On August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment became law. Citizens of the United States could no longer be barred from voting based on their sex. The culmination of many decades of struggle involving generations of women, the amendment meant some 27 million women were now eligible to vote—the largest ever expansion of enfranchisement in the U.S.

Yet the march toward political equality was far from finished. The amendment failed to rock the patriarchal political landscape as advocates had hoped and opponents had feared. Women didn’t band together as a dominant political force to insist that their interests be addressed. Instead they often checked off the same names on their ballots as their fathers, husbands, and brothers had—if they