When the LWV was first formed, the women were not only committed to voting, but were anxious to make known their opinions on numerous public issues. They were determined that the newly enfranchised women would cast informed votes. 

At their first meeting, they listed 69 different items that they wanted to address. They did do some prioritizing and formed study committees to look into the most important issues and report back to the membership. These study committees and the issues they examined became the basis for what League calls “Program”. 

Since then, Program has expanded to include items at all levels of government. Suggestions for study topics have always been provided from the grass-roots (members) and selected by delegates at annual meetings or state or national conventions. National and state study items have routinely been researched by board members at the appropriate level and study information provided to the local leagues, along with certain questions that guided the discussion at local, or Unit, meetings. 

The goal was always to reach consensus on the questions, which were then sent to the national or state League. The board members compiled the responses from the local leagues and from that determined the League’s opinion, or Position, on the issue at hand.  League members and local leagues may then use these positions to lobby elected officials on those topics. Local Leagues follow similar procedures when they determine a local issue that they feel needs to be studied.

For more, see our Positions page here.

What is the History of the League of Women Voters?

The Productive Past

In her address to the National American Woman Suffrage Association's (NAWSA) 50th convention in St. Louis, Missouri, President Carrie Chapman Catt proposed the creation of a "league of women voters to finish the fight and aid in the reconstruction of the nation." Women Voters was formed within the NAWSA, composed of the organizations in the states where suffrage had already been attained. The next year, on February 14, 1920 - six months before the 19th amendment to the Constitution was ratified - the League was formally organized in Chicago as the national League of Women Voters. Catt described the purpose of the new organization:

   "The League of Women Voters is not to dissolve any present organization but to unite all existing organizations of women who believe in its principles. It is not to lure women from partisanship but to combine them in an effort for legislation which will protect coming movements, which we cannot even foretell, from suffering the untoward conditions which have hindered for so long the coming of equal suffrage. Are the women of the United States big enough to see their opportunity?"

For more, see our History page here .