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60 free Women's Suffrage trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The fight for votes for women stretched across a century and every continent, and this women's suffrage trivia quiz covers the whole campaign. The American story runs from Seneca Falls and the Declaration of Sentiments through Susan B. Anthony's arrest for voting, the Wyoming Territory, the Silent Sentinels picketing the White House and the single Tennessee vote that ratified the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. The British story covers suffragists and suffragettes, Millicent Fawcett and the Pankhursts, hunger strikes and the Cat and Mouse Act, Emily Davison at the Derby and the acts of 1918 and 1928. The quiz also travels further: Kate Sheppard's petition and New Zealand's 1893 first, South Australia letting women stand for parliament, Finland's 19 women MPs of 1907, France waiting until 1944, Switzerland until 1971 and one canton until 1990, and Saudi Arabia in 2015. There are questions on the colours of the movement, the origin of the word suffragette, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells and Carrie Chapman Catt's League of Women Voters. Every answer was verified against Wikipedia's articles on women's suffrage and the people, laws and events involved, and each question links to its source. Try our Women in History and US Constitution quizzes next.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which was the first self-governing country to grant women the vote at national level, in 1893?
New Zealand
Kate Sheppard's petition of nearly 32,000 signatures represented almost a quarter of adult European women there.
Q 02Which US territory gave women the vote and the right to stand for office in 1869?
Wyoming
It kept the right on becoming a state in 1890 and is nicknamed the Equality State.
Q 03The 1848 Seneca Falls Convention was held in which building?
The Wesleyan Chapel
It ran over two days, 19-20 July, and was advertised as a convention on "the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman".
Q 04Which famous abolitionist spoke up at Seneca Falls to keep the demand for the vote in the Declaration of Sentiments?
Frederick Douglass
Even Lucretia Mott had urged that the voting resolution be dropped as too radical.
Q 05How many people signed the Declaration of Sentiments at Seneca Falls?
100: 68 women and 32 men
Elizabeth Cady Stanton modelled it on the Declaration of Independence, changing "all men" to "all men and women are created equal".
Q 06Where did Elizabeth Cady Stanton first meet Lucretia Mott, planting the seed for Seneca Falls?
The 1840 anti-slavery convention in London
The convention refused to seat Mott and the other American women delegates because they were women.
Q 07Susan B. Anthony was arrested in 1872 in which city for the crime of voting?
Rochester, New York
She was convicted but refused to pay the fine, and the authorities let the matter drop.
Q 08Which senator introduced the 1878 amendment that became known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment?
Aaron A. Sargent
It was rejected in 1887 and not passed by Congress until 1919.
Q 09Susan B. Anthony became the first female citizen on US coinage when her portrait appeared on what in 1979?
The dollar coin
Her 80th birthday had been celebrated at the White House at President McKinley's invitation.
Q 10Why did Stanton and Anthony oppose the Fifteenth Amendment?
It enfranchised Black men but not women
The dispute split the movement into the NWSA and the AWSA for more than twenty years.
Q 11When Stanton and Anthony's NWSA merged with Lucy Stone's rival AWSA in 1890, what did the united body call itself?
The National American Woman Suffrage Association
Stanton was its first, largely honorary, president.
Q 12Sojourner Truth's famous 1851 speech, later titled "Ain't I a Woman?", was delivered at a women's convention in which Ohio city?
Akron
Born into slavery as Isabella Bomefree, she spoke only Dutch until she was nine.
Q 13Alice Paul and Lucy Burns organised a huge suffrage procession in Washington, D.C. on 3 March 1913, the day before what event?
Q 21Which state was recorded as the first to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment in June 1919, its messenger reaching Washington ahead of a neighbour that had actually voted an hour earlier?
Wisconsin
Delegate David James was handed a statement establishing his state as first.
Q 22By what margin did the US Senate finally pass the suffrage amendment on 4 June 1919?
56 yeas to 25 nays
The House had passed it two weeks earlier, and Southern Democrats abandoned a filibuster before the Senate vote.
Q 23Which state became the decisive 36th to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment, on 18 August 1920?
Tennessee
The state House approved it by 50 votes to 49, with anti-suffragists trying to reverse the result for days afterwards.
Woodrow Wilson's inauguration
Crowds mobbed the marchers and cavalry had to be called in, which won the cause weeks of headlines.
Q 14The Silent Sentinels' picket, begun in January 1917, was organised by Alice Paul and which militant suffrage organisation?
The National Woman's Party
More than 2,000 women took part in the vigil, which lasted two and a half years and was the first ever picket of the White House.
Q 15Who coined the name "Silent Sentinels" for the White House pickets?
Harriot Stanton Blatch
Blatch was Elizabeth Cady Stanton's daughter and had learned militant tactics from the British movement.
Q 16When the DC Jail ran out of room for arrested pickets in 1917, where were the women sent?
The Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia
The site later became the Lorton prison complex; the Lucy Burns Museum opened there in 2020 to commemorate the suffragists held there.
Q 17The "Night of Terror", when jailed suffragists were beaten by guards at the Occoquan Workhouse, took place on which date?
14 November 1917
Reports of the brutality helped swing public sympathy toward the pickets.
Q 18Banners carried by White House pickets in 1917 provoked mob attacks by giving the president what mocking nickname?
Kaiser Wilson
The banner asked why he sympathised with un-self-governed Germans while 20 million American women could not vote.
Q 19At the 1913 Washington suffrage parade, organisers told journalist Ida B. Wells and other Black suffragists to march where?
At the back, in a separate delegation
Wells refused, waited in the crowd and stepped into the Illinois ranks as they passed.
Q 20Which Chicago organisation did Ida B. Wells co-found in January 1913 to advance the vote for Black women?
The Alpha Suffrage Club
It also worked to elect African Americans to city offices and paid Wells's way to the Washington parade.
Q 24In the decisive 1920 state ratification vote, 24-year-old legislator Harry T. Burn switched to yes after receiving a note from whom?
His mother
Febb Burn's letter urged him to be a good boy and help ratify; rumours of bribery followed but nothing was found.
Q 25Women's Equality Day is marked on 26 August because on that date in 1920 what happened?
Its adoption was formally certified
Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby signed the proclamation quietly at his home, with only his secretary present.
Q 26In which 1922 case did the US Supreme Court unanimously uphold the validity of the Nineteenth Amendment?
Leser v. Garnett
Maryland opponents had argued that the state's constitution limited voting to men.
Q 27Which state was the last of those existing in 1920 to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment, doing so only in 1984?
Mississippi
Its ratification was symbolic, since the amendment had been in force for 64 years.
Q 28Carrie Chapman Catt founded which organisation on 14 February 1920, six months before ratification, to help the newly enfranchised use their vote?
The League of Women Voters
She had also founded the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in 1904.
Q 29Catt's 1916 strategy of combining state campaigns with a push for a federal amendment was known as what?
The Winning Plan
She unveiled it at the Atlantic City convention and it delivered ratification within four years.
Q 30After 1920 Alice Paul devoted herself to which proposal, first sent to Congress in 1923 and nicknamed for Lucretia Mott?
The Equal Rights Amendment
She wrote it with Crystal Eastman; it has still never been added to the Constitution.