This web site identifies women candidates for elective office in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, giving biographical information for each woman, information about her campaign, party affiliation, photographs, and lists of selected resources. We estimate that women ran in well over 3,500 campaigns by 1920. Currently, our database contains biographical records for 1,407 women, who ran in 2,027 campaigns. New entries will continue to appear on this site as women are identified and researched.

In the second half of the 19th century and through the first two decades of the 20th century hundreds of daring women ran for political office on local, state, and national levels throughout the U.S. Decades before 1920, when ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted all women in the United States the right to vote, in some states and localities, because of the principle of federalism, women were able to vote for school board representatives, county clerks, and state office holders. In a very few states and territories, where they had been given complete suffrage rights, they could even cast ballots for members of the U.S. House of Representatives, and for the U.S. President. With the right to vote also came the right to hold office, and women quickly took up the challenge to run for public office. For these women, influencing public policy only through non-partisan organizations, which did not sponsor political candidates, was not enough.

As early as 1866 woman suffrage activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton offered her name as a candidate for the U.S. Congress. In 1871 newspaper publisher Victoria Woodhull announced as a presidential candidate. Belva Lockwood ran a full campaign for the U.S. presidency in 1884 and again in 1888. Beginning in the 1870s lesser-known women were drawn to politics through the suffrage, temperance, and progressive movements and ran, often in highly contested elections, for a wide variety of political offices. In 1887 Susanna Salter became mayor of Argonia, Kansas. Colorado elected the first three women to a state legislature in 1894. Two years later, in Utah, Martha Hughes Cannon became the first woman state senator.

In the 20th century, the stories of Woodhull and Lockwood and other women candidates of their era were nearly lost. Even after ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment and the integration of women into the electoral process, it continued, and continues, to be a struggle for women to get elected to public office beyond the local level. Many states have yet to elect a woman to serve in Congress, as governor, or as mayors of large cities. For women of color the opportunity to serve in elective office at the national level has come slowly. Patsy Mink, from Hawai'i, was elected to the House of Representatives in 1964.The first African-American woman representative was not elected to Congress until 1968. The first Hispanic American woman was elected to the House of Representatives only in 1989 and none has served in the Senate. As of 2008 no Native American woman has been elected to Congress.