Women in Utah Politics

The early political history of Utah women began with the 1870 law that gave women the right to vote.

With all of the attention on Hillary Clinton's historic campaign for President, it might be interesting to take a look at the history of women's involvement in Utah politics. The right to vote came early for Utah's women. In 1870, the territorial legislature passed a law giving Utah's women the vote, though not the right to hold office, making Utah only the second territory in the nation to enfranchise women. Ironically both Mormon leaders and anti-polygamy activists saw the move as a step in the right direction -- the Mormons because they believed it proved that women in polygamous marriages were not the slavish, oppressed class many non-Mormons imagined them to be, and the anti-polygamy advocates because they thought Mormon women would actually vote to kill polygamy in the territory if given the opportunity. Utah women continued to vote in elections for 17 years until Congress revoked the right to vote for Utah women as part of its own anti-polygamy campaign.

By 1895, with Utah's elevation to statehood a foregone conclusion, the vote was returned to women. The next year, Martha Hughes Cannon, a medical doctor with a degree from the University of Michigan, became Utah's first female state senator. In the years that followed Cannon's election, other women were voted into the state legislature. Women were also elected to local government positions. In 1912, for instance, women were given control of the town council and mayor's office in Kanab, a farming town on Utah's southern border. According to various source, this may have been the first time in American history that a town council had been entirely composed of women.

In the 1940s, Utahns took another step toward full political integration for women when they elected Reva Beck Bosone to Congress in 1948. Karen Shepard and Enid Green Waldholtz both followed in the 1990s.