"Gender Dynamics Had Always Been Part of It"

"And Americans today are likely to recognize the names of the most famous temperance activists not from that work but from their efforts for women's suffrage—not that those two weren't connected. In 1853, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton founded the Women's State Temperance Society in upstate New York. Stanton would even refer to alcohol as 'the unclean thing.' It became clear to them that giving women the right to vote was only way they could ban alcohol. As Anthony put it in 1899, 'the only hope' for Prohibition was 'putting the ballot into the hands of women.'"

Olivia B. Waxman at Time explains that "Prohibition and women's suffrage went hand in hand."