What connection does women being citizens without the right to vote have with sitting in a rowboat without any oars?

The year is 1913. A new president has been elected and is about to take office. But when he arrives at the train station in Washington, DC, few people are there to meet him. "Where are the crowds?” he asks.They are already on Pennsylvania Avenue, watching something the American public has never seen before: thousands of women, marching in the streets. The right to vote.“The U.S. Constitution didn’t say one thing about who could vote in its initial form. All of the power over who could vote was left to the states.”Robyn Muncy is a history professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. She explains that in America’s political system, power is divided between the federal government and the states.“That meant that suffragists in the late 19th century had a choice: They could either try to get a federal amendment … or, they could work state by state, where in a lot of cases, women had a lot more power at the state level.”Women decided to do both. The struggle for woman suffrage took place at the federal and state level from the 19th century through the 20th. “Suffrage” means the right to vote.The 19th century: grassroots campaigns in the states At first, only a few women were asking for suffrage. They said women had the same value as men, so they should have the same political and legal rights, too.