About the League & Our Founding

For 100 years the League has stood strong, growing into the vital force we are today: changing our political system and supporting millions of voters. Across the country, we continue to have impact in all 50 states, from local communities to the halls of Congress.

The League of Women Voters was founded by Carrie Chapman Catt in 1920, just six months before the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, giving all American women the right to vote after a 72-year fight for women’s suffrage.

Carrie Chapman Catt believed that within five years, a League of Women Voters could give millions of women voters a crash course in civic engagement and launch them into the American political system.

The League was a safe-haven for women, regardless of formal party affiliation, to find their voices on issues that mattered to them. As one early leader described it, the League is “like a university without walls ... whose members enter to learn and remain to shape the curriculum.” Over the nearly 10 decades of our existence, the League of Women Voters has applied the lessons learned in our earliest days to engage and empower all voters.

From the beginning, the League has been an activist, grassroots organization whose leaders believed that citizens should play a critical role in advocacy.