29/07/2025
Throughout her 60-year career as a lawmaker, lobbyist, and activist, Jeannette Rankin championed women’s rights, workers’ rights, peace, and democracy, and made history as the first woman elected to Congress in 1916.
Born on a ranch outside Missoula, Montana in 1880, Rankin grew up in a community where gender roles were far more flexible than they were on the East Coast or Europe. On Montana’s rural homesteads and ranches, survival required every set of hands, regardless of gender.
Rankin also grew up with a profound awareness of the devastating toll that white settlers, her people, took on Indigenous communities through westward expansion. This early recognition laid the foundation for Rankin’s lifelong commitment to peace, empathy, and systemic change.
Rankin was accepted to the New York School of Philanthropy in 1908. While working at the night court helping convicted s*x workers find a second chance, Rankin was introduced to the women’s right to vote through her supervisor, a court clerk by night and a suffragist by day. Over the next few months, Rankin traveled over a dozen states campaigning for women’s right to vote, and helped to win it in California.
Rankin returned to Montana to campaign for the vote, but rather than being the sole star of Montana suffrage, Rankin charted a constellation of women activists throughout Big Sky Country. This grassroots organizing flipped both State Houses in favor of women’s right to vote, and the measure passed in 1914 with an overwhelming majority.
In July 1916, Rankin launched her historic campaign to be the first U.S. Congresswoman. After learning the aspirations, desires, and dreams of her constituents, she constructed a platform of women’s rights, pacifism, labor reform, and democratic reform. The voters of Montana flocked to her vision built from their collective voices and catapulted her into Congress with a resounding victory.
An unwavering pacifist, Rankin was the only congressperson to vote against both WWI and WWII, and even considered running for a third term to oppose the Vietnam War.
Learn more about Rankin in our newly-published biography: https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/jeannette-rankin
