The issue of woman's suffrage did not concern the presidential candidates in 1912 as much as modern observers  might expect. However, by 1912 the woman's suffrage movement was beginning to make suffrage a topic all major parties had to consider.

    The push for woman's suffrage in the United States dates back to the Seneca Falls convention of 1848 and continued for over seventy years until the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1920. The floodgates to woman's suffrage did not, however, open finally and dramatically in 1920; instead, during the interim women had struggled for progress on local and state levels.

    In 1912, using existing organizations and creating new ones, women and men debating suffrage for women continued waging their war, fighting the battles state by state. By the end of the decade, the activists for suffrage refocused their attention on the national level, pushing for a Constitutional amendment as opposed to advances on the local and state levels. In 1912, neither side's victory was secure.