Why Suffragists Wore White, And More Feminist Symbols Decoded

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White, purple, and yellow

The women’s movement didn’t rely on visual symbols at first, notes historian Einav Rabinovitch-Fox. That changed in the early 20th century, when suffragists in England and the United States realized that visual symbolism was a way to get their message across. British suffragists were the first to use the colors purple, white, and green and, inspired by that example, the National Woman’s Party, the militant U.S. organization dedicated to enshrining women’s suffrage in the Constitution, adopted white, purple and yellow as its colors.

Suffragists marching in Washington DC in 1913
Women clad in white dresses march through the streets of Washington, D.C., to demand their right to vote on March 13, 1913. Suffragists often wore white to stand out while promoting their cause—and to signify the virtue they would bring to public life.Photograph courtesy Library of Congress

Each color had its own meaning. Purple meant loyalty, and gold “the color of light and life...the torch that guides our purpose, pure and unswerving.” For British suffragists, green symbolized hope.

But white, symbolizing purity, is the color most associated with suffragists today. Long associated with youth, virginity, and moral virtue, white suggested that women could be expected to vote for politicians and policies that would better society. In massive suffrage parades, white-clad women contrasted with the crowds of darkly dressed men.

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The color had practical benefits, too. “White cotton dresses made an impression en masse, were consistently in style, relatively inexpensive, and easy to maintain,” writes Sarah Gordon, curatorial scholar at the Center for Women’s History at the New York Historical Society.

State symbols 

A bird pin used during the American suffrage movement
In 1915, suffragists in Massachusetts promoted a state referendum on whether to grant women the right to vote by posting these tin signs of a bluebird emblazoned the text "Votes For Women Nov. 2" on fences, telephone poles, and trees around the state. Although the referendum failed, the bluebird has remained a symbol of women’s suffrage.Photograph by Ken Florey Suffrage Collection, Gado/Getty

American women also conducted state-by-state attempts to gain suffrage. These efforts often generated their own symbols. One was the sunflower, the state flower of Kansas. Suffragists there began the fight as soon as Kansas became a territory in 1854, adopting the state’s flower and its color, yellow, as they worked toward an 1867 referendum granting full statewide suffrage. They lost the referendum—and it would take another 25 years to obtain the right to vote in statewide election—but the symbol was later adopted by national suffragists who saw it as a potent sign of women’s organizing power. (Here's what the 19th Amendment did—and didn’t—do for women in 1920.)

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