Iron Jawed Angels

The first wave of suffragettes had to fight for more than just the right to vote. Women of color and lower class women were seen as even lesser than upper class white women. During the first parade, Alice Paul worries that having women of color join the other suffragettes there would be more problems for them later. The woman in that scene tells Alice that the women of color must join in the fight at that time, or white women will get the right to vote, and the women of color would be left behind. Not only were women of color in even more of a disadvantage, but lower class women as well. These groups were seen as even less than women, and they had more to lose. Lower class women risked getting their names blacklisted and denied work anywhere, and women of color had to fight harder to be seen as citizens in general. The film shows three different goups of women (white women, women of color and lower class women), and instead of a single struggle of the same magnitude for all of them, there are different hurdles each must overcome.