Women and the Constitutional Convention

Updated January 28, 2025 • January 28, 2025

How did the drafting and ratification of the Constitution of the United States affect women of the era? Were they involved in the process?

No women attended the daily meetings in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, during the summer of 1787. No women voted for or against the adoption of the Constitution. However, some women were intensely interested in the political happenings, and all would be affected—one way or another—by the document that the men drafted. Arguably, some women influenced the proceedings of the convention and the language of the final document.

Of the fifty-five men who attended the Grand Convention (Constitutional Convention), most were married, had been married or had a female relative looking after their property or business while they were in Philadelphia. The delegates at the convention had agreed to keep their discussions secret until the final document could be revealed, making it unlikely that women at home were informed by letter of the details of the convention. Wives and children of delegates Edmund Randolph and Elbridge Gerry traveled to Philadelphia and spent time there while the convention continued.

On September 17, 1787, the delegates signed the Constitution and prepared to share the document with the states and the people to begin the ratification process. On that day, Elizabeth Willing Powel asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" Franklin famously replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” In later decades, Powel did not specifically recall the question and Franklin’s answer, but she noted, “I well remember to have frequently associated with the most respectable, influential members of the Convention that framed the Constitution, and that the all-important subject was frequently discussed at our house.” Hosting delegates at their home, Elizabeth Powel and her husband—soon to be mayor of Philadelphia—were at the center of social life during the convention.

Other women—like Mrs. House, Mrs. Marshall and Miss Daley—had delegates staying in their respectable boarding houses or taverns and likely overheard discussions or ideas from the convention. They likely had or even expressed unrecorded opinions on the subjects, possibly influencing indirectly the proceedings in the state house.

Mary Morris—wife of Robert Morris—hosted George Washington at their Philadelphia home. One evening Washington accompanied Mrs. Morris and several other women to hear Eliza Harriot present a lecture. Historian Mary Sarah Bilder suggests that this may have influenced Washington’s opinions during the convention.

Eliza Herriot had been born in 1749 in Lisbon, Portugal. Her father and other male relatives held important positions in British colonial ports and she traveled to New York City, Charleston (South Carolina) and possibly Boston. During the Revolutionary War years, she was in London in 1776 and married a man named John O’Connor, an Irish Catholic. Living in Dublin, Ireland, she became friends with famous educators and may have opened her first school. The couple moved to New York City in 1786, and Eliza opened a girls’ boarding school that became well-known for its progressive education. Her husband went to Philadelphia in the spring of 1787, seeking work as a magazine editor and Eliza left her New York school and went to Pennsylvania, too. The city was anticipating the arrival of the delegates for the convention, and Eliza began advertising that she give a series of subscription lectures at University Hall. She is the first known woman to advertise and present lectures in the United States. While it is not entirely clear what topics Eliza lectured on, it is reasonable to surmise it would have been about education, women’s rights and opportunities in society and perhaps the idea that better education for girls and women would allow them to participate actively in government. Washington noted in his diary that the lecture was “tolerable” and later he purchased three books that were also favorites of Eliza Herriot, suggesting that he wanted to further consider her ideas. Washington also later recommended schools for girls that aligned with her educational concepts.

On both sides of the Atlantic, some women built on The Enlightenment ideas and put forward the idea that women had equal capacity and could successful participate in elements of a constitutional government. Famously, English-woman Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792. Some American women also had hopes that they would be have a say in the United States’ new government. As historian Liz Covart points out, “Early Americans had a lot of aspirational ideas when it came to who would and could be included in the United States’s new constitutional state. The notion that only white men should be politically active and hold political power was not a settled issue in 1787. In fact, it was so unsettled, the Framers of the Constitution wrote their new system of government with language that allowed for the inclusion of all sorts of Americans – white men, free people of color, and women. And the reason we see this inclusive language is because of the work of men and women like Eliza Harriot – everyday Americans who advocated for their inclusion in the new American constitutional state.”

With the brief exception in New Jersey—from 1776 to 1807—women were not allowed to vote. The concept of household voting allowed for the men to vote and “represent” the views of his family. This system of voting stemmed from English political theory and the laws of Coverture which “denied a married woman a separate legal status from her husband, thereby preventing her from voting.”

In the late 19^th Century, some states allowed women to vote in state elections. It was not until the ratification of the 19^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920 that women could cast ballots in all elections.

During 1787, some women had hopes that they would be directly included in the United States new government either immediately or in the near future. Instead, it would take decades for women to gain the right to vote. Still, women influenced the framing of the Constitution and language was included in the final document that—while it did not allow them to actively participate—did not shut women out of citizenship and future discussions of what they should, could and would look like.

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