The women’s suffrage movement, from its inception, faced a critical barrier to its goal of gaining the right to vote for all women. To be successful, women needed to convince legislators to change the current laws. But since women did not have the right to vote, they lacked an important means of influencing these legislators. If a legislator promised to vote in favor of women’s suffrage and then later reneged, women could not punish that legislator by voting him out of office. Furthermore, the legislators had little incentive to grant voting rights to women. Once women got the right to vote, how could a legislator be certain that the newly enfranchised women would not exercise their right to vote for another candidate? Given these possible disadvantages, it is difficult to immediately understand why so many politicians eventually did vote in favor of...