Page "Jeannette Rankin" Paragraph 7

Wellington D. Rankin, a power in the Montana Republican party and Jeannette Rankin ’ s brother, helped to manage her first campaign for the party nomination in the Congressional election of 1916 and in the general election.

On November 7, 1916 she was elected to the House of Representatives as a Republican from Montana, becoming the first female member of Congress.

The Nineteenth Amendment ( which gave women the right to vote everywhere in the United States ) was not ratified until 1920 ; therefore, during Rankin's term in the 65th Congress ( 1917 – 1919 ), many women throughout the country did not have the right to vote, though they did in her home state of Montana.

She supported woman's suffrage, child-protection laws, and prohibition.