This year is 100 years since women (but for African American women in some states and Native American women) got the right to vote. It was hard won. Women called "suffragettes" rather than "feminists", fought for this right. It took over 40 years.
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE GOV: HISTORY OF WOMEN'S RIGHT TO VOTE
EXCERPT: Even though they were legally able to vote now, African American women were often barred from the polls. American Indian women were also not considered U.S. citizens until 1924 and could not vote.
image from Wikipedia
It was a process.
Once Women got the right to vote in 1920 when the 19th Amendment was ratified, they also got the right (and responsibility) to file for their own citizenship. If you are doing African-American research, you want to check what state your ancestor was in and when African-American women there got the right to vote. Remember that there were local and state efforts by women to gain the vote as the momentum built over decades. Learning the niche history of your ancestor's voting and citizenship status can be an interesting addition to your family history writing. Before this it was assumed that the head of household - a man - voted as a representative of his family and that women's opinions ought to reflect that of their husbands.
So before women got the right to vote, they could become citizens by being included in their father's petition - also any children under the age of 18 would have been included. And yet, there was a punishment in place for women who married men who were not citizens yet and that was that they lost their own citizenship.
In my years as a genealogist, I have seen that some widows petitioned for their own citizenship and that of their children. So many immigrant men did dangerous work and lost their lives and there were many widows on their own until a possible remarriage. Perhaps remarriage was easy for the 20 somethings but an older widow with many children could find herself living the rest of her life without a husband to support her.
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