I found the following in an article from In These Times, and wanted to capture the history of women running for president.
Excerpt From: "Cutting Women Out: The media’s bias against female presidential candidates"
By Erika FalkFebruary 25, 2008
Though the mainstream media tend to frame women who run for president as novelties, they are not. Women have led nations such as Canada, France and the United Kingdom, not to mention Turkey, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and many others. In fact, there have been so many historical and contemporary women heads of state that one has to scroll through pages to get a complete list.
Here at home, women have been running for the presidency since before universal suffrage, as Woodhull’s candidacy demonstrates.
In his comprehensive list of people who have run for president, James Havel, author of U.S. Presidential Candidates and the Elections: A Biographical and Historical Guide, included more than 100 women’s names. Some of these women were serious candidates, qualified for federal primary matching funds, and even received substantial press coverage. Here are a few:
Woodhull ran as the Equal Rights Party candidate in 1872. She owned her own newspaper, was the first woman stockbroker on Wall Street, and presided over and supported her extended family.
The second woman to run for president was Belva Lockwood in 1884. As an attorney and partner in her own firm, and as the first woman to practice law before the U.S. Supreme Court, she had a profession consistent with those of other presidential candidates. Lockwood had also campaigned for presidential candidate Horace Greeley, and drafted a piece of legislation making it illegal to take into account a person’s sex in determining pay for civil servants. Congress later passed the bill.
Former Sen. Margaret Chase Smith (R-Maine) sought the presidential nomination of the Republican Party and was the first woman already holding federal office to run. She ran in 1964 after serving nine years in the House and 15 years in the Senate. Smith placed third in popular votes in the Republican primary, but she received only 27 delegate votes at the convention that ultimately nominated Barry Goldwater.
In 1988, former Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.), a Harvard-educated attorney who had served in Congress for eight terms, ran for president. At the time, she was a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee.
Twelve years later, Elizabeth Dole sought the Republican nomination. Also a Harvard-educated lawyer, Dole had served in the cabinet of two different presidential administrations (as secretary of transportation and secretary of labor) and had executive experience as president of the American Red Cross. She is currently a U.S. senator from North Carolina.
In 2004, former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun (D-Ill.) ran for president, making her the most recent woman to seek the nomination until Clinton’s 2007 declaration. A Chicago native, Moseley Braun had served six years as an assistant U.S. attorney, 10 years in the Illinois House of Representatives and one term as U.S. senator. She was the ambassador to New Zealand during President Clinton’s administration.
