In the Gilded Age (late 19th century) the parties were reluctant to involve the federal government too heavily in the private sector, except in the area of railroads and tariffs. In general, they accepted the concept of laissez-faire, a doctrine opposing government interference in the economy except to maintain law and order. This attitude started to change during the depression of the 1890s when small business, farm, and labor movements began asking the government to intercede on their behalf.

By the turn of the century, a middle class had developed that was leery of both the business elite and the radical political movements of farmers and laborers in the Midwest and West. Known as Progressives, these people favored government regulation of business practices to, in their minds, ensure competition and free enterprise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Era#Economic_policy

...

At the first national convention of the Progressive Party, in Chicago in August of 1912, all observers noted the prominence of women, women delegates, women leaders. The Kansas newspaper editor William Allen White recalled: "We were, of course, for woman suffrage, and we invited women delegates and had plenty of them. They were our own kind, too-- women doctors, women lawyers, women teachers, college professors, middle-aged leaders of civic movements, or rich young girls who had gone in for settlement work." "Settlement work" refers to the settlement houses in the cities, places where the poor could obtain basic social services, not then available from government. Many social workers, male and female, supported the Progressive Party in 1912. Indeed, the most famous settlement house leader and social worker in American history, the beloved Jane Addams of Hull House in Chicago, was at the convention, and seconded Theodore Roosevelt's nomination for President. This was said to be the first time that a woman had addressed the national convention of a major party. The rules of the Bull Moose Party, adopted at the Chicago convention, mandated that four women were to be members-at-large on the Progressive National Committee. This was to insure female representation at the highest levels of party leadership.

In November 1912 Theodore Roosevelt carried two states with women's suffrage, Washington and California (he won six states in all); and in the State of Washington, Helen J. Scott was a Progressive elector. It was said in the press at the time that she was the first woman to cast a vote in the electoral college-- and therefore in a real constitutional sense Helen Scott may be said to be the first woman who voted for President! However, some reports list women among the Progressive electors in California, and the matter has not been resolved by historians as yet.

In 1913 the prominent social worker Frances Kellor became the director of the "Progressive Service," which was a division of the national party, housed at party headquarters in New York City, that researched issues, drafted bills for Progressive legislators (state and national), issued publications, and provided witnesses for legislative hearings. It was unprecedented for a woman to have such a prominent role in a national political organization. Jane Addams at this time was serving on the executive committee of the Progressive National Committee. Mrs. Kellogg Fairbank of Illinois, later a member of the Democratic Party's national committee, was a member of the finance committee of the Progressive Party's national organization. The national party also employed Alice Carpenter as a worker for women suffrage and labor issues.

In 1913 Progressive Party state legislators in Illinois, aided by the dynamic Ruth Hanna McCormick, were able to obtain women's suffrage in the state. This was possible because the Bull Moosers held the balance of power...

In 1913 Progressive Party state legislators in Illinois, aided by the dynamic Ruth Hanna McCormick, were able to obtain women's suffrage in the state. This was possible because the Bull Moosers held the balance of power in the state legislature. Illinois was the first state east of the Mississippi to give women the vote. Ruth Hanna McCormick was the daughter of Mark Hanna. Her husband Medill McCormick, was in the legislature in 1913. He ended up in the US Senate. Ruth Hanna McCormick later was elected to the US House.

In 1914 Agnes L. Riddle, a two-term member of her state legislature, was the Progressive Party candidate for secretary of state of Colorado.

The Progressive Party went out of business in 1916, but the cause of women's suffrage was surely advanced by four years of Bull Moose campaigning. Women got the vote everywhere at last in 1920. In later years Ruth Hanna McCormick, after serving in the US House, became the first woman nominated in any state for the US Senate by the Republican Party. Though defeated, she remained a power in that party until her death in the 1940s. In 1933 Frances Perkins was appointed Secretary of Labor by Franklin D. Roosevelt, the first women to serve in the cabinet. In 1912 Frances Perkins had supported the Progressive Party. The legacy is clear. The Progressive Party had opened a door to women, a door previously closed to them by Republicans and Democrats alike.

http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/life/bullmoose.htm

Emma Goldman on suffrage:

...



Woman's demand for equal suffrage is based largely on the contention that woman must have the equal right in all affairs of society. No one could, possibly, refute that, if suffrage were a right. Alas, for the ignorance of the human mind, which can see a right in an imposition. Or is it not the most brutal imposition for one set of people to make laws that another set is coerced by force to obey? Yet woman clamors for that "golden opportunity" that has wrought so much misery in the world, and robbed man of his integrity and self-reliance; an imposition which has thoroughly corrupted the people, and made them absolute prey in the hands of unscrupulous politicians.

The poor, stupid, free American citizen! Free to starve, free to tramp the highways of this great country, he enjoys universal suffrage, and, by that right, he has forged chains about his limbs. The reward that he receives is stringent labor laws prohibiting the right of boycott, of picketing, in fact, of everything, except the right to be robbed of the fruits of his labor. Yet all these disastrous results of the twentieth century fetich have taught woman nothing. But, then, woman will purify politics, we are assured.

Needless to say, I am not opposed to woman suffrage on the conventional ground that she is not equal to it. I see neither physical, psychological, nor mental reasons why woman should not have the equal right to vote with man. But that can not possibly blind me to the absurd notion that woman will accomplish that wherein man has failed. If she would not make things worse, she certainly could not make them better. To assume, therefore, that she would succeed in purifying something which is not susceptible of purification, is to credit her with supernatural powers. Since woman's greatest misfortune has been that she was looked upon as either angel or devil, her true salvation lies in being placed on earth; namely, in being considered human, and therefore subject to all human follies and mistakes. Are we, then, to believe that two errors will make a right? Are we to assume that the poison already inherent in politics will be decreased, if women were to enter the political arena? The most ardent suffragists would hardly maintain such a folly.

As a matter of fact, the most advanced students of universal suffrage have come to realize that all existing systems of political power are absurd, and are completely inadequate to meet the pressing issues of life. This view is also borne out by a statement of one who is herself an ardent believer in woman suffrage, Dr. Helen L. Sumner. In her able work on EQUAL SUFFRAGE, she says: "In Colorado, we find that equal suffrage serves to show in the most striking way the essential rottenness and degrading character of the existing system." Of course, Dr. Sumner has in mind a particular system of voting, but the same applies with equal force to the entire machinery of the representative system. With such a basis, it is difficult to understand how woman, as a political factor, would benefit either herself or the rest of mankind.

But, say our suffrage devotees, look at the countries and States where female suffrage exists. See what woman has accomplished--in Australia, New Zealand, Finland, the Scandinavian countries, and in our own four States, Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. Distance lends enchantment--or, to quote a Polish formula--"it is well where we are not." Thus one would assume that those countries and States are unlike other countries or States, that they have greater freedom, greater social and economic equality, a finer appreciation of human life, deeper understanding of the great social struggle, with all the vital questions it involves for the human race.

The women of Australia and New Zealand can vote, and help make the laws. Are the labor conditions better there than they are in England, where the suffragettes are making such a heroic struggle? Does there exist a greater motherhood, happier and freer children than in England? Is woman there no longer considered a mere sex commodity? Has she emancipated herself from the Puritanical double standard of morality for men and women? Certainly none but the ordinary female stump politician will dare answer these questions in the affirmative. If that be so, it seems ridiculous to point to Australia and New Zealand as the Mecca of equal suffrage accomplishments.

On the other hand, it is a fact to those who know the real political conditions in Australia, that politics have gagged labor by enacting the most stringent labor laws, making strikes without the sanction of an arbitration committee a crime equal to treason.

Not for a moment do I mean to imply that woman suffrage is responsible for this state of affairs. I do mean, however, that there is no reason to point to Australia as a wonder-worker of woman's accomplishment, since her influence has been unable to free labor from the thralldom of political bossism.

...

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/goldman/works/1911/woman-suffrage.htm

The American suffrage movement has been, until very recently, altogether a parlor affair, absolutely detached from the economic needs of the people. Thus Susan B. Anthony, no doubt an exceptional type of woman, was not only indifferent but antagonistic to labor; nor did she hesitate to manifest her antagonism when, in 1869, she advised women to take the places of striking printers in New York.* I do not know whether her attitude had changed before her death.