Articles

September 21, 2022 Utah women make history, but they’re often missing from our textbooks, classrooms, and public art. We need your help to change that! Our annual student art contest is open for submissions through January 25, 2023. Winners in each age category will receive cash awards and prizes from Utah businesses, and they’ll be […]

by Toni Pilcher, Better Days Graduate Intern May 18, 2022 In the fallout of the Civil War, many American women were trying to build new and meaningful connections within their communities. The war had really challenged what it meant to live in an increasingly diverse country. In response, women flocked to special interest clubs like […]

February 23, 2022 It’s been 125 years since Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon made history as the country’s first female state senator. Utah chose to send a statue of her to represent our state in Washington, D.C., but the pandemic delayed her planned installation in 2020. Her statue should make it to our nation’s capital this […]

July 2021 This month’s featured woman is Marjorie Redding Christiansen, a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots during World War Two. As a WASP, Marjorie flew non-combat missions for the Air Force like testing repaired planes and flying troops. This freed up more male pilots for combat. Marjorie’s brave service wasn’t fully recognized at […]

November 3, 2020 We’ve been posting this on our social media, but want to make sure it’s available here as well. This historic election marks the 150th year since Utah women voted in a general election, the 100th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, and the 55th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. Isn’t it a […]

By Jessica Breiman October 15, 2020 Ivy Baker Priest and Reva Beck Bosone are two Utah politicians who served in national leadership roles on opposite sides of the political aisle. Campaigning for elected office, particularly as a woman in Utah, is no easy feat; while Utah’s women have long been politically active, they make up […]

by Katherine Kitterman, Better Days 2020 Historical Director September 24, 2020 In honor of National Voter Registration Day this week, let’s take a look at Utah women’s involvement in voter registration over the years. When Utah was becoming a state, women hoped to regain the right to vote that Congress had taken from them in […]

June 10, 2020 2021 update––We’re not handing out pins at physical locations this year, but if you take a photo at locations matching all 15 women and send us a message on social media, we’ll mail you a prize! You can also email [email protected] to claim your prize. This summer, get outside and have fun […]

April 20, 2020 Welcome back to another week of the Better Days 2020 Reading Club! We hope you enjoyed last week’s article on rivalries within the women’ suffrage movement. This week, we’ll be taking a little bit of a different direction. For the this week’s reading club, we’re jumping back in time and looking at […]

By Katherine Kitterman and Rebekah Clark April 18, 2020 125 years ago, in the spring of 1895, delegates gathered in Salt Lake City to write a state constitution for Utah. Each of the 107 male delegates came to the convention pledged to support women’s equal voting rights. Utah suffragists had spent the past five years […]

April 13, 2020 Welcome to Week Four of the Better Days 2020 Reading Club! We hope you enjoyed last week’s article. This week’s article was written by Dr. Lisa Tetrault, who we read from our very first week about the Seneca Falls Convention. We’ll be learning about the divisions and tensions that arose within the […]

April 6, 2020 Welcome back to another week of the Better Days Reading Club! We are really excited about this week’s topic because of its ties to Utah history, but also because it relates to modern women’s rights movements as well. The article we’ll be reading together this week is by Adrienne LaFrance in The […]

March 31, 2020 Welcome to week two of the Better Days Reading Club! We hope you enjoyed the wonderful article from Dr. Tetrault last week, as well as our discussion guide. If you missed it, they’re linked the sources below. This week we’re getting into Utah’s voting history specifically, and it’s something you won’t want […]

March 24, 2020 In light of recent events, we’re launching the Better Days Reading Club as a way to stay more connected and discuss topics we’d planned to explore at events this spring. At the beginning of every week, we’ll dig into an interesting article about the history of women’s voting rights and share a […]

by Katherine Kitterman, Better Days 2020 Historical Director On January 13, 1870, 5,000 women crowded into the “Old Tabernacle” in Salt Lake City for an indignation meeting. These meetings were pretty common throughout the country in the 1800s, providing opportunities for people to gather in protest to unpopular policies or leaders. But this one was […]

by Tiffany Greene, Better Days 2020 Historical Research Consultant November 8, 2019 On February 22, 1897, when Nannie Cordell, Mary Hayt, and Jeanette Ferry decided to form the Woman’s Athenaeum Club in the small mining town of Park City, one can assume they didn’t consider the long-reaching effects this club would have on the lives […]

by Kenzi Christensen, Better Days 2020 Historical Intern August 9, 2019 “Sisters, brave of heart and true, now for simple justice sue, claim the birthright of the free–Equal Rights and Liberty.” – “Equal Rights,” by Emily Woodmansee   From 1889 to 1895, women across Utah founded local suffrage associations and held meetings in small towns […]

by Katherine Kitterman, Better Days 2020 Historical Director April 26, 2019 Here at Better Days 2020, we want to make sure all Utahns know that Utah women were the first American women to vote under an equal suffrage law. That historic vote happened on February 14, 1870–a full 50 years before most women in the […]

By Tiffany Greene, Better Days 2020 Historical Research Consultant April 4, 2019 The role Utah women played in the Chicago Columbian World’s Fair Exposition of 1893 is a case study in what’s possible when women join forces for a common cause. Hundreds of women across the geographic, religious, and cultural spectrum in Utah territory joined […]

March 7, 2019 March is women’s history month, and there are lots of great ways to honor women’s history in Utah. We’ve compiled a few ideas below: Take the Self-Guided Women’s Suffrage Walking Tour – explore the downtown Salt Lake City sites connected to the women’s suffrage movement in Utah. Read picture books about women’s […]

by Candace Brown February 14, 2019 It’s now been over a decade since my first grade year. Since then, I’ve forgotten most of the details about my teacher, my classmates, and our little classroom at the end of the school’s longest hallway. I believe we were learning to read that year, so I’m fairly certain […]

by Sarah Hancock Jones January 17, 2019 Here in Utah, the news can sometimes be as dismal as a gray January day, the inversion is at its worst. From poverty to education to the gender pay gap, we’re often inundated with articles about the serious challenges facing our society. It can be enough to make the […]

by Sherri Einfeldt January 10, 2019 130 years ago today, Emily S. Richards and Margaret Caine led Utah women in organizing the Woman Suffrage Association of Utah in Salt Lake City’s Assembly Hall. This meeting in 1889 marked the beginning of Utah women’s organized efforts to win back their voting rights after Congress had revoked […]

a By Katherine Kitterman, Better Days 2020 Historical Director December 20, 2018   Susan B. Anthony first visited Utah in 1871, one year after Utah’s female citizens gained the right to vote, and she returned in 1895 to celebrate Utah women’s successful efforts in gaining suffrage for the second time. Congressional legislation had revoked Utah […]

by Tiffany Taylor Bowles   In 1920, many women throughout the United States gained the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. Prior to this historic legislation, some territories and states granted various levels of suffrage to their female residents; and in 1870, Utah women became the first to […]

By Gabi Price November 29, 2018 In February of 1870, Utah territory granted Utah women citizens the right to vote. Many Americans hoped that Utah women would use their votes to help end the common Mormon practice of polygamy, or plural marriage, believing that it did not align with the goals of enfranchised women, who […]