"While women lacked a voice in the former political structure, women and women’s support—whether actual or claimed—became increasingly important to men’s political debates. Male politicians regularly used women symbolically in their speeches and arguments, employing woman’s dual incarnations as moral paragon and sinful temptress.  Women also featured prominently in political cartoons and as personifications of abstract concepts such as liberty and justice.  Furthermore, as apolitical moral guardians, women supposedly offered legitimation to the positions of political parties.  As democracy rose in political centrality, women’s approval of political parties became even more of a necessity."

-Kate Grandfield