Blazing a Trail

Women in the American West faced specific challenges that their Eastern counterparts often did not, such as lack of health care on the frontier and lack of property rights.  Western women often had to improvise, showing great innovation, in certain precarious situations. They continually adapted to circumstances beyond their control.  And they frequently overcame the odds in a male-dominated society. Consequently, women in the Western states and territories such as Montana, Wyoming, and Utah,  and achieved the right to vote and to determine their own paths, and blazed the trail for women across the United States to achieve suffrage.