Jeannette Pickering Rankin (June 11, 1880 – May 18, 1973) was an American politician and women's rights advocate who became the first woman to hold federal office in the United States.

A suffragist during the Progressive Era, Rankin organized and lobbied for legislation enfranchising women in several states, including Montana, New York, and North Dakota.

[4][5] One of her sisters, Edna Rankin McKinnon, became the first Montana-born woman to pass the bar exam in Montana and was an early social activist for access to birth control.

As an adolescent on her family ranch, Rankin had many tasks, including cleaning, sewing, farm chores, outdoor work, and helping care for her younger siblings.

[13] During this period, Rankin also traveled to Washington to lobby Congress on behalf of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).

[3][16] Rankin coordinated the efforts of a variety of grassroots organizations to promote her suffrage campaigns in New York and Montana (and later in North Dakota as well).

[17] Rankin later compared her work in the women's suffrage movement to promoting the pacifist foreign policy that defined her congressional career.

Rankin rallied support at train stations, street corners, potluck suppers on ranches, and remote one-room schoolhouses.

Shortly after her term began, Congress was called into an extraordinary April session in response to Germany declaring unrestricted submarine warfare on all Atlantic shipping.

[3] On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson, addressing a joint session, asked Congress to "make the world safe for democracy" by declaring war on Germany.

[26] Some considered her vote a discredit to the suffragist movement and her authority in Congress; but others applauded it, including Alice Paul of the National Woman's Party and Representative Fiorello La Guardia of New York.

Rankin listened to the grievances of federal workers in the bureau, which included long hours and an excessively demanding work pace.

[3] In January 1918, the committee delivered its report to Congress,[28] and Rankin opened congressional debate on a Constitutional amendment granting universal suffrage to women.

She argued for the passage of a Constitutional amendment banning child labor and supported the Sheppard–Towner Act, the first federal social welfare program created explicitly for women and children.

[36] Rankin made frequent speeches around the country on behalf of the Women's Peace Union and the National Council for the Prevention of War (NCPW).

In 1928 she founded the Georgia Peace Society, which served as headquarters for her pacifism campaign until its dissolution in 1941, on the eve of the U.S. involvement in World War II.

When it became clear that her lobbying efforts were largely ineffective, Rankin resigned from her NCPW position and declared her intention to regain her seat in the House of Representatives.

[37] In the 1940 race, Rankin—at age 60—defeated incumbent Jacob Thorkelson, an outspoken antisemite, in the July primary,[38] and former Representative Jerry J. O'Connell in the general election.

While members of Congress and their constituents had been debating the question of U.S. intervention in World War II for months, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, galvanized the country and silenced virtually all opposition.

[40] Hisses could be heard in the gallery as she cast her vote; several colleagues, including Rep. (later Senator) Everett Dirksen, asked her to change it to make the resolution unanimous—or at very least, to abstain—but she refused.

[45][46] While her action was widely ridiculed in the press, Progressive leader William Allen White, writing in the Kansas Emporia Gazette, acknowledged her courage in taking it: Probably a hundred men in Congress would have liked to do what she did.

"[51] Over the next twenty years, Rankin travelled the world, frequently visiting India, where she studied the pacifist teachings of Mahatma Gandhi.

[53] Rankin led 5,000 participants from Union Station to the steps of the Capitol Building, where they presented a peace petition to House Speaker John McCormack.

[54] In 1972, Rankin—by then in her nineties—considered mounting a third House campaign to gain a wider audience for her opposition to the Vietnam War,[3] but longstanding throat and heart ailments forced her to abandon that final project.

[61] A statue of Rankin by Terry Mimnaugh, inscribed "I Cannot Vote For War", was placed in the United States Capitol's Statuary Hall in 1985.

At its dedication, historian Joan Hoff-Wilson called Rankin "one of the most controversial and unique women in Montana and American political history.

[63] Simpson also starred in a film adaptation that was directed and produced by Kamala Lopez, narrated by Martin Sheen, and featuring music by Joni Mitchell.