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Much of American history is the story of women struggling to gain full equality and/or equity with males in law and in life. Women are not mentioned in the U. S. Constitution, and until 1920 woman were not allowed to vote in national elections. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution protected voting for African-American males as U. S. citizens but not for female citizens, white or black. For the first 150 years of U. S. history, women were treated in law and by the Supreme Court as inferior to men and as so fundamentally different from men that they required protection in the workplace and the family. Continued,,,