In 1870, the New York State Suffrage Association published a pamphlet titled “Woman as Inventor.” White suffragists distributed this history of female invention to prove women's inventiveness, countering arguments that biological disabilities justified women's legal disabilities. In the United States, inventiveness was linked to the capacity for original thought considered crucial for voters, making female inventiveness relevant to the franchise. As women could and did receive patents, activists used them as government certification of female ability. By publicizing female inventors, counting patents granted to women, and displaying women's inventions, they sought to overturn the common wisdom that women could not invent and prove that they had the ability to vote. Although partially successful, these efforts left undisturbed the equally common assertion that African Americans could not invent. White suffragists kept the contemporary Black woman inventor invisible, relegating the technological creations of women of color to a primitive past. White suffragists created a feminist history of invention, in words and objects, that reinforced white supremacy—another erasure of Black women, whose activism white suffragists were eager to harness, yet whose public presence they sought to minimize in order to keep the woman voter, like the woman inventor, presumptively white.

中文翻译：

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发明女性选民：选举权、能力和专利

1870 年，纽约州选举权协会出版了一本名为“女性发明家”的小册子。白人选举权主义者分发了这段女性发明的历史，以证明女性的创造力，反驳了生物残疾证明女性合法残疾是正当的论点。在美国，创造力与被认为对选民至关重要的原创思想的能力有关，这使得女性的创造力与选举权相关。由于女性可以并且确实获得了专利，因此活动家将它们用作政府对女性能力的证明。通过宣传女性发明家、统计授予女性的专利、展示女性的发明，他们试图推翻女性不能发明并证明她们有投票能力的普遍观念。虽然部分成功，这些努力使非裔美国人无法发明的同样普遍的断言不受干扰。白人选举权主义者让当代黑人女性发明家不为人知，将有色女性的技术创造归结为原始的过去。白人选举权主义者创造了一部女权主义发明史，在文字和物品上，加强了白人至上主义——黑人妇女的又一次抹杀，白人选举权主义者渴望利用她们的激进主义，但为了留住女性选民，他们试图尽量减少她们的公众存在，就像女发明家一样，假定是白人。