According to Carrie Chapman Catt, women's suffrage took ''56 campaigns of referenda to male voters; 480 campaigns to get legislatures to submit suffrage amendments to votes;

From:    Donna.
To:      Robert Emond
Subject: The Road to Suffrage

 >    That is practically impossible to determine.  However, in 
 > some cases we can see how many men were out to subjugate 
 > women.  For instance when women's suffrage was defeated by a 
 > majority of male voters, we can see that at that time a 
 > majority of voting men consciously tried to dominate women. 

And for about 70 years!

According to Carrie Chapman Catt, women's suffrage took "56 campaigns
of referenda to male voters; 480 campaigns to get legislatures to
submit suffrage amendments to votes; 47 campaigns to get State
constitutional conventions to write woman suffrage into state
constitutions; 277 campaigns to get State party conventions to
include woman suffrage planks; 30 campaigns to get presidential
partyconventions to adopt woman suffrage plans for party platforms,
and 19 campaigns with 19 successive Congresses."

(quote borrowed from p.84 of _Pulling Our Own Strings_, ed. by
Gloria Kaufman and Mary Kay Blakely, 1980.)