After more than a century of activism, women in the United States won the right to vote through the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1920. The amendment was initially introduced in Congress in 1878 by Senator Aaron A. Sargent, a Republican from California, who was passing along the measure as written by his friend Susan B. Anthony, who in turn based the language on the Fifteenth Amendment. However, it failed to secure passage after it was defeated in the Senate in 1886. Over the next three decades, the amendment was introduced by others and either blocked from consideration or defeated. For instance, it failed to pass the Senate in both 1913 and 1918. Many members of Congress clung to outdated stereotypes about gender roles, while others were afraid that male voters did not back increased rights for women.