STORY: The year is 1896. The place is Sacramento. The subject is women's suffrage. The speaker is Susan B. Anthony. Some of her toughest critics are women. Will they even step out of their worlds to listen?

A young Irish seamstress named Mary Margaret is about to find out. Her world is controlled by the conventions of her time and the traditions of women like Miss Ames, who owns the millinery shop where she works. Then a young woman doctor named Jennie Kellogg arrives with thoughts of her own, and Susan B. Anthony is just a few steps away, trying to change misconceptions about women's rights.

GENRE: Historical drama.

BACKSTORY: Set in a Sacramento millinary shop in 1896, Capital Women touches briefly on the evolution of women's right to dress as they please, pursue careers such as medicine previously reserved for men, and vote.

In the background, the voice of Susan B. Anthony is heard stumping for women's right to vote. In 1896, California women asked Anthony to campaign for passage of women's suffrage. At the time, Anthony had already been a proponent of women's rights for 40 years, since before the Civil War. Anthony spent 8 months campaigning throughout California, only to have the measure soundly defeated.

Fifteen more years would pass before California women would win the right to vote in 1911. Women would have to wait until 1920, until after World War I and passage of the 19th Amendment (also called the Susan B. Anthony Amendment), for the United States to Federally sanction women's right to vote.