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Prior to the passage of the 20th amendment to the US Constitution in 1920, several states had extended the suffrage to women. Helen Laura Sumner (later Woodbury), a student of John R. Commons at Wisconsin, undertook a statistical study of the political, economic, and social impacts of the granting of voting rights to women in the state of Colorado, and subsequently defended the results against numerous attacks. In this paper, we present a brief account of the struggle for women’s equality in the extension of the suffrage and examine Sumner’s critical analysis of the evidence as to its effects, as well as the counterarguments to which she responded.

In this chapter, we discuss how individuals acquire knowledge through group experiences and how technologies used by virtual teams will affect this process. The effect of groups on individual member learning is a fundamental, but relatively unexplored, aspect of group effectiveness. We propose that group members can acquire knowledge in two ways: via other group members and through products that groups generate. With respect to acquisition via group members, we emphasize how collaborative processes provide opportunities for learning. With respect to knowledge transfer via group products, we pay particular attention to the mechanisms by which group members store knowledge. We address how information and communication technologies can influence these mechanisms for knowledge acquisition when working in virtual teams. In general, our review suggests that there are numerous challenges to knowledge acquisition in distributed groups. We conclude by discussing methods for enhancing opportunities for learning in virtual teams.