American suffragetts were generally not interested in the situation and problems of immigrant women living in the USA. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the wave of mass peasant emigration from the Polish land was dominated by men, but the percentage of women (wives, daughters, but also those coming on their own) gradually increased. Leaving the family village for a foreign country, language and cultural barriers, settling down in a city or in a large industrial centre, taking up a job outside the home - all these posed new challenges for Polish women emigrants, but also changed their position within the family and the local community. Those changes were additionally compounded by experiences resulting from social and economic processes and political events taking place in Polish land at that time, but also emerging from the transformation of the American society. The achievements of American women in access to education and their struggle for gender equality, especially for suffrage, influenced Polish immigrant women mainly indirectly and they were used primarily to push for changes in the Polish diaspora environment: to promote girls' education, women gaining full membership and leadership in the organizations established by Polish immigrants (especially insurance organizations). The text shows examples, achievements and subsequent stages of this process. The ethnocentric and Catholic leaning of women's activities within the Polish diaspora in the USA and their specific, cautious methods of operation enabled Polish women emigrants to gradually adapt to the changes occurring in the American society while at the same time maintaining ties with their country of origin.