If so, what happened to these women and did it change the culture in the North and South? Did having a higher percent of the population lay any ground for eventual suffrage?
Apologies if my premise is faulty!
Roughly 800,000 soldiers died during the war. The population of America prior to the war was 31.4 million. So, the overall population fell by about 2.5%. But given those were all males, it was a 5% drop of the male population due to the war.
That is a significant loss but not a massive society changing amount as experienced elsewhere.
Women's suffrage wasn't achieved in America until about 55 years after the war. So, that was fairly disconnected from the Civil War generation. I am unaware of any great advancements in women's rights between these two time periods. The suffrage movement actually began well before the Civil War so the War wasn't the cause of it.
Other people may better elaborate a linkage between the two but I don't think there was much of one.
More so, American women's suffrage was influenced by a successful movement outside of America. Many countries had already granted women the right to vote before America did.