Votes for Women

Last night, The Librarian and I watched Iron Jawed Angels which is a fantastic movie about suffragist Alice Paul and her homegirls. (If you haven't seen it, you need to!) Every time I watch this movie, I get angry but also thankful. Thanks to the efforts of thousands of women over 70 years, every woman in the US has the right to vote. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony started the fight for women's rights back in 1848 at the Senecca Falls convention where they declared that women needed to have certain rights. (At this point in US history, it was legal for a man to beat his wife, among other things.) In 1920, over 70 years later, women gained the right to vote. The amendment passed by one vote. Women were not granted the right to vote. They fought for it with their blood, sweat and tears.

Our great-grandmothers, grandmothers, and mothers fought for every freedom that we enjoy today. Currently, I have the right to vote, open my own bank account, have control over my reproductive capacity, get an education and even play on sports teams. A married women could not open her own bank account until the 1960's. Women were not admitted to Dartmouth, Harvard, Yale etc. until the late 1970's. When Margaret Sanger began advocating for birth control, it was illegal for her to open a clinic or disseminate any information via the mail. Congress had passed a law in 1873 which defined birth control as obscene material, so it became illegal to distribute it. The Supreme Court declared laws against birth control as unconstitutional in 1965 (Griswald v. CT) b/c these laws violated a woman's right to privacy (no shit). But again it took 60 years for women to have the ability to control her own body.

Unfortunately, I think that we have a tendency to forget these facts (or we never learned them due to an education system only concerned with the history of the white male). So, I encourage you to take a class in women's history if you can or even just read a wikipedia page about Margaret Sanger, Alice Paul, Elizabeth Cady Stanton etc (the list goes on). We need to remember this history and these women because they sacrificed not for themselves really but for us. So, exercise the rights that your foremothers fought for. Don't let anyone take them away from you or tell you that the fight for gender equality is over ('cause it isn't).

Lots of Love,
Lady Lola