23 Oct 100 Years of the Right to Vote
Isn’t it amazing that 2020, the year of hindsight, celebrates the 100th anniversary of American women’s right to vote?
And if you think voter intimidation is a problem today, remember that women were jailed, beaten, and tortured for their “militant stand” for that basic right. African America men got the right to vote before women did, so it is no surprise we were able to elect an African American man to the presidency before a woman. Still, Native American women were barred from voting until a few years later (1924) and some Asian women citizens, not until the 1950s.
Now 100 years later, we are at a crucial turning point in civilization. Our climate is dangerously warming, our streets are full of violence, we’re dealing with a global pandemic, and blatant corruption parades through our government.
You certainly can’t blame this on women. Even though it’s been a full century, the US still has only 101 women in the House of Representatives (23.2%) and 26 women in the Senate, so half the population is represented by only a quarter of Congress.
Even more telling, as reported in the New York Times today, is that if voting were left up to white men alone, we would not have any of the milestones we have achieved today. We would have instead elected child molester, Roy Moore, KKK sympathizer, David Duke, Obama would have lost, and we’d surely get Trump for another four years. That’s what the gender gap in the voting records show.
Today we have the chance to elect Kamala Harris as the first female African American Vice President, as running mate to Joe Biden, a demonstrably compassionate man. But if it were up to white men, this wouldn’t happen. Polls in general show that 48% of men still favor Donald Trump over Joe Biden (42%), while for women polls show 35% for Trump and 58% for Biden. The New York Times article suggests that men vote their selfish interests more often while women tend to vote for the common good.
James Olson, in The Whole Brain Path to Peace, shows research that suggests women are more likely to be right-brain dominant, which is more holistic, while men lead more often with their left brain, which focuses on the particular. He goes into the abortion issue at length, showing how the left brain sees only the life-death issue of the fetus, while the right brain sees the quality of life, the longer effect on women, and the effect of overpopulation on society in general. Of course, as Amy Coney Barrett has shown, this gender discrepancy is a tendency, not an absolute.
Women vote in higher numbers than men and have done so since 1964. In 2016, almost 10 million more women voted than men, but still it was only 63% of voting-age women.
So what’s the moral of this story? Women: Get out and vote!
Your ancestors didn’t go through all those beatings and jail time so you could sit on the sidelines a hundred years later. It really is up to us to make a difference, to make the world a kinder, more compassionate and healthier place.
And then, maybe one of these years, a woman will finally break through that glass ceiling that nearly shattered four years ago.
And that’s worth standing in line for.
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