90 Years of the Vote

The question on MPR today was about what women have contributed to the political process since getting the vote. Have we made a difference?

I wish I had an answer, based on research and objective fact. I'm not old enough to have experienced before and after. My mother was born without the right to vote, but it came along shortly afterward, enough so that she likely took it for granted, the way I do.

I would like to insist that of course we changed things, and for the better. In some ways that has to be true. We no longer are property, though some still behave as if we are. We can own our own property, have our own money, follow our own reasonable desires. Surely our votes helped accomplish that. In the whole of things, the fact that half the population is no longer prohibited from having a say in their own lives has to have made a difference, for the better. Just like allowing whatever percentage there was/is of persons of color in the population getting the vote has made a difference, for the better. Just like allowing whatever percentage of GLBT citizens have full rights will make a difference, for the better.

It's about power.

I heard one comment read on air where somebody was whining that we women have made this country more liberal, like that was a bad thing. While I have no problem with that word, let's substitute the word "humane" for it. That's the how of why it's more liberal. Individual persons, their rights, their educations, their aspirations, their comforts, their full bellies - these are the ways women voting have made the country more humane.

We still have to fight for it, an ongoing battle against a noise machine these days that glorifies the company and the bottom line and denigrates the worker. But those of us who've been around long enough to see some of the progress and remember what it was like before, know the battle isn't won and we can't back down. We've been taught that power is unfeminine, that wanting for ourselves and our families is selfish (when somehow it's not when the robber barons do it), and a whole host of other lies that seek to make us turn away from our collective power, told to us by those who seek to keep all of theirs.

We are told that we react with feelings and not logic, by those who value only logic and don't recognize their own feelings. While this may be true with individuals on the far end of the feminine spectrum, it is equally true on the far end of the masculine spectrum. Whether our feelings tend more towards nurturing and theirs more towards rage is something to be sorted out if we can ever get away from stereotypes and figure out what is real and not. I know people of both genders who defy the stereotypes as well as those who fulfill them. If we women do tend to vote towards nurturing, towards cooperation rather than competition, then this has to be an improvement in our society. If we vote with an eye towards the family and the community and less with an eye on the profit margin, then we can help balance what is so often out of balance.

So have we made a difference? Some. Not enough.

Let's keep working on it.