Opening The Door Of Democracy

Last week, while visiting our older son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren, I noticed a cloth banner in their kitchen that commemorated women gaining the right to vote in 1920. On the Sunday of our visit, a woman in my son’s and daughter-in-law’s church was honored on her 100th birthday. She was on a walker, but was spry and witty. What struck me was that only four years before this woman was born, other women in our country were barred from voting.

I am penning this column before the election; consequently, I don’t know if we have elected our first female president. I think it likely, however, that women’s preferences in this election will be a deciding factor in determining who is our next president.

Regardless of the election’s outcome, I am amazed that for over half of our country’s 248 years of history, women were excluded from participating in our democracy. The wait was even longer for women of color. Until 1920, white male candidates spoke to crowds of white men, appealed to the concerns of white men, and surrounded themselves with other white men as advisors.

The situation elsewhere in the world wasn’t much better. Women first gained the right to vote in 1893 in New Zealand. Women in eleven other countries gained the right to vote before they did in our country. Even women in Russia, which was viewed at the time as backward, gained the right to vote in 1917, three years before this right was achieved here.

We might assume that Hillary Clinton was the first woman to run for president, but, as I discovered through a bit of research, this was not the case. Victoria Woodhull ran for president in 1872, nearly fifty years before women gained the right to vote. Woodhull ran on a platform of fairer wages for women, shorter work days, and the rights of African-Americans.

Belva Lockwood was the presidential candidate of the National Equal Rights Party in 1882 and 1886, but it wasn’t until 1964 that Margaret Chase Smith became the first woman nominated by a major political party. In 1972, Shirley Chisholm ran for president as the first African-American candidate.

In 1988, Pat Schroeder ran for president, but what I most admire about Schroeder was her response when her ability to be president and a mother at the same time was questioned. She replied, “I have a brain and a uterus and I use both.”

While none of these candidates had legitimate chance of winning the presidency, each sowed the seeds that led in 2016 to Hillary Clinton’s nomination and now in 2024 to Kamala Harris’ run for the highest office in our country.

If not this year, then in the future, our country will certainly elect a female as president. Whenever that happens, we will again be lagging behind other countries. Sri Lanka elected the first female prime minister in 1960, while Iceland elected the first female president in 2006. Lest we conclude that these were leaders of smaller or less significant countries, we should remember three who were as tough as any male in political history: Indira Gandhi, prime minister of India in 1966; Golda Meir, prime minister of Israel in 1968; and Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of the United Kingdom in 1979.

I deliberately write that women “gained” the vote rather than were “granted” or “given” the vote. Woman worked hard for this basic right, and some of those who worked the hardest were

martyred for the cause. Consequently, I don’t believe that the US did women a favor when extending the vote. Instead, women have done the world and our country a favor by enriching the conversations, disagreements, and debates that are the basis of true democracy.