As most know, or should, women weren’t allowed to vote back in 1912. Historically, women were regarded as chattels. Had limited legal recognition and rights.
Like everyone before them, women had to fight for the right to vote in the United States.
In the 1912 photo above we find suffragettes in Kansas Governor Walter Roscoe Stubb’s automobile, going after the vote in Topeka, Kansas. The women are identified as: (l to r) Laura Clay, President of Kentucky Equal Rights Association; Lucy B. Johnston; Sarah A. Thurston; Helen Eacker; and Stella H. Stubbs. They were all members of the Kansas Equal Suffrage Association. [Kansas Memory]
I’m convinced women are better at politics than men. They have more common sense. They have overwhelming power, too. Consider Lysistrata, a play written by Aristophanes and performed in 411 B.C. in Athens, Greece. Lysistrata convinces the women of Greece to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands as a means of forcing the men to negotiate a peace, a strategy however that inflames the battle between the sexes. The women wanted an end to the Peloponnesian War. [Wikipedia]
Withholding sex from men is a surefire way of making a political point.
Issues commonly associated with notions of women’s rights include, though are not limited to, the right: to bodily integrity and autonomy; to vote (universal suffrage); to hold public office; to work; to fair wages or equal pay; to own property; to education; to serve in the military or be conscripted; to enter into legal contracts; and to have marital, parental and religious rights. Women and their supporters have campaigned and in some places continue to campaign for the same rights as modern men.
Men have been stingy about recognizing that others, that is others than men, have rights, particularly rights like men hold. Men still are. Just this year Congress passed the Lily Ledbetter Act which grants women more equal rights in the workplace.
Those women in the car in the photo above were carrying on with a struggle for the right to vote that began in the United States in 1820. They did not win the right to vote until 1920, a hundred years later, when the 19th Amendment to the United States’ Constitution was ratified.
They didn’t win it easily. They had to get out and demonstrate and insist on it and, perhaps, used the lesson from Lysistrata. It is likely a lesson in today’s time that can be applied to win healthcare reform. If the wives of all the Senators and Congressman exercised the power of Lysistrata all the wrangling between Democrats and Republicans would come to a screeching halt. Congress would likely even be anxious to give up the river of corporate money that pours into their campaign coffers.
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Thanks for the acknowledgement of women and their role in society. Regretfully, there are many women still that don’t understand or appreciate the struggle that our sisters went through to get us here today. Besides, if women did take it to the bedroom as Lysistrata did then men would simply go the way of Ensign. Women shouldn’t have to use bedroom tricks to have their voices heard. Women should be recognized for the importance of their voice in the public deliberation along with everyone else.
Women have come a long way, but have a ways to go. Societies are so slow in recognizing unequal treatment. When I look at the cultures of the middle east and the manner in which women are treated it is hard to comprehend such thinking in modern times. I still think Lysistrata is a viable means of achieving a worthy goal.
I am aware of the battle of women for recognition as contributing members of society, and yet in the state of kansas they are still considered as sub-human servants to the male residents… the courts, the police, court mediators, and attorneys appointed by the court to protect the children in custody cases make life changing decisions without paying any attention to the children, or to the people that are there to influence the children that they are there to protect… in most cases these people don’t spend any time with the children and couldn’t even identify them in a lineup…. it is more than criminal that these people are allowed to decide where to place children and with whom without spending any time investigating the type of people they are turning these children. In my opinion they are just as much abusing the children they are there to serve as some of the parents they turn these kids over to. if women do not stand up for their rights in this state and do it now they will continue to be chatels of the male population of kansas, and in that case it is a shame that the state wasn’t blown off the map by the tornado that took dorothy and todo!!!!!
Good for you Charlotte for speaking up and bringing attention about this to those of us who don’t live in Kansas. Certainly sounds like the women of Kansas has a mammoth job ahead to change the attitude about women and children. I hope the women of Kansas rise up and demand change. Good luck.