Global Impact

Voting Power: A Truth About Women’s Suffrage

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Posted By Paula Nourse

I’ve become fascinated with women’s suffrage. The power to vote is an appropriate topic to think about during these volatile and political times. 

So, let’s go back in time for a moment.  Before the suffragists began their fight, women had the right to vote in some states. Take New York, for example.  The state’s voting laws included both the male and female pronouns of “he or she” and “his or her” regarding voting and ballots.  However, in 1777, the state of New York took away women’s right to vote and deleted the female pronouns from its voting laws.  Massachusetts copied this action in 1780 as did New Hampshire in 1784.  In 1790 the U.S. Constitutional Convention placed voting rights in the hands of the states.  The result? Women lost the power to vote in all states but New Jersey.  New Jersey granted suffrage to all “free” state residents and then revoked the right for women in 1807.

Why is this important? Because history has a way of repeating itself. It’s taken decades for women to step up and into the Me Too movement. The movement’s positive impact is monumental.  It took nearly a century, from the start of the suffragist movement, for women to gain the right to vote. Let’s not take any steps backward while we march forward to equal pay.  If you ever get complacent about voting, remember that once married women could not own property because married women were considered the property of their husbands.

Every female, be they in diapers, wearing that first pair of heels, settling into sensible shoes, or gripping a walker has a stake in the governance of our country.  Each month until election day, I’ll post a blog about the power of voting. 

What you can do?

  1. Don’t take voting for granted. Feel powerful about it.
  2. Vote in very election no matter what.
  3. Take your children with you to vote.
  4. Want to know more? Read The Woman’s Suffrage Movement by Sally Roesch Wagner or Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote by Susan Ware
  5. Do you have something to say? Contact to me about a guest post.

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