tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/womens-suffrage-21400/articlesWomen's suffrage – The Conversation2024-03-26T03:08:35Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2247362024-03-26T03:08:35Z2024-03-26T03:08:35ZSuffragettes resurrected, maternal ambivalence and toxic teens: two Australian novels impress, but one overpromises<p>Earlier this year, I spent a day immersed in the second wave of British feminism at Tate Britain’s <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/women-in-revolt?gad_source=1">Women In Revolt: Art and Activism in the UK 1970-90</a>. More of an event than an exhibition, the show was brimming with multimedia installations and artworks celebrating 20th-century, grass-roots activism. </p>
<p>I was equally struck by the audience and the exhibition. The gallery was buzzing as multiple generations gathered to learn and reminisce about the creative, politically engaged, socially diverse communities of women who altered British culture 50 years ago. </p>
<p>As their name suggests, second-wave feminists were not the first women to agitate for change. The pioneering work was done by suffragettes (the first-wave feminists), as Melanie Joosten explains in her vibrant new novel, <a href="https://ultimopress.com.au/products/like-fire-hearted-suns">Like Fire-Hearted Suns</a>. </p>
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<p><em>Review: Like Fire-Hearted Suns – Melanie Joosten (Ultimo), Thanks for Having Me – Emma Darragh (Allen & Unwin), Lead Us Not – Abbey Lay (Viking)</em></p>
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<p>Unlike their successors, first-wave feminists were mostly white, wealthy women, and the movement was characterised by structural privilege. But Joosten’s clever choice of protagonists allows her to critique this inherent issue, while detailing the struggles and dreams of the individuals involved. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Women in Revolt celebrates 20th-century, grass-roots activism.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>A suffragette prison story</h2>
<p>A fictionalised account based on historical research, the story begins in 1908 and revolves around two young students, Catherine Dawson and Beatrice Taylor. The third protagonist is prison warden Ida Bennett, who oversees the suffragette inmates of Holloway prison.</p>
<p>Ida, a widow of mixed ancestry with two young boys, is clearly distinct from the well-to-do Catherine and Beatrice. Resentful of the uppity attitudes and frivolous demands of her prisoners, her distress is further complicated by her racist treatment and the traumatic burden of having to force-feed the inmates when they go on hunger strike. But Ida is also a single working parent, unable to raise her own children: she understands the need for change more than most.</p>
<p>Catherine and Beatrice share student digs, similar wealthy backgrounds and a belief in women’s voting rights. They are also fiercely critical of each other’s lobbying styles and contrasting political approaches. </p>
<p>Beatrice is happy to throw bombs and smash windows as a member of the Women’s Social and Political Union, even though this results in repeated arrests and nightmarish spells in Holloway with Ida. </p>
<p>Catherine prefers the pacifist campaigns of the <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/womenvote/overview/womens-freedom-league/">Women’s Freedom League</a> and sells copies of the League’s own newspaper, The Vote, while petitioning the government. Catherine does not approve of Beatrice’s tactics, and Beatrice deems Catherine’s actions to be ineffective.</p>
<p>Together with Ida’s conflicted attitude, the womens’ mutual irritation and political divide adds personal depth and insight to the historical context of their story. The varied perspectives remind the reader feminism has always been a pluralist discourse. </p>
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<p>With such distinct characters at play, the narrative’s omnipresent point of view works well enough, though the switches from one individual’s interior state to the next can be sudden and jarring, and the intentionally old-fashioned linguistic style is initially awkward to read. But Joosten is a gifted writer who manages to integrate factual detail into an engaging, compelling story with a fascinating cast. Her ability to revitalise such an important chapter of women’s history is a huge achievement. </p>
<p>Brutalised and sexually assaulted by the police and the public, and horribly abused within the penal system during their 25-year campaign to gain the vote (from 1903 to 1928), the suffragettes’ battle was a violent one, often enacted upon their own bodies. </p>
<p>Name-checked in recent years by <a href="https://rebellion.global/">Extinction Rebellion</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_Rush">Climate Rush</a> and <a href="https://juststopoil.org/">Just Stop Oil</a>, they were honoured in 1981 by the women of <a href="https://greenhamwomeneverywhere.co.uk/">Greenham Common</a>, who wore their predessors’ colours of green, purple and white while marching to the Royal Air Force base in Berkshire for their anti-nuclear campaign. </p>
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<span class="caption">In 1981, the women of Greenham Common honoured their predecessors during their anti-nuclear protest.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://greenhamwomeneverywhere.co.uk/portfolio-items/jude-mundens-archive">Jude Munden Visual Archive</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<p>Nevertheless, the suffragettes have been largely consigned to the history books, where their stories have been misrepresented and misunderstood. Joosten’s novel reasserts their right to be heard on a wider scale. </p>
<p>Like Women In Revolt’s tribute to the Greenham women at the Tate, it’s a worthy commemoration of a conflict that should never be forgotten.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-are-the-four-waves-of-feminism-and-what-comes-next-224153">What are the four waves of feminism? And what comes next?</a>
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<h2>Maternal ambivalence</h2>
<p>A very different tale of 20th-century women comes from Emma Darragh in her debut novel, <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Emma-Darragh-Thanks-for-Having-Me-9781761471018">Thanks for Having Me</a>, the first fiction release of <a href="https://www.joanpress.com/">Joan Press</a>, the new Allen and Unwin imprint under the curatorship of Gamillaroi and Torres Strait Islander actor, writer and producer (now publisher) <a href="https://harpersbazaar.com.au/nakkiah-lui-digital-cover-story/">Nakkiah Lui</a>. </p>
<p>Confronting, poignant and tender, the novel highlights some uncomfortable truths about the bonds of love and conventional family systems, within a mosaic of beautifully crafted stories that turn the spotlight on maternal ambivalence. </p>
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<p>Refusing a straightforward chronological sequence, these tales of transgenerational trauma unfold around each other organically, hanging together in a loose but discernible pattern. Fraught and fragile mother–daughter bonds are juxtaposed with toxic sibling rivalries and unfulfilling marriages. Lost ambitions are weighed against the disappointing realities of family life and unfulfilling relationships. Yet somehow, love is never quite absent from the picture. </p>
<p>Mary Anne, her mental health in the balance, walks out on her husband and teenage daughters, retreating to the seat of familial dysfunction that is her parents’ house. </p>
<p>Nursing a hot, maternal wound, Vivian is volatile and unstable but settles down with a caretaking husband, only to leave her own child, Evie, when life gets too beige to bear. </p>
<p>Little Evie, born around the millennium and named after her late great aunt, is left at home with her dad and her broken, child-sized heart. Caught in the crossfire, Vivian’s love leaves enough of a trace to sustain her. Over the years, she shifts into a touchingly maternal role with her motherless mother, who has never quite grown up.</p>
<p>Written with varying degrees of grit and empathy, Mary Anne and Vivian make ill-judged decisions and create terrible predicaments for themselves and those around them. They grasp at love, security, acceptance, and try their best to make things better – to <em>do</em> things better. This saves the novel from becoming bleak, despite the pervading sense of hopelessness.</p>
<p>An assured debut ringing with empathy, Thanks for Having Me critiques the flawed institution of motherhood by showing its impact on maternal experience. </p>
<p>With nonfiction publications like <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jun/29/matrescence-by-lucy-jones-review-the-birth-of-a-mother">Lucy Jones’ Matrescence</a> now addressing maternal ambivalence and the challenges of parenting from the perspective of science as well as culture, second-wave feminists like psychotherapist <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2006/oct/28/familyandrelationships.family2">Roszika Parker</a> and poet and essayist <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/of-woman-born-by-adrienne-rich-3528976">Adrienne Rich</a> are being reappraised. </p>
<p>Projects like the <a href="https://www.mothernet.eu/about/">MotherNet</a> collaboration between universities in Vilnius, Uppsala and Maynooth are funding research into a range of fields that converge on maternal experience, which doesn’t necessitate having a child. Conversations are changing, and Darragh’s novel is a valuable contribution.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ive-had-enough-of-sad-bad-girl-novels-and-sensationalised-trauma-but-im-hungry-for-complex-stories-about-women-213901">I've had enough of Sad Bad Girl novels and sensationalised trauma – but I'm hungry for complex stories about women</a>
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<h2>Teen girls and toxic friendship</h2>
<p>Thanks For Having Me is not just about family though. Friendships play a part here too, with their capacity to soothe or exacerbate familial harm. Joosten also acknowledges the importance of friendship within the testing conditions of political divide. And in her debut novel, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/lead-us-not-9781761340680">Lead Us Not</a>, Abbey Lay makes friendship the whole story. </p>
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<p>Toxic teenage dynamics have become something of a trope in recent years, and for good reason. With the complexity of adolescence now troubled by the rapid ascent of social media, and the added confusion of online networking, there is much to explore. But while Lay’s subject matter holds currency, especially with the added questions of sexual exploration, her story lacks intrigue and ultimately fails to convince. </p>
<p>The premise is familiar enough. Millie, an insecure teenage girl develops a fascination with the more beautiful, more sexually experienced Olive, who moves in next door. Both are in their final year at the same Catholic girls’ high school, though their paths have never previously crossed. </p>
<p>Olive quickly establishes herself with the upper hand in the relationship, while the fixated Millie does her new friend’s bidding, happily dumping her old one, Jess, in the process. Boys are present but peripheral, serving as fodder for the girls’ intimate discussions. To this end, Olive instructs Millie to lose her virginity with the painfully awkward Leon, while divulging the details of her own sex life with handsome tennis player, Hunter. </p>
<p>There is nothing surprising in any of this. Teenage girls are renowned for their intense, romantic, often cruel, sometimes transgressive friendships. The merging of identities and unequal power dynamics are virtually a high-school rite of passage. After all, TV shows like <a href="https://www.paramountplus.com/au/shows/yellowjackets/">Yellowjackets</a>, in which teen-girl rivalry escalates into lifelong trauma following a plane crash in the wilderness, were not born into a void. </p>
<p>There is nothing wrong with this story arc either – and Lay’s prose is elegant and well crafted. She carefully avoids extreme drama, while raising interesting questions about the authenticity of friendship. But while she builds tension with skill, the plot is too pedestrian and the characters are not compelling or mature enough to match the level of suspense she spins.</p>
<p>Olive and Millie, supposedly in year 12, behave more like year 9 or 10 students, setting out on relatively innocent social and sexual adventures with high-blown attitudes. However, their emotional concerns and conversations are too young for their age. </p>
<p>Next to <a href="https://theconversation.com/girlhood-misery-bullying-and-beauty-combine-for-laura-elizabeth-woolletts-unlikeable-west-coast-girls-211427">Laura Elizabeth Woollett’s West Girls</a>, with its complex twists of social, cultural and ethnic hierachies, their white middle-class preoccupations appear simplistic and anodyne. </p>
<p>There is a distinct uniformity to Olive and Millie’s world. All their friends are from conservative backgrounds, with good-enough families and comfortable homes. The Catholic girls consort with the boys from St Marks as if in a preordained bubble. Nobody deviates or dissents, which makes Millie’s obsession with Olive all the more curious, because apart from a touch of drama-school charisma, Olive is no different to the rest.</p>
<p>When the girls explore the boundaries of their friendship during a school camping trip, there is potential for something to develop. But the tentative steps they take towards each other are barely discernible, and the emotional landscape remains under-explored. </p>
<p>After the trip, a communication failure brings the unhealthy dynamic to a head. Olive retreats, leaving Millie upset and confused. Millie, an intelligent, sensitive girl on the verge of womanhood, inexplicably fails to understand why Olive has withdrawn from her. The narrative presents this emotional temperature change as a pivotal mystery for both Millie and the reader, but it’s too much of a stretch: there is no mystery. The reasons for Olive’s vanishing act are all too plain.</p>
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<span class="caption">Abbey Lay is ‘hopefully on the edge of a promising career’.</span>
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<p>Overall, Lay’s novel would be better suited for the young adult (YA) market. The book’s attempt to interrogate themes of control, vulnerability, trust and honesty within a toxic dynamic is worthwhile, but the level at which these topics are addressed is too naive to satisfy an adult, or even an older YA readership. </p>
<p>A poised and assured writer, Lay is hopefully on the edge of a promising career, but her use of subtlety and restraint needs to be balanced with greater depth and scope. And her characters are in danger of sleepwalking into the future. By contrast, the women and girls of Like Fire-Hearted Suns and Thanks For Having Me understand the need to fight. </p>
<p>If I could, I’d pitch the Catholic girls into the thick of a suffragette rally with Beatrice, or get Evie to sneak them some vodka at a party while Vivian flirts her arse off. Then I’d transport them to the Tate and the epicentre of Women In Revolt, where <a href="https://www.euronews.com/culture/2023/11/15/women-in-revolt-british-feminist-art-from-the-1970s-and-1980s-takes-over-tate-britain">Gina Birch’s Three Minute Scream</a> echoes through the galleries. </p>
<p>Finally, I’d guide them through all the feminist diversity of that whole heartstopping show, in the hope of enriching their perspectives and expanding their vision. </p>
<p>And then I’d let go of their hands.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224736/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Liz Evans' debut novel, Catherine Wheel, is to be published by Ultimo Press in August 2024.</span></em></p>A novel about first-wave feminists cleverly critiques the movement’s privilege. The first fiction from Nakkiah Lui’s imprint highlights uncomfortable truths. And a debut about teen girls is ‘too naive’.Liz Evans, Writer, author, journalist, Associate Lecturer in English & Writing, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2241532024-03-07T19:24:11Z2024-03-07T19:24:11ZWhat are the four waves of feminism? And what comes next?<p>In Western countries, feminist history is generally packaged as a story of “waves”. The so-called first wave lasted from the mid-19th century to 1920. The second wave spanned the 1960s to the early 1980s. The third wave began in the mid-1990s and lasted until the 2010s. Finally, some say we are experiencing a fourth wave, which began in the mid-2010s and continues now.</p>
<p>The first person to use “waves” was journalist Martha Weinman Lear, in her 1968 New York Times article, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1968/03/10/archives/the-second-feminist-wave.html">The Second Feminist Wave</a>, demonstrating that the women’s liberation movement was another <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/3/20/16955588/feminism-waves-explained-first-second-third-fourth">“new chapter</a> in a grand history of women fighting together for their rights”. She was responding to anti-feminists’ framing of the movement as a “<a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/3/20/16955588/feminism-waves-explained-first-second-third-fourth">bizarre historical aberration</a>”.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/718868">Some feminists</a> criticise the usefulness of the metaphor. Where do feminists who preceded the first wave sit? For instance, Middle Ages feminist writer <a href="https://blogs.loc.gov/bibliomania/2023/08/30/christine-de-pizan/">Christine de Pizan</a>, or philosopher <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wollstonecraft/">Mary Wollstonecraft</a>, author of <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/a-vindication-of-the-rights-of-woman-9780141441252">A Vindication of the Rights of Woman</a> (1792). </p>
<p>Does the metaphor of a single wave <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/3/20/16955588/feminism-waves-explained-first-second-third-fourth">overshadow</a> the complex variety of feminist concerns and demands? And does this language exclude the <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/718868">non-West</a>, for whom the “waves” story is meaningless?</p>
<p>Despite these concerns, countless feminists <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317322421_Finding_a_Place_in_History_The_Discursive_Legacy_of_the_Wave_Metaphor_and_Contemporary_Feminism">continue to use</a> “waves” to explain their position in relation to previous generations.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579536/original/file-20240304-28-b6mifj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579536/original/file-20240304-28-b6mifj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579536/original/file-20240304-28-b6mifj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=358&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579536/original/file-20240304-28-b6mifj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=358&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579536/original/file-20240304-28-b6mifj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=358&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579536/original/file-20240304-28-b6mifj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579536/original/file-20240304-28-b6mifj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579536/original/file-20240304-28-b6mifj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A second-wave International Women’s Day rally in Melbourne, 1975.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.naa.gov.au/students-and-teachers/learning-resources/learning-resource-themes/society-and-culture/gender-and-sexuality/international-womens-day-rally-melbourne">National Archives of Australia</a></span>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-whitlam-government-gave-us-no-fault-divorce-womens-refuges-and-childcare-australia-needs-another-feminist-revolution-202238">The Whitlam government gave us no-fault divorce, women's refuges and childcare. Australia needs another feminist revolution</a>
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</p>
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<h2>The first wave: from 1848</h2>
<p>The first wave of feminism refers to the campaign for the vote. It began in the United States in 1848 with the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibitions/women-fight-for-the-vote/about-this-exhibition/seneca-falls-and-building-a-movement-1776-1890/">Seneca Falls Convention</a>, where 300 gathered to debate Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Declaration of Sentiments, outlining women’s inferior status and demanding suffrage – or, the right to vote.</p>
<p>It continued over a decade later, in 1866, in Britain, with the presentation of a <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/womenvote/parliamentary-collections/1866-suffrage-petition/presenting-the-petition/">suffrage petition</a> to parliament.</p>
<p>This wave ended in 1920, when women were granted the right to vote in the US. (Limited women’s suffrage had been introduced in Britain two years earlier, in 1918.) First-wave activists believed once the vote had been won, women could use its power to enact other much-needed reforms, related to property ownership, education, employment and more. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579516/original/file-20240304-16-oifdqr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579516/original/file-20240304-16-oifdqr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579516/original/file-20240304-16-oifdqr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579516/original/file-20240304-16-oifdqr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579516/original/file-20240304-16-oifdqr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579516/original/file-20240304-16-oifdqr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579516/original/file-20240304-16-oifdqr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579516/original/file-20240304-16-oifdqr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Vida Goldstein.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vida_Goldstein#/media/File:Vida_Goldstein-01.jpg">Wikipedia</a></span>
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<p>White leaders dominated the movement. They included longtime president of the the International Woman Suffrage Alliance <a href="https://cattcenter.iastate.edu/home/about-us/carrie-chapman-catt/">Carrie Chapman Catt</a> in the US, leader of the militant Women’s Social and Political Union <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Emmeline-Pankhurst">Emmeline Pankhurst</a> in the UK, and <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/spence-catherine-helen-4627">Catherine Helen Spence</a> and <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/goldstein-vida-jane-6418">Vida Goldstein</a> in Australia. </p>
<p>This has tended to obscure the histories of non-white feminists like evangelist and social reformer <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sojourner-Truth">Sojourner Truth</a> and journalist, activist and researcher <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/ida-b-wells-barnett">Ida B. Wells</a>, who were fighting on multiple fronts – including anti-slavery and anti-lynching – as well as feminism. </p>
<h2>The second wave: from 1963</h2>
<p>The second wave coincided with the publication of US feminist Betty Friedan’s <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-feminine-mystique-9780141192055">The Feminine Mystique</a> in 1963. Friedan’s “<a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/powerful-complicated-legacy-betty-friedans-feminine-mystique-180976931/">powerful treatise</a>” raised critical interest in issues that came to define the women’s liberation movement until the early 1980s, like workplace equality, birth control and abortion, and women’s education. </p>
<p>Women came together in “consciousness-raising” groups to share their individual experiences of oppression. These discussions informed and motivated public agitation for <a href="https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/HaeberlenPolitics">gender equality and social change</a>. Sexuality and gender-based violence were other prominent second-wave concerns. </p>
<p>Australian feminist Germaine Greer wrote <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9780007205011/the-female-eunuch/">The Female Eunuch</a>, published in 1970, which <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-female-eunuch-at-50-germaine-greers-fearless-feminist-masterpiece-147437">urged women to</a> “challenge the ties binding them to gender inequality and domestic servitude” – and to ignore repressive male authority by exploring their sexuality. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-female-eunuch-at-50-germaine-greers-fearless-feminist-masterpiece-147437">Friday essay: The Female Eunuch at 50, Germaine Greer's fearless, feminist masterpiece</a>
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</p>
<hr>
<p>Successful lobbying saw the establishment of refuges for women and children fleeing domestic violence and rape. In Australia, there were groundbreaking political appointments, including the world’s first Women’s Advisor to a national government (<a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/audio/landmark-women/transcripts/landmark-women-elizabeth-reid-181013.mp3-transcript">Elizabeth Reid</a>). In 1977, a <a href="https://www.whitlam.org/women-and-whitlam">Royal Commission on Human Relationships</a> examined families, gender and sexuality. </p>
<p>Amid these developments, in 1975, Anne Summers published <a href="https://theconversation.com/damned-whores-and-gods-police-is-still-relevant-to-australia-40-years-on-mores-the-pity-47753">Damned Whores and God’s Police</a>, a scathing historical critique of women’s treatment in patriarchal Australia. </p>
<p>At the same time as they made advances, so-called women’s libbers managed to anger earlier feminists with their distinctive claims to radicalism. Tireless campaigner <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/rich-ruby-sophia-14202">Ruby Rich</a>, who was president of the Australian Federation of Women Voters from 1945 to 1948, responded by declaring the only difference was her generation had called their movement “<a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-296328435/findingaid">justice for women</a>”, not “liberation”. </p>
<p>Like the first wave, mainstream second-wave activism proved largely irrelevant to non-white women, who faced oppression on intersecting gendered and racialised grounds. African American feminists produced their own critical texts, including bell hooks’ <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Aint-I-a-Woman-Black-Women-and-Feminism/hooks/p/book/9781138821514">Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism</a> in 1981 and Audre Lorde’s <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/198292/sister-outsider-by-audre-lorde/">Sister Outsider</a> in 1984. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/bell-hooks-will-never-leave-us-she-lives-on-through-the-truth-of-her-words-173900">bell hooks will never leave us – she lives on through the truth of her words</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The third wave: from 1992</h2>
<p>The third wave was announced in the 1990s. The term is popularly attributed to Rebecca Walker, daughter of African American feminist activist and writer <a href="https://alicewalkersgarden.com/about/">Alice Walker</a> (author of <a href="https://www.hachette.com.au/alice-walker/the-color-purple-now-a-major-motion-picture-from-oprah-winfrey-and-steven-spielberg">The Color Purple</a>). </p>
<p>Aged 22, Rebecca proclaimed in a 1992 Ms. magazine <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200404030632/http:/heathengrrl.blogspot.com/2007/02/becoming-third-wave-by-rebecca-walker.html">article</a>: “I am not a post-feminism feminist. I am the Third Wave.” </p>
<p>Third wavers didn’t think gender equality had been more or less achieved. But they did share <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1464700119842555">post-feminists</a>’ belief that their foremothers’ concerns and demands were obsolete. They argued women’s experiences were now shaped by <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14680777.2016.1190046">very different</a> political, economic, technological and cultural conditions. </p>
<p>The third wave has been described as “an <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/beauty/meet-the-woman-who-coined-the-term-third-wave-feminism-20180302-p4z2mw.html">individualised feminism</a> that can not exist without diversity, sex positivity and intersectionality”. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579520/original/file-20240304-16-zuvan5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579520/original/file-20240304-16-zuvan5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579520/original/file-20240304-16-zuvan5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579520/original/file-20240304-16-zuvan5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579520/original/file-20240304-16-zuvan5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579520/original/file-20240304-16-zuvan5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579520/original/file-20240304-16-zuvan5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579520/original/file-20240304-16-zuvan5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term ‘intersectionality’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">UCLA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Intersectionality, <a href="https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1052&context=uclf">coined</a> in 1989 by African American legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, recognises that people can experience intersecting layers of oppression due to race, gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity and more. Crenshaw notes this was a “lived experience” before it was a term. </p>
<p>In 2000, Aileen Moreton Robinson’s <a href="https://www.uqp.com.au/books/talkin-up-to-the-white-woman-indigenous-women-and-feminism-20th-anniversary-edition">Talkin’ Up to the White Woman: Indigenous Women and Feminism</a> expressed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women’s frustration that white feminism did not adequately address the legacies of dispossession, violence, racism, and sexism.</p>
<p>Certainly, the third wave accommodated <a href="https://paromitapain.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/10.10072F978-3-319-72917-6.pdf#page=112%22">kaleidoscopic views</a>. Some scholars claimed it “grappled with fragmented interests and objectives” – or micropolitics. These included ongoing issues such as sexual harassment in the workplace and a scarcity of women in positions of power. </p>
<p>The third wave also gave birth to the <a href="https://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/brief-history-riot-grrrl-space-reclaiming-90s-punk-movement-2542166">Riot Grrrl</a> movement and “girl power”. Feminist punk bands like <a href="https://bikinikill.com/about/">Bikini Kill</a> in the US, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/nov/28/pussy-riot-beaten-jailed-exiled-taunting-putin">Pussy Riot</a> in Russia and Australia’s <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/mbknev/little-ugly-girls-tractor-album-single-premiere-2018">Little Ugly Girls</a> sang about issues like homophobia, sexual harassment, misogyny, racism, and female empowerment. </p>
<p>Riot Grrrl’s <a href="https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/riotgrrrlmanifesto.html">manifesto</a> states “we are angry at a society that tells us Girl = Dumb, Girl = Bad, Girl = Weak”. “Girl power” was epitomised by Britain’s more sugary, phenomenally popular Spice Girls, who were accused of peddling “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/sep/14/spice-girls-how-girl-power-changed-britain-review-fabulous-and-intimate">‘diluted feminism’ to the masses</a>”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tAbhaguKARw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Riot Grrrrl sang about issues like homophobia, sexual harassment, misogyny and racism.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The fourth wave: 2013 to now</h2>
<p>The fourth wave is epitomised by “<a href="https://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol25/iss2/10/">digital or online feminism</a>” which gained currency in about <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/3/20/16955588/feminism-waves-explained-first-second-third-fourth">2013</a>. This era is marked by mass online mobilisation. The fourth wave generation is connected via new communication technologies in ways that were not previously possible. </p>
<p>Online mobilisation has led to spectacular street demonstrations, including the #metoo movement. #Metoo was first founded by Black activist <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/tarana-burke">Tarana Burke</a> in 2006, to support survivors of sexual abuse. The hashtag #metoo then went viral during the 2017 Harvey Weinstein <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/10/28/1131500833/me-too-harvey-weinstein-anniversary">sexual abuse scandal</a>. It was used at least <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563221002193">19 million times</a> on Twitter (now X) alone.</p>
<p>In January 2017, the <a href="https://www.womensmarch.com/">Women’s March</a> protested the inauguration of the decidedly misogynistic Donald Trump as US president. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Womens-March-2017">Approximately 500,000</a> women marched in Washington DC, with demonstrations held simultaneously in <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Remembering-Womens-Activism/Crozier-De-Rosa-Mackie/p/book/9781138794894">81 nations</a> on all continents of the globe, even Antarctica.</p>
<p>In 2021, the <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/8564388">Women’s March4Justice</a> saw some 110,000 women rallying at more than 200 events across Australian cities and towns, protesting workplace sexual harassment and violence against women, following high-profile cases like that of Brittany Higgins, revealing <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/29/brittany-higgins-bruce-lehrmann-defamation-trial-evidence-stand-rape-allegations-liberal-party-ntwnfb#:%7E:text=Bruce%20Lehrmann%20has%20brought%20a,Wilkinson%20are%20defending%20the%20case.">sexual misconduct</a> in the Australian houses of parliament.</p>
<p>Given the prevalence of online connection, it is not surprising fourth wave feminism has reached across geographic regions. The Global Fund for Women <a href="https://www.globalfundforwomen.org/movements/me-too/">reports</a> that #metoo transcends national borders. In China, it is, among other things, #米兔 (translated as “<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/61903744-9540-11e8-b67b-b8205561c3fe">rice bunny</a>”, pronounced as “mi tu”). In Nigeria, it’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we-F0Gi0Lqs">#Sex4Grades</a>. In Turkey, it’s #<a href="https://ahvalnews.com/sexual-harrasment/dozens-turkish-womens-organisations-issue-statement-backing-latest-metoo-movement">UykularınızKaçsın</a> (“may you lose sleep”). </p>
<p>In an inversion of the traditional narrative of the Global North leading the Global South in terms of feminist “progress”, Argentina’s “<a href="https://www.auswhn.com.au/blog/colour-green/">Green Wave</a>” has seen it decriminalise abortion, as has Colombia. Meanwhile, in 2022, the US Supreme Court <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-supreme-court-overturns-roe-v-wade-but-for-abortion-opponents-this-is-just-the-beginning-185768">overturned historic abortion legislation</a>.</p>
<p>Whatever the nuances, the prevalence of such highly visible gender protests have led some feminists, like <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14680777.2020.1804431">Red Chidgey</a>, lecturer in Gender and Media at King’s College London, to declare that feminism has transformed from “a dirty word and publicly abandoned politics” to an ideology sporting “a new cool status”.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-a-sex-positive-feminist-takes-up-the-unfinished-revolution-her-mother-began-but-its-complicated-189139">Friday essay: a sex-positive feminist takes up the 'unfinished revolution' her mother began – but it's complicated</a>
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<h2>Where to now?</h2>
<p>How do we know when to pronounce the next “wave”? (Spoiler alert: I have no answer.) Should we even continue to use the term “waves”?</p>
<p>The “wave” framework was first used to demonstrate feminist continuity and solidarity. However, whether interpreted as disconnected chunks of feminist activity or connected periods of feminist activity and inactivity, represented by the crests and troughs of waves, some believe it encourages binary thinking that produces <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14680777.2016.1190046">intergenerational antagonism</a>.</p>
<p>Back in 1983, Australian writer and second-wave feminist Dale Spender, who died last year, <a href="https://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/feminism/radical-books-dale-spender-theres-always-been-a-womens-movement-this-century-1983/">confessed her fear</a> that if each generation of women did not know they had robust histories of struggle and achievement behind them, they would labour under the illusion they’d have to develop feminism anew. Surely, this would be an overwhelming prospect.</p>
<p>What does this mean for “waves” in 2024 and beyond?</p>
<p>To build vigorous varieties of feminism going forward, we might reframe the “waves”. We need to let emerging generations of feminists know they are not living in an isolated moment, with the onerous job of starting afresh. Rather, they have the momentum created by generations upon generations of women to build on.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224153/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sharon Crozier-De Rosa receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>We’re used to describing feminism in ‘waves’, from the first in 1848, campaigning for women to vote, to the current fourth wave, in the age of #metoo. But do waves still work to describe feminism?Sharon Crozier-De Rosa, Professor, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2153332023-10-10T19:04:43Z2023-10-10T19:04:43ZFrom Eureka to suffrage to now: a Voice that was 169 years in the making<p>“The envy of the world.”</p>
<p>That’s how one American journalist described Australia at the turn of the 20th century.</p>
<p>What was the object of global desire, the precious jewel that this very new nation at the bottom of the planet possessed and that the rest of the international community coveted?</p>
<p>Was it sporting prowess? Military valour? Sparkling beaches or a bounty of mineral resources?</p>
<p>It was democracy. In 1902, Australia had become the first country where (white) women were entitled to the same franchise as men: the right to vote and the right to stand for parliament. (Although women in New Zealand were granted the right to vote in 1893, they were not able to stand for parliament until 1919.)</p>
<p>There was a sting in the tail of Australia’s global democratic distinction: the same act of parliament that made Australian women the world’s most enfranchised deliberately barred from voting all Indigenous Australians, male and female, who did not already have the vote prior to federation. </p>
<p>It would be another 60 years before all First Nations’ people could vote in our national elections.</p>
<p>But it was its leading role in the women’s rights movement that made Australia the world’s “social laboratory”.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/birth-of-a-nation-how-australia-empowering-women-taught-the-world-a-lesson-52492">Birth of a nation: how Australia empowering women taught the world a lesson</a>
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<h2>Australia led the way</h2>
<p>For decades, women from Munich to Melbourne, from Westminster to Washington, had been campaigning for the same thing: a voice. The right to have a say in making the laws and policies that affected their daily lives.</p>
<p>What did the opponents of the idea that half the population might be consulted before legislation was drafted have to say about this wild idea?</p>
<p>It will be divisive.</p>
<p>It will be unfair, effectively giving men two votes.</p>
<p>Most women don’t actually want the vote. All this fuss, the nay-sayers proclaimed, was just the product of a few educated, elite women (“the shrieking sisterhood” they were branded by a febrile anti-suffrage press).</p>
<p>But Australia led the way in the global push for these human rights and the world watched on with curiosity, hope and admiration.</p>
<p>“A splendid object lesson”, President Theodore Roosevelt pronounced Australia’s achievement. (It would take America until 1920 to catch up.)</p>
<h2>It wasn’t the first time Australia heeded the call for a voice</h2>
<p>Remember the Eureka Stockade? “The birthplace of Australian democracy”, as we learned in school about the Ballarat gold miners of 1854.</p>
<p>The brief battle that came at the grisly end of a lawful community push for direct consultation with the people feeling the pinch of the Victorian colonial government’s tax and land policies. </p>
<p>These gold rush communities were structurally disadvantaged and discriminated against.</p>
<p>They decried the lack of health and other services on the goldfields, as well as the over-policing and incarceration rates of miners.</p>
<p>Some miners, shopkeepers and their families were looking to a “constitutional” solution: legal recognition of their existence and contribution. </p>
<p>The mining community was united in one thing: they wanted to be consulted in the laws that governed them.</p>
<p>After Eureka, Victoria became the first jurisdiction in the British empire to extend the vote to unpropertied men, rights the mother country would not fully implement until after the first world war. (Up until 1918, only two in four British men had the vote; all women would not get the vote in Britain until 1928.)</p>
<h2>1962 and 1967</h2>
<p>It would not be until 1962, 60 years after Australia’s white women won the vote, that First Nations people in Australia got the vote federally. (It would take a few more years for Western Australia and Queensland to award state voting rights to its Indigenous population.) </p>
<p>Then, in 1967, a referendum was held to change the Australian Constitution so First Nations’ people could be counted in the census.</p>
<p>It was this act that structurally and symbolically recognised the original occupiers and traditional owners of the land on which the Australian nation was founded, without treaty.</p>
<p>Over 90% of Australians voted to change the Constitution to make this happen. Bipartisan political support ensured this watershed moment in Australia’s democratic history. The Liberal Party’s How to Vote Card imparts a clear direction: “yes”.</p>
<p>Like the paradigm-shifting women’s suffrage era, the global community watched with interest and alarm. </p>
<p>“The eyes of the world are on Australia and her handling of black Australians,” yes activist Faith Bandler <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/48078607">noted</a>.</p>
<p>Unlike the campaign for women’s right to vote, there were few cynics and trolls in 1967, spreading fear and spinning prophesies of doom.</p>
<p>Australians overwhelming understood – and their party-political leaders accepted, indeed instructed – that recognising the human rights of Australia’s Indigenous people was a positive, forward-looking move for the nation.</p>
<p>Australia did not want to be cast in the same light as apartheid South Africa and deep south America, embroiled in its own civil rights messes.</p>
<p>Today, over <a href="https://www.unsw.edu.au/news/2023/06/ten-questions-about-the-voice-to-parliament---answered-by-the-ex">80%</a> of First Nations people still endorse the voice as the first step towards the measure of recognition and respect that will truly take Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians into account.</p>
<h2>Australia’s Brexit moment?</h2>
<p>National living treasure, Barry Jones, has <a href="https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/comment/topic/2023/09/16/the-voice-our-brexit-moment#mtr">argued</a> the 2023 referendum to enshrine an Indigenous Voice to parliament in the Constitution will be Australia’s Brexit moment.</p>
<p>That, should the majority of voters (in the majority of states) return a regressive “no” vote, not only will Australians wake up on the morning after they go to the polls with “buyers’ remorse”, but the global community will also shake its head in disbelief.</p>
<p>How could a country that once promised so much deliver so little? A non-binding advisory body. It’s all they were asking for.</p>
<p>The world is still watching.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-60-years-old-the-yirrkala-bark-petitions-are-one-of-our-founding-documents-so-why-dont-we-know-more-about-them-210801">Friday essay: 60 years old, the Yirrkala Bark Petitions are one of our founding documents – so why don't we know more about them?</a>
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<p><em>Correction: An earlier version of this article said New Zealand women would get the right to stand for parliament in 1920. It should have said 1919. An earlier version of this article said “the same act of parliament that made Australian women the world’s most enfranchised also deliberately divested all Indigenous Australians, male and female, of their federal franchise rights”. It has been changed to: “The same act of parliament that made Australian women the world’s most enfranchised deliberately barred from voting all Indigenous Australians, male and female, who did not already have the vote prior to federation.”</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215333/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clare Wright has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council. She has collaborated with the Uluru Dialogue on the Voice referendum campaign in a voluntary capacity.</span></em></p>For decades, women from Munich to Melbourne, from Westminster to Washington, had been campaigning for a voice.Clare Wright, Professor of History and Professor of Public Engagement, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2093702023-07-18T12:30:37Z2023-07-18T12:30:37Z175 years ago, the Seneca Falls Convention kicked off the fight for women’s suffrage – an iconic moment deeply shaped by Quaker beliefs on gender and equality<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537892/original/file-20230717-184356-6a2tmx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C6%2C1024%2C676&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, N.Y., where on July 19 and 20, 1848, the first women's rights conventions in the U.S. were held.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/general-view-of-the-wesleyan-chapel-in-seneca-falls-new-news-photo/827407736?adppopup=true">Epics/Hulton Archive via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On July 19, 1848, nearly 300 men and women gathered in Seneca Falls, New York, to begin the United States’ first public political meeting regarding women’s rights. The Seneca Falls Convention resulted in the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture/declaration-of-sentiments.htm">Declaration of Sentiments</a>, a document modeled on the U.S. Declaration of Independence that asserted “all men and women are created equal.” </p>
<p>The two-day conference marked the beginning of the movement for women’s suffrage, which would be granted 70 years later by the ratification of the 19th Amendment of the Constitution. And it likely wouldn’t have happened without Quakers.</p>
<p>Four of the convention’s five leaders belonged to this Protestant Christian group, also known as the Religious Society of Friends, whose ideas and community deeply shaped the meeting. One of Quakers’ core beliefs is that all men and women possess <a href="https://quaker.org/the-inner-light/">the “inward light</a>” – the light of Christ – and are therefore equal in the eyes of God. This belief led Quakers to recognize women as spiritual leaders, distinguishing them from many other religious groups at the time. </p>
<p>The Quaker women who participated in the gathering at Seneca Falls had been nurtured in a religious community that <a href="https://history.rutgers.edu/people/details/60-faculty-emeriti/162-hewitt-nancy">historian Nancy Hewitt</a> describes as a “<a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469668727/radical-friend/">rich female world of faith, family, and friendship</a>” – one that led many of them to step into the public sphere and work for social reforms. </p>
<p>As a scholar of <a href="https://museumstudies.artsandsciences.baylor.edu/person/dr-julie-holcomb">19th century Quaker history</a>, I have found the faith’s women at the forefront of efforts <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501748493/moral-commerce/">to abolish slavery</a>, promote the temperance movement and grant rights to women.</p>
<h2>Women’s souls and service</h2>
<p>Quakerism developed in the 1640s, amid the English Civil War – a time of political and religious turmoil. George Fox, <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/w/walvin-quakers.html">one of the faith’s founders</a>, spent much of the decade in spiritual wanderings, which led him to conclude the answers he sought came from his direct experience of God. As Quaker historian and theologian <a href="https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/tr/dandelion-ben.aspx">Ben Pink Dandelion</a> notes, “This intimacy with Christ, this relationship of direct revelation,” <a href="https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/an-introduction-to-quakerism-pink-dandelion/3952779?ean=9780521600880">has defined Quakerism</a> ever since.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537889/original/file-20230717-184356-zmu30b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white drawing inside a pub shows a man in early modern dress standing on a bench and speaking as if in a trance." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537889/original/file-20230717-184356-zmu30b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537889/original/file-20230717-184356-zmu30b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537889/original/file-20230717-184356-zmu30b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537889/original/file-20230717-184356-zmu30b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537889/original/file-20230717-184356-zmu30b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537889/original/file-20230717-184356-zmu30b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537889/original/file-20230717-184356-zmu30b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A painting by E.H. Wehnert depicts George Fox preaching in a tavern.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/george-fox-founder-of-the-society-of-friends-preaching-in-a-news-photo/2666182?adppopup=true">Hulton Archive/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>The belief in the “inward light” led Fox and others to encourage women’s spiritual leadership. In <a href="https://www.ccel.org/ccel/fox_g/autobio.vi.html#fna_vi-p56.1">Fox’s later writings</a>, he recalled encountering a religious group who believed women had no souls, “no more than a goose.” Fox objected, reminding them of <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%201%3A46-55&version=KJV">Mary’s words in the Bible</a> after an angel tells her that she will give birth to God’s son: “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.” </p>
<p><a href="http://www.qhpress.org/texts/fell.html">Margaret Fell</a>, the wife of a wealthy and prominent judge, helped Fox organize his followers into the Society of Friends. Worship meetings took inspiration from the Bible’s <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2018%3A20&version=KJV">Book of Matthew</a>: “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” Quakers worshipped in silence. On occasion, when a worshipper felt moved by the spirit of Christ, they would break the silence to share something with the rest.</p>
<p>Quakers also established <a href="https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/an-introduction-to-quakerism-pink-dandelion/3952779?ean=9780521600880">meetings to oversee church business</a>, such as approving marriages, recording births and deaths, and enforcing the faith’s discipline.</p>
<h2>Spreading the faith</h2>
<p>Quaker men and women sometimes met together, and sometimes in separate meetings. Fox believed women might be reluctant to speak up in the company of men, even though they were men’s spiritual equals. </p>
<p><a href="https://nha.org/research/nantucket-history/history-topics/nantucket-women-how-the-quakers-womens-meetings-established-the-foundation-for-the-national-womens-rights-movement/">In their business meetings</a>, Quaker women oversaw relief for the poor, appointed committees to visit women who had strayed from church teachings, and testified on spiritual and social concerns. One woman was selected to serve as a clerk, taking notes on members’ concerns and decisions.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537891/original/file-20230717-21441-cw2xpr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An early modern printed pamphlet's title page, which says 'Womens Speaking' at the top." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537891/original/file-20230717-21441-cw2xpr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537891/original/file-20230717-21441-cw2xpr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537891/original/file-20230717-21441-cw2xpr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537891/original/file-20230717-21441-cw2xpr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537891/original/file-20230717-21441-cw2xpr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=972&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537891/original/file-20230717-21441-cw2xpr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=972&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537891/original/file-20230717-21441-cw2xpr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=972&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The title page for a 1666 edition of Margaret Fell’s ‘Womens Speaking Justified.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1666_Fell_Womens_Speaking_Justified.jpg">Folger Shakespeare Library/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>Quakerism attracted a significant number of female converts, some of whom took an active role in spreading the faith. Eleven of the so-called “<a href="https://pendlehill.org/product/george-fox-and-the-valiant-sixty/">valiant sixty</a>” – itinerant ministers who preached Quaker principles in several countries – were women. <a href="https://www.quakersintheworld.org/quakers-in-action/223/Elizabeth-Hooton">Elizabeth Hooton</a>, long reputed to be Fox’s first convert, traveled widely in Britain, North America and the Caribbean, preaching and proselytizing. <a href="https://www.quakersintheworld.org/quakers-in-action/187/Mary-Fisher">Mary Fisher</a> joined six other Quakers on a spiritual visit to the Ottoman Empire in 1658, where she reported meeting with Sultan Mehmed IV. </p>
<p>Women also produced some of the <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/new-critical-studies-on-early-quaker-women-1650-1800-9780198814221?cc=us&lang=en&#:%7E:text=and%20Catie%20Gill-,Description,as%20a%20transatlantic%20religious%20body.">earliest texts of Quaker witness</a>, writing about their relationship to God. In 1666, Fell penned <a href="http://www.qhpress.org/texts/fell.html">the pamphlet “Women’s Speaking Justified</a>,” a scripture-based argument for the spiritual equality of the sexes. Her text is now recognized as a major 17th century document on women’s religious leadership.</p>
<h2>Acting on faith</h2>
<p>The Quaker women who organized the Seneca Falls Convention were born into this world of female ministry. For women like Philadelphia Quaker <a href="https://www.pennpress.org/9780812222791/lucretia-motts-heresy/">Lucretia Mott</a>, one of the Seneca Falls Convention’s organizers, Quaker practice normalized the idea that women, too, should have education, religious authority and the right to speak freely. Mott was also active in the antislavery movement, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-18th-century-quakers-led-a-boycott-of-sugar-to-protest-against-slavery-174114">boycotting slave-labor goods</a> such as cotton and sugar and organizing women in associations like the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. </p>
<p>Indeed, Quakers’ commitment to equality and community led many men and women to become social activists – but not without controversy. In the 1820s and again in the 1840s, the Society of Friends experienced a series of divisions over Quakers’ involvement in the antislavery movement and other reforms. Some saw activism as a natural manifestation of Quaker beliefs, but others feared that it threatened the group’s spiritual unity.</p>
<p>In 1848 – the same year as the Seneca Falls Convention – 200 Quakers made the decision to break from their yearly meeting, their local association. Citing their “<a href="https://www.pennpress.org/9780812222791/lucretia-motts-heresy/">rights of conscience</a>,” these men and women later formed the Yearly Meeting of Congregational Friends. Congregational Friends believed their faith required them to take steps toward abolishing slavery, and many also felt compelled to seek rights for women.</p>
<h2>‘Simply human rights’</h2>
<p>Just weeks after the Quaker split, Mott joined with four other women – her sister Martha Wright, Jane Hunt, Mary Ann M’Clintock and Elizabeth Cady Stanton – to organize a women’s rights convention. Among them, Stanton was the only non-Quaker. She and Mott had met during the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405198073.wbierp1607">World’s Anti-Slavery Convention</a> in 1848, held in London, where British organizers refused to recognize the American female delegates because of their gender.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537893/original/file-20230717-98971-edauh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A formal, black-and-white photo of an older woman wearing a gauzy bonnet and shawl." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537893/original/file-20230717-98971-edauh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537893/original/file-20230717-98971-edauh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537893/original/file-20230717-98971-edauh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537893/original/file-20230717-98971-edauh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537893/original/file-20230717-98971-edauh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1072&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537893/original/file-20230717-98971-edauh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1072&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537893/original/file-20230717-98971-edauh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1072&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A photo of Quaker social reformer Lucretia Mott, signed by Philadelphia photographer Frederick Gutekunst.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lucretia_Mott,_signed_photo,_by_F._Gutekunst.jpg">Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Although the women agreed on the necessity of a women’s rights convention, they disagreed on the form and content. At their initial meeting, <a href="https://www.pennpress.org/9780812222791/lucretia-motts-heresy/">the five proposed to discuss the “social, civil, and religious condition of women”</a> – placing women’s oppression within a larger constellation of social evils. Stanton, however, listed the lack of suffrage as woman’s most urgent grievance. </p>
<p>Ultimately, the Seneca Falls Convention produced the Declaration of Sentiments, which celebrated women’s worthiness, criticized their subjugation and articulated the rights they deserved. Participants also passed <a href="https://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda/2B-HUM/Readings/Womens-Rights.pdf">12 resolutions</a> designed to provide for women’s equality, affirming their right to occupy “such a station in society” as their “conscience shall dictate,” and their “sacred right to the elective franchise.”</p>
<p>The Quaker influence on the convention is most apparent in the differing views held by its two most influential leaders, Stanton and Mott. <a href="https://www.nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture/elizabeth-cady-stanton.htm">Stanton rejected</a> the need to introduce other issues into the fight for women’s rights, believing that once women gained political and legal power, more reforms would follow.</p>
<p>Mott, on the other hand, saw women’s oppression as one of many threats to individual liberty, from slavery and abusive prisons to the treatment of Native Americans. Real change, she believed, would require going to the root of the problem: “<a href="https://www.pennpress.org/9780812222791/lucretia-motts-heresy/">mindless tradition and savage greed</a>.” As Mott <a href="https://www.wwhp.org/Resources/davis_history.html">would later note</a>, “Among Quakers there had never been any talk of woman’s rights – it was simply human rights.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209370/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julie L. Holcomb does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Most of the convention’s core organizers were Quakers. The religious movement’s beliefs about men and women’s equality before God has shaped members’ activism for centuries.Julie L. Holcomb, Professor of Museum Studies, Baylor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2020712023-03-23T17:18:31Z2023-03-23T17:18:31ZWomen only gained access to the London Stock Exchange in 1973 – why did it take so long?<p>On March 26 1973, the London Stock Exchange admitted its first female members. This followed years of resistance, with London trailing behind other smaller exchanges around the UK. </p>
<p>That women had been excluded for so long was not only due to institutional misogyny. Research has shown how finance was <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/146167400407019">imagined in sexist terms</a> for centuries. And despite the extraordinary accomplishments of prominent female figures over the past 50 years, these biased beliefs persist to this day.</p>
<p>Long before stock exchanges existed, women were active investors and speculators. They navigated the bustling coffee shops of London’s Exchange Alley, where people met to trade stocks. They sometimes <a href="https://www.historian.live/home/2018/8/23/episode-111-amy-froide-on-the-female-stockbrokers-of-the-financial-revolution">acted as intermediaries</a>, managing the investments of others in return for commission. In other words, women were stockbrokers.</p>
<p>But their presence in the market often attracted attention. This was especially the case in times of crisis, such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/women-were-to-blame-for-the-south-sea-bubble-according-to-men-72439">the South Sea Bubble in 1720</a> – one of the UK’s first speculative manias. Male commentators claimed women were too emotional to be effective investors, let alone brokers. Only men, to their minds, could exercise the self-restraint necessary to master the market. </p>
<p>So women got squeezed out. The title of the bestselling 18th-century investment guide –– <a href="https://ia600301.us.archive.org/23/items/everymanhisownbr00mort/everymanhisownbr00mort.pdf">Every Man His Own Broker</a> –– was telling. The author, Thomas Mortimer, thought that women should only invest via a male relative. And he certainly didn’t think they were capable of being brokers.</p>
<h2>How financial institutionalisation excluded women</h2>
<p>When stockbrokers moved to a purpose-built stock exchange in the heart of the City of London, at the start of the 19th century, they signed up to a <a href="https://ia902704.us.archive.org/5/items/rulesregulations00stocuoft/rulesregulations00stocuoft.pdf">new set of rules</a>. Though these did not specifically bar women, the wording made it clear that the exchange was for men only: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>No new applicant for admission is admissible if he, or his wife, be engaged in business.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="An etched medallion portrait of a woman in black and white." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517173/original/file-20230323-22-dgybcz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517173/original/file-20230323-22-dgybcz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517173/original/file-20230323-22-dgybcz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517173/original/file-20230323-22-dgybcz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517173/original/file-20230323-22-dgybcz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517173/original/file-20230323-22-dgybcz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517173/original/file-20230323-22-dgybcz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Amy Elizabeth Bell.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Later in the century, stock exchanges were established in towns and cities across the UK, and these followed London in excluding women.</p>
<p>Yet they never had a monopoly. From the 1880s, a few enterprising women started establishing their own brokerages. Trading a stone’s throw from the Bank of England, <a href="https://womenwhomeantbusiness.com/2021/05/01/amy-bell-1859-1920/">Amy Bell</a> specialised in dealing for women. She sought to educate them in a subject about which they had <a href="https://ia802901.us.archive.org/4/items/professionalwom00bategoog/professionalwom00bategoog.pdf">often been kept ignorant</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I want to make women understand their money matters and take a pleasure in dealing with them. After all, is money such a sordid consideration?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Some were the daughters of stockbrokers who worked in family firms, occasionally taking them over on the death of the father. Others had no family connections and started in secretarial roles. They determinedly worked their way up to senior positions, like <a href="https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/tahistory/877287.battle-for-a-womans-right-to-work/">Edith Midgley</a> in Bradford. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A black and white historical photographic portrait of a woman." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517170/original/file-20230323-16-xkn7k9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517170/original/file-20230323-16-xkn7k9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517170/original/file-20230323-16-xkn7k9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517170/original/file-20230323-16-xkn7k9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517170/original/file-20230323-16-xkn7k9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1087&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517170/original/file-20230323-16-xkn7k9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1087&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517170/original/file-20230323-16-xkn7k9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1087&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Victoria Woodhull.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the US, meanwhile, pioneering figures including the radical feminist <a href="https://www.moaf.org/publications-collections/financial-history-magazine/122/_res/id=Attachments/index=0/Ladies%20of%20the%20Ticker.pdf">Victoria Woodhull</a> paved the way for a feminine presence on Wall Street. </p>
<p>By the interwar years, women had proven they could be successful stockbrokers. Clients, both male and female, reportedly had no objections. Indeed, many preferred dealing with a woman. But persuading institutions was altogether harder. </p>
<p>Publicly, the London Stock Exchange’s stance was that there was no rule against women joining. Privately, when women did try to apply –- the first as early as 1936 –- they were firmly told to drop the matter. </p>
<p>What changed? 1973 was not the result of an institution quietly moving in line with public opinion. A series of dramatic votes on the issue between 1967 and 1971 all went against admitting women. Brokers claimed that women were too delicate for the trading floor – they would be jostled, they would be offended by the language. One broker was clear this was no place for a woman: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>When I’m there, I’m there to do business and when I’m doing business I’m not inclined to be as gentlemanly as when I’m pouring sherry at home.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Another explained that stockbroking, “like coal-mining”, was best done by men. </p>
<h2>How sexist beliefs about finance endure</h2>
<p>Outside London, attitudes were changing. Without much fanfare, smaller stock exchanges began accepting female applicants. Aberdeen was first in 1964, soon followed by Sheffield and Huddersfield. Larger exchanges followed. By the early 1970s, Glasgow, Nottingham and Manchester had all gained female members.</p>
<p>This mattered to London because for some years there had been plans to amalgamate the country’s stock exchanges to promote efficiency. In contrast to the polls on admitting women, London members enthusiastically voted for the creation of a United Stock Exchange in 1972. </p>
<p>Muriel Bailey, a broker, had long campaigned for equality in the City. In a filmed BBC interview in 1967, she had spoken candidly of the “deep-rooted prejudice in the Stock Exchange about women members, which is utterly ridiculous”. She explained that she did the same work as the partners and wanted the same status as them.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"968829387691970560"}"></div></p>
<p>In 1972, she seized her chance. Writing to the London Stock Exchange, she pointed out that under the new rules, provincial brokers –- some of whom were women –- would be able to access the London trading floor, whereas those who happened to work in the capital would not. This was untenable, she said. The authorities were forced to concede.</p>
<p>The day women were admitted, members were on their best behaviour for the cameras. Those who ventured onto the floor reported a friendly reception. But it was not quite the victory it seemed.</p>
<p>Members had not voted for equality. Rather, it had been forced on them. And they were quick to make it clear that this was still a male domain. </p>
<p>Women were cast as intruders, and some were subjected to harassment. One new member who dared to wear a miniskirt <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/aff6433f-5231-465a-a96c-a2219c2d1dc1">faced catcalls</a>, wolf whistles and yells of “Get ’em off!”. All were given derogatory nicknames.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, over the past 50 years, women have been able to <a href="https://docs.londonstockexchange.com/sites/default/files/documents/charting-50-years-change-women-UKs-%20finance-sector-final.pdf">forge successful careers</a> in the City. Some, including the London Stock Exchange’s current CEO, Julia Hoggett, have demonstrated they can rise to the top. <a href="https://legalresearch.blogs.bris.ac.uk/2018/01/sex-and-the-city-culture/">Challenging</a> the macho culture, however, has been much harder. </p>
<p>History shows that finance is not inherently masculine. Rather, it was constructed as such by the institutions that sought to exclude women. Despite the barriers they have faced, women have, in fact, been trading successfully as stockbrokers, on and off, for over 300 years. </p>
<p>The gendered beliefs that are still widely held today –- that men are <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28065/w28065.pdf">more financially literate</a> and that women are <a href="https://www.bu.edu/eci/files/2020/01/12-05NelsonRiskAverse.pdf">excessively risk-averse</a> -– are determined more by culture than biology. Recognising this is the next step towards fulfilling the promise of 1973.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202071/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Taylor has received funding from the Economic History Society for research into the history of stockbroking.</span></em></p>Finance is not inherently masculine. Rather, it was long constructed as such by the institutions which sought to exclude women.James Taylor, Senior Lecturer in History, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1989742023-03-01T13:26:03Z2023-03-01T13:26:03ZHow Frances Willard shaped feminism by leading the 19th-century temperance movement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512495/original/file-20230227-16-yiwjos.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=12%2C21%2C2807%2C2120&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Frances Willard stands behind her mother, at left, and Anna B. Gordon, who worked as a secretary and lived in the Willard household.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/frances-willard-standing-her-mother-and-anna-b-gordon-secy-news-photo/640476983?phrase=frances%20willard&adppopup=true">Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As younger adults opt for “wellness” products, many are practicing alcohol abstinence. Sometimes referred to as “<a href="https://blog.faire.com/industry-insights/staying-power-of-sober-curious-trend/">sober curious</a>,” this trend of often forgoing alcohol has forged public conversations on the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/12/27/dry-january-health-benefits/">health benefits of abstinence</a>. </p>
<p>Few, however, reflect on its connections to the <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Drinking-In-America/Mark-Edward-Lender/9780029185704">temperance movement</a>, one of the major social movements of the 19th and early 20th centuries. </p>
<p>Its leaders not only believed that alcohol abstinence would lead to better health, but they saw it as a way to create a just society. This movement laid a foundation for the <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/prohibition-a-very-short-introduction-9780190280109?cc=us&lang=en&">successful campaign for an amendment</a> to the U.S. Constitution. Enacted in 1920, the 18th Amendment barred the sale and distribution of alcoholic beverages. </p>
<p>Because of the difficulties of legal enforcement, and following a national campaign waged against Prohibition, the amendment was <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Last-Call/Daniel-Okrent/9780743277044">repealed in 1933</a>. That repeal still casts aspersion on how the temperance movement is remembered today. Many Americans see it as a moralistic crusade dominated by religious zealots. However, temperance <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/smashing-the-liquor-machine-9780190841577?cc=us&lang=en&">became an international movement</a>, with many of its leaders being women. </p>
<p>A historical figure who sheds light on this movement is Frances Willard. In a <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/do-everything-9780190914073?cc=us&lang=en&">recent biography</a>, I discuss how Willard came to lead the temperance movement.</p>
<h2>Global reach of temperance movement</h2>
<p>Born in 1839, Willard wanted to become a Methodist minister. Instead, she became a teacher, as women could rarely be ordained at the time. Ultimately, she became the <a href="https://www.northwestern.edu/150-years-of-women/learn/library-exhibit/fireworks-and-fire.html">first dean of the newly founded Woman’s College at Northwestern University</a>. </p>
<p>In 1874, Willard helped found the <a href="https://scalar.usc.edu/works/willard-and-wells/the-wctu-temperance-and-prohibition">Woman’s Christian Temperance Union</a>, an organization committed to campaigning for prohibition legislation. She was elected its president in 1879, holding that office until her death in 1898. Throughout her presidency, the WCTU ran shelters, medical dispensaries and free kindergartens that reached out to destitute families. </p>
<p>Willard focused on alcohol’s <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/American_Temperance_Movements.html?id=YCC6QgAACAAJ">impact on women and children</a>. At a time when women had few legal safeguards compared with men, Willard highlighted how what today is known as <a href="https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sheets/understanding-alcohol-use-disorder">alcohol use disorder</a> drained economic resources, while liquor manufacturers made huge profits at the expense of the poor. She argued that money spent on alcohol not only took away resources from families, it led to inebriated men committing domestic violence against women and children. </p>
<p>Emphasizing what the WCTU called “<a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807871966/womans-worldwomans-empire/">organized mother love</a>” – the belief that women could apply the ideals of motherhood to the social issues of the time – Willard built the WCTU into one of the largest women’s organizations in the world. By the late 19th century, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Woman_and_Temperance.html?id=90DiAAAAMAAJ">it had over 150,000 members</a>. </p>
<p>The temperance movement was not confined to the U.S. In 1884, <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691145211/reforming-the-world">Willard inaugurated the World’s WCTU</a>. This organization formed WCTU chapters in over 40 countries including Sweden, Japan and Australia. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512504/original/file-20230227-811-o510fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two women lay a wreath at the statue of a woman holding a book in one hand." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512504/original/file-20230227-811-o510fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512504/original/file-20230227-811-o510fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512504/original/file-20230227-811-o510fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512504/original/file-20230227-811-o510fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512504/original/file-20230227-811-o510fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512504/original/file-20230227-811-o510fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512504/original/file-20230227-811-o510fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This Frances Willard statue is in the Statuary Hall of the U.S. Capitol.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/beverly-robinson-and-merry-lee-powell-of-the-illinois-state-news-photo/99871232?phrase=frances%20willard&adppopup=true">Douglas Graham/Roll Call/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1905, when a statue of Willard was <a href="https://www.aoc.gov/explore-capitol-campus/art/frances-e-willard-statue">unveiled in the National Statuary Hall</a> – a chamber devoted to sculptures of prominent Americans in the U.S. Capitol – she became the first woman to receive that distinction. She was <a href="https://www.womenofthehall.org/inductee/frances-e-willard/">inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame</a> in Seneca Falls, New York, in 2000. </p>
<h2>Elevating women’s voices</h2>
<p>For Willard, prohibition was one of her many interests. Through her slogan, “<a href="https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/the-do-everything-policy/">Do Everything</a>,” she challenged women to become politically active, encouraging them to embrace any issues they saw as important. </p>
<p>Under her leadership, the WCTU advocated for women’s suffrage, lobbied for prison reform and <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780875804163/articulating-rights/#bookTabs=1">campaigned for age-of-consent laws</a> that were designed to raise the legal marriage age for women from 10 to 18. </p>
<p>Believing that the best way to ensure prohibition legislation was through giving women the right to vote, Willard mentored WCTU women who <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674431331&content=bios">became suffrage leaders</a>. These reformers included Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt, who helped lead the campaign to ratify the 19th Amendment, granting women the right to vote. </p>
<p>Willard supported <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780809079636/equality">third-party political movements</a> that endorsed prohibition, universal suffrage and economic reforms. Always at the center of her message was the belief that overhauling the American political system required women’s voices. “I am glad to live in a day when we are talking about justice,” <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=c032073">she wrote in 1892</a>. “What we women want is simply justice.” </p>
<p>Willard was a harsh critic of anyone who stood in the way of women’s achievement. Opposing male physicians of the time, who believed that exercise would damage a woman’s health, she learned how to ride a bicycle. Willard described her <a href="https://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5038/">mastery of bicycle riding in a popular book</a> published in 1895. </p>
<h2>An activist faith</h2>
<p>Willard’s <a href="https://www.gbhem.org/publishing/publications/nevertheless-american-methodists-and-womens-rights/">Methodist faith</a> shaped her reform commitments. She was influenced by the <a href="https://people.smu.edu/mappingthega/stories/s15/">18th-century founder of Methodism, John Wesley</a>, who emphasized doing good works in service to the poor. His example influenced later religious-based reform movements, including temperance. </p>
<p>Willard built on this Methodist foundation, believing that reforming society required that one’s faith be put into practice. Motivated by Jesus’ commitment to serve the poor, she pushed WCTU women to work for economic justice and social equality. </p>
<p>Willard supported the fledgling labor movement. She called for women to receive the same pay as men in the workplace, and backed federal legislation to regulate business monopolies. </p>
<p>She also pushed for the <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Woman_in_the_Pulpit.html?id=hGtJAAAAIAAJ">ordination of women</a>, believing that increasing women’s voices in churches would facilitate the building of a just society. </p>
<p>Willard’s model of progressive religion is <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/30/politics/clinton-faith-private/index.html">evident today in former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton</a>. Like Willard, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee often discusses how her Methodist faith inspires her political vision. </p>
<h2>Complicated legacy</h2>
<p>Willard was far from perfect. Her legacy is haunted by an absence of a systemic understanding of racism. </p>
<p>In the 1890s, she became embroiled in a controversy with the <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780809016464/totellthetruthfreely">African American journalist Ida B. Wells</a>. Wells criticized Willard for not taking a stand against the lynching of African Americans in the South. She noted how Willard’s desire to placate white Southerners blinded her to the atrocities of Jim Crow racism.</p>
<p>Willard’s <a href="https://scalar.usc.edu/works/willard-and-wells/christopher-evans">reluctance to address Wells’ accusations</a> was typical of white reformers of the time. It reflects the historical failure of many white Americans to prioritize issues of racial justice.</p>
<p>Despite her shortcomings, Willard’s leadership not only played a critical role in the temperance movement. She <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Two_Paths_to_Women_s_Equality.html?id=yMO-QgAACAAJ">helped shape 21st-century feminism</a> and progressive-based movements <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-social-gospel-movement-explains-the-roots-of-todays-religious-left-78895">associated with today’s religious left</a>. </p>
<p>At the height of her fame, many believed that if women won the right to vote Frances Willard would be the first woman elected president. Oftentimes, she expressed hope that <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=c021398">she would live to see a woman elected</a> to that office. This dream of Willard’s remains unfulfilled. </p>
<p>Ever the optimist, however, <a href="https://curiosity.lib.harvard.edu/women-working-1800-1930/catalog/45-990010688700203941">Willard wrote in 1889</a>, “I have sincerely meant in life, to stand by the great cause of poor, oppressed humanity. There must be explorers along all pathways. … This has been my ‘call’ from the beginning.” </p>
<p>Willard died before the passing of the 18th and 19th Amendments. Yet she played a vital role in molding movements that led to their enactment. Her contributions are a reminder to celebrate the work of many visionary women, like Willard, who did not live to see their dreams become reality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198974/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher H. Evans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A historian highlights the role of Frances Willard, who helped found the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, one of the major social movements of the 19th and 20th centuries.Christopher H. Evans, Professor of the History of Christianity, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1752052022-02-10T13:38:41Z2022-02-10T13:38:41ZInmates’ hunger strikes take powerful stands against injustice<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445482/original/file-20220209-19735-1w8kmf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Palestinian artists draw a mural of hunger striker Hisham Abu Hawash.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/palestinian-artists-draw-a-mural-of-hisham-abu-hawash-a-news-photo/1237545910">MOHAMMED ABED/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the coming weeks, Israel is slated to free Palestinian detainee Hisham Abu Hawash, a 40-year-old construction worker, who has been held by Israeli military authorities since October 2020 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/04/world/middleeast/palestinian-hunger-strike-israel.html">without charge or trial</a>. Israel agreed to release him after Abu Hawash agreed to end a 141-day hunger strike he had carried out while imprisoned.</p>
<p>He was hospitalized but <a href="https://aohr.org.uk/critical-health-of-palestinian-prisoner-on-hunger-strike-hisham-abu-hawash/">refused medical treatment</a>. After days of protests by Palestinians calling for his release, and mounting fears in Israel of widespread unrest if he died in custody, the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/05/palestinian-man-end-hunger-strike-israel-agrees-release">Israeli government yielded</a>. </p>
<p>His expected release comes almost a year after another high-profile prisoner began a hunger strike. In March 2021, imprisoned Russian political leader Alexei Navalny began refusing food to demand that his own physicians – rather than prison doctors – <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/23/world/europe/russia-navalny-putin-hunger-strike.html">treat various health conditions</a> that potentially stemmed from a failed Russian assassination attempt against him. </p>
<p>Outraged by the injustice of his incarceration, demonstrators took to the streets across Russia and clashed with police, resulting in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/23/world/europe/russia-navalny-putin-hunger-strike.html">arrests of around 1,500</a>. After 24 days, some of which he <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/25/world/europe/navalny-jail-prison.html">spent in hospitals</a>, Russian officials allowed Navalny’s doctors to treat him. He then ended the strike and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F03064220211033790">returned to his prison cell</a>.</p>
<p>Neither man is yet free from prison, but their actions show the power of hunger strikes to galvanize public attention and promote specific political goals. My book “<a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520302693/refusal-to-eat">Refusal to Eat: A Century of Prison Hunger Strikes</a>” presents a wide-ranging analysis of hunger striking as a tactic and explains why this practice has such visceral power as a tool of radical and revolutionary action.</p>
<h2>An effective tactic</h2>
<p>The power of the hunger strike lies in its utter simplicity. Anyone can choose to forego eating, even when living under <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/holding-the-fort/oclc/1232211060&referer=brief_results">extremely restricted conditions</a>. It has happened in the prisons of <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-02-17-mn-2779-story.html">apartheid South Africa</a>, <a href="https://harvardilj.org/2016/12/force-feeding-prisoners-on-a-hunger-strike-israel-as-a-case-study-in-international-law/">Israeli prisons holding Palestinians</a> and the <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469626314/rightlessness/">U.S. detention camp</a> at <a href="http://www.beacon.org/A-Place-Outside-the-Law-P1664.aspx">Guantánamo Bay, Cuba</a>. </p>
<p>Many captors are particularly afraid that a hunger-striking prisoner will die in their custody.</p>
<p>In 1981, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-56937259">Bobby Sands and nine other members</a> of the Irish nationalist paramilitary movement died after months of hunger striking in a British prison in Northern Ireland.</p>
<p>Their hunger strike was part of a wider prison protest against British rule that took place during <a href="https://www.history.com/news/the-troubles-northern-ireland">the Troubles</a>, a period of sectarian unrest that saw running street battles between largely Protestant pro-British loyalists and mainly Catholic Irish republicans.</p>
<p>During the strike, Sands gained so much public support that he was elected a member of the British Parliament while still behind bars. When he starved to death a month later, he became a <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/archives/the-last-months-of-bobby-sands-life-as-seen-from-afar-and-up-close-1.5107999">martyr for the cause of Irish nationalism and independence from Britain</a>.</p>
<p>In 2005, when <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/18/politics/guantanamo-prisoners-go-on-hunger-strike.html">hundreds of Guantanamo prisoners went on hunger strike</a> to protest their indefinite detention without charge, a key fear among U.S. officials was that one of them would die. </p>
<p>“The worst case would be to have someone go from <a href="http://www.lukemitchell.org/2012/11/he-has-chosen-death-refusing-to-eat-or.html">zero to hero</a>. We don’t want a Bobby Sands,” one U.S. official told a reporter. So the U.S. began <a href="https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp058296">force-feeding the inmates</a>, which overwhelmed the camp’s medical system, requiring new equipment and emergency recruitment of nursing personnel.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445485/original/file-20220209-19735-48dc6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A hearse carries a coffin draped with the Irish flag through a crowd" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445485/original/file-20220209-19735-48dc6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445485/original/file-20220209-19735-48dc6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445485/original/file-20220209-19735-48dc6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445485/original/file-20220209-19735-48dc6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445485/original/file-20220209-19735-48dc6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445485/original/file-20220209-19735-48dc6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445485/original/file-20220209-19735-48dc6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The death of hunger striker Bobby Sands in 1981 drew crowds to his funeral and sparked protests against British rule in Northern Ireland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/NorthernIrelandBobbySands/f0fa768035cb48a8917d3bf2cafb60bd/photo">AP Photo/Robert Dear</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A clear message</h2>
<p>Over time, hunger strikers physically weaken and become more dependent on others for their survival. But in my research, I have seen them strengthen their messages against oppression, and their determination to be heard.</p>
<p>Most of these prisoners don’t want to die. “In order for a hunger strike to succeed, <a href="https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/nelson-mandela/long-walk-to-freedom/9780759521049/">the outside world must learn of it</a>. Otherwise, prisoners will simply starve themselves to death and no one will know,” wrote former political prisoner Nelson Mandela, who <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/food-matters/nelson-mandelae28099s-long-and-hungered-walk-to-freedom/">participated in hunger strikes while in prison</a> and later became president of South Africa.</p>
<p>Rather, their goal is to draw public sympathy for the cause and pressure authorities to <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-jan-05-mn-20446-story.html">change their policies or actions</a>. Hunger strikers’ memoirs, as well as medical reports, <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.18574/9781479846306-008/html">reveal that their hunger pangs subside after a few days</a>, making them more able to withstand pressure from guards, fellow prisoners, physicians and even their family members to resume eating. It can often take <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1136%2Fbmj.315.7112.829">weeks, and even months</a>, for grave deterioration to set in – <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/0140-6736(91)92465-E">much less death</a>. That time is an opportunity for the striker and his or her allies to leverage the strike to achieve their goals.</p>
<p>In the early 20th century, <a href="https://theconversation.com/suffragists-used-hunger-strikes-as-a-powerful-tool-of-resistance-a-tactic-still-employed-by-protesters-100-years-on-144323">British and American suffragists</a> were the first to use hunger strikers’ stories in the media, focusing on the feelings and bodily distress of hunger striking, to show how determined and important their protest was.</p>
<p>After hunger striking in 1917, Alice Paul was released from prison and campaigned to win votes for women’s suffrage in the U.S. Senate. She also inspired women’s suffrage activists across the country to influence their state legislators to ratify the <a href="https://networks.h-net.org/node/20317/reviews/21453/browne-adams-and-keene-alice-paul-and-american-suffrage-campaign">19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution</a>, which gave women the right to vote.</p>
<p>When prisoners go on a hunger strike, their experience of self-starvation focuses attention on prison conditions, or the reasons they are being detained. Prison authorities often try to <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/08/22/a-former-warden-s-view-on-prison-strikes">limit information about hunger strikes</a>, denying they are happening at all, minimizing the number of strikers and the duration of their protest, and even claiming that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/11/nyregion/rikers-island-hunger-strike.html">prisoners are eating surreptitiously</a> by consuming food hidden in their cells.</p>
<p>When media reports thrust the experience of hunger striking into the public eye, the news can pressure the government to curb abusive treatment, improve conditions in the <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2015/11/28/detained-immigrants-hunger-strikes-could-be-gamble/">short term, ease communication or grant prisoner release</a>. Strikers’ allies and supporters communicate the injustices through demonstrations, picketing, placards and banners. They also express solidarity with the <a href="https://www.upi.com/Archives/1989/02/09/Lawyers-vow-hunger-strike/4143603003600/">strikers experiences through public sympathy fasts</a>. </p>
<p>Governments fear that public protests can escalate into political upheaval and insurrection. Protests shift the terms of public debate away from the state’s justifications for imprisonment and secrecy, and toward concerns for justice.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445478/original/file-20220209-15-16hg036.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5615%2C3732&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Protesters hold up signs with photos and messages written in Arabic" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445478/original/file-20220209-15-16hg036.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5615%2C3732&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445478/original/file-20220209-15-16hg036.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445478/original/file-20220209-15-16hg036.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445478/original/file-20220209-15-16hg036.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445478/original/file-20220209-15-16hg036.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445478/original/file-20220209-15-16hg036.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445478/original/file-20220209-15-16hg036.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Palestinians demonstrate in solidarity with hunger striker Hisham Abu Hawash, who is pictured on the center poster.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/IsraelPalestinians/c928b737e5ba43e88e2d40ecf1f7f2a9/photo">AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Singular figures</h2>
<p>Most hunger strikers survive – and often remain in prison. That is what Mandela and his fellow inmates did in 1966, and what Navalny did in Russia in 2021.</p>
<p>Even before his strike, Navalny was famous as an outspoken opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Navalny barely survived an assassination attempt with life-saving treatment in Germany, and was arrested <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-16057045">upon his return to Russia</a>. His strike continued his years-long effort to call attention to abuses of power in the Russian government.</p>
<p>Abu Hawash, by contrast, was not widely known beyond his own community until his hunger strike was publicized globally. But he was not alone.</p>
<p>In October 2021, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-middle-east-west-bank-hunger-strikes-prisons-543a11e2d9f62b713f461411ccbb33c6">250 Palestinian detainees</a> went on hunger strike to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/palestinian-ends-113-day-hunger-strike-officials-2021-11-11/">protest their removal to solitary confinement</a>. Some prisoners refused food for short periods, from 48 hours to five days.</p>
<p>But others struck for longer, heightening alarm among guards, physicians and family members – as well as political leaders. Over the years, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/21/palestinian-prisoner-ends-hunger-strike">Palestinian detainees’ hunger strikes</a> have triggered street protests in West Bank and Gaza, and focused worldwide media attention on <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-un-experts-slam-force-feeding-bill-1.5253383">Israel’s use of detention without charge or trial</a>.</p>
<p>In November 2021, several long-term strikers were hospitalized and released from custody after medical treatment. Abu Hawash’s moment is approaching.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nayan Shah does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The power of the hunger strike lies in its utter simplicity. Anyone can choose to forego eating, even when living under extremely restricted conditions.Nayan Shah, Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity and History, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1695882021-12-15T13:25:49Z2021-12-15T13:25:49ZHow Mrs. Claus embodied 19th-century debates about women’s rights<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437312/original/file-20211213-13-1cw4wu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=512%2C149%2C4356%2C2930&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Why did she do all the work while Santa got all the glory? What would happen if she delivered the toys?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/christmas-yard-decorations-st-louis-missouri-news-photo/144083189?adppopup=true">Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Clement Clarke Moore’s 1823 poem “<a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Troy_Sentinel/1823/12/23/Account_of_a_Visit_from_St._Nicholas">Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas</a>” redefined Christmas in America. As historian Steven Nissenbaum explains in “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/122132/the-battle-for-christmas-by-stephen-nissenbaum/">The Battle for Christmas</a>,” Moore’s secular St. Nick weakened the holiday’s religious associations, transforming it into a familial celebration that culminated in Santa Claus’ toy deliveries on Christmas Eve. </p>
<p>Nineteenth-century writers, journalists and artists were quick to fill in details about Santa that Moore’s poem left out: a toy workshop, a home at the North Pole and a naughty-or-nice list. They also decided that Santa Claus wasn’t a bachelor; he was married to Mrs. Claus. </p>
<p>Yet scholars tend to overlook the evolution of Santa Claus’ spouse. <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Merry_Christmas.html?id=C5rNtWmHtpkC">You’ll see brief references to a handful of late-19th-century Mrs. Claus poems</a> – especially Katharine Lee Bates’ 1888 “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=I5dFAQAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=goody%20sleigh%20ride%20wide%20awake&pg=PA35#v=onepage&q=goody%20sleigh%20ride%20wide%20awake&f=false">Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh Ride</a>.” </p>
<p>But as I discovered when I began work on a class about Christmas in literature, the writers who created Mrs. Claus were not just interested in filling in the blanks of Santa’s personal life. The poems and stories about Mrs. Claus that appeared in newspapers and popular periodicals spoke to women’s central role in the Christmas holiday. The character also provided a canvas to explore contemporary debates about gender and politics. </p>
<h2>The hardest-working woman in the North Pole</h2>
<p>Christmas in 19th-century America depended on women’s time and labor: Women prepared <a href="https://archive.org/details/celebratingfamil0000plec">family celebrations</a>, organized community and church events and worked in industries that fed seasonal demand for cards, toys and clothing. </p>
<p>This work was both essential and, at times, exhausting: As the century drew to a close, the Ladies’ Home Journal <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015012341650&view=1up&seq=20&skin=2021&q1=Complicating%20Christmas">urged its readers</a> not to “tire themselves out preparing for Christmas.” </p>
<p>Many literary depictions of Mrs. Claus paid tribute to the long hours, practical know-how and managerial skills that women’s holiday preparations required. </p>
<p>Sara Conant’s 1875 short story “Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus,” which appeared in an 1875 issue of Western Rural: Weekly Journal for the Farm & Fireside, celebrated these efforts by describing Mrs. Claus working alongside women across America as they cooked, cleaned and sewed. In Ada Shelton’s 1885 story “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=uIUCAAAAYAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=%22in%20santa%20claus%20land%22&pg=PA17#v=onepage&q=%22in%20santa%20claus%20land%22&f=false">In Santa Claus Land</a>,” Santa acknowledged his debt to Mrs. Claus: Without her hard work, he could “never get through” the Christmas season. </p>
<p>But on Christmas Eve, Mrs. Claus hit the North Pole’s glass ceiling. </p>
<p>For Conant, Mrs. Claus was as “indispensible” as Santa, an equal partner in the “joint work” of preparing for holiday festivities. Still, in most Mrs. Claus literature, Santa traveled the world filling stockings while Mrs. Claus stayed home to await his return. In 1884’s “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=4KivdYHq200C&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=sarah%20j%20burke%20mrs%20santa%20claus%20asserts%20herself&pg=PA132#v=onepage&q=sarah%20j%20burke%20mrs%20santa%20claus%20asserts%20herself&f=false">Mrs. Santa Claus Asserts Herself</a>,” Sarah J. Burke’s tearful Mrs. Claus, ignored by Santa and his fans, is left to “cower alone” clasping the fingers she’d “worked to the bone” as Santa speeds off on his sleigh.</p>
<p>A few writers did, however, reward Mrs. Claus’ hard work with a sleigh ride of her own.</p>
<p>Georgia Grey’s 1874 short story “<a href="https://archive.org/details/sim_zions-herald_1874-12-17_51_51/page/n5/mode/2up">Mrs. Santa Claus’s Ride</a>” allows Mrs. Claus to venture out alone, but only after Santa – adamantly “not a woman’s rights man” – makes her promise to remain unseen. To avoid questioning Santa’s authority or the belief that women belonged at home, the anonymous author of the 1880 tale “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=gCDnAAAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=the%20churchman%20Mrs%20Santa%20Claus's%20Christmas%20Eve&pg=PA28#v=onepage&q=the%20churchman%20Mrs%20Santa%20Claus's%20Christmas%20Eve&f=false">Mrs. Santa Claus’s Christmas-Eve</a>” manufactures an emergency: Santa has taken off without some dolls, so Mrs. Claus must saddle Blitzen and deliver them.</p>
<h2>Mrs. Claus on the naughty list</h2>
<p>Other writers were less willing to allow Mrs. Claus to step outside the home. </p>
<p>Negative representations of her Christmas Eve travels reflected backlash against women’s demands for independence and the vote. The majority of Mrs. Claus writing took place after the Civil War, <a href="http://www.rochester.edu/sba/suffrage-history/us-suffrage-movement-timeline-1792-to-present/">alongside state and national efforts to grant voting rights to women</a>.</p>
<p>Publications geared toward women didn’t necessarily advocate for more rights and political power. In 1871, the popular woman’s magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book published an <a href="https://archive.org/details/sim_godeys-magazine_1871-05_82_491/page/476/mode/2up?q=woman+suffrage">anti-suffrage petition addressed to Congress and signed by a number of prominent women</a>, with Godey’s female editor, Sarah Hale, encouraging readers to collect additional signatures. Like Georgia Grey’s Santa, the petition argued that women’s place was in the home, not in public. </p>
<p>Charles S. Dickinson’s “Mrs. Santa Claus’s Adventure,” which appeared in the Dec. 1, 1871, issue of Wood’s Household Magazine, offered a cautionary tale for disobedient wives. Refusing to believe that some children were too naughty to visit, Mrs. Claus trades places with Santa on Christmas Eve. But when she attempts to climb down chimneys to deliver gifts, she is attacked by “hateful imps” that embody children’s “naughty words and deeds.” Depicting Mrs. Claus’ advocacy for children as unrealistic and naive, Dickinson echoes anti-suffrage arguments that <a href="https://archive.org/details/jstor-25100797/page/n5/mode/2up">emphasized the dangers awaiting women who abandoned the home</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437303/original/file-20211213-13-7hgexo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Woman on bike rides past crying children." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437303/original/file-20211213-13-7hgexo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437303/original/file-20211213-13-7hgexo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=668&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437303/original/file-20211213-13-7hgexo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=668&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437303/original/file-20211213-13-7hgexo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=668&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437303/original/file-20211213-13-7hgexo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437303/original/file-20211213-13-7hgexo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437303/original/file-20211213-13-7hgexo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A cartoon from the Dec. 7, 1895, issue of the satirical magazine Judge shows a masculine-looking Mrs. Claus on a bicycle, leaving Santa and her children behind as she pedals away on her way to deliver Christmas gifts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Judge</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>M.B. Horton’s “<a href="https://archive.org/details/sim_godeys-magazine_1879-12_99_594/page/542/mode/2up?q=Horton">A New Departure</a>” <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=n-qmDwAAQBAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&lpg=PA107&dq=new%20departure%20suffrage&pg=PA107#v=onepage&q=new%20departure%20suffrage&f=false">took its title</a> from the National Woman Suffrage Association’s failed strategy to register women voters. The 1879 story – published, like the anti-suffrage petition, in Godey’s Lady’s Book – discredits women’s rights activists through its negative portrayal of Mrs. Claus, called “Mrs. St. Nicholas” in this telling. </p>
<p>Jealous of Santa’s fame, Mrs. St. Nick tries to deliver gifts in his place, but her plot to usurp Santa’s role as gift-giver fails when Santa tricks her into delivering a sack of worthless, embarrassing goods. </p>
<p>Mrs. Claus seems an unlikely target of anti-suffrage propaganda, but her association with the ultimate domestic holiday made the idea of an independent Mrs. Claus especially shocking. </p>
<h2>‘Goody Santa Claus’ takes the reins</h2>
<p>Nineteenth-century writing about Mrs. Claus focused primarily on her work ethic and whether that work would ever allow her a share of Santa’s Christmas limelight. </p>
<p>But scholar and suffragist Katharine Lee Bates, best known as the author of “<a href="https://archive.org/details/sim_congregationalist-and-herald-of-gospel-liberty_1895-07-04_80_27/page/17/mode/1up">America the Beautiful</a>,” took a different tack: She gave Mrs. Claus a voice and personality of her own. </p>
<p>Drawing upon elements of previous Mrs. Claus literature, Bates’ “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=I5dFAQAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=%22Katharine%20Lee%20Bates%22%20wide%20awake&pg=PA37#v=onepage&q=%22Katharine%20Lee%20Bates%22%20wide%20awake&f=false">Goody Santa Claus on A Sleigh Ride</a>” creates an outspoken Mrs. Claus who loves her work and her husband – and is not about to be left behind when Santa makes his deliveries. </p>
<p>Like Burke’s despondent Mrs. Claus, Bates’ Claus – whose title, Goody, stands in for “Mrs.” – begins her monologue with a question: Why does Santa get “all the glory” while she has “nothing but work”? </p>
<p>“Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh-Ride” first appeared in the children’s periodical Wide Awake. While the illustrations cast Mrs. Claus as affectionate, grandmotherly and nonthreatening, Bates’ text reveals the powerhouse behind Goody’s meek exterior.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Mrs. Claus plants a kiss on Santa Claus." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437319/original/file-20211213-19-uaeym4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437319/original/file-20211213-19-uaeym4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437319/original/file-20211213-19-uaeym4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437319/original/file-20211213-19-uaeym4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437319/original/file-20211213-19-uaeym4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437319/original/file-20211213-19-uaeym4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437319/original/file-20211213-19-uaeym4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Katharine Lee Bates’ Goody Claus was both affectionate and outspoken.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://museumsonthegreen.org/wp-content/uploads/Goody-Santa-Claus-007-768x513.jpg">Falmouth Historical Society</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Most Mrs. Claus literature highlights her domesticity, but Bates’ Goody is equally adept at housework and outdoor chores. As Santa snacks on Christmas treats and relaxes by the fire, Goody tends Christmas trees, an orchard and toy-growing plants; she also raises livestock and takes on the risky-sounding task of chasing thunder to “fashion fire-crackers with the lightning.”</p>
<p>Although Santa allows Goody to ride beside him, her North Pole work resume isn’t enough to convince him that she has enough “brain” to fill a stocking, and he fears that seeing her climb a chimney would “give his nerves a shock.” Left alone on the rooftop while Santa does his work, Mrs. Claus is on the outside looking in as she peers through the skylight.</p>
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<p>But the holes in a poor child’s Christmas stocking stop Santa in his tracks: Sewing was Mrs. Claus’ department. Seizing her chance to shine, Goody mends the sock, proving the value of women’s work and breaking Santa’s rules about chimney-climbing and stocking-filling in the process. </p>
<p>The themes and plots of 19th-century Mrs. Claus writing – <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/does-mrs-claus-have-a-life-of-her-own">including stealth sleigh rides</a> – reappear in Mrs. Claus narratives to this day, and for good reason. Katharine Bates’ thunder-chasing, bonnet-wearing, sweet-talking Goody – and the many Mrs. Clauses who came before her – still speak to every woman who has ever dreamed of a little rest, a little recognition and a seat in the sleigh.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169588/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maura Ives does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many early stories praise her work ethic and devotion. But with Mrs. Claus usually hitting the North Pole’s glass ceiling, some writers started to push back.Maura Ives, Professor of English, Texas A&M UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1721062021-11-29T16:48:37Z2021-11-29T16:48:37ZWhat maps made by 20th century suffragists can teach us about holding leaders to account on climate change<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434445/original/file-20211129-19-11sily9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1024%2C768&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The women's suffrage movement was one of the most successful political movements in history.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://picryl.com/media/suffragists-protest-woodrow-wilsons-opposition-to-woman-suffrage-october-1916">Picryl</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>I’m a geographer who’s produced <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/01/atlas-of-the-invisible-using-data-reveal-climate-crisis">many maps</a> depicting human effects on the environment – and <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-eye-catching-graphics-are-vital-for-getting-to-grips-with-climate-change-165983">demanded</a> we create more of them. A question I am increasingly asked is: how do you not feel powerless in the face of such depressing data? </p>
<p>With climate anxiety now affecting young people’s <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02582-8">mental health</a>, and widespread doubt about whether limiting global warming to <a href="https://theconversation.com/ipcc-says-earth-will-reach-temperature-rise-of-about-1-5-in-around-a-decade-but-limiting-any-global-warming-is-what-matters-most-165397#">1.5°C</a> is possible, it can be tricky to answer. What I’ve found is that we can use a surprisingly commonplace tool to communicate danger and to bring about positive change: the map.</p>
<p>Throughout history, it has generally been society’s elites who have used maps to exploit, not help, the planet and its people. They’ve used them to <a href="https://collections.leventhalmap.org/search/commonwealth:4m90fc35x">pinpoint oil reserves</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Conference">carve up continents</a> and <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/powells-photos/4/">justify wars</a>. But maps can also be used to empower and defend those who face seemingly insurmountable obstacles. </p>
<p>Over a century ago, the women’s suffrage movement developed one of the largest ever <a href="https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1017&context=geoggeolfacpub">map-based campaigns</a>, spanning decades and continents, as part of its drive to give women the vote. We need to use their principles if we are to persuade leaders not just to deliver but to improve upon the promises made at the recent UN climate conference <a href="https://theconversation.com/glasgow-climate-pact-where-do-all-the-words-and-numbers-we-heard-at-cop26-leave-us-171704">COP26</a>. </p>
<h2>What the Suffragists did</h2>
<p>Suffragists used maps <a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbcmil.scrp4005301/?st=text">to celebrate</a> jurisdictions across the world that had given women the vote – and to shame those that had not. They reasoned that the action of some policymakers would highlight the inaction of others, betraying the most misogynist politicians and their supporters. </p>
<p>American suffrage maps with the headline “<a href="https://www.visitthecapitol.gov/exhibitions/artifact/map-votes-women-success-map-proves-it-ca-1914">Votes for Women a Success</a>” showed the US states that had granted women the right to vote. To challenge those with backward views, some versions of the map were also adorned with provocative statements such as “How long will the republic of the United States lag behind the monarchy of Canada?”</p>
<p>In 1930s Europe, where France was still withholding votes for women, suffrage campaigns <a href="https://bibliotheques-specialisees.paris.fr/ark:/73873/pf0000940475/v0001.simple.selectedTab=record">published maps</a> showing the country’s outdated approach to democracy in contrast to its neighbours such as Belgium, under the banner “French women can’t vote! French women want to vote!”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A map showing states where women had been granted the vote" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434420/original/file-20211129-17-syy0h0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434420/original/file-20211129-17-syy0h0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434420/original/file-20211129-17-syy0h0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434420/original/file-20211129-17-syy0h0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434420/original/file-20211129-17-syy0h0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434420/original/file-20211129-17-syy0h0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434420/original/file-20211129-17-syy0h0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Maps provide a powerful tool for demonstrating inequality.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/vculibraries/24941542555">VCULibraries/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Suffrage maps were plastered on walls, hung across streets, paraded on sandwich boards, printed in newspapers and even used to <a href="https://www.archives.gov/files/legislative/resources/education/womens-petitions-to-congress/primary-source-sheets.pdf">petition</a> the US Congress.</p>
<p>Geographer <a href="https://www.unomaha.edu/college-of-arts-and-sciences/geography/about-us/directory/christina-dando.php">Christina E. Dando</a> has pointed out how American suffragists’ work was not just focused on creating maps, but changing them. For example, the map below was submitted by the Nevada Women’s Civic League to the US <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_Committee_on_the_Judiciary">judiciary committee</a>, which was resisting granting women the right to vote nationwide. As the catalogue entry for the map <a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/169820371">tells us</a>, “this petition shows that women were not just lobbying Congress in general, but strategically pressuring committees to act”. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="dddd" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434423/original/file-20211129-59855-ng7ejp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434423/original/file-20211129-59855-ng7ejp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=717&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434423/original/file-20211129-59855-ng7ejp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=717&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434423/original/file-20211129-59855-ng7ejp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=717&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434423/original/file-20211129-59855-ng7ejp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434423/original/file-20211129-59855-ng7ejp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434423/original/file-20211129-59855-ng7ejp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Maps were central to political lobbying.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/169820371">National Archives Catalog</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the US, the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/19th-amendment#:%7E:text=Passed%20by%20Congress%20June%204,decades%20of%20agitation%20and%20protest.">19th amendment</a> guaranteeing all women the right to vote <a href="https://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/19th-amendment">was ratified</a> in August 1920. But the fight for equal access to the ballot box was far from over. </p>
<p>Racist voter suppression policies were enacted in many states against women of colour, who were themselves <a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/149268727">creating maps</a> to campaign against the horrors of lynching. It was only after the <a href="https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/legislative-milestones/voting-rights-act-1965">Voting Rights Act</a> was passed nearly 50 years later, on August 6 1965, that such policies were outlawed. Even today, maps <a href="https://www.aclu.org/news/voting-rights/alabamas-new-electoral-lines-are-racially-gerrymandered-heres-why">remain a weapon</a> in the continuing fight to achieve fair racial representation in some US states.</p>
<h2>Modern maps</h2>
<p>In the past, creating maps to counter the status quo – or indeed creating pretty much any map at all – would have required significant design expertise, a lot of manual effort and the financial means to print and promote it. </p>
<p>Today, these challenges can be overcome more easily. The majority of sites and social media platforms are free, do not conform to national borders, and are out of government reach. That means that images that hold those in power to account can spread more freely. So it’s time to use maps to challenge the greatest social and political crisis of our time: the destruction of our planet’s environment.</p>
<p>Take a look at this map of nitrogen dioxide – a gas released into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels – from a hot July day across Europe in 2019 (click to make it bigger). High levels <a href="https://www.lung.org/clean-air/outdoors/what-makes-air-unhealthy/nitrogen-dioxide">can damage</a> health, create <a href="https://www.epa.gov/acidrain/what-acid-rain">acid rain</a> and contribute to the <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24234471/">greenhouse effect</a>. Although the map shows gas moving around, it’s clearly concentrated in certain areas. There’s a big cloud caused by shipping in Marseille and spots marking industrial plants around Dusseldorf.</p>
<p><strong>Map of nitrogen dioxide concentration</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434417/original/file-20211129-17-11869dc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="AAA" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434417/original/file-20211129-17-11869dc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434417/original/file-20211129-17-11869dc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434417/original/file-20211129-17-11869dc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434417/original/file-20211129-17-11869dc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434417/original/file-20211129-17-11869dc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434417/original/file-20211129-17-11869dc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434417/original/file-20211129-17-11869dc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">High nitrogen dioxide concentration is shown in yellow and red colours.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.atlasoftheinvisible.com/">Atlas Of The Invisible</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Rather than view this as purely an image of scientific interest, we should see it as a call to action. Living beneath the swirls of nitrogen dioxide are policymakers who can design tougher legislation, such as introducing <a href="https://theconversation.com/londons-ultra-low-emission-zone-will-it-make-the-city-healthier-114942">low emission zones</a>, to erase the yellow marks from this map.</p>
<p>The battle for women’s equality is clearly not over, but the idea that at least half the adult population should be legally deprived of a vote is now unconscionable in all but the most extreme jurisdictions. Maps created for women, by women, helped make this so. Now, let’s unleash the political power of maps to ensure that a failure to act on the environment becomes unconscionable too.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172106/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Cheshire receives funding from the ESRC. </span></em></p>Women’s rights activists used maps to highlight which regions hadn’t given women the vote: we can use the same tactics to push climate action.James Cheshire, Professor of Geographic Information and Cartography, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1676272021-09-17T03:05:27Z2021-09-17T03:05:27ZOn the money: Kate Sheppard and the making of a New Zealand feminist icon<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421744/original/file-20210917-19-4o13rr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1278%2C672&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1992 four New Zealand icons (and the queen) appeared on new banknotes. Part of creating national identity, these notable citizens were chosen to represent the pinnacles of achievement. </p>
<p>Āpirana Ngata, Edmund Hillary, Ernest Rutherford and Kate Sheppard — all in circulation so their acts and values can be admired, celebrated and emulated. </p>
<p>Collectively, the banknote icons signalled a bicultural nation that celebrates Māori knowledge and success, a place where women are equal and where it is possible to lead the world, including in science and exploration. </p>
<p>But while positioned on individual pedestals, these people were also part of citizenship-building that relied on team efforts. </p>
<p>Ngata was one of many talented members of the Young Māori Party. Hillary didn’t climb Everest alone. And Rutherford’s scientific breakthroughs resulted from collaborative work that stood “on the shoulders of giants”. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Bronze sculpture showing Kate Sheppard and other suffrage leaders" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421747/original/file-20210917-23-htheh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421747/original/file-20210917-23-htheh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421747/original/file-20210917-23-htheh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421747/original/file-20210917-23-htheh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421747/original/file-20210917-23-htheh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421747/original/file-20210917-23-htheh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421747/original/file-20210917-23-htheh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A detail from Margriet Windhausen’s Kate Sheppard National Memorial, unveiled in Christchurch in 1993 by New Zealand’s first female governor-general, Dame Catherine Tizard.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Cast in bronze</h2>
<p>So what of Kate Sheppard’s position? A year after she graced the $10 note, she was put on another pedestal, literally. Unveiled in 1993, the national memorial provides a useful interpretation of the suffrage leader’s place in the collaborative women’s movement of the late 19th century. </p>
<p>The memorial’s Christchurch location, Sheppard’s name in its title and her central position cast in bronze all recognise her leadership. But the monument also recognises how, after the victory, she brought together the networks that had formed during the suffrage campaign. </p>
<p>Sheppard became the first president of the National Council of Women (NCW) in 1896, but flanking her in bronze are others central to the women’s movement.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-epicentre-of-womens-suffrage-kate-sheppards-christchurch-home-finally-opens-as-a-public-museum-151828">The 'epicentre of women's suffrage' — Kate Sheppard's Christchurch home finally opens as a public museum</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Meri Te Tai Mangakāhia of Taitokerau requested the vote for women from the Kotahitanga parliament. Amey Daldy was a leader of Auckland’s Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and Franchise League. Ada Wells of Christchurch worked for equal educational opportunities for girls and women. Harriet Morison of Dunedin was an advocate for working-class women and active in the Tailoresses’ Union. And Helen Nicol led the important women’s franchise campaign in Dunedin.</p>
<p>The monument also recognises the complex layers and themes of women’s suffrage, including the place of men such as MP Sir John Hall who played a vital part in the suffrage victory. Seven other prominent suffragists are also named. Smaller panels depict generic women going about their daily lives, all part of the wider movement.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Kate Sheppard memorial" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421764/original/file-20210917-21-he0oru.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421764/original/file-20210917-21-he0oru.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421764/original/file-20210917-21-he0oru.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421764/original/file-20210917-21-he0oru.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421764/original/file-20210917-21-he0oru.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421764/original/file-20210917-21-he0oru.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421764/original/file-20210917-21-he0oru.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The full Kate Sheppard memorial in Christchurch: layers of context and meaning.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>An archetypal heroine?</h2>
<p>So what makes Sheppard so iconic? As well as her role in a world-first episode in New Zealand history, I would argue Sheppard embodies many of the characteristics common to modern heroines globally. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421749/original/file-20210917-15-u2a6ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421749/original/file-20210917-15-u2a6ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421749/original/file-20210917-15-u2a6ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421749/original/file-20210917-15-u2a6ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421749/original/file-20210917-15-u2a6ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421749/original/file-20210917-15-u2a6ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421749/original/file-20210917-15-u2a6ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>She is emblematic of a mother figure, specifically as a maternal feminist concerned with home, purity and well-being. Metaphorically, her work involves giving birth to the nation. </p>
<p>Accompanied by an image of the symbolic white camellia flower presented to pro-suffrage MPs, Sheppard’s image on the banknote is part of her invention as a feminine, stylishly dressed, commanding figure. </p>
<p>But there are other dynamics at work, too. Sheppard is sometimes framed as a reformer, called to work for a more peaceful and egalitarian society. But the 2015
punk-rock musical That Bloody Woman portrays her as a rebel warrior queen, fighting with bravery and determination. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/did-a-tragic-family-secret-influence-kate-sheppards-mission-to-give-new-zealand-women-the-vote-141526">Did a tragic family secret influence Kate Sheppard's mission to give New Zealand women the vote?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Intrigue in her private life also adds to Sheppard’s appeal. Was her marriage to Walter Sheppard unhappy? They lived apart from 1905 until he died in 1915. Author Rachel McAlpine wrote a fictional account involving an extramarital affair and a love child. </p>
<p>And what of the rumours surrounding Sheppard’s friendship with William Lovell-Smith, who she married towards the end of her life after the death of his wife Jenny? Her private life hints at mystery and suggests a woman advancing new ways of co-habiting.</p>
<p>There is also tragedy. Sheppard lost her only child, Douglas, in 1910, and outlived her nearest and dearest friends and relations, including her only grandchild. </p>
<p>Sheppard’s shape-shifting presence leaves room for us to create our own versions to augment all the writing she left revealing her beliefs and ideas. The Kate Sheppard Women’s Bookshop aptly memorialises her, and her leadership is honoured through scholarships and awards. </p>
<p>All this has helped keep her memory alive, especially with the feminists who have always claimed her as a heroine. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421752/original/file-20210917-25-184f5wv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421752/original/file-20210917-25-184f5wv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421752/original/file-20210917-25-184f5wv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421752/original/file-20210917-25-184f5wv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421752/original/file-20210917-25-184f5wv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421752/original/file-20210917-25-184f5wv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421752/original/file-20210917-25-184f5wv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Princess Te Kirihaehae Te Puea Herangi as a girl.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ref: 1/2-005159-G. Alexander Turnbull Library</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Who else but Sheppard?</h2>
<p>Sheppard is on the money, then, but who else might represent the heroic archetype?
Waikato woman of mana and Kīngitanga leader Te Puea Hērangi is surely one, described by historian J.G.A. Pocock as possibly the most influential woman in New Zealand’s political history. </p>
<p>Te Puea was also a mother figure. A literal healer, she nursed her people back to health — especially after the smallpox epidemic of 1913 and the devastating 1918 influenza epidemic that killed a quarter of the population at Mangatāwhiri, leaving many orphans to be cared for. </p>
<p>Her motto is said to have been “work, eat, pray, work again”. Te Puea was called to help her people and was dedicated to leading their resurgence. In particular, her efforts secured the Kīngitanga movement. Part of her legacy as the most active leader of her generation was the building of Tūrangawaewae marae at Ngāruawāhia. </p>
<p>Like Sheppard, Te Puea’s health and welfare work included campaigns against alcohol and smoking. In the face of Pākehā resistance she built an impressive health facility at Tūrangawaewae. In 1951 she became the first patron of the Māori Women’s Welfare League.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nz-was-first-to-grant-women-the-vote-in-1893-but-then-took-26-years-to-let-them-stand-for-parliament-123467">NZ was first to grant women the vote in 1893, but then took 26 years to let them stand for parliament</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Her activism included seeking compensation for land confiscation. An early peace warrior, she led a non-violent campaign against conscription during the first world war. Like Sheppard, she was part of an international network and well-connected around the Pacific. </p>
<p>Also like Sheppard, Te Puea was strategic and collaborated with many men. She launched Māui Pōmare’s political career and later collaborated with Āpirana Ngata. Well known in the Pākehā world as Princess Te Puea, in 1937 she was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. </p>
<p>In many ways, of course, Christchurch and Ngāruawāhia were worlds apart. While both women challenged the state, Sheppard represented a mainstream Pākehā establishment, whereas Te Puea pursued mana motuhake for her people. Yet, placed side by side and viewed through an early 21st-century lens, both are important heroines in history. </p>
<p>Both stand for citizens working together for the common good. Kate Sheppard might be on the money to represent women’s rights as a fundamental part of Aotearoa New Zealand. But, as her memorial suggests, it’s important we don’t see her as the only woman worthy of being on a pedestal.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167627/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katie Pickles received funding from Royal Society Te Aparangi James Cook Research Fellowship. </span></em></p>This Suffrage Day, September 19, we remember Kate Sheppard as a heroine of the movement. But we should also remember others who paved the way, even if they don’t have a banknote to their name.Katie Pickles, Professor of History, University of CanterburyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1589572021-04-20T06:14:54Z2021-04-20T06:14:54ZWhat is suffragette white? The colour has a 110-year history as a protest tool<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395935/original/file-20210420-23-xwt5c1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1022%2C850&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A silent protest parade in New York City against the East St. Louis riots in 1917.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/ds.00894/">Library of Congress</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Suffragette white” is proving to be a popular fashion choice for women who want to make a statement. Most recently, former Australia Post CEO Christine Holgate donned a white jacket in her <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-13/christine-holgate-cartier-watches-scandal-committee-hearing/100064972">appearance before a Senate inquiry</a> into her controversial departure from the organisation. </p>
<p>Her sartorial choice formed part of the “<a href="https://www.wearwhite2unite.com.au/">Wear White 2 Unite</a>” campaign, which encouraged people to sport the colour in support of Holgate and call for an end to workplace bullying.</p>
<p>In doing this, Holgate, like Brittany Higgins last month at the Canberra March4Justice, is building on a trend in which women are wearing white clothing — and often referencing suffrage history — to draw attention to gender inequity today.</p>
<h2>Deeds not words</h2>
<p>The term “suffragette” is sometimes mistakenly used to refer to all those who campaigned for women’s voting rights. But it was actually a label applied to a specific group of women — initially in a derogatory sense.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.bl.uk/votes-for-women/articles/the-campaign-for-womens-suffrage-an-introduction">women’s suffrage movement</a> in Britain took off during the 1860s. By the turn of the 20th century, women still did not have the vote. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395901/original/file-20210420-17-12vam57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Four white women in brilliant white dresses" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395901/original/file-20210420-17-12vam57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395901/original/file-20210420-17-12vam57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395901/original/file-20210420-17-12vam57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395901/original/file-20210420-17-12vam57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395901/original/file-20210420-17-12vam57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395901/original/file-20210420-17-12vam57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395901/original/file-20210420-17-12vam57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Emmeline Pankhurst, Christabel Pankhurst, Mabel Tuke and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, 17th June 1911, marching at the head of the Prisoners’ Pageant at the Coronation Procession.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Digital image copyright Museum of London</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This led <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/emmeline-pankhurst/m0gfzc?hl=en">Emmeline Pankhurst</a> to establish the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1903. Her group of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/in-pictures-42837451">primarily white women</a> believed <a href="https://www.bl.uk/votes-for-women/articles/suffragettes-violence-and-militancy">militancy</a> was the only way they could achieve change, living by the motto “deeds not words”.</p>
<p>The British press mockingly labelled these women “<a href="https://time.com/4079176/suffragette-word-history-film/">suffragettes</a>”, adding the diminutive suffix “-ette” in an attempt to de-legitimise them. But Pankhurst’s group was not deterred. It reclaimed the term, eliminating the element of ridicule and rebranding it as “<a href="https://digital.library.lse.ac.uk/objects/lse:son216feg/read/single#page/1/mode/1up">a name of highest honour</a>”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395912/original/file-20210420-13-wpzhgh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395912/original/file-20210420-13-wpzhgh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395912/original/file-20210420-13-wpzhgh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395912/original/file-20210420-13-wpzhgh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395912/original/file-20210420-13-wpzhgh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395912/original/file-20210420-13-wpzhgh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395912/original/file-20210420-13-wpzhgh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395912/original/file-20210420-13-wpzhgh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">One of the WSPU teams that drew the carriage of released prisoners away from Holloway in 1908.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Library of the London School of Economics and Political Science</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Her group’s dramatic actions – from disrupting meetings to damaging public property – cemented their place in the history of women’s suffrage.</p>
<h2>Purity, dignity and hope</h2>
<p>Early 20th century suffrage campaigns relied heavily on <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Spectacle_of_Women.html?id=qjp5Yw_w8XsC&redir_esc=y">spectacle and pageantry</a>, using striking visual imagery and mass gatherings to garner the attention of the press and the wider public.</p>
<p>Many suffrage organisations <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/theme/still-marching-still-inspiring-still-campaigning/XQJSqVLaBcYsKg?hl=en">adopted colours</a> to symbolise their agenda. In Britain, the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies used red and white in their banners, later adding green. The WSPU chose <a href="https://maas.museum/magazine/2015/10/purple-green-and-white-an-australian-history/">white, purple and green</a>: white for purity, purple for dignity and green for hope.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395902/original/file-20210420-17-12oiqpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395902/original/file-20210420-17-12oiqpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395902/original/file-20210420-17-12oiqpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395902/original/file-20210420-17-12oiqpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395902/original/file-20210420-17-12oiqpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395902/original/file-20210420-17-12oiqpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395902/original/file-20210420-17-12oiqpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395902/original/file-20210420-17-12oiqpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An original Women’s Social and Political Union postcard album, with the circular purple, white and green WSPU motif printed on the front.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Library of the London School of Economics and Political Science</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Suffragette white was first donned <em>en masse</em> in June 1908 on <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/women-s-sunday/igFP9xounDQpPw?hl=en">Women’s Sunday</a>, the first “monster meeting” hosted by the WSPU in London’s Hyde Park. The 30,000 participants were encouraged to wear white, accessorised with touches of purple and green.</p>
<p>Ahead of the march, <a href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp17695/emmeline-pethick-lawrence">Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence</a>’s newspaper Votes for Women <a href="https://digital.library.lse.ac.uk/objects/lse:has924jop/read/single#page/1/mode/1up">explained</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the effect will be a magnificent moving colour scheme never before seen in London’s streets.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>White fabric was <a href="https://womenatthecenter.nyhistory.org/the-many-official-colors-of-the-suffrage-movement/">relatively affordable</a>, which meant women of different backgrounds could participate. The colour’s association with purity also helped those involved present themselves as respectable, dignified women.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395903/original/file-20210420-13-l8ijq5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A stream of women in white between crowds of men in black." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395903/original/file-20210420-13-l8ijq5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395903/original/file-20210420-13-l8ijq5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395903/original/file-20210420-13-l8ijq5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395903/original/file-20210420-13-l8ijq5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395903/original/file-20210420-13-l8ijq5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395903/original/file-20210420-13-l8ijq5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395903/original/file-20210420-13-l8ijq5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Suffragette Coronation Procession through central London, 17 June, 1911.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Digital image copyright Museum of London</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Suffragette white became a mainstay of the WSPU’s demonstrations. In 1911, women who had been imprisoned for militancy were among those who marched in white in the Women’s Coronation Procession. </p>
<p>The Australian suffragist <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/goldstein-vida-jane-6418">Vida Goldstein</a>, wearing a white dress, famously headed the Australian contingent. </p>
<p>Goldstein later brought the WSPU’s colours to Australia in her campaigns for a parliamentary seat.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-sex-power-and-anger-a-history-of-feminist-protests-in-australia-157402">Friday essay: Sex, power and anger — a history of feminist protests in Australia</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Two years later in 1913, members of the WSPU wore white in a funeral procession for their colleague Emily Wilding Davison, who died under the hooves of the King’s horse <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/emily-wilding-davison-lse-library/ZALyW2jqmC2tKQ?hl=en">at the Epsom Derby</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/how-white-became-the-color-of-suffrage-111576">American suffragists</a> soon picked up this tactic, influenced by the British suffragettes as well as by the <a href="https://case.edu/ech/articles/w/womens-christian-temperance-movement">temperance movement’s use of white ribbons</a>. </p>
<p>Cities like Washington D.C. witnessed similar scenes of women in white dresses marching through the streets, making striking material for photographers. Contemporary black women — who were excluded from the suffrage movement in many ways — used the colour in their <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/95517074/">protests against racial violence</a>, too.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395940/original/file-20210420-23-8bqtov.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Poster: Bring U.S. together. Vote Chisholm, 1972. Unbought and unbossed." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395940/original/file-20210420-23-8bqtov.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395940/original/file-20210420-23-8bqtov.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395940/original/file-20210420-23-8bqtov.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395940/original/file-20210420-23-8bqtov.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395940/original/file-20210420-23-8bqtov.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=946&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395940/original/file-20210420-23-8bqtov.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=946&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395940/original/file-20210420-23-8bqtov.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=946&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fifty years after Black American women wore white in protest marches, white suits became a calling card of Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Library of Congress</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Feminist solidarity</h2>
<p>The modern trend towards white has had particular traction in the US. </p>
<p>In 2019, Donald Trump faced a sea of suffragette white at his <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-06/why-did-democrat-women-wear-white-to-sotu/10785818">State of the Union address</a>. Last year, <a href="https://www.thelily.com/harris-wears-suffragette-white-pantsuit-to-deliver-first-remarks-as-vice-president-elect/">Kamala Harris</a> wore a white pantsuit to deliver her remarks as vice president-elect.</p>
<p>Closer to home, at the March4Justice rally in Canberra, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-15/brittany-higgins-national-womens-march-canberra-parliament-house/13248604">Brittany Higgins</a> made a surprise appearance in a white outfit, standing in contrast to the funereal black worn by attendees.</p>
<p>By wearing white, these women — either consciously or not — are building connections with their feminist forebears across the Anglosphere. At times this can flatten the complex history of women’s suffrage. It is important to remember it was primarily white, middle-class women who led these suffrage movements, often to the exclusion of women of colour and others. </p>
<p>In drawing on their feminist genealogy, women today need to acknowledge the limitations of feminisms past and present — and not simply celebrate and reproduce the attitudes of over a hundred years ago.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1081032307262345216"}"></div></p>
<p>At the same time, wearing suffragette white is a powerful and highly symbolic gesture that reminds us just how long women have been fighting. </p>
<p>By establishing a sense of feminist solidarity across time and space, this move can also generate inspiration and energy and attract media attention. Women of colour’s choice to wear white can be read as a way of asserting their place within a movement from which they have historically been (and continue to be) excluded — and honouring women of colour who have come before them.</p>
<p>Like the suffragettes of the early 20th century, women today are showing the power of visual spectacle to grab the public’s attention. Whether this will, in turn, lead to real change remains to be seen.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158957/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Staff receives funding from an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Domestic Scholarship.</span></em></p>From Emmeline Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political Union, to Christine Holgate and Brittany Higgins, suffragette white has a long history.Michelle Staff, PhD Candidate, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1567342021-03-11T13:29:54Z2021-03-11T13:29:54ZDeaf women fought for the right to vote<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388912/original/file-20210310-21-pgesd1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C8%2C2830%2C1789&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women protested outside the White House in 1917, seeking the right to vote.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/mnwp.160022/">Harris & Ewing via Library of Congress</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If Susan B. Anthony had a deaf sister, everyone would know that deaf suffragists fought tirelessly for expanding women’s right to vote, right alongside Anthony herself. Everyone would know deaf suffragists contributed to women’s emancipation in the United States and Britain and that they lived bold lives. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://infoguides.rit.edu/prf.php?account_id=43304">researcher of deaf history</a>, including deaf women’s history, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=hEvp7NIAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">I</a> work to illuminate the often hidden history of deaf people and their unique contributions to the world. I have unearthed historical information about deaf women suffragists and assembled it into an <a href="https://infoguides.rit.edu/deafsuffragists">online collection</a> chronicling what is known – so far – about these women and their lives.</p>
<p>Despite harsh, discriminatory conditions, low pay and lack of recognition, countless deaf women have fought with brilliance and dedication for personal and professional recognition, including for the right to vote.</p>
<h2>Underpaid and discriminated against</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388847/original/file-20210310-18-1get4g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman in profile" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388847/original/file-20210310-18-1get4g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388847/original/file-20210310-18-1get4g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388847/original/file-20210310-18-1get4g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388847/original/file-20210310-18-1get4g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388847/original/file-20210310-18-1get4g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1060&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388847/original/file-20210310-18-1get4g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1060&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388847/original/file-20210310-18-1get4g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1060&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Annie Jump Cannon, deaf woman, astronomer and suffragist.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Annie_Jump_Cannon_1922_Portrait.jpg">New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Annie Jump Cannon was a pioneering astronomer. Born in 1863, she experienced progressive hearing loss starting at a young age. <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/science-and-technology/astronomy-biographies/annie-jump-cannon">One of the first women</a> from Delaware to attend college, she was her class valedictorian when she graduated from Wellesley College, where she excelled in the sciences and mathematics.</p>
<p>In 1896, she was hired as a “woman computer” at the Harvard College Observatory, along with another prominent deaf astronomer, <a href="https://www.aavso.org/henrietta-leavitt-%E2%80%93-celebrating-forgotten-astronomer">Henrietta Swan Leavitt</a>.</p>
<p>The work involved looking at photos of stars and calculating their brightness, position and color. The two were paid between 25 and 50 cents an hour – half the rate paid to men doing similar work. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, Cannon is credited with cataloging 350,000 stars. Building on others’ work, Cannon revolutionized and refined a <a href="https://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/H/Harvard+Spectral+Classification">system to rank stars from hottest to coolest</a> that is still used today by the International Astronomical Union, though it is named for Harvard, not for her.</p>
<p>Cannon was a member of the <a href="https://www.nationalwomansparty.org/our-story">National Woman’s Party</a>, formed in 1916 to advocate for passage of the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxix">19th Amendment</a> to the U.S. Constitution, <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/19th-amendment-1">allowing women to vote</a>. Cannon’s suffragist efforts used her profession as a launchpad, as when she declared that “if women can organize the sky, we can organize the vote.” </p>
<p>She used her prominence to pave the way for women in the sciences, becoming the first woman to receive an honorary degree from Oxford University in 1925, and facing down eugenicists who <a href="https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Cannon/">blocked her from joining</a> the National Academy of Sciences because she was deaf. </p>
<p>In 1938, after 40 years of service, her role as “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_235">the dean of women astronomers</a>” finally earned her a permanent faculty position at Harvard, where she worked until her death three years later. A lunar crater, Cannon, and an asteroid, Cannonia, are named for her.</p>
<h2>Two British women faced prison</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388861/original/file-20210310-15-q1c1h7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black-and-white portrait of a woman" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388861/original/file-20210310-15-q1c1h7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388861/original/file-20210310-15-q1c1h7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388861/original/file-20210310-15-q1c1h7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388861/original/file-20210310-15-q1c1h7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388861/original/file-20210310-15-q1c1h7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388861/original/file-20210310-15-q1c1h7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388861/original/file-20210310-15-q1c1h7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Helen Kirkpatrick Watts, a deaf suffragist.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/history/nottingham-suffragette-helen-watts-honoured-2246730">Nottingham Post</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>British deaf suffragist Helen K. Watts, born in 1881, was a militant member of the radical Women’s Social and Political Union who demonstrated at Parliament in 1909 <a href="https://www.lentontimes.co.uk/back_issues/issue_7/issue_7_19.htm">for the women’s vote</a>. After one protest that year, she was arrested and imprisoned – but began a 90-hour hunger strike that resulted in her release. As she left, she declared:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The Suffragettes have come out of the drawing-room, the study and the debating hall, and the committee rooms of Members of Parliament, to appeal to the real sovereign power of the country – the people.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In 1913, she left the more violent group and joined the nonviolent Women’s Freedom League, also <a href="https://spartacus-educational.com/WwattsH.htm">seeking women’s right to vote</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388909/original/file-20210310-22-k2dqgw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman sitting with a book on her lap" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388909/original/file-20210310-22-k2dqgw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388909/original/file-20210310-22-k2dqgw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388909/original/file-20210310-22-k2dqgw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388909/original/file-20210310-22-k2dqgw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388909/original/file-20210310-22-k2dqgw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388909/original/file-20210310-22-k2dqgw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388909/original/file-20210310-22-k2dqgw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">British suffragist Kate Harvey did not want to pay taxes unless she was allowed to vote.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://irp-cdn.multiscreensite.com/54afefd4/files/uploaded/Kate%20Harvey1862%20-%201946%20%282018_03_19%2016_01_39%20UTC%29.pdf">Ann Donnelly</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One of her sister leaders in the Women’s Freedom League was British deaf suffragist Kate Harvey. Harvey believed in <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/clip/14118761/womens-tax-resistance-movement-the/">not paying taxes</a> until <a href="https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/library-rnid/2018/03/16/a-deaf-suffragist-kate-harvey-1862-1946/the-globe-1911/">women were granted the vote</a> – which resulted in authorities breaking into her home to arrest and imprison her in 1913.</p>
<h2>A silent voice in print</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388853/original/file-20210310-14-15e7i7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman in profile" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388853/original/file-20210310-14-15e7i7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388853/original/file-20210310-14-15e7i7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388853/original/file-20210310-14-15e7i7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388853/original/file-20210310-14-15e7i7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388853/original/file-20210310-14-15e7i7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388853/original/file-20210310-14-15e7i7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388853/original/file-20210310-14-15e7i7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Laura Redden Searing, deaf journalist and feminist activist.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Searing.JPG">C.W. Moulton, The Magazine For Poetry via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Laura Redden Searing, born in 1840, was a gifted American poet, newspaper reporter and writer – often using the male pseudonym Howard Glyndon so her work would be taken more seriously. Deafened by illness as a child, she entered the Missouri School for the Deaf when she was 15 years old and learned sign language, graduating in 1858, writing an address and “farewell poem” that was published in the <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/mighty-change-an-anthology-of-deaf-american-writing-1816-1864/oclc/1060941147">American Annals of the Deaf</a>. </p>
<p>When communicating with nonsigners, she wrote with a pencil and pad – with which she conducted countless interviews over many years as a reporter and writer.</p>
<p>In 1860, Searing became the earliest deaf woman journalist, writing for the St. Louis Republican, whose editors sent her to Washington in September 1861. There, she cultivated friendships with prominent leaders and interviewed Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, soldiers on the battlefield, and President Abraham Lincoln. She also met future Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth, and taught him fingerspelling, a manual alphabet that is used in sign language.</p>
<p>When the Civil War ended in 1865, she traveled to Europe and picked up reading and writing in French, German, Spanish and Italian. She continued writing news stories for the St. Louis Republican and The New York Times. Returning to the United States in 1870, Searing <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/gallaudet-encyclopedia-of-deaf-people-and-deafness/oclc/442722727">wrote on a wide variety of topics</a> for the New York Evening Mail and other newspapers and magazines. Searing had a literary circle of admiring friends who supported her work. She also contributed articles and poems to the popular national <a href="https://gaislandora.wrlc.org/islandora/object/gaislandora%3A90">Silent Worker newspaper</a>, published by the New Jersey School for the Deaf. </p>
<p>[<em>More than 150,000 readers get one of The Conversation’s informative newsletters.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-150K">Join the list today</a>.]</p>
<p>She was a feminist who wrote about women’s issues such as unequal pay and <a href="https://wordgathering.com/past_issues/issue49/essays/christie.html">women’s sexuality</a>. She also <a href="https://archive.org/details/JulAug95/page/n9/mode/2up">explained her support</a> for an 1872 campaign for women’s right to vote with an analogy to the freeing of the slaves after the Civil War:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“<a href="https://archive.org/stream/JulAug95/Jul-Aug95_djvu.txt">I believe I am called upon</a> to sign this petition in conformation with that clause of our constitution which recognizes the equal rights of all human beings of lawful age and sound mind without regard to sex, color, or social condition. Having decided that black people do not belong to white ones, why not go a step farther and decide that women do not belong to men unless the proprietorship be recognized as mutual?”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In 1981, Searing was dubbed “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogrVm2tXWks">the first deaf women’s libber</a>” by <a href="https://store.usps.com/store/product/buy-stamps/robert-panara-S_114004">Robert F. Panara</a>, the first deaf professor of Deaf Studies at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, because of her pioneering work in the journalism field and her fierce independence as a woman who did not accept restrictions, nor follow expected traditions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/156734/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joan Marie Naturale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Despite harsh, discriminatory conditions, low pay and lack of appreciation, deaf women have fought with brilliance and dedication for personal and professional recognition, including the right to vote.Joan Marie Naturale, Reference Librarian, National Technical Institute for the Deaf, Rochester Institute of Technology Libraries, Rochester Institute of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1518282020-12-14T18:17:22Z2020-12-14T18:17:22ZThe ‘epicentre of women’s suffrage’ — Kate Sheppard’s Christchurch home finally opens as a public museum<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374655/original/file-20201214-17-17rwyox.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C0%2C3988%2C2994&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Kate Sheppard was around 40 in 1888, the year she and her family moved into the brand-new wooden villa at 83 Clyde Road, Ilam. Now part of inner Christchurch, it was then a rural section some five kilometres from the city centre.</p>
<p>Today, 132 years later, what is now known as Te Whare Waiutuutu Kate Sheppard House will be opened by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.</p>
<p>The government <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/houses/122992796/jacinda-ardern-says-kate-sheppard-house-will-open-to-the-public-this-year">bought the house</a> in 2018 to mark the 125th anniversary of women’s suffrage and its former owner’s pivotal role in the movement. The landmark property will now be open to the public as a museum promoting and and celebrating Sheppard’s life and achievements.</p>
<p>The feminist pioneer had migrated to Christchurch from Scotland in 1869. She married city councillor and merchant Walter Sheppard in 1871. Their son Douglas was seven when they moved into Clyde Road, which was near where her two sisters, a brother and friends already lived. </p>
<p>Because women were largely excluded from the male world of politics, the house served as both home and unpaid workplace. Emblematically, a domestic space was the epicentre of woman’s suffrage, birthplace of the campaign that would see New Zealand become the first country in the world to enfranchise all women, regardless of race, class or creed, on September 19, 1893. </p>
<h2>A centre of activism</h2>
<p>During the prime years of her activism, from 1888 until 1902, Sheppard worked in the house, writing letters, speeches and articles. It was where newspapers and books were read, ideas formed and actions plotted. Other women activists, such as Ada Wells, and male supporters Alfred Saunders and John Hall were regular visitors. </p>
<p>It was in the dining room that the iconic <a href="https://nzhistory.govt.nz/womens-suffrage-petition-presented-to-parliament">third petition</a>, with 32,000 signatures from around the country, was pasted together and wrapped around a wooden handle for Hall to roll down the aisle in parliament. And it was where the suffrage victory was celebrated. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-new-zealand-was-the-first-country-where-women-won-the-right-to-vote-103219">Why New Zealand was the first country where women won the right to vote</a>
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<p>After 1893 the property remained a hub of feminist ideas for social change. As Sheppard later put it, there were still many “fossilised prejudices” to work on. In 1896, she became the founding president of the National Council of Women, directing activities and fostering international connections from the house. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Kate Shappard" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374652/original/file-20201214-15-7b5kzj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374652/original/file-20201214-15-7b5kzj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374652/original/file-20201214-15-7b5kzj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374652/original/file-20201214-15-7b5kzj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374652/original/file-20201214-15-7b5kzj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374652/original/file-20201214-15-7b5kzj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374652/original/file-20201214-15-7b5kzj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kate Sheppard.</span>
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<p>Sheppard worked hard, advocating for health and well-being, education and social, political and economic justice. The Married Women’s Property Act 1884 and the Divorce Act 1898 were two further important feminist victories, but it took until 1910 for the repeal of the 1869 Contagious Diseases Act, which unfairly targeted prostitutes.</p>
<p>Sheppard believed in women’s economic independence, their place in the professions and equal pay for equal work. She campaigned for women to be able to stand for parliament, to be appointed as justices of the peace, to act as jurors and to be guardians of children. </p>
<p>Despite its illustrious history, the Clyde Road house was mostly overlooked for decades. But thanks to a succession of owner-occupiers who poured love and money into the villa, it has not only survived but thrived. </p>
<p>John Joseph Dougall, lawyer and mayor of Christchurch from 1911 to 1912, bought the house from Walter Sheppard and undertook grand Edwardian improvements. It was further extended and modernised during the ownership of Julia Burbury and family, who for 33 years were the last private owners. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/did-a-tragic-family-secret-influence-kate-sheppards-mission-to-give-new-zealand-women-the-vote-141526">Did a tragic family secret influence Kate Sheppard's mission to give New Zealand women the vote?</a>
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<p>Unlisted and largely unknown when Burbury bought it, the house eventually became a category one historic place in 2010. By then, a second wave of feminism had raised the status of women’s history, recovering and celebrating Sheppard and her colleagues as role models. </p>
<h2>A feminist shrine?</h2>
<p>With the 1993 suffrage centenary and Sheppard’s likeness gracing the New Zealand $10 note, she has become a national heroine. Is her house likely to become something of a feminist shrine, too? If so, it would be part of a global trend. </p>
<p>In 1965, the family home of US women’s rights pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton in Seneca Falls, New York, became a National Historical Landmark. She lived there from 1847 until 1862, and referred to the farmhouse as the “centre of the rebellion”. </p>
<p>It is now part of the extensive Women’s Rights National Historical Park. Opened in 1980, it focuses on the first Women’s Rights Convention held in Seneca Falls in 1848, but <a href="https://www.nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture/elizabeth-cady-stanton-house.htm">claims</a> a broad philosophical brief:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is a story of struggles for civil rights, human rights, and equality, global struggles that continue today. The efforts of women’s rights leaders, abolitionists, and other 19th century reformers remind us that all people must be accepted as equals. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The former home of Cady Stanton’s suffrage partner, Susan B. Anthony, also became a National Historic Landmark in 1965. The celebrated American civil rights leader ran the National American Woman Suffrage Association from the house in Rochester, New York, where she lived until her death in 1906. </p>
<p>Today, the Susan B. Anthony <a href="https://susanb.org/">Museum and House</a> “collects and exhibits artifacts related to her life and work, and offers tours and interpretive programs to inspire and challenge individuals to make a positive difference”. </p>
<p>In Britain, Manchester’s Pankhurst Centre opened in 1987 as “an iconic site of women’s activism, past and present”. The home of suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst and her family from 1898 to 1907, the first meeting of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) took place in its parlour. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nz-was-first-to-grant-women-the-vote-in-1893-but-then-took-26-years-to-let-them-stand-for-parliament-123467">NZ was first to grant women the vote in 1893, but then took 26 years to let them stand for parliament</a>
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<p>Keeping activism alive, the house is also a women’s centre and home to Manchester Women’s Aid, a service for victims of domestic abuse. It <a href="https://www.pankhursttrust.org/pankhurst-centre">seeks to be</a> a “unique and vibrant place where women can learn together, work on projects and socialise”.</p>
<p>With hindsight, early European feminists were reformers, but they could also be agents of colonisation. In Aotearoa New Zealand, their connections with Māori focused on temperance and they tended to assume assimilation was inevitable. </p>
<p>In the US and Britain the emerging feminist “shrines” have attempted to widen their remits accordingly. How Te Whare Waiutuutu Kate Sheppard House views its purpose and makes public history is a story that begins today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151828/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katie Pickles received funding from Royal Society Te Apārangi as a James Cook Research Fellow and a University of Canterbury Tessa Malcolm Bequest. She was part of a Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Kate Sheppard House Interpretation Reference Group.</span></em></p>Overlooked for decades, the house where the women’s suffrage campaign was launched finally becomes a public landmark.Katie Pickles, Professor of History, University of CanterburyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1498072020-11-18T13:22:09Z2020-11-18T13:22:09ZPatsy Takemoto Mink blazed the trail for Kamala Harris – not famous white woman Susan B. Anthony<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369646/original/file-20201116-17-1af7c1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=53%2C106%2C5038%2C3298&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Congress had very few women members back in 1960, and just one woman of color: Representative Patsy Mink of Hawaii.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/women-members-of-the-united-states-congress-gathered-for-a-news-photo/618766864?adppopup=true">Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Clad in suffragette white, Kamala Harris used her <a href="https://time.com/5910084/kamala-harris-historic-win-women/">first speech as the United States’ first female vice president-elect</a> to commemorate <a href="https://theconversation.com/19-facts-about-the-19th-amendment-on-its-100th-anniversary-134517">women’s political achievements</a>. Her victory comes one century after the 19th Amendment, which gave American women the right to vote.</p>
<p>Many commentators quickly <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/08/19/kamala-harris-vice-president-100-year-suffrage-anniversary-column/5601340002/">linked Harris’ achievement to activist Susan B. Anthony</a>. </p>
<p>Anthony did advocate for the 19th Amendment. But <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469633503/the-myth-of-seneca-falls/">she wanted only some women to vote</a>. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/17381">testimony before the Senate in 1902</a>, Anthony suggested that white women would be more qualified voters than “ignorant and unlettered” Hawaiian and Puerto Rican men, “who know nothing about our institutions.” </p>
<p>Anthony’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/28/opinion/sunday/suffrage-movement-racism-black-women.html">racist and xenophobic feminism</a> runs counter to Harris’ own political and family genealogy as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/with-kamala-harris-americans-yet-again-have-trouble-understanding-what-multiracial-means-145233">child of immigrants</a> and of <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469659329/recasting-the-vote/">racial justice movements</a>. </p>
<p>As many news articles have pointed out, Harris’ truer political forerunners are <a href="https://theconversation.com/before-kamala-harris-many-black-women-aimed-for-the-white-house-149729">Black presidential candidates like Shirley Chisholm</a>. But another politician who blazed a path for Harris is often overlooked: Patsy Takemoto Mink, Congress’ <a href="https://history.house.gov/People/Detail/18329">first woman of color</a> and a 1972 presidential aspirant.</p>
<h2>Hawaii trailblazer</h2>
<p>Mink was a third-generation Japanese American from Hawaii. With her daughter, political scientist Gwendolyn Mink, I am writing <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep16-who-was-patsy-mink-conversation-historian-judy/id1509084412?i=1000493974424">a book about Patsy Mink’s life</a>. </p>
<p>In Congress, where she served for 24 years, Mink spearheaded lawmaking from a feminist perspective that considered the diverse needs of diverse women.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368993/original/file-20201112-19-x4c219.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white image of Mink wearing a lei and surrounded by flowers" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368993/original/file-20201112-19-x4c219.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368993/original/file-20201112-19-x4c219.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368993/original/file-20201112-19-x4c219.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368993/original/file-20201112-19-x4c219.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368993/original/file-20201112-19-x4c219.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=623&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368993/original/file-20201112-19-x4c219.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=623&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368993/original/file-20201112-19-x4c219.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=623&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mink in her office, about 1967.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Personal collection of Gwendolyn Mink</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>During her first terms as a House Democrat, from 1965 to 1977, Mink co-sponsored <a href="https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/tix_dis.html">Title IX</a>, a law mandating gender equity for schools that receive federal funding. It expanded women’s previously limited access to higher education, scholarships, housing, jobs and sports. </p>
<p>Mink didn’t just work to empower women. Coming from Hawaii, the 50th state and a former colonial territory, she understood that the ongoing violence of the U.S. empire required government oversight. </p>
<p>Mink sought an <a href="https://doi.org/10.1215/15366936-7775729">end to nuclear testing and military training in the Pacific</a>. A 1973 lawsuit she organized to obtain information about nuclear testing in the Bering Strait, <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/usrep410073/">Mink v. EPA</a>, strengthened the Freedom of Information Act, and was later cited to <a href="https://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&context=fodl_contest">justify releasing President Richard Nixon’s secret Watergate tapes</a>. </p>
<p>Mink also was an early opponent of the Vietnam War, running for president in 1972 as an antiwar candidate. Ultimately she decided to campaign in only one state, Oregon. Shirley Chisholm also ran that year, and the two discussed how to avoid competing with each other.</p>
<p>In Congress Mink worked with Chisholm – whose parents came from the Caribbean – to recognize empire and immigration as part of American society. They ensured the U.S. territories of American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Trust Territories and the Virgin Islands had representation at the 1977 <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1977-conference-womens-rights-split-america-two-180962174/">National Women’s Conference</a>, the only federally funded gathering authorized to create a national agenda on women’s issues. </p>
<p>Mink served in Congress again from 1990 until her death in 2002, fighting in the final years of her life for <a href="https://history.house.gov/Oral-History/Women/Gwendolyn-Mink/">improved, rather than restricted, government assistance to poor women and children</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369625/original/file-20201116-23-s2t1pu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Mink wears a suit and speaks into a microphone" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369625/original/file-20201116-23-s2t1pu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369625/original/file-20201116-23-s2t1pu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369625/original/file-20201116-23-s2t1pu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369625/original/file-20201116-23-s2t1pu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369625/original/file-20201116-23-s2t1pu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369625/original/file-20201116-23-s2t1pu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369625/original/file-20201116-23-s2t1pu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rep. Mink speaking before a House committee in 2001.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/rep-patsy-mink-d-hi-speaks-before-a-committe-on-house-news-photo/99620935?adppopup=true">Tom Williams/Roll Call/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Lost legacy</h2>
<p>Mink demanded <a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/suffrage-100/table-of-contents">rights for all women, including and particularly those on the margins</a>. </p>
<p>Yet she was notably absent from a recent miniseries, “<a href="https://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/mrs-america">Mrs. America</a>,” which featured the arch-conservative Phyllis Schlafly and the 1960s-era activism of Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug. Mink collaborated with these feminist all-stars on Title IX, the National Women’s Conference, <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/supadu-imgix/ingram-nyu/pdfs/table-of-contents/9781479877010_toc.pdf">federally funded child care</a> and much more. </p>
<p>Just as U.S. history puts white men at its center, the history of feminism – and of anti-feminism – tends to <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/news/2019/06/01/weekend-read-challenging-whitewashed-history-womens-suffrage">spotlight white women</a>. </p>
<p>Black women like Stacey Abrams and Shirley Chisholm who <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/martha-s-jones/vanguard/9781541618619/">served as the vanguard</a> of democracy are starting to get their due. When <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35057641">Hillary Clinton ran for president in 2016</a>, Chisholm was <a href="https://www.blackenterprise.com/hillary-clinton-stands-on-the-shoulders-of-shirley-chisholm/">recognized as her forerunner</a>. </p>
<p>Mink was not. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369844/original/file-20201117-23-7fl9o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white image of six congresswomen in suits standing at a lectern" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369844/original/file-20201117-23-7fl9o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369844/original/file-20201117-23-7fl9o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369844/original/file-20201117-23-7fl9o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369844/original/file-20201117-23-7fl9o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369844/original/file-20201117-23-7fl9o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369844/original/file-20201117-23-7fl9o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369844/original/file-20201117-23-7fl9o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mink at a 1990 press conference on civil rights, far right, with Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer (speaking), among others.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/american-politician-us-representative-barbara-boxer-speaks-news-photo/1278981038?adppopup=true">Michael R Jenkins/CQ Roll Call Photograph Collection/PhotoQuest/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In popular culture, Asian Americans are more often portrayed as <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/perpetual-foreigners-a-reflection-on-asian-americans_b_5810b616e4b0f14bd28bd19alink">forever foreigners</a> or <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2020/10/18/coronavirus-asian-americans-racism-death-rates-san-francisco/5799617002/">disease carriers</a>, <a href="https://time.com/5859206/anti-asian-racism-america/link">model minorities</a> or <a href="https://www.colorlines.com/articles/how-fetishism-and-erasure-silence-asian-american-women-hollywood">sexualized geishas</a> – supporting actors who buttress whiteness, not boundary-breaking leaders. </p>
<p>That the United States’ next vice president is a mixed-race woman with ancestral ties to Jamaica and India could help to expand these deep-rooted conceptions of what U.S. citizens look like and who can be a political leader. </p>
<p>The imprint of empire <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/kamala-harris-history-trying-define-asian-american-n1242200">shaped the migration, educational aspirations and politics of Harris’ family</a>, just as it did Mink’s. </p>
<p>[<em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=experts">Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter and get expert takes on today’s news, every day.</a></em>]</p>
<h2>Strong women</h2>
<p>In 2018, Hawaii <a href="https://www.hawaiipublicradio.org/post/patsy-t-mink-monument-dedicated-her-birthday">erected a statue to honor Mink</a>. The site, in Honolulu, features quotes from this homegrown political hero. </p>
<p>“It is easy enough to vote right and be consistently with the majority,” Mink said in a 1976 speech, “but it is more often more important to be <a href="https://www.makingwavesfilms.com/patsy-mink">ahead of the majority</a> and this means being willing to cut the first furrow in the ground and stand alone for a while if necessary.” </p>
<p>Shortly after Mink died, <a href="https://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/educational-activities/14th-amendment-and-evolution-title-ix">Title IX was renamed the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act</a>. Representative Maxine Waters, <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CPRT-107JPRT82489/html/CPRT-107JPRT82489.htm">paying tribute</a> to her friend at a 2002 congressional memorial, reflected on a WNBA game the two women had recently attended. </p>
<p>“As I looked at all of those strong, tall women out there playing,” Waters said, “I thought it was a short, little woman that caused this tall, big woman to be able to realize her dreams.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149807/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Judy Tzu-Chun Wu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Mink, the first woman of color in Congress, brought a racially and historically aware brand of feminism into lawmaking and ran for president in 1972. But women’s history largely overlooks her.Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, Professor of Asian American Studies and Director of the UCI Humanities Institute, University of California, IrvineLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1456912020-09-21T19:58:56Z2020-09-21T19:58:56ZReview: new biography shows Vida Goldstein’s political campaigns were courageous, her losses prophetic<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358955/original/file-20200921-22-19chwjt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=148%2C540%2C2021%2C4422&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/360742">T. Humphrey/State Library Victoria</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/vida-a-woman-for-our-time-9780670079490">Vida: A Woman for Our Time</a>, published by Penguin (Viking imprint)</em> </p>
<p>Australian women were not the first to win the right to vote in national elections. That world-historic distinction <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-new-zealand-was-the-first-country-where-women-won-the-right-to-vote-103219">belongs to New Zealanders</a>. But they were the first to win, in 1902, both <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/Senate_Briefs/Brief03">the right to vote and stand for election</a> to the national parliament. </p>
<p>Three Australian women quickly availed themselves of the opportunity. <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/martel-ellen-alma-nellie-13081">Nellie Martel</a> and <a href="https://www.nla.gov.au/digital-classroom/year-10-11-12/Feminism/womens-suffrage">Mary Bentley</a> from New South Wales joined <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/goldstein-vida-jane-6418">Vida Goldstein</a> from Victoria as candidates in the 1903 federal election.</p>
<p>Little is now known of Martel and Bentley, but Goldstein’s contribution to politics has been commemorated in numerous scholarly studies, theses, essays, book chapters and encyclopedia entries, Janette Bomford’s biography <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/books/that-dangerous-and-persuasive-woman-paperback-softback">That Dangerous and Persuasive Woman</a>, and a <a href="https://www.aec.gov.au/profiles/vic/goldstein.htm">federal electorate</a> named in her honour. But historical memory is fickle and we need still to know more about the political history of women in Australia. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/womens-votes-six-amazing-facts-from-around-the-world-91196">Women's votes: six amazing facts from around the world</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Enlivened by speculation</h2>
<p>A skilled and prize-winning biographer, Jacqueline Kent brings fresh enthusiasm and focus to her quest to understand Vida’s extraordinary political career and its disappointments in her new biography. Goldstein stood five times for election to the federal parliament and suffered five defeats.</p>
<p>Kent’s previous biography was <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-making-of-julia-gillard-9781742531748">The Making of Julia Gillard</a> and it seems the painful experiences of our first woman Prime Minister – subject to relentless misogyny and sexist attacks – remain fresh in the writer’s mind. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358939/original/file-20200921-16-n2a6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="19th century woman in book cover" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358939/original/file-20200921-16-n2a6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358939/original/file-20200921-16-n2a6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358939/original/file-20200921-16-n2a6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358939/original/file-20200921-16-n2a6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358939/original/file-20200921-16-n2a6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358939/original/file-20200921-16-n2a6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358939/original/file-20200921-16-n2a6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/vida-a-woman-for-our-time-9780670079490">Penguin</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Kent’s telling, Vida’s story is framed by Gillard’s fate. There are regular references to Gillard’s experiences and the trials of politicians such as Julie Bishop and Sarah Hanson-Young. Thus Vida’s biography becomes a story of continuity, rather than change, with Vida still “a woman for our time”.</p>
<p>Kent’s account is enlivened by speculation. Vida and her activist mother “might very well have attended” the initial meeting of the <a href="https://www.womenaustralia.info/biogs/AWE0733b.htm">Victorian Women’s Suffrage Society</a> (VWSS) and “must have known about” the women’s novels then in circulation. </p>
<p>There is also a good amount of authorial displeasure evident. Women speakers had to endure “the tedious jocularity that was de rigueur” for mainstream journalists. The Age newspaper “evidently considered the welfare of women and children to be a trivial matter”.</p>
<p>Some of the most vivid passages in the book sketch the range of forceful personalities in the Melbourne “woman movement” of the late 19th century, who served as Vida’s models and mentors. </p>
<p><a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/dugdale-henrietta-augusta-3452">Henrietta Dugdale</a>, cofounder of the VWSS was small in stature, but formidable in argument and the author of the radical Utopian novel <a href="http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/182048">A Few Hours in a Far-Off Age</a>. <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/smyth-bridgetena-brettena-8564">Brettena Smyth</a>, “an imposing speaker, being six feet tall and voluminous in figure, with blue shaded spectacles” was also a member of the VWWS, and sold women contraceptives. <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bear-crawford-annette-ellen-5168">Annette Bear-Crawford</a> and <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/stone-emma-constance-8676">Constance Stone</a> were cofounders of the <a href="https://www.qvwc.org.au/history">Shilling Fund</a> that made possible the Queen Victoria Hospital for Women.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/expect-sexism-a-gender-politics-expert-reads-julia-gillards-women-and-leadership-142725">'Expect sexism': a gender politics expert reads Julia Gillard's Women and Leadership</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Missing chapters</h2>
<p>The larger community of <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-03-08/timeline3a-the-women27s-movement/3873294?nw=0">the Australian “woman movement”</a> is largely absent from this account. </p>
<p>There are glimpses of Rose Scott and Louisa Lawson in Sydney and Catherine Spence in Adelaide, who could be frosty when confronted by Goldstein’s evident ambition. </p>
<p>In 1902, Goldstein represented “Australasian” women at the <a href="https://search.alexanderstreet.com/preview/work/bibliographic_entity%7Cbibliographic_details%7C1654706">First International Woman Suffrage Conference in Washington, DC</a>. Yet Spence, who preceded Goldstein in her informal role as ambassador for Australian women at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 and embarked on a lecture tour, offered her successor a long list of contacts and helpful advice.</p>
<p>Scott, Spence, Goldstein and others of their generation were strong advocates of non-party politics for women, convinced they should avoid the male domination of established political parties. Their strong international connections reinforced woman-identified politics. But would enfranchised women vote as a bloc? </p>
<p>While in Boston in 1902, lecturing to a range of women’s groups, Goldstein met a bright young feminist, <a href="https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/schlesinger-library/collection/papers-maud-wood-park-in-womans-rights-collection">Maud Wood Park</a>, whom she invited to Australia. When Goldstein hosted Park and her friend Myra Willard in Melbourne in 1909 she introduced them to future Labor <a href="https://primeministers.moadoph.gov.au/prime-ministers/andrew-fisher">Prime Minister Andrew Fisher</a> and a number of Labor women at a tea party at Parliament House. </p>
<p>Elected to government in 1910, in a historic victory assisted by a strong women’s vote, Fisher responded to lobbying from Labor women and introduced the acclaimed Maternity Allowance.</p>
<p>Kent misses the significance of the rise of the labour women’s movement and its part in the 1910 election result.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358960/original/file-20200921-16-enjke1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Suffragists in London, 1911" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358960/original/file-20200921-16-enjke1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358960/original/file-20200921-16-enjke1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=675&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358960/original/file-20200921-16-enjke1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=675&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358960/original/file-20200921-16-enjke1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=675&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358960/original/file-20200921-16-enjke1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358960/original/file-20200921-16-enjke1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358960/original/file-20200921-16-enjke1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Vida Goldstein (right) takes part in the great suffragette demonstration in London in 1911.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-136683161/view">Geo Rose/National Library of Australia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Questions of class</h2>
<p>Class divisions mattered, but Kent tends to read Goldstein’s failure as a symptom of sexism, rather than class affiliation. </p>
<p>In the Epilogue, she observes that in the UK and US, Nancy Astor and Jeanette Rankin were quickly elected to Parliament and Congress. In Australia, Dorothy Tangney and Enid Lyons had to wait until 1943 to win seats in the Senate and House of Representatives. Kent doesn’t note, however, that Astor (Conservative) and Rankin (Republican) were party-endorsed candidates, as were Tangney (Labor) and Lyons (Liberal).</p>
<p>Sadly, Vida Goldstein’s series of electoral defeats as a non-party woman candidate would prove prophetic rather than path-breaking. </p>
<p>Goldstein’s courage and endurance qualify her as a woman for our time. But her political strategy of seeking power as an “independent woman candidate” meant she didn’t succeed then or set the most compelling example for aspiring political women today.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/more-than-a-century-on-the-battle-fought-by-australias-suffragists-is-yet-to-be-won-104262">More than a century on, the battle fought by Australia's suffragists is yet to be won</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LYqDhChLpU4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Vote No!’ Vida Goldstein campaigned against WWI conscription as Chair of the Women’s Peace Army and in her newspaper, The Woman Voter.</span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145691/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marilyn Lake was previously an ARC professorial fellow. </span></em></p>A biography about suffragist Vida Goldstein seeks to reveal her strength and endurance. Sadly, it also reveals how little progress women who seek political power on their terms have made.Marilyn Lake, Professorial Fellow in History, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1444542020-08-27T12:20:51Z2020-08-27T12:20:51ZAbolishing child labor took the specter of ‘white slavery’ and the job market’s near collapse during the Great Depression<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353775/original/file-20200820-16-1u0kl3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C0%2C996%2C634&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">These boys working in a Georgia cotton mill were photographed in 1909. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2018674998">Lewis Hine/The National Child Labor Committee Collection via Library of Congress</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Today, <a href="https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/youthlabor/agerequirements">U.S. laws and regulations bar kids</a> under the age of 14 from working in most industries. Children under 17 may not work more than three hours on school days, for example.</p>
<p>Ever wonder where these rules came from?</p>
<p>While <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=q7nIrq8AAAAJ">studying this issue for more than a decade</a>, I’ve learned that very few Americans thought there was anything wrong with child labor before the Civil War. <a href="https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/child-labor-in-america/">Most kids under age 15 worked</a> up to 14 hours a day, either alongside their parents or for an employer – unless they were rich. In that case, other children worked for their families. </p>
<p>Enslaved children typically began working alongside their mothers in the fields at a very young age. They also did housework, hauled water and took care of animals. Not only were these enslaved people unpaid “child laborers”; the law cast them as <a href="https://iupress.org/9780253222640/stolen-childhood-second-edition">property subject to the threat of sale</a>.</p>
<p>After emancipation, the question of whether to outlaw child labor was hotly contested for more than 80 years. Northern reformers who sought abolition <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">squared off against their Southern opponents</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354460/original/file-20200824-14-1kuf4ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black sharecroppers, picking cotton in Texas" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354460/original/file-20200824-14-1kuf4ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354460/original/file-20200824-14-1kuf4ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354460/original/file-20200824-14-1kuf4ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354460/original/file-20200824-14-1kuf4ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354460/original/file-20200824-14-1kuf4ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354460/original/file-20200824-14-1kuf4ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354460/original/file-20200824-14-1kuf4ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Even after emancipation, Black children would toil all day long in the fields.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.thestoryoftexas.com/discover/campfire-stories/african-americans">Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Early laws only regulated child labor</h2>
<p>As I explain in <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">my new book on the topic</a>, it took the Great Depression to reserve full-time employment for adults.</p>
<p>After the Civil War officially ended child slavery, most Americans still did not think there was anything wrong with children earning their keep, as long as working kids could <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">get at least a rudimentary education</a>. While some states such as Massachusetts had child labor laws on the books, those measures only regulated employment. Children could be limited to working <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1010335.pdf">as many as 10 hours daily</a>.</p>
<p>By the 1870s, unions condemned child labor on the basis that overly young workers competed for jobs, making it harder for adults to <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-World-of-Child-Labor-An-Historical-and-Regional-Survey/Hindman-Hindman/p/book/9780765617071">obtain higher pay and better conditions</a> – not due to concerns about the well-being of kids.</p>
<p>The government first gathered data on child labor, which was defined at the time as the <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">gainful employment of children under the age of 15</a>, in 1870. That year’s census counted 750,000 employed children – 1 in 8 American kids. It was a low estimate that excluded children working for their families.</p>
<p>The 1900 census found that more than 1 in 5 children worked. Reformers believed the real rate was even higher.</p>
<h2>Lax Southern regulations</h2>
<p>Some companies, meanwhile, were moving production to Southern states like North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama to take advantage of their <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">lax regulations</a>. Cotton milling quickly became one of the nation’s <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">most child-labor-intensive industries</a>, along with coal mining.</p>
<p>By 1900, a <a href="https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2017/article/history-of-child-labor-in-the-united-states-part-1.htm">quarter of the South’s nearly 100,000 textile workers</a> were under 16. Northern reformers were calling for change.
They objected not because they considered child labor a form of child abuse but rather because <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">these little workers were white</a>.</p>
<p>The image of pale, shrunken-faced, debilitated poor white boys and girls in Southern textile mills was sensationalized in the North as “<a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">white child slavery</a>.” Once the issue became a national obsession, activists formed the
<a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">National Child Labor Committee in 1904</a> to “change the public conscience” on this issue.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354463/original/file-20200824-20-glk0sx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Girl working in box factory in 1909" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354463/original/file-20200824-20-glk0sx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354463/original/file-20200824-20-glk0sx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354463/original/file-20200824-20-glk0sx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354463/original/file-20200824-20-glk0sx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354463/original/file-20200824-20-glk0sx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354463/original/file-20200824-20-glk0sx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354463/original/file-20200824-20-glk0sx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Little girls and boys often worked long days in factories, alongside adults.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/523064">Lewis Hine/Department of Commerce and Labor's Children's Bureau</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A culture war</h2>
<p>Southern industrialists resisted regulations, insisting that they were uplifting poor whites. They denounced child labor reform as “<a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">aggressive Northern interference</a>.”</p>
<p>Despite Southern opposition, reformers argued that state-level regulations were rife with loopholes and difficult to enforce. In 23 states, for instance, there was <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">no official way to determine children’s ages</a>. Additionally, many states allowed <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">poor children to work out of “necessity</a>.”</p>
<p>The committee first pushed to outlaw child labor in 1906 on the grounds that it weakened the white race and, therefore, interfered with U.S. plans for global dominance.</p>
<p>Named after Sen. Albert Beveridge of Indiana, the Beveridge bill sought to use the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution to ban the <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">interstate shipment of products made by child labor</a>. Southern opponents defeated it.</p>
<p>In 1913, the minister <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1961/06/30/118915298.html?pageNumber=27">Owen Lovejoy</a> brought new religious allies to the committee, which by then focused on the <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">sinfulness of child labor</a> in America.</p>
<p>In 1916, they got Congress to pass the the <a href="https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=59">first federal child labor law</a>. Like the Beveridge bill, the new law prohibited shipping products made with child labor across state lines. </p>
<p>However, a North Carolina mill worker, Roland Dagenhart, challenged the measure in court on the grounds that it violated his right to have his sons employed. The case wound up before the <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/247/251/">Supreme Court, which ruled in Dagenhart’s favor in 1918</a>.</p>
<p>Reformers would try again, this time using the federal taxing power to tax the products of child labor, but the Supreme Court would strike down that law – also challenged in court by a Southern mill worker – <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/259/20/">as unconstitutional in 1922</a>.</p>
<p>The showdown came in the 1920s. Fed up with the Supreme Court for repeatedly overturning child labor laws, Northern reformers tried to amend the U.S. Constitution. Prohibition had recently secured the 18th Amendment, and women had just gained suffrage through the 19th Amendment.</p>
<p>Many observers wrongly predicted that a child labor Amendment would <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">become the 20th amendment</a>.</p>
<p>U.S. culture was changing at the time. Americans were beginning to consider <a href="https://theconversation.com/teen-boys-will-be-boys-a-brief-history-103970">adolescence as a separate developmental stage</a> between <a href="https://massculturalcouncil.org/creative-youth-development/boston-youth-arts-evaluation-project/brief-history-of-adolescence-youth-development/">childhood and adulthood</a>. Likewise, the <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/268us510">education of children through high school</a> was <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/programs/statereform/tab5_1.asp">gradually becoming mandatory</a>. </p>
<h2>Small farmhands</h2>
<p>And yet those expectations didn’t materialize, due to a <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">rural backlash</a>.</p>
<p>Back then, most family farms relied on their own children’s labor. Many other children were hired as farmhands or “helpers” in <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">seasonal agriculture</a>. A 1922 <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000932806">study of seasonal demand for farm labor</a> in Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey found that three-fifths of white children and nearly three-fourths of black children were working before the age of 10.</p>
<p>Southern industrialists seized the moment, warning thousands of farm families of a government takeover of their farms. A collective uprising against a child labor constitutional amendment became yet another culture war, this time between rural and urban communities.</p>
<p>Reformers panicked, buying radio spots and distributing pamphlets backing off the notion that they wanted to interfere with family farms. The movement to pass a <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">child labor amendment fizzled by 1925</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354458/original/file-20200824-14-1lr0124.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Wanted: Small boys sign in Manhattan in the early 20th century." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354458/original/file-20200824-14-1lr0124.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354458/original/file-20200824-14-1lr0124.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354458/original/file-20200824-14-1lr0124.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354458/original/file-20200824-14-1lr0124.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354458/original/file-20200824-14-1lr0124.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354458/original/file-20200824-14-1lr0124.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354458/original/file-20200824-14-1lr0124.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Factory employers would seek out children for jobs where little fingers would come in handy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/nclc.04997/">Lewis Hine/National Child Labor Committee collection via Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Labor markets</h2>
<p>It took the <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">Great Depression</a> to resolve the debate over child labor.</p>
<p>Both Southerners and Northerners embraced an argument that union organizers had been making for decades and agreed that all available jobs in the nation should go to adult workers rather than children.</p>
<p>[<em>Understand new developments in science, health and technology, each week.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/science-editors-picks-71/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=science-understand">Subscribe to The Conversation’s science newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Subsequently, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal included the <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">first federal child labor law not to be overturned by the Supreme Court</a>. This 1938 law included provisions banning child labor under age 14 in most industries while exempting “children under 16 employed in agriculture” and “children working for their parents” in most occupations. </p>
<p>Today, FDR’s <a href="https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/flsa">measure is still the basis of child labor laws in America</a>. It was a major victory, to be sure. But its <a href="https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/14/the-children-in-the-fields">limitations reflect the mixed legacy</a> of the movement to abolish child labor.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144454/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Betsy Wood has received funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. </span></em></p>More than a fifth of US children were working in 1900, and many Americans saw nothing wrong with that. It took decades of activism and court battles plus economic upheaval to change course.Betsy Wood, Instructor of American History, Hudson County Community CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1415262020-07-02T20:08:47Z2020-07-02T20:08:47ZDid a tragic family secret influence Kate Sheppard’s mission to give New Zealand women the vote?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345161/original/file-20200702-2644-tsb1hh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=44%2C14%2C4943%2C3597&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kate Sheppard (seated at centre) with the National Council of Women in Christchurch. 1896.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>The family of pioneering New Zealand suffragist Kate Sheppard kept an important secret – one that possibly explains a lot about her life, her beliefs and her motivation.</p>
<p>The secret involved her father, Andrew Wilson Malcolm, and what happened to him after Kate was born. An extensive and painstaking quest by her great great niece Tessa Malcolm has revealed the truth about his fate.</p>
<p>Sadly, Tessa died in 2013 before publishing her decades-long research. I am now completing her work and hope to publish a new biography of Sheppard in 2023, the 130th anniversary of New Zealand becoming the first place in the world to give women the vote. </p>
<p>Solving the mystery of Andrew’s death deepens our understanding of Kate and her extraordinary life.</p>
<h2>What happened to Kate Sheppard’s father?</h2>
<p>Following family leads and with detailed searches of official and military records, wills and graves, Tessa finally established the truth: Andrew Malcolm died aged 42 of the delirium tremens (DTs) in New Mexico on January 26, 1862. </p>
<p>The DTs are a severe form of alcohol withdrawal and a horrible way to die. Symptoms include fever, seizures and hallucinations.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345155/original/file-20200702-2679-1dvu58m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345155/original/file-20200702-2679-1dvu58m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345155/original/file-20200702-2679-1dvu58m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345155/original/file-20200702-2679-1dvu58m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345155/original/file-20200702-2679-1dvu58m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345155/original/file-20200702-2679-1dvu58m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345155/original/file-20200702-2679-1dvu58m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kate Sheppard.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It had already been a long and difficult slog for Andrew. He was one of thousands of Scotsmen who served in overseas armies throughout the 19th century, motivated by a lust for adventure, sympathy for a cause, financial reward, a desire to emigrate or just to escape their lives at home. </p>
<p>When he died he was months short of completing ten years service in the Union Army. His burial site at Fort Craig was <a href="https://www.historynet.com/grave-robbers-desecrate-and-loot-fort-craig-nm-cemetery.htm">recently looted</a>, which led to the official exhumation and reburial of bodies, Andrew’s remains possibly among them. </p>
<p>So we now know the Scottish father of a leader in the New Zealand Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) died an alcoholic amid the horrors of the American Civil War. He had served and sacrificed his life on US soil, far from his wife and five children at home in the British Isles. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nz-was-first-to-grant-women-the-vote-in-1893-but-then-took-26-years-to-let-them-stand-for-parliament-123467">NZ was first to grant women the vote in 1893, but then took 26 years to let them stand for parliament</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The personal becomes political</h2>
<p>As is well known, after the family left Scotland and re-grouped in New Zealand, Kate went on to play a key role in the movement to grant women the vote.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345162/original/file-20200702-2658-8oeq17.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345162/original/file-20200702-2658-8oeq17.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345162/original/file-20200702-2658-8oeq17.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345162/original/file-20200702-2658-8oeq17.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345162/original/file-20200702-2658-8oeq17.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345162/original/file-20200702-2658-8oeq17.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345162/original/file-20200702-2658-8oeq17.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The late Tessa Malcolm, great great niece of Kate Sheppard.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The peaceful campaign was closely aligned with the temperance movement. It argued that moral, enfranchised women were needed to clean up society by voting against the “demon drink”. </p>
<p>A New Zealand tour in 1885 by Mary Leavitt of the American WCTU was a catalyst for local organising. Sheppard became the secretary of the WCTU franchise department. </p>
<p>With her own family experience and connection with America, we can certainly speculate that for Kate temperance was more than a platform from which women could gain the vote. It’s highly probable that her quests for a sober society and votes for women were personally entwined. </p>
<h2>A missing page from history</h2>
<p>So why did Andrew’s death remain a secret? Stigma, a sense of shame, or just the natural desire for privacy could all be explanations.</p>
<p>In her 1992 biography of Kate Sheppard, Judith Devaliant dedicated only two pages to Kate’s life prior to her 1869 migration to New Zealand around the age of 21. Of Andrew she wrote: “His death has not been traced with any accuracy, although it is known that he died at an early age leaving his widow to cope with five young children.” </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hundred-years-of-votes-for-women-how-far-weve-come-and-how-far-theres-still-to-go-91169">Hundred years of votes for women: how far we've come and how far there's still to go</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The biography is also vague about the details of his life. He was born in Dunfermline, Fifeshire, in 1819 and married Jemima Crawford Souter on Islay in the Hebrides in 1842. Documents describe his occupation variously as lawyer, banker, brewer’s clerk and legal clerk. </p>
<p>There is no mention of Andrew in either the New Zealand History Net or <em>Book of New Zealand Women</em> entries on Kate Sheppard. Until now, the focus is on Kate’s adult life and work, with family taking a back seat. </p>
<p>Even in her own 1993 <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2s20/sheppard-katherine-wilson#:%7E:text=This%20biography%2C%20written%20by%20Tessa,and%20updated%20in%20May%2C%202013.&text=She%20was%20called%20Catherine%20after,the%20names%20Katherine%20or%20Kate.">entry</a> on Kate in the <em>Dictionary of New Zealand Biography</em> Tessa simply wrote: “Her father died in 1862”. The implication was that Andrew had died in Scotland, although Dublin and Jamaica also appear in genealogical records. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345167/original/file-20200702-2674-346gej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345167/original/file-20200702-2674-346gej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345167/original/file-20200702-2674-346gej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345167/original/file-20200702-2674-346gej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345167/original/file-20200702-2674-346gej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345167/original/file-20200702-2674-346gej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345167/original/file-20200702-2674-346gej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ruins of the officers’ quarters, Fort Craig, New Mexico, USA: last resting place of Kate Sheppard’s father.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The search goes on</h2>
<p>But Tessa was already aware of Andrew’s New Mexico fate by 1990, two years before Devaliant’s book was published. After following dead ends and disproving family rumours she had solved the puzzle of what really happened to the ancestor she referred to as the “bete noire” of her research. </p>
<p>Can we conclusively say that Kate Sheppard’s temperance and suffragist work was directly linked to knowledge of her father’s death? Or are we dealing with an irony of history, albeit a sad one?</p>
<p>As yet we can’t be sure. But Kate’s mother definitely knew the cause of Andrew’s death and we know she greatly influenced Kate. I believe it was also likely known by other senior (and also influential) family members, but kept quiet. </p>
<p>The fact the truth was hidden so well suggests a degree of deliberate concealment. By building on Tessa’s groundbreaking research I hope to reveal more of a remarkable story that connects Scotland, America and New Zealand to a global first for women.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/141526/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katie Pickles receives funding from University of Canterbury Tessa Malcolm Bequest. </span></em></p>We now know how the father of New Zealand’s suffrage pioneer died, and it raises fascinating questions about what drove her morally and politically.Katie Pickles, Professor of History at the University of Canterbury, University of CanterburyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1394532020-06-29T12:10:21Z2020-06-29T12:10:21ZAs professional sports come back, members of the US women’s soccer team are still paid less than the men’s<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343077/original/file-20200621-43214-bwdauh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fans rally for the U.S. women's soccer team.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/fans-with-an-equal-play-equal-pay-banner-supporting-the-news-photo/520040916?adppopup=true">Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The U.S. women’s soccer team reported being “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/05/02/849492863/federal-judge-dismisses-u-s-womens-soccer-team-s-equal-pay-claim">shocked and disappointed</a>” by a federal judge’s dismissal in May of the team’s lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation.</p>
<p>The lawsuit alleged discriminatory pay practices by the federation between its men’s and women’s team, which seemed especially unfair because the women’s team was so successful compared to the men’s team. The U.S. women’s soccer team dominated the <a href="https://time.com/5620124/team-usa-womens-world-cup-final/">2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup</a> tournament last summer, taking a record fourth World Cup title.</p>
<p>The U.S. <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2017/10/10/usmnt-world-cup-qualification-trinidad-tobago/752568001/">men’s soccer team</a>, on the other hand, failed to qualify for the World Cup in 2018. </p>
<p>On June 24, the federal judge denied the women’s team request to <a href="https://www.si.com/soccer/2020/06/24/uswnt-equal-pay-case-judgment-appeal-delay-us-soccer">immediately appeal</a> their equal pay claim. Members of the U.S. women’s soccer team are the first professional athletes in the United States to return to sports when the National Women’s Soccer League began its <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/06/25/nwsl-challenge-cup-opens-this-weekend-making-womens-soccer-first-us-team-sport-back/">Challenge Cup</a> on June 27.</p>
<p><a href="https://kelley.iu.edu/faculty-research/faculty-directory/profile.cshtml?id=JMAGID">I study</a> employment <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ablj.12082">discrimination and inclusion</a> – and I wasn’t as surprised as the members of the women’s team. That’s because their claims were made under the <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/statutes/equal-pay-act-1963">Equal Pay Act</a> and <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/statutes/title-vii-civil-rights-act-1964#:%7E:text=L.%2088%2D352">Title VII</a> of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.</p>
<p>Despite the purpose of the laws – protecting employees from discrimination in the workplace based on specific characteristics – both are particularly hard to use to prove pay discrimination.</p>
<p>The EPA rejects deviations in responsibilities – for example, the deviation in the women playing more games – and Title VII requires a “similarly situated” individual, or someone who has the same situation as the women soccer team but are paid better. These evidentiary requirements often work to undermine gender pay discrimination claims.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343079/original/file-20200621-43229-q20tzk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343079/original/file-20200621-43229-q20tzk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343079/original/file-20200621-43229-q20tzk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343079/original/file-20200621-43229-q20tzk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343079/original/file-20200621-43229-q20tzk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343079/original/file-20200621-43229-q20tzk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343079/original/file-20200621-43229-q20tzk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John F. Kennedy signs the Equal Pay Act into law.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Pay_Act_of_1963#/media/File:American_Association_of_University_Women_members_with_President_John_F._Kennedy_as_he_signs_the_Equal_Pay_Act_into_law.jpg">Abbie Rowe/JFK Presidential Library and Museum</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The history of women’s rights</h2>
<p>Both the Equal Pay Act and Title VII evolved out of a conflict between women’s role in the workplace and women’s role in the family.</p>
<p>This year marks <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/15/arts/design/womens-suffrage-movement.html">100 years</a> since the ratification of the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote. The suffrage movement is early evidence of the conflict between those who supported a role for women outside the home and the <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/npr-history-dept/2015/10/22/450221328/american-women-who-were-anti-suffragettes">anti-suffragists</a> who were concerned about the loss of privilege for women and elevated status of motherhood if they became embroiled in politics. </p>
<p>Similar concerns were expressed in the 1908 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/208us412">Muller v. Oregon</a>. The court endorsed limiting the role of women in the workplace, emphasizing the protection of women for the larger purpose of preserving the “well‐being of the race.” As a result, states were permitted to enact a range of laws that restricted women’s ability to work outside the home in a way that men were not restricted.</p>
<p>Women did not voluntarily enter the workforce in large numbers until during World War II. When this happened, the prevailing policy of protective legislation drew more detractors. </p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>The idea of equal rights began to receive more attention as the language of the Equal Rights Amendment, originally drafted in 1923, gained additional support. The notion of equality for women in the workplace advanced in public policy discussions when President John F. Kennedy established the <a href="https://www.nacw.org/history.html">Commission on the Status of Woman</a> in 1961, appointing Eleanor Roosevelt as the chairwoman. </p>
<p>The final report of the commission, often referred to as the <a href="https://guides.library.harvard.edu/schlesinger_presidents_commission_on_the_status_of_women">Peterson Report</a> after <a href="https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/documents/report_of_the_presidents_commission_on_the_status_of_women_background_content_significance.pdf">Esther Peterson</a>, assistant secretary of labor and director of the U.S. Women’s Bureau, was published in 1963. Although the Peterson Report avoided the most controversial issue of the day, the Equal Rights Amendment, it nonetheless chose the path of moving away from protecting women’s position in the home as mothers and toward equality.</p>
<p>After documenting discrimination against women’s full participation in the workplace, the Peterson Report made several key recommendations, including equal employment opportunity, paid maternity leave and affordable childcare.</p>
<h2>Equal pay for equal work</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/statutes/equal-pay-act-1963">Equal Pay Act</a>, enacted in 1963, is the first federal legislation reflecting the equal employment opportunities advocated by the commission.</p>
<p>The EPA prohibits discrimination based on gender in wages paid for the same job. Determining when jobs are the same is often when it becomes difficult, as was the case in the U.S. women’s soccer team case.</p>
<p>As described in the law, “equal work” means “the performance of which requires equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions.” For the soccer teams, collective bargaining agreements negotiated between the players’ associations and U.S. Soccer created significantly different pay structures with significantly different job requirements, such as number of games played.</p>
<p>Even absent the soccer teams’ collective bargaining agreements, the EPA has a number of exceptions to its equal pay mandate.</p>
<p>Exceptions to equal pay include, “a seniority system; a merit system; a system which measures earnings by quantity or quality of production; or a differential based on any other factor other than sex.” This final “<a href="https://www.nwlc.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/FactorOtherThanSex.pdf">any factor other than sex</a>” is often used by courts to determine that the pay disparity between jobs is nondiscriminatory.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343078/original/file-20200621-43209-2qfo0q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343078/original/file-20200621-43209-2qfo0q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343078/original/file-20200621-43209-2qfo0q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343078/original/file-20200621-43209-2qfo0q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343078/original/file-20200621-43209-2qfo0q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343078/original/file-20200621-43209-2qfo0q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343078/original/file-20200621-43209-2qfo0q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The U.S. women’s soccer team plays Mexico.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/crystal-dunn-of-united-states-tries-to-break-free-from-news-photo/1232168378?adppopup=true">Ira L. Black/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Unequal pay as wage discrimination</h2>
<p>Congress enacted Title VII in 1964 to address employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin. Title VII continued the concept of equality to mean that of “sameness.”</p>
<p>To prove their claim of wage discrimination, the women’s soccer team had to identify men who were <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericbachman/2019/04/01/who-is-a-similarly-situated-employee-in-an-employment-discrimination-case/#79f1b2633d6e">“similarly situated”</a> to them but paid better, a “comparator” to show that their pay was discriminatory.</p>
<p>Since the men’s soccer team was determined by the court to not be “similarly situated” to the women’s soccer team in pay based on collective bargaining agreements and different requirements for games and friendlies – such as exhibition matches – the pay claim failed.</p>
<p>The judge allowed two claims of discrimination made by the women’s soccer team against their employer, the U.S. Soccer Federation, to continue to trial. The women’s team identified different treatment than the men’s team in travel conditions – specifically charter flights and hotel accommodations – and medical and training support.</p>
<h2>What about now?</h2>
<p>Though Congress adopted a path of equality in both the EPA and Title VII,
in the decades that followed, “any factor other than sex” meant nonperformance-based factors such as differences in academic degrees led to dismissal of EPA claims and an inability to find the same or <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericbachman/2019/04/01/who-is-a-similarly-situated-employee-in-an-employment-discrimination-case/#7fb60c983d6e">“similarly situated”</a> individual – because of differences in supervisors, job evaluations or discipline records – became a barrier to equal pay under Title VII. This has allowed the <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/03/22/gender-pay-gap-facts/">gender pay gap</a> to remain almost 60 years after the EPA and Title VII became law.</p>
<p>The gap is more pronounced for women who have children, often referred to as the “<a href="https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/compensation/pages/wage-gap-is-wider-for-working-mothers.aspx">motherhood penalty.</a>”</p>
<p>I would argue that the focus on “sameness” in equality has failed to offer progress in building diversity and inclusion in organizations, including addressing the wage gap. A normative workplace is one that does not recognize differences in how someone can be successful.</p>
<p>All people are not the same and organizations that <a href="https://sproutsocial.com/adapt/diversity-equality-inclusion/">level the playing field</a> offer different people different tools or support to succeed. A stand-up desk for one and a left handed workstation for another, for example. </p>
<p>Leveling the playing field generates equity. Given the evidentiary requirements of the EPA and Title VII, a level playing field has not happened through federal legislation but many organizations now promote a culture of <a href="https://www.siliconrepublic.com/careers/equity-equality-diverse-workforce-hubspot">equity</a>. </p>
<p>The four-time World Cup champions U.S. women’s soccer team created renewed awareness about the intransigence of gender pay discrimination and the dismissal of its pay claim in the federal court highlights the limits of current legislation but should further the discussion of equity. This would mean avoiding one-size-fits-all workplaces and rewarding those who respond with dominating performances.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139453/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julie Manning Magid does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar explains why the players are having so much trouble with their equal pay claim.Julie Manning Magid, Professor of Business Law, IUPUILicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1298672020-01-24T13:37:52Z2020-01-24T13:37:52ZWhen lesbians led the women’s suffrage movement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311449/original/file-20200122-117962-1tr1v3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A suffrage parade.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2014700130/">Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1911, a team of three women with <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3704629">“lesbian-like” relationships</a> – Jane Addams, Sophonisba Breckinridge and Anna Howard Shaw – took control of the suffrage movement, leading the nation’s largest feminist organization. They promoted a diverse and inclusive women’s rights movement.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/82kcs3yk9780252042676.html">My research</a> suggests that the personal lives of these suffrage leaders shaped their political agendas. Rather than emphasizing differences of gender, race, ethnicity and class, they advanced equal rights for all Americans.</p>
<p><a href="https://academic.oup.com/jah/article-abstract/52/4/855/764984">Suffrage scholarship</a> has long acknowledged a shift “from justice to expediency” – from an emphasis on natural rights to an emphasis on gender distinctions – in the movement at the turn of the century. </p>
<p>The 1848 <a href="https://www.nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture/declaration-of-sentiments.htm">Declaration of Sentiments</a>, a founding document of the suffrage struggle, proudly insisted that “all men and women are created equal.” </p>
<p>However, by the early 20th century, many of the movement’s new adherents emphasized women’s differences from men. To gain support, they argued that female voters would engage in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_housekeeping">“social housekeeping”</a> and “clean up” corrupt politics. </p>
<p>Some suffragists, including women’s rights pioneer <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/28/opinion/sunday/suffrage-movement-racism-black-women.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article">Elizabeth Cady Stanton</a>, also increasingly emphasized racial, class and ethnic differences. After the Civil War, when the <a href="https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199772636.001.0001/acprof-9780199772636">15th Amendment</a> enfranchised Black men but ignored all women, white suffrage leaders <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/02/opinion/sunday/women-voting-19th-amendment-white-supremacy.html">excluded African American women</a> from the movement. </p>
<p>By the 1890s, some had begun to advocate <a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss41210.mss41210-002_00551_00562/?st=gallery">“educated suffrage,”</a> code for literacy requirements that would extend voting rights to educated, white, middle-class women, but prevent many African Americans, immigrants and working-class citizens from casting ballots.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311203/original/file-20200121-117943-1xbhx6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311203/original/file-20200121-117943-1xbhx6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311203/original/file-20200121-117943-1xbhx6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311203/original/file-20200121-117943-1xbhx6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311203/original/file-20200121-117943-1xbhx6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311203/original/file-20200121-117943-1xbhx6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311203/original/file-20200121-117943-1xbhx6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311203/original/file-20200121-117943-1xbhx6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jane Addams.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2014687739/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A new leadership team</h2>
<p>At the 1911 meeting of the <a href="http://www.crusadeforthevote.org/nawsa-united">National American Woman Suffrage Association</a> (NAWSA), the membership elected <a href="https://www.louisewknight.com/spirit-in-action.html">Jane Addams</a> as first vice president and <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/82kcs3yk9780252042676.html">Sophonisba Breckinridge</a> as second vice president. </p>
<p>The new officers joined a leadership team headed by <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/34men9yt9780252038150.html">Anna Howard Shaw</a>, an ordained minister who served as NAWSA’s president from 1904 to 1915. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311205/original/file-20200121-117943-vs9hvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311205/original/file-20200121-117943-vs9hvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311205/original/file-20200121-117943-vs9hvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311205/original/file-20200121-117943-vs9hvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311205/original/file-20200121-117943-vs9hvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311205/original/file-20200121-117943-vs9hvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311205/original/file-20200121-117943-vs9hvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311205/original/file-20200121-117943-vs9hvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anna Shaw.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2016820860/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For the next year, women who loved other women held the top three positions in the nation’s largest feminist organization. </p>
<p>None of these women publicly claimed a lesbian identity. Nonetheless, like other leaders in <a href="https://www.hmhbooks.com/shop/books/To-Believe-in-Women/9780618056972">women’s rights, higher education and social reform</a>, all three women had significant same-sex relationships. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/34men9yt9780252038150.html">Shaw</a> relied on her companion and secretary, Lucy E. Anthony – suffrage pioneer Susan B. Anthony’s niece – to assist her in guiding the woman suffrage movement. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Education-Addams-Politics-Culture-America/dp/0812237471">Addams</a>, head of the Chicago settlement house <a href="https://www.history.com/news/the-humble-chicago-house-that-started-a-movement">Hull House</a>, enjoyed a long and loving relationship with philanthropist Mary Rozet Smith, who supported her both emotionally and financially. As Addams’ nephew <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=SXM_zMK3u4YC&q=making+life+easier#v=snippet&q=making%20life%20easier&f=false">explained</a>, Smith dedicated herself to “making life easier for Jane Addams. That was her career.” </p>
<p>And, as <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/82kcs3yk9780252042676.html">my biography of Breckinridge</a> demonstrates, her intimate relationship with Edith Abbott, dean of the <a href="https://ssa.uchicago.edu/history">University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration</a>, helped her <a href="https://livestream.com/UC-SSA/20191017-SSA-PHD-Jabour">pioneer the social work profession</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/same-sex-couples-have-been-in-american-politics-way-longer-than-the-buttigiegs-have-been-married-116568">promote social welfare policy</a>.</p>
<h2>Promoting conventional femininity</h2>
<p>Opponents of woman suffrage used <a href="https://aha.confex.com/aha/2020/webprogram/Paper27349.html">images of suffragists as unattractive man-haters</a> to discredit the movement. </p>
<p>To counter such stereotypes, suffrage leaders promoted a public image of conventional femininity. Shaw, who previously sported short hair, grew her hair long and wore it in a conservative chignon. </p>
<p>“I learned that no woman in public life can afford to make herself conspicuous by any eccentricity of dress or appearance,” <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/354/354-h/354-h.htm">she noted</a>, because negative attention “injures the cause she represents.” </p>
<p>Suffrage leaders also emphasized women’s roles as wives and mothers. Addams and Breckinridge were founding members of the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2163477?seq=1">Woman’s City Club of Chicago</a>, which produced a popular <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=3XsEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA2144#v=onepage&q&f=false">pro-suffrage graphic</a> that illustrated the connections between domestic life and local government. NAWSA adopted the image as its own, featuring it on <a href="https://images.socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/items/show/78">suffrage posters</a>. </p>
<p>To avoid criticism and gain support, NAWSA’s leaders upheld conventional femininity. But this was not the whole story.</p>
<h2>Demanding equality for all</h2>
<p>In a <a href="https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1910-06-23/ed-1/seq-6/">1910 speech</a>, Breckinridge predicted that the time was coming “when man and woman would stand on the same industrial plane and their wages would be equalized by an equal social condition.”</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311232/original/file-20200121-117927-16xgi79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311232/original/file-20200121-117927-16xgi79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311232/original/file-20200121-117927-16xgi79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311232/original/file-20200121-117927-16xgi79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311232/original/file-20200121-117927-16xgi79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311232/original/file-20200121-117927-16xgi79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1036&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311232/original/file-20200121-117927-16xgi79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1036&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311232/original/file-20200121-117927-16xgi79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1036&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sophonisba Breckinridge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2014687516/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Breckinridge’s lesbian-like lifestyle helps explain her stance on gender equality. As a single, self-supporting woman, she understood that many women, like herself, could not rely on men for financial security. </p>
<p>Thus, at the same time that she promoted equal voting rights, she also championed <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/G/bo3624520.html">financial support for single mothers</a> and <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691176161/a-class-by-herself">maximum hour and minimum wage legislation for women workers</a>.</p>
<p>As members of the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20173756?seq=1">Immigrants’ Protective League</a> and the <a href="https://www.naacp.org/nations-premier-civil-rights-organization/">National Association for the Advancement of Colored People</a>, both Breckinridge and Addams rejected exclusionary strategies. </p>
<p>Addams protested <a href="http://digital.janeaddams.ramapo.edu/items/show/3958">proposed literacy tests</a> for immigrants. Breckinridge coauthored a <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011926613">report advocating education</a>, rather than employment, for working class youth.</p>
<p>The new lesbian leadership team also welcomed African American participation in the movement. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/phylon1960.53.2.3?seq=1">W. E. B. Du Bois</a>, editor of the NAACP publication The <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25079051?seq=1">Crisis</a>, had publicly <a href="https://library.brown.edu/pdfs/1308149903968629.pdf">criticized NAWSA’s racism</a>, warning that the movement’s mission was becoming “Votes for White Women Only.” He also published numerous <a href="http://suffrageandthemedia.org/source/race-gender-fight-vote-web-du-bois-suffrage/">editorials and articles</a> in <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2645943?seq=1">support of woman suffrage</a>. </p>
<p>Breckinridge advocated <a href="https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:460406564$1i">inviting Du Bois to speak</a> at the suffrage organization’s 1912 meeting. <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.rslfe1&view=1up&seq=5">His participation</a> signaled NAWSA’s growing commitment to racial equality.</p>
<p>In 1911, NAWSA had <a href="https://library.brown.edu/pdfs/1307980563609254.pdf">refused to allow a resolution</a> linking woman suffrage with African American rights to be presented at its annual meeting. In 1912, however, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24494512?seq=1">NAWSA published</a> Du Bois’s speech, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/W-B-Bois-Speaks-1890-1919/dp/0873481259">“Disfranchisement,”</a> which did just that, advocating a <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.rslfe1&view=1up&seq=15">“Democracy of Sex and Color.”</a> </p>
<p>This lesbian leadership team lasted for only a year. But while it operated, these leaders made the suffrage movement more diverse and inclusive.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article originally published on January 24, 2020.</em></p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129867/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anya Jabour receives funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.</span></em></p>In 1911, lesbians led the nation’s largest feminist organization. They promoted a diverse and inclusive women’s rights movement.Anya Jabour, Regents Professor of History, University of MontanaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1293522020-01-16T19:04:23Z2020-01-16T19:04:23ZHidden women of history: Catherine Hay Thomson, the Australian undercover journalist who went inside asylums and hospitals<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310375/original/file-20200115-134772-1he8wcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C2%2C855%2C556&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Catherine Hay Thomson went undercover as an assistant nurse for her series on conditions at Melbourne Hospital. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-147135448/view">A. J. Campbell Collection/National Library of Australia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In this series, we look at under-acknowledged women through the ages.</em></p>
<p>In 1886, a year before American journalist Nellie Bly <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/07/28/she-went-undercover-expose-an-insane-asylums-horrors-now-nellie-bly-is-getting-her-due/">feigned insanity</a> to enter an asylum in New York and became a household name, Catherine Hay Thomson arrived at the entrance of Kew Asylum in Melbourne on “a hot grey morning with a lowering sky”. </p>
<p>Hay Thomson’s two-part article, <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/6089302">The Female Side of Kew Asylum</a> for The Argus newspaper revealed the conditions women endured in Melbourne’s public institutions. </p>
<p>Her articles were controversial, engaging, empathetic, and most likely the first known by an Australian female undercover journalist.</p>
<h2>A ‘female vagabond’</h2>
<p>Hay Thomson was accused of being a spy by Kew Asylum’s supervising doctor. The Bulletin called her “the female vagabond”, a reference to Melbourne’s famed undercover reporter of a decade earlier, Julian Thomas. But she was not after notoriety. </p>
<p>Unlike Bly and her ambitious contemporaries who turned to “stunt journalism” to escape the boredom of the women’s pages – one of the few avenues open to women newspaper writers – Hay Thomson was initially a teacher and ran <a href="https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/A79772">schools</a> with her mother in Melbourne and Ballarat. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310830/original/file-20200120-69568-x4hyux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310830/original/file-20200120-69568-x4hyux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310830/original/file-20200120-69568-x4hyux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310830/original/file-20200120-69568-x4hyux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310830/original/file-20200120-69568-x4hyux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310830/original/file-20200120-69568-x4hyux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310830/original/file-20200120-69568-x4hyux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310830/original/file-20200120-69568-x4hyux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hay Thomson, standing centre with her mother and pupils at their Ballarat school, was a teacher before she became a journalist.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ballarat Grammar Archives/Museum Victoria</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/207826580?searchTerm=%22Catherine%20Hay%20Thomson%22&searchLimits=exactPhrase=Catherine+Hay+Thomson%7C%7C%7CanyWords%7C%7C%7CnotWords%7C%7C%7CrequestHandler%7C%7C%7CdateFrom%7C%7C%7CdateTo%7C%7C%7Csortby">1876</a>, she became one of the first female students to sit for the matriculation exam at Melbourne University, though women weren’t allowed to study at the university until 1880. </p>
<h2>Going undercover</h2>
<p>Hay Thomson’s series for The Argus began in March 1886 with a piece entitled <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/6087478?searchTerm=%22The%20Inner%20Life%20of%20the%20Melbourne%20Hospital%22&searchLimits=">The Inner Life of the Melbourne Hospital</a>. She secured work as an assistant nurse at Melbourne Hospital (now <a href="https://www.thermh.org.au/about/our-history">The Royal Melbourne Hospital</a>) which was under scrutiny for high running costs and an abnormally high patient death rate. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310150/original/file-20200115-93792-1rli38t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310150/original/file-20200115-93792-1rli38t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310150/original/file-20200115-93792-1rli38t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310150/original/file-20200115-93792-1rli38t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310150/original/file-20200115-93792-1rli38t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310150/original/file-20200115-93792-1rli38t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310150/original/file-20200115-93792-1rli38t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310150/original/file-20200115-93792-1rli38t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Doctors at Melbourne Hospital in the mid 1880s did not wash their hands between patients, wrote Catherine Hay Thomson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://viewer.slv.vic.gov.au/?entity=IE1125263&mode=browse">State Library of Victoria</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Her articles increased the pressure. She observed that the assistant nurses were untrained, worked largely as cleaners for poor pay in unsanitary conditions, slept in overcrowded dormitories and survived on the same food as the patients, which she described in stomach-turning detail.</p>
<p>The hospital linen was dirty, she reported, dinner tins and jugs were washed in the patients’ bathroom where poultices were also made, doctors did not wash their hands between patients.</p>
<p>Writing about a young woman caring for her dying friend, a 21-year-old impoverished single mother, Hay Thomson observed them “clinging together through all fortunes” and added that “no man can say that friendship between women is an impossibility”.</p>
<p>The Argus editorial called for the setting up of a “ladies’ committee” to oversee the cooking and cleaning. Formal nursing training was introduced in Victoria three years later.</p>
<h2>Kew Asylum</h2>
<p>Hay Thomson’s next <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/6089302">series</a>, about women’s treatment in the Kew Asylum, was published in March and April 1886. </p>
<p>Her articles predate <a href="https://www.sas.upenn.edu/%7Ecavitch/pdf-library/Bly_TenDays.pdf">Ten Days in a Madhouse</a> written by Nellie Bly (born <a href="https://www.biography.com/activist/nellie-bly">Elizabeth Cochran</a>) for Joseph Pulitzer’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/New-York-World">New York World</a>. </p>
<p>While working in the asylum for a fortnight, Hay Thomson witnessed overcrowding, understaffing, a lack of training, and a need for woman physicians. Most of all, the reporter saw that many in the asylum suffered from institutionalisation rather than illness. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310146/original/file-20200115-151844-1hs1bdy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310146/original/file-20200115-151844-1hs1bdy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310146/original/file-20200115-151844-1hs1bdy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310146/original/file-20200115-151844-1hs1bdy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310146/original/file-20200115-151844-1hs1bdy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310146/original/file-20200115-151844-1hs1bdy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310146/original/file-20200115-151844-1hs1bdy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310146/original/file-20200115-151844-1hs1bdy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kew Asylum around the time Catherine Hay Thomson went undercover there.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.slv.vic.gov.au/images?page=1&keyword=kew%20asylum&smt=1">Charles Rudd/State Library of Victoria</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>She described “the girl with the lovely hair” who endured chronic ear pain and was believed to be delusional. The writer countered “her pain is most probably real”.</p>
<p>Observing another patient, Hay Thomson wrote: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>She requires to be guarded – saved from herself; but at the same time, she requires treatment … I have no hesitation in saying that the kind of treatment she needs is unattainable in Kew Asylum.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The day before the first asylum article was published, Hay Thomson gave evidence to the final sitting of Victoria’s <a href="https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/papers/govpub/VPARL1886No15Pi-clxxii.pdf">Royal Commission on Asylums for the Insane and Inebriate</a>, pre-empting what was to come in The Argus. Among the Commission’s final recommendations was that a new governing board should supervise appointments and training and appoint “lady physicians” for the female wards.</p>
<h2>Suffer the little children</h2>
<p>In May 1886, <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/6095144/276118">An Infant Asylum written “by a Visitor”</a> was published. The institution was a place where mothers – unwed and impoverished - could reside until their babies were weaned and later adopted out. </p>
<p>Hay Thomson reserved her harshest criticism for the absent fathers:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>These women … have to bear the burden unaided, all the weight of shame, remorse, and toil, [while] the other partner in the sin goes scot free.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For another article, <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/6099966?searchTerm=%22Among%20the%20Blind%3A%20Victorian%20Asylum%20and%20School%22&searchLimits=">Among the Blind: Victorian Asylum and School</a>, she worked as an assistant needlewoman and called for talented music students at the school to be allowed to sit exams.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/254464232?searchTerm=%22A%20Penitent%E2%80%99s%20Life%20in%20the%20Magdalen%20Asylum%22&searchLimits=">A Penitent’s Life in the Magdalen Asylum</a>, Hay Thomson supported nuns’ efforts to help women at the Abbotsford Convent, most of whom were not residents because they were “fallen”, she explained, but for reasons including alcoholism, old age and destitution.</p>
<h2>Suffrage and leadership</h2>
<p>Hay Thomson helped found the <a href="https://www.australsalon.org/130th-anniversary-celebration-1">Austral Salon of Women, Literature and the Arts</a> in January 1890 and <a href="https://ncwvic.org.au/about-us.html#est">the National Council of Women of Victoria</a>. Both organisations are still celebrating and campaigning for women. </p>
<p>Throughout, she continued writing, becoming <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_Talk_(magazine)">Table Talk</a> magazine’s music and social critic. </p>
<p>In 1899 she became editor of The Sun: An Australian Journal for the Home and Society, which she bought with Evelyn Gough. Hay Thomson also gave a series of lectures titled <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/145847122?searchTerm=%22catherine%20hay%20thomson%22%20and%20%22women%20in%20politics%22&searchLimits=">Women in Politics</a>. </p>
<p>A Melbourne hotel maintains that Hay Thomson’s private residence was secretly on the fourth floor of Collins Street’s <a href="https://www.melbourne.intercontinental.com/catherine-hay-thomson">Rialto building</a> around this time. </p>
<h2>Home and back</h2>
<p>After selling The Sun, Hay Thomson returned to her birth city, Glasgow, Scotland, and to a precarious freelance career for English magazines such as <a href="https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=cassellsmag">Cassell’s</a>. </p>
<p>Despite her own declining fortunes, she brought attention to writer and friend <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/carmichael-grace-elizabeth-jennings-5507">Grace Jennings Carmichael</a>’s three young sons, who had been stranded in a Northampton poorhouse for six years following their mother’s death from pneumonia. After Hay Thomson’s article in The Argus, the Victorian government granted them free passage home.</p>
<p>Hay Thomson eschewed the conformity of marriage but <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/65330270?searchTerm=&searchLimits=l-publictag=Mrs+T+F+Legge+%28nee+Hay+Thomson%29">tied the knot</a> back in Melbourne in 1918, aged 72. The wedding at the Women Writer’s Club to Thomas Floyd Legge, culminated “a romance of forty years ago”. <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/140219851">Mrs Legge</a>, as she became, died in Cheltenham in 1928, only nine years later.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129352/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A passionate crusader for the rights of women and children, Catherine Hay Thomson went undercover to investigate their treatment in public institutions and testified before a Royal Commission.Kerrie Davies, Lecturer, School of the Arts & Media, UNSW SydneyWilla McDonald, Senior Lecturer, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1234672019-09-18T20:36:05Z2019-09-18T20:36:05ZNZ was first to grant women the vote in 1893, but then took 26 years to let them stand for parliament<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292896/original/file-20190917-19045-ei5tjs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C28%2C795%2C470&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">After winning the right to vote in 1893, New Zealand's suffragists kept up the battle, but the unity found in rallying around the major cause had receded.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tribute_to_the_Suffragettes,_close_up.jpg">Jim Henderson/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Today marks the passing of the much celebrated <a href="https://nzhistory.govt.nz/politics/womens-suffrage">1893 Electoral Act</a>, 126 years ago, which made New Zealand the first country in the world to grant women the right to vote.</p>
<p>But it would take 26 years before the often twinned step of allowing women to stand for parliament happened. On October 29, it will be a century since the passing of the <a href="http://www.nzlii.org/nz/legis/hist_act/wpra191910gv1919n16391/">1919 Women’s Parliamentary Rights Act</a>, which opened the way for women to enter politics. </p>
<p>Women’s suffrage and women’s right to stand for parliament are natural companions, two sides of the same coin. It would be fair to assume both happened at the same time. </p>
<p>Early women’s suffrage bills included women standing for parliament. But, in the hope of success, the right was omitted from the third and successful 1893 bill. Suffragists didn’t want to risk women standing for parliament sinking the bill. </p>
<p>The leader of the suffrage movement, <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2s20/sheppard-katherine-wilson">Kate Sheppard</a>, reluctantly accepted the omission and expected that the right would follow soon afterwards. But that didn’t happen. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-new-zealand-was-the-first-country-where-women-won-the-right-to-vote-103219">Why New Zealand was the first country where women won the right to vote</a>
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<h2>Post-vote agitation</h2>
<p>After women won suffrage, agitation for several egalitarian causes, including women in parliament, continued. The Women’s Christian Temperance Movement (<a href="https://nzhistory.govt.nz/women-together/new-zealand-womens-christian-temperance-union">WCTU</a>) and, from 1896, the National Council of Women (<a href="https://nzhistory.govt.nz/women-together/national-council-women-new-zealand">NCW</a>) both called for the bar to be removed. </p>
<p>Women including Kate Sheppard, <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2s24/sievwright-margaret-home">Margaret Sievwright</a>, <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2h29/henderson-stella-may">Stella Henderson</a> and <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/3p1/page-sarah">Sarah Saunders Page</a> kept up the battle. But the unity found in rallying around the major women’s suffrage cause was lacking and the heady and energetic climate of 1893 had receded. </p>
<p>From 1894 to 1900, sympathetic male politicians from across the political spectrum presented eight separate bills. Supportive conservatives emphasised the “unique maternal influence” that women would bring to parliament. Conservative MP <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/3n4/newman-alfred-kingcome">Alfred Newman</a> argued that New Zealand must retain its world-leading reputation for social legislation, but he downplayed the significance. He predicted that even if women were allowed to stand for parliament, few would be interested and even fewer would be elected. </p>
<p>Left-leaning supportive MPs <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2r31/russell-george-warren">George Russell</a> and <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2t16/taylor-thomas-edward">Tommy Taylor</a> saw the matter as one of extending women’s rights and the next logical step towards societal equality. But contemplating women in the House was a step too far and all attempts failed. </p>
<h2>Enduring prejudice</h2>
<p>The failure in the pre-war years was largely because any support for women in parliament was outweighed by enduring prejudice against their direct participation in politics. </p>
<p>At the beginning of the new century, Prime Minister <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2s11/seddon-richard-john">Richard Seddon</a> was well aware of public opinion being either indifferent to or against women in parliament. A new generation of women with professional careers who might stand for parliament, if allowed, comprised a small minority. </p>
<p>Much to the chagrin of supporters, New Zealand began to lag behind other countries. <a href="https://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/Australian_Electoral_History/milestone.htm">Australia simultaneously granted women the right to vote</a> and stand for parliament in 1902 at the federal level, with the exception of Aboriginal women in some states. </p>
<p>Women in Finland were able to both vote and stand for election from 1906, as part of reforms following unrest. In 1907, 19 women were elected to the <a href="http://www.helsinki.fi/sukupuolentutkimus/aanioikeus/en/articles/first.htm">new Finnish parliament</a>. </p>
<h2>The game changer: the first world war</h2>
<p>Importantly, during the first world war, women’s status improved rapidly and this overrode previous prejudices. Women became essential and valued citizens in the war effort. Most contributed from their homes, volunteering their domestic skills, while increasing numbers entered the public sphere as nurses, factory and public sector workers. </p>
<p><a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/3m51/melville-eliza-ellen">Ellen Melville</a> became an Auckland city councillor in 1913. <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2w11/wells-ada">Ada Wells</a> was elected to the Christchurch City Council in 1917. Women proved their worth in keeping the home fires burning while men were away fighting. </p>
<p>In 1918, British women, with some conditions, were enfranchised and allowed to stand for parliament. <a href="https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=res&dir=his&document=chap2&lang=e">Canada’s federal government</a> also gave most of its women both the right to vote and stand for parliament. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/100-years-since-women-won-the-right-to-be-mps-what-it-was-like-for-the-pioneers-105907">100 years since women won the right to be MPs – what it was like for the pioneers</a>
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<p>Late in 1918, MP <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/3m3/mccombs-james">James McCombs</a>, the New Zealand Labour Party’s first president and long-time supporter of women’s rights, opportunistically included women standing for parliament in a legislative council amendment bill. It was unsuccessful, mostly due to technicalities, and Prime Minister <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2m39/massey-william-ferguson">Bill Massey</a> promised to pursue the matter. </p>
<p>Disappointed feminist advocate <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2m15/mackay-jessie">Jessie Mackay</a> pointed to women’s service during the war and the <a href="https://nzhistory.govt.nz/keyword/influenza">recent influenza epidemic</a> and shamed New Zealand for failing to keep up with international developments. </p>
<p>Women’s wartime work, renewed feminist activism and male parliamentary support combined to make the 1919 act a foregone conclusion. Introducing the bill, Massey said he did not doubt it would pass because it was important to keep up with Britain. The opposition leader, Joseph Ward, thought war had changed what was due to women, and Labour Party leader Harry Holland pushed <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.32106019788832&view=1up&seq=1001">women’s role as moral citizens</a>.</p>
<p>The Legislative Council (upper house) held out and women had to wait until 1941 for the right to be appointed there. It took until 1933 for the first woman, <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/4m3/mccombs-elizabeth-reid">Elizabeth McCombs</a>, to be elected to parliament. The belief that a woman’s place was in the home and not parliament, the bastion of masculine power, endured. </p>
<p>Between 1935 and 1975, only 14 women were elected to parliament, compared to 298 men. It was not until the advent of a <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/womens-movement/page-6">second wave of feminism</a> and the introduction of <a href="https://elections.nz/democracy-in-nz/what-is-mmp/">proportional representation in 1996</a> that numbers of women in the house began to increase.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123467/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katie Pickles receives funding from Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi.</span></em></p>New Zealand was the first nation to grant women the vote in 1893, but during the pre-war years enduring prejudice against women in politics outweighed any support for women to stand for parliamentKatie Pickles, Professor of History at the University of Canterbury and current Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi James Cook Research Fellow, University of CanterburyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1184202019-08-08T13:13:40Z2019-08-08T13:13:40ZGender equality at home takes a hit when children arrive<p>In the early 20th century, American women won the right to vote. Soon, women’s participation in the workforce, education and political life <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0891243210361475?casa_token=PgWe6qUpw8oAAAAA:-OyN7djfUEDeAUPYTfyD4S-Lb4w7VF88wd1PWHVF-hviNbtJ2erWMBX6NhJep6LUjXIudHR4Vqw">all increased dramatically</a>. </p>
<p>This gender revolution took place not just in the U.S., but in many countries throughout the world.</p>
<p>But beginning in 1980, the changes in opportunities, status and attitudes that were closing the gap between men and women <a href="https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2017/01/23/gender-gaps-and-the-stalled-gender-revolution/">began to slow</a>. Since the mid-1990s, <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/658853">there’s been little change</a>.</p>
<p>Gender equality at home among heterosexual couples has progressed even more slowly than in public life. The family theorist <a href="http://sph.umd.edu/department/fmsc/bio/18819">Frances Goldscheider</a> has argued that the goal of moving women into what has traditionally been men’s territory in the paid labor force is just <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279057747_The_Gender_Revolution_A_Framework_for_Understanding_Changing_Family_and_Demographic_Behavior">the “first half” of what she calls the gender revolution.</a> </p>
<p>Without progress on the “second half” of that revolution – men picking up an equal share of work at home – other efforts, such as equal pay, won’t be enough to make the work that women and men do equitable.</p>
<p>My colleagues <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=TSLxVR8AAAAJ&hl=en">and I</a> at the World Family Map project collaborated with Goldscheider to understand whether having children made the goal of fairly dividing work at home more elusive.</p>
<p><a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10680-018-09515-8">We found</a>,
<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/30130732?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">consistent with previous research</a>, that having children at home made men and women behave more traditionally. Women cleaned, cooked and cared for the children far more then the men did.</p>
<p>But we also found lots of variation across countries in how much children “traditionalized” couples’ division of labor. We wanted to know why the presence of children mattered more for how couples divided work in some countries – like Finland and Lithuania – than in others – like Norway and Latvia.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286621/original/file-20190801-169680-1olo0xy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286621/original/file-20190801-169680-1olo0xy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286621/original/file-20190801-169680-1olo0xy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286621/original/file-20190801-169680-1olo0xy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286621/original/file-20190801-169680-1olo0xy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286621/original/file-20190801-169680-1olo0xy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286621/original/file-20190801-169680-1olo0xy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How much have women’s rights progressed in the U.S. since the women’s suffrage movement?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://theconversation.createsend.com/campaigns/createSend/snapshot.aspx?cID=94FAC45CD92132F32540EF23F30FEDED">Library of Congress</a></span>
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<h2>Surprising answers</h2>
<p>We looked at how men and women divided their time between paid work, childcare and housework using <a href="https://dbk.gesis.org/dbksearch/sdesc2.asp?ll=10&notabs=&af=&nf=&search=&search2=&db=e&no=5900">the most recent International Social Survey Programme’s data on family and changing gender roles</a>. </p>
<p>The data covers 35 countries representing northern countries as well as relatively wealthy countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. </p>
<p>We looked at several factors that we believed might explain why couples divided up household work the way they do, including <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ny.gnp.pcap.pp.cd">national income</a>, <a href="https://www.ilo.org/global/publications/books/WCMS_242615/lang--en/index.htm">national family policy</a> and <a href="https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-gender-gap-report-2018">national gender equality</a>. </p>
<p>We used the <a href="https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-gender-gap-report-2018">Global Gender Gap Index</a>, which measures equality in health, education, the labor force and political representation, to measure gaps between men and women in public life. </p>
<p>When we began our analysis we thought that children would be less of a factor in how labor was divided at home in countries with more gender equality in the public sphere.</p>
<p>We were wrong.</p>
<p>In 76% of Northern European childless couples, the women put in equal or more paid hours than the man did and he put in equal or more domestic hours than she did. In other words, 3 out of 4 couples were not gender traditional in their division of labor.</p>
<p>But only 45% of Northern European couples with children practiced a non-traditional division of labor. </p>
<p>In comparison, 31% of childless couples in Central and South America divide labor more equally. But having a child doesn’t change the status quo by much. Just 21% of couples in this region with children divide labor more equally. </p>
<p>Where both partners typically work outside of the home, children typically contribute to a “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2014/08/06/the-second-shift-at-25-q-a-with-arlie-hochschild/">second shift</a>” much more for women than for men. This means that children present a greater obstacle to a gender revolution in its later stages than one that is just getting underway. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286624/original/file-20190801-169718-1pnp6ag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286624/original/file-20190801-169718-1pnp6ag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286624/original/file-20190801-169718-1pnp6ag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286624/original/file-20190801-169718-1pnp6ag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286624/original/file-20190801-169718-1pnp6ag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286624/original/file-20190801-169718-1pnp6ag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286624/original/file-20190801-169718-1pnp6ag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Parents share work at home differently in different countries.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Sweden-Daddy-Leave/b3375115d12c409fbffd8e4be5a8692d/27/0">AP Photo/Niklas Larsson</a></span>
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<h2>A solution?</h2>
<p>The most surprising finding in our analysis was that the loss of momentum toward gender equality differed among countries. We wondered if government policies could be an influence. </p>
<p>Generous parental leave that could be used by either parent didn’t seem to affect things – the workload still broke down into traditional roles if there were children. </p>
<p>Legislation providing fathers with legal protection if they took unpaid parental leave didn’t move the needle, either.</p>
<p>We tested many other policies that didn’t seem effective.</p>
<p>Only one specific family policy stood out: non-transferable paid paternal leave – <a href="https://apolitical.co/solution_article/norways-daddy-quota-means-90-of-fathers-take-parental-leave/">also known as a “father’s quota.”</a></p>
<p>When use-it-or-lose-it paid leave was offered, men participated more at home.</p>
<p><iframe id="siqiS" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/siqiS/4/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Among couples with children across our 35 countries, 28% practiced a modern division of labor without the father’s quota, and 34% with it. This difference is significant, and its magnitude is almost exactly the same as the change associated with an individual moving to a higher level of education. </p>
<p>Fathers’ quotas emerged in <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/300776296_Norway_The_making_of_the_father's_quota">Norway in 1993</a>. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35225982">Sweden soon followed suit</a>. By 2012, <a href="https://www.oecd.org/els/family/Backgrounder-fathers-use-of-leave.pdf">fathers’ quotas were also found</a> in Belgium, France, Portugal, Latvia and Japan. </p>
<h2>Forcing changes in cultural norms</h2>
<p>Our data doesn’t tell us why the paternal policies seem to help close the gender gap. </p>
<p>If fathers’ quotas were created by policymakers in response to progressive values – if they simply reflected gender norms rather than changing them – we would expect to see those values reflected in a couples’ division of labor whether or not children were in the household. </p>
<p>But the policy does not impact gender equality in domestic labor among the childless in those countries. About half of childless couples practiced a modern division of labor regardless of whether there was a father’s quota – 49% without, 51% with. </p>
<p>And we can’t prove how a father’s quota influences behavior. </p>
<p>But we know that forces that push men and women into “non-traditional” roles may have lasting results if the rewards of the new behaviors are self-reinforcing. One example: When men enjoy nurturing their children and therefore want to do more of it.</p>
<p>This worked during World War I, when seeing women <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/z9bf9j6#z8rv87h">plow fields, deliver mail, enforce laws, drive buses and assemble munitions</a> countered the stereotypes of women as <a href="http://www.crusadeforthevote.org/naows-opposition">too fragile or disinterested in non-domestic work</a>. </p>
<p>If the gender revolution is stalled or stalling because men are seen as ill suited for domestic work, a paid benefit that makes their paternity leave more of a cultural norm may be the force that changes society’s perceptions and behavior.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118420/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laurie DeRose received support from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Center for Child Health and Human Development grant P2C-HD041041, Maryland Population Research Center.</span></em></p>Does having children make the goal of fairly dividing work at home more elusive?Laurie DeRose, Adjunct Professor, Georgetown UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1126932019-03-04T22:08:09Z2019-03-04T22:08:09ZSaying no to power: The resignations of women cabinet members<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261697/original/file-20190301-110123-u6grbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mary Ellen Smith is seen in this undated photo.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">City of Vancouver Archives</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>First in 1921 and now in 2019, the resignations of women cabinet ministers have exposed the limits of Canadian liberalism.</p>
<p>Suffragist <a href="https://www.vancourier.com/news/archives-b-c-s-first-female-mla-elected-1.1739485">Mary Ellen Smith, the first female cabinet minister in the British Empire, resigned from the British Columbia cabinet</a> almost a century ago. Ninety-eight years later, Indigenous <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/read-the-full-resignation-letter-from-jody-wilson-raybould-1.4293854">MP Jody Wilson-Raybould quit the federal cabinet</a>, followed <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/read-jane-philpott-s-full-resignation-letter-1.4321826">by activist doctor Jane Philpott</a>. </p>
<p>Even though the events played out almost 100 years apart, they’ve revealed the unrequited hopes of disadvantaged communities for a fair dealing.</p>
<p>In January 1921, B.C.’s <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/john-oliver">Liberal Premier “Honest John” Oliver</a>, sought new women voters to ensure his government retained power. To that end, he appointed as minister without portfolio the prominent suffragist who had become the province’s first female MLA. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/women/030001-1326-e.html">Mary Ellen Smith</a> was elected as an Independent in a 1918 by-election and then as a Liberal in 1920. Committing herself to “the people and the rights of the people,” she affirmed her allegiance to the Liberal Party’s progressive wing. Not to be forgotten, however, is that her supposedly progressive politics <a href="https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/canada-150-mary-ellen-smith-was-first-woman-elected-to-a-legislature-in-canada">included anti-Asian and pro-eugenics arguments,</a> not entirely uncommon 100 years ago.</p>
<p>Despite topping polls, rescuing Liberal seats and speaking for a broad community of feminist activists, Smith was denied departmental responsibility. Oversight of the mothers’ pensions and women’s minimum wage legislation, causes she had long championed, were assigned to less sympathetic politicians. </p>
<p>Her lack of budget, salary and staff did not stop Canadians from congratulating themselves on making history with her appointment. </p>
<h2>Appointment made headlines</h2>
<p>Almost a century later, in November 2015, Jody Wilson-Raybould of the We Wai Kai Nation <a href="https://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/five-things-about-jody-wilson-raybould-canadas-new-justice-minister">became the first Indigenous justice minister and attorney-general</a> in Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet. That appointment, with its signalling of reconciliation and equality, once again made headlines given Wilson-Raybould was the onetime treaty commissioner and regional chief of the B.C. Assembly of First Nations. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261999/original/file-20190304-92280-zud430.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261999/original/file-20190304-92280-zud430.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261999/original/file-20190304-92280-zud430.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261999/original/file-20190304-92280-zud430.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261999/original/file-20190304-92280-zud430.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261999/original/file-20190304-92280-zud430.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261999/original/file-20190304-92280-zud430.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former Liberal cabinet ministers Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott in a photo that Wilson-Raybould posted on Twitter the day of Philpott’s resignation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jody Wilson-Raybould/Twitter</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Equally significant for contemporary federal Liberals, the presence of Wilson-Raybould in cabinet might have held the promise of potential votes from a rising Indigenous demographic — just as politicians had harboured similar hopes about Smith and women voters in the 1920s.</p>
<p>Wilson-Raybould, whose traditional name translates as “woman born to noble people,” quickly proved independent. <a href="https://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/read-jody-wilson-rayboulds-resignation-letter/">As she wrote in her resignation letter</a>, she espoused “a positive and progressive vision of change” and “a different way of doing politics.” Like Smith, she stood on her party’s left.</p>
<p>Philpott, meantime, is a physician noted for her dedication to international development and to reconciliation with Indigenous peoples as minister for Indigenous services. <a href="https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/liberal-government-will-pursue-activist-agenda-federal-health-minister-says">She’s been a champion of progressive liberalism.</a></p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261695/original/file-20190301-110130-1d2yoee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261695/original/file-20190301-110130-1d2yoee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261695/original/file-20190301-110130-1d2yoee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1003&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261695/original/file-20190301-110130-1d2yoee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1003&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261695/original/file-20190301-110130-1d2yoee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1003&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261695/original/file-20190301-110130-1d2yoee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1261&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261695/original/file-20190301-110130-1d2yoee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1261&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261695/original/file-20190301-110130-1d2yoee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1261&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mary Ellen Smith is seen this 1918 portrait.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">City of Vancouver archives</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Smith’s honeymoon with liberalism ended a century ago when she discovered she was neither to criticize nor advise her colleagues in government. In November 1921, scandals over liquor sales, railways and patronage and few benefits for women or workers drove her to resign. </p>
<p>Public reaction was mixed, but Smith’s hope that a chastened government would turn to the left did not happen. As women voters grew disenchanted in the 1920s, Liberal power-brokers sidelined Canada’s first female cabinet minister to largely ceremonial posts. </p>
<p>In January 2019, despite being widely applauded as an effective minister, <a href="https://www.citynews1130.com/2019/01/14/indigenous-justice-minister-demoted-cabinet-shuffle/">Wilson-Raybould was demoted from Justice to Veterans’ Affairs.</a> Less than a month later, she resigned from cabinet. </p>
<p>Philpott, on Ontario MP who had been promoted in the same cabinet shuffle that saw Wilson-Raybould’s demoted, joined her less than a month later, citing “core values, my ethical responsibilities and constitutional obligations.”</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1102660614307172352"}"></div></p>
<h2>Alleged pressure from PMO</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/wilson-raybould-testimony-liberals-1.5036494">In her testimony to the House of Commons judicial committee</a>, Wilson-Raybould alleged the Prime Minister’s Office pressured her to rescue a leading Canadian corporation, SNC-Lavalin, from criminal prosecution. <a href="https://www.ubcic.bc.ca/discriminatory_sexist_comments_about_minister_jody_wilson">Indigenous and</a> <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-what-happened-to-our-feminist-prime-minister/">feminist allies,</a> long suspicious of what they consider a Liberal tendency to campaign on the left and govern on the right, quickly mobilized.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261988/original/file-20190304-92295-1e6forb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261988/original/file-20190304-92295-1e6forb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261988/original/file-20190304-92295-1e6forb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261988/original/file-20190304-92295-1e6forb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261988/original/file-20190304-92295-1e6forb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261988/original/file-20190304-92295-1e6forb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261988/original/file-20190304-92295-1e6forb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Philpott, then Indigenous Services minister, is seen with Assembly of First Nations Chief Perry Bellegarde in December 2018 in Ottawa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the immediate aftermath of Wilson-Raybould’s resignation, progressive allies within the Liberal party had a lot to consider. In stark contrast to the situation in 1921, the stakes rose massively when Wilson-Raybould was joined by Philpott, a rising Liberal cabinet star. </p>
<p>What do resignations of these three prominent women politicians tell us? </p>
<p>Above all, Smith, Wilson-Raybould and Philpott were all well-known for seeking long-overdue political inclusion and reconciliation for chronically disadvantaged communities. </p>
<p>Their hopes rested with left-wing liberalism even as they tested its limits. </p>
<p>But 2019 is not 1921.</p>
<p>The outcome for Wilson-Raybould, and now Philpott, remains to be written. Almost 100 years ago, Mary Ellen Smith could be largely ignored following her resignation. Her two modern successors, on the other hand, appear far better equipped to battle for liberalism’s future — or to choose another political party.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112693/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Veronica Strong-Boag receives funding from SSHRCC. She is a Professor Emerita at the University of British Columbia and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Victoria. </span></em></p>In 1921 and now in 2019, the respective resignations of Mary Ellen Smith from B.C. cabinet and Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott from federal cabinet have exposed the limits of Canadian liberalism.Veronica Strong-Boag, Professor Emerita, University of British ColumbiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1115762019-02-15T11:49:46Z2019-02-15T11:49:46ZHow white became the color of suffrage<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368140/original/file-20201108-15-1ga6r7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C95%2C4705%2C3151&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kamala Harris wore white for a reason during her victory speech. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/APTOPIXElection2020Biden/c783793f9c234a7897b5bb52b228f02e/photo?Query=kamala%20AND%20harris&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=4540&currentItemNo=7">AP Photo/Andrew Harnik</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/11/07/kamala-harris-victory-speech-transcript/">During her victory speech</a>, Kamala Harris, the first woman to be elected vice president of the United States, paid tribute to women activists not only in her words, but also in her appearance. </p>
<p>Harris’ decision to wear a white pantsuit was a nod to suffragists and to women politicians like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/30/fashion/hillary-clinton-democratic-national-convention.html">Hillary Clinton</a> and former vice presidential candidate <a href="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/07/30/style/30OTRc/30OTRc-jumbo.jpg">Geraldine Ferraro</a>. Meanwhile, Harris’ white silk shirt with a pussy bow was a nuanced reference to the women protests that erupted four years ago. </p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=_Zhsg9oAAAAJ&hl=en">As a historian who writes about fashion and politics</a>, I like these types of sartorial gestures. They show the relevancy and power of fashion statements in our political system. Harris, like the suffragists and political leaders that came before her, is using her clothes to control their image and spark a conversation. </p>
<p>However, today’s strong association between the color white and the suffragists isn’t fully accurate. It’s based more on the black-and-white photographs that circulated in the media, which obscured two colors that were just as important to the suffragists. </p>
<h2>Using color to convince</h2>
<p>For most of the 19th century, suffragists didn’t incorporate visuals in their movement. It was only during the early 20th century that suffragists started to realize that, as Glenda Tinnin, one of the organizers of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, <a href="https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:53708534$54i">argued</a>, “An idea that is driven home to the mind through the eye, produces a more striking and lasting impression than any that goes through the ear.” </p>
<p>Becoming aware of the way visuals could shift public opinion, suffragists began to incorporate media and publicity tactics into their campaign, using all kinds of spectacles to popularize their cause. Color played a crucial role in these efforts, especially during public demonstrations such as pageants and parades.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258875/original/file-20190213-181612-6rwf5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258875/original/file-20190213-181612-6rwf5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258875/original/file-20190213-181612-6rwf5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258875/original/file-20190213-181612-6rwf5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258875/original/file-20190213-181612-6rwf5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258875/original/file-20190213-181612-6rwf5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258875/original/file-20190213-181612-6rwf5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258875/original/file-20190213-181612-6rwf5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Suffragist Alice Paul dons a white dress and raises a glass shortly after the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/ds.00180/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Part of their goal was to convey that they were not devilish Amazons set to destroy gender hierarchies, as some of their critics <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924069224834;view=1up;seq=522">claimed</a>. Rather, suffragists sought to present an image of themselves as beautiful and skilled women who would bring civility to politics and cleanse the system of corruption. </p>
<p>Suffragists deployed white to convey these messages, but they also turned to a much more diverse palette. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/ppmsca.02946/">1913 Washington, D.C. parade</a> was the first national event that put the cause of the suffragists on front pages of newspapers around the country. Organizers used an intricate color scheme to create an impression of harmony and order. Marchers were divided by professions, countries and states, and each group adopted a distinct color. Social workers wore dark blue, educators and students wore green, writers wore white and purple, and artists wore pale rose. </p>
<p>Being the media-savvy women that they were, suffragists realized that it wasn’t enough to create an appealing impression of themselves. They also needed to come up with a recognizable brand. Inspired by the British suffragettes and their campaign colors – purple, white and green – the National Woman’s Party also adopted a set of three colors: <a href="http://www.crusadeforthevote.org/imagery-and-propaganda/stdi5c3o81lzqb5lrlku7butgioh93">purple, white and golden yellow</a>. </p>
<p>They replaced green with yellow to pay tribute to Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who used the <a href="http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_507974">sunflower</a> – Kansas’s state flower – when they campaigned for a failed statewide suffrage referendum in 1867.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258877/original/file-20190213-181631-1ysnvmz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258877/original/file-20190213-181631-1ysnvmz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258877/original/file-20190213-181631-1ysnvmz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258877/original/file-20190213-181631-1ysnvmz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258877/original/file-20190213-181631-1ysnvmz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258877/original/file-20190213-181631-1ysnvmz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258877/original/file-20190213-181631-1ysnvmz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258877/original/file-20190213-181631-1ysnvmz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The sunflower was first used during an 1867 campaign for a Kansas state suffrage referendum that failed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_507974">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Crafting a contrast</h2>
<p>These American <a href="http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_509474">suffrage colors</a> – purple, white and yellow – stood for loyalty, purity and hope, respectively. And while all three of them were used during parades, it was the brightness of the white that left the biggest impression. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2014700130/">In images of suffragists</a> marching in formation, their bright clothing contrasts sharply with the crowds of men in dark-colored suits who line the sidewalks. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258876/original/file-20190213-181619-8qsr72.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258876/original/file-20190213-181619-8qsr72.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258876/original/file-20190213-181619-8qsr72.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258876/original/file-20190213-181619-8qsr72.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258876/original/file-20190213-181619-8qsr72.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258876/original/file-20190213-181619-8qsr72.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258876/original/file-20190213-181619-8qsr72.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258876/original/file-20190213-181619-8qsr72.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">During parades, the white garments of the marchers contrasted sharply with the onlookers lining the sidewalk.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2014700130/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This visual contrast – between women and men, bright and dark, order and disorder – conveyed hope and possibility: How might women improve politics if they get the right to vote? </p>
<p>White dresses were also easier and cheaper to attain than colored ones. A poorer or middle-class woman could show her support for suffrage by wearing an ordinary white dress and adding a purple or yellow accessory. The association of white with the idea of sexual and moral purity was also a useful way for suffragists to refute negative stereotypes that portrayed them as <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b000776582;view=1up;seq=436">masculine</a> or sexually deviant. </p>
<p>Black suffragists, in particular, capitalized on the association of white with moral purity. By wearing white, black suffragists showed they, too, were honorable women – a position they were long deprived of in public discourse.</p>
<p>Beyond the struggle for the vote, black women would deploy white. During the 1917 <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/95517074/">silent parade</a> to protest lynching and racial discrimination, they wore white.</p>
<p>As much as white made a powerful statement, it was the combination of the colors – and the qualities that each represented – that reflect the true scope and symbolism of the suffrage movement.</p>
<p>The next time a female politician wants to use fashion to celebrate the legacy of the suffrage movement, it might be a good idea to not just emphasize their moral purity, but to also bring attention to their loyalty to the cause and, more importantly, their hope. </p>
<p>White is a great gesture. But it can be even better if there’s a dash of purple and yellow.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article originally published on Feb. 19, 2019.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111576/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Einav Rabinovitch-Fox does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Being the media-savvy women that they were, suffragists realized they needed to come up with a meaningful, recognizable brand.Einav Rabinovitch-Fox, Visiting Assistant Professor, Case Western Reserve UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1042622018-10-25T19:23:07Z2018-10-25T19:23:07ZMore than a century on, the battle fought by Australia’s suffragists is yet to be won<p>When Kerryn Phelps claimed her <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/kerryn-phelps-kicks-liberals-into-minority-government-20181020-p50ayl.html">historic by-election win</a> on the weekend, she called the triumph a “a victory for democracy”, signalling “a return of decency, integrity and humanity to the Australian government”. </p>
<p>As well as taking a progressive stand on social issues, Phelps vowed to represent all those who were disgusted by the internal brawling and destructive power plays of Australia’s elected officials. <a href="https://www.marieclaire.com.au/kerryn-phelps-wentworth-by-election-victory">One commentator rejoiced</a> that people who were “tired of the spineless and incompetent politicians who are intent on destroying the joint” were finally getting their moment in the sun. “Hear us roar,” the journalist cheered, channelling a mutinous <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6fHTyVmYp4">Helen Reddy</a>.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/V6fHTyVmYp4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>Was Phelps aware that her roll call of values and virtues — decency, integrity, humanity — harked back to a much earlier age of grassroots political activism led by women?</p>
<p>The idea that institutional outliers are the new brooms that can sweep clean the filthy floors of national legislatures has a far-reaching lineage. “Cleansing the Augean stables” has long been an allegory for ridding an administration of corruption. Most recently, we have seen what can happen when a perceived underdog promises to “drain the swamp” of American government, as Donald Trump did.</p>
<p>Trump was hailed as the hero of the marginalised and silenced — those buried by the sludge of Washington — for being a man of steel, able to leap petty bureaucrats (and nasty women) in a single bound.</p>
<p>But the “new brooms” metaphor for scrubbing the halls of power has more often been gendered female. This is particularly true in Australia, where white women had a singular advantage: they were the first in the world to win the right to stand for parliament, a paradigm-shifting reform that was ushered in by the passage of the Commonwealth Franchise Act in 1902. Pre-figuring Phelps, Australia’s trail-blazing political reformers at the turn of the 20th century were fully enfranchised women intent on using their new super power to puncture the fetid pustule of federal parliament.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/quotas-are-not-pretty-but-they-work-liberal-women-should-insist-on-them-103517">Quotas are not pretty but they work – Liberal women should insist on them</a>
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<p>One of the arguments against women’s eligibility to sit in parliament was that parliament, like the pub, was “no place for a lady”. “If such were true,” countered Nellie Martel, who stood for election to the Senate in 1903, “women should be sent there to purify it, and it certainly required cleansing.” </p>
<p>The notion that women would “purify politics” through their inherent female qualities of munificence, rectitude and sobriety — as well as maternal skills of negotiation, conciliation and care — was central to the suffragists’ moral claim to political equality.</p>
<p>Vida Goldstein, who also ran for the Senate in 1903, adopted a light-hearted way to <a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/twentiethcentury56londuoft/twentiethcentury56londuoft_djvu.txt">describe</a> the need for women’s direct parliamentary representation:</p>
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<p>Man seems to be constitutionally unable to keep things tidy.</p>
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<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241965/original/file-20181024-48715-1sh9qmg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241965/original/file-20181024-48715-1sh9qmg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241965/original/file-20181024-48715-1sh9qmg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241965/original/file-20181024-48715-1sh9qmg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241965/original/file-20181024-48715-1sh9qmg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241965/original/file-20181024-48715-1sh9qmg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241965/original/file-20181024-48715-1sh9qmg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Vida Goldstein.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">NLA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As I write in <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/you-daughters-of-freedom-the-australians-who-won-the-vote-and-inspired-the-world">my new book</a>, during her 1903 campaign for the Senate Goldstein joked that it had always been woman’s lot to tidy up after men: “He leaves the bathroom in a state of flood, his dressing-room a howling wilderness of masculine paraphernalia, his office a chaos of ink and papers” — and this disorderly boor was equally “untidy in the nation”. No wonder the “national household” was in such “a terrible state of muddle”. Women’s vote and their presence in parliament would, according to Goldstein, lead to a more principled approach to “national housekeeping”.</p>
<p>Such gendered metaphors and stereotypes were not challenged by Edwardian-era women’s rights advocates. It was a later generation of feminists whose demand was to be liberated from the role of “angel of the hearth” or spiritual redeemer — God’s Police, the hand rocking the cradle and wielding the broom.</p>
<p>Suffrage campaigners of the early 20th century proudly accepted their “natural” function as civilisers of the civilisers. (It’s sobering to remember that the same act that gave Australia’s white women their leading global edge also disenfranchised all Indigenous Australians on the grounds that, as Senator Alexander Matheson argued in <a href="https://historichansard.net/senate/1902/19020410_senate_1_9/#subdebate-3-0">debating the Franchise Bill</a>, “if every one of these savages and their gins [were put] upon the federal rolls” the nation would be “swamped by aboriginal votes”).</p>
<p>In settler-colonial White Australia, suffragists simply wanted the political power to make the white man’s burden woman’s burden too.</p>
<p>But the first-wave feminists would be rolling in their <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/04/opinion/women-statues.html">largely unmarked</a> graves to know that women joining the ranks of parliamentarians barely changed their male colleagues’ outlook and demeanour at all. Some women (Margaret Thatcher, for example) revelled in the opportunity to play the hawk and had no qualms about ruffling geopolitical and domestic feathers in the most noxious fashion. Other women have found it more difficult to adopt moves from the playbook of toxic masculinity: belligerence, bellicosity and bullying.</p>
<p>Recently, we’ve seen female MPs in Australia call time’s up — or at least time-out — on such on-field antics, particularly when the aggression is directed at women themselves. In August this year, Liberal MP Julia Banks <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/aug/29/liberal-mp-julia-banks-to-quit-parliament-next-election-citing-bullying-and-intimidation">announced her decision to quit federal politics</a>, citing the “cultural and gender bias, bullying and intimidation” of women in parliament.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-woman-problem-no-the-liberals-have-a-man-problem-and-they-need-to-fix-it-102339">A 'woman problem'? No, the Liberals have a 'man problem', and they need to fix it</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>It’s worrisome that the prevailing culture of sexism has changed so little in over a century of parliamentary politics being a gender-inclusive workplace. “We were subjected to ridicule, contempt, abuse and to anything but flattering cartoons,” lamented Nellie Martel after her 1903 Senate campaign. The limits of participatory democracy are sorely tested by such cultural intransigence.</p>
<p>Despite Kerryn Phelps and her support crew being dressed in <a href="https://www.stylist.co.uk/life/pantone-colour-of-the-year-2018-ultra-violet-feminism-suffragettes/178623">suffragette purple</a> — the symbolic colour of courage — she did not claim her victory as a win for women as such. Rather, as a seasoned and astute campaigner, Phelps flew the flag for the non-party vote. By running as an independent, she was able to channel the disaffection and discontent of a cosmopolitan community.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241970/original/file-20181024-48721-9z3ys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241970/original/file-20181024-48721-9z3ys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=214&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241970/original/file-20181024-48721-9z3ys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=214&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241970/original/file-20181024-48721-9z3ys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=214&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241970/original/file-20181024-48721-9z3ys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241970/original/file-20181024-48721-9z3ys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241970/original/file-20181024-48721-9z3ys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Suffragettes graffiti on a wall to make their feelings known, 1900-1910.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">NLA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This call to grassroots activism was also a hallmark of the Federation-era feminists. Vida Goldstein deplored what she called “the ticket system” of politics. In her view, the party machine led to “disastrous consequences”: feeble candidates, selfish and greedy egoists, mere “log-rollers” who had been trundled into parliament purely because they were on the party’s ticket. Oftentimes, such politicians were “men of doubtful character, men whose social life is a scandal” and who could be found “intoxicated” in parliament.</p>
<p>The teetotalling Goldstein ran for parliament as an independent five times – in vain. Contemporaries believed she would have easily won if she’d stood for the Labor Party. Women, it transpired, voted more along class than gender lines.</p>
<p>It may well be that neither female voters nor female politicians turned out to be the democratic disinfectants that the women who fought for the franchise expected. Perhaps, the degree of muck and debris to which they were exposed as fully enfranchised citizens was more insidiously entrenched than they could have imagined from outside the stable. </p>
<p>Or, maybe, women just aren’t that fond of cleaning. But one insight from the Federation era of hope and optimism still rings true. Goldstein was ever <a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/twentiethcentury56londuoft/twentiethcentury56londuoft_djvu.txt">at pains to</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… give honour where honour is due: to the men of Australia, who have grown so far in democratic sentiment that they can tolerate the idea of living with political equals.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Living with and as political equals is surely the most potent solution for reform.</p>
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<p><em>Clare Wright is the author of You Daughters of Freedom: The Australians who won the vote and inspired the world, by Text Publishing.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104262/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clare Wright receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is on the Expert Advisory Panel of the Australian Republic Movement.</span></em></p>The early suffragists would be rolling in their graves to know that women joining the ranks of parliamentarians barely changed their male colleagues’ outlook and demeanour at all.Clare Wright, Associate Professor in History, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.