tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/suffrage-51182/articlesSuffrage – The Conversation2024-03-07T19:24:11Ztag: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>
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<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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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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<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>
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<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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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>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>
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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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<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>
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<span class="caption">Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term ‘intersectionality’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">UCLA</span></span>
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<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>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Riot Grrrrl sang about issues like homophobia, sexual harassment, misogyny and racism.</span></figcaption>
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<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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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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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/2007672023-03-07T18:03:35Z2023-03-07T18:03:35ZLady Rhondda: the little-known suffragette whose efforts led to greater equality for women<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514009/original/file-20230307-28-8km9lo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C2%2C1914%2C1074&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A scale model of a statue dedicated to Lady Rhondda has been revealed by the sculptor, Jane Robbins. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MARGARET_MACKWORTH,_VISCOUNTESS_RHONDDA.jpg">AV Morgan/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The design for a statue of a leading suffragette has been unveiled in Newport, south Wales. Margaret Haig Thomas or Lady Rhondda was a lifelong campaigner for women’s rights and was the first woman to hold a hereditary peerage, though she was barred from taking up her seat in the House of Lords. She was also a successful businesswoman at a time when married women were <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-untold-story-of-a-mid-20th-century-group-of-women-fighting-for-equality-in-marriage-and-why-it-matters-today-190007">often</a> excluded from gainful employment.</p>
<p>The statue by artist <a href="https://janerobbinssculpture.co.uk">Jane Robbins</a> is part of a <a href="https://monumentalwelshwomen.com/">wider campaign</a> dedicated to marking the contribution of women to the history of Wales. The sculpture is expected to be cast in bronze and erected in Newport in 2024. </p>
<p>The relationship between statues and our understanding of history <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/statues-past-and-present/">is complex</a>. In 2020, the toppling of the statue of slave trader <a href="https://theconversation.com/edward-colston-statue-toppled-how-bristol-came-to-see-the-slave-trader-as-a-hero-and-philanthropist-140271">Edward Colston</a> sparked important questions about what statues are for and how they <a href="https://theconversation.com/public-sculpture-expert-why-i-welcome-the-decision-to-throw-bristols-edward-colston-statue-in-the-river-140285">contribute</a> to the public’s understanding of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/statues-are-just-the-start-the-uk-is-peppered-with-slavery-heritage-140308">past</a>. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_G1eXBi_Atk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol was toppled and thrown into the harbour in June 2020.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many statues, like Colston’s, were created in the 19th century as honorific symbols of power. Those representations of authority are now rightfully being <a href="https://theconversation.com/edward-colston-museum-display-what-happens-next-for-the-fallen-statue-162376">questioned</a>. Conversely, the creation of statues of women has the potential to acknowledge their often hidden yet important impact.</p>
<p>Across the UK, there are very few statues dedicated to named women that aren’t royal or mythological in nature. Out of more than 800 statues, <a href="https://pssauk.org/women/">only 128 are of named, non-royal women</a>. Until late 2021, there was not a single such statue in Wales. </p>
<p>This is why the <a href="https://monumentalwelshwomen.com/">ongoing campaign</a> to create a statue of Lady Rhondda matters. She was a woman who sat on the boards of 33 companies and became the first female president of the Institute of Directors in 1926. She was an outlier.</p>
<p>But looking only to Lady Rhondda’s professional success risks aligning her with those traditional forms of biography, memorials and statues that typically celebrate “great” men as exceptional individuals. </p>
<p>Very few women can fit into this mould. And this limited view of success may be one of the reasons we know so little about women’s influence throughout history. Fortunately, the work of <a href="https://www.parthianbooks.com/products/turning-the-tide">historians</a> has uncovered Lady Rhondda’s life story beyond her professional achievements. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A bright red postbox set into an old stone wall. The letters GR appear on the front of the box and it is framed with ivy and other foliage." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513941/original/file-20230307-18-nqz1y4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513941/original/file-20230307-18-nqz1y4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513941/original/file-20230307-18-nqz1y4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513941/original/file-20230307-18-nqz1y4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513941/original/file-20230307-18-nqz1y4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513941/original/file-20230307-18-nqz1y4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513941/original/file-20230307-18-nqz1y4.jpg?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">Lady Rhondda put an incendiary device inside this postbox in Newport in 1913.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sharon Thompson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Lady Rhondda was an active member of the militant wing of the suffragettes, the <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Rise_Up_Women/0hmiLpjtDHgC?hl=en&gbpv=0">Women’s Social and Political Union</a>, under Emmeline Pankhurst and was arrested for setting fire to a postbox. She travelled across Wales mobilising women (and a few men) to the cause. </p>
<p>One of her vital accomplishments was her push for further reform immediately after landmark changes to women’s rights in the early 20th century. In fact, she shattered the misguided notion that votes for women meant equality had been achieved. </p>
<p>When the <a href="https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/the-sex-disqualification-removal-act-1919/">Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919</a> permitted women to become professionals, such as solicitors, magistrates and civil servants, for the first time, it appeared that Lady Rhondda could also take up her hereditary peerage and sit in the House of Lords. But her entry was blocked by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Birkenhead. </p>
<p>Though she lost her case challenging this and was never able to sit in the Lords, she spent the next few decades campaigning for reform until her death in 1958. Her efforts influenced the passing of the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1963/48">Peerage Act 1963</a>, which enabled female hereditary peers to take their seats for the first time.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A portrait of a white woman with brown wavy hair. She is wearing a white blouse with pearls and a see through cardigan." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513965/original/file-20230307-916-glqo0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513965/original/file-20230307-916-glqo0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=996&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513965/original/file-20230307-916-glqo0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=996&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513965/original/file-20230307-916-glqo0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=996&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513965/original/file-20230307-916-glqo0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1251&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513965/original/file-20230307-916-glqo0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1251&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513965/original/file-20230307-916-glqo0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1251&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">A portrait of Lady Rhondda by Alice Mary Burton.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/womenvote/parliamentary-collections/collections-the-vote-and-after/lady-rhondda/">Palace of Westminster Collection WOA 7177</a></span>
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<p>Lady Rhondda mobilised women to push for change on other fronts too. In February 1921, she established the <a href="https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/women-in-the-law/centenary-of-the-six-point-group/5108893.article">Six Point Group</a>. This was a pressure group comprising women able to vote at that time to work towards equal rights through legal reform. As their name suggests, they targeted six issues at a time. Once they had achieved as much as they could in one area, another issue would take its place. </p>
<p>The activities of the Six Point Group were publicised in <a href="https://www.timeandtidemagazine.org/#">Time and Tide</a>, a groundbreaking feminist periodical that Lady Rhondda founded, owned and edited. It included work by literary greats such as Virginia Woolf and George Bernard Shaw. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A small, dark grey model of a woman sitting on a light wooden surface. She has a circle made up of hands around her shoulders. The wall behind her is a sage colour." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513998/original/file-20230307-20-xik4sp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513998/original/file-20230307-20-xik4sp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1055&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513998/original/file-20230307-20-xik4sp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1055&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513998/original/file-20230307-20-xik4sp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1055&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513998/original/file-20230307-20-xik4sp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1326&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513998/original/file-20230307-20-xik4sp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1326&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513998/original/file-20230307-20-xik4sp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1326&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A scale model of how the statue of Lady Rhondda by sculptor, Jane Robbins, will look.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Monumental Welsh Women</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While the Six Point Group remains a relatively unknown part of the women’s movement, it asserted an important influence. It raised awareness of issues relating to equal pay, reform of the law on child assault and the rights of housewives. It was also behind the establishment of the <a href="https://marriedwomensassociation.co.uk/">Married Women’s Association</a>, which I have <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/quiet-revolutionaries-9781509929412/">argued</a> had a profound influence on married women’s property rights throughout the 20th century.</p>
<h2>Statue</h2>
<p>The campaign for a Lady Rhondda statue was initiated by <a href="https://monumentalwelshwomen.com/">Monumental Welsh Women</a>, an organisation seeking to correct the almost complete absence of statues representing women’s achievements throughout history. Efforts to <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/statue-for-lady-rhondda?s=09">fund</a> the statue continue. </p>
<p>In contrast with traditional statues, Lady Rhondda’s will be just over 2 metres (7 ft) in height, so the public can observe its features up close. The statue’s hoop will be made from hand casts of the women involved with the project, symbolising unity.</p>
<p>If it is erected, the statue will create new opportunities for dialogue not just about why women should be commemorated, but <a href="https://theconversation.com/mary-wollstonecraft-statue-why-public-art-should-be-collective-commemorative-and-embrace-abstraction-150563">how</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200767/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sharon Thompson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Lady Rhondda was a suffragette, a business leader and an editor. A statue of her is expected to be revealed in Newport, south Wales, next year.Sharon Thompson, Reader in Law, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1910082022-11-07T19:01:42Z2022-11-07T19:01:42ZHidden women of history: Kate Cocks, the pioneering policewoman who fought crime and ran a home for babies – but was no saint<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491523/original/file-20221025-20-2serq3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C11%2C3976%2C1982&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Image sources, from left: Wakefield Press, State Library South Australia.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>In 1915, an unmarried, 40-year-old woman by the name of Fanny Kate Boadicea Cocks was hand-picked for the role of South Australia’s first policewoman. A small number of others had taken up similar roles globally, amid growing fears for the morality of young women enjoying ever more independence in a rapidly changing world. </p>
<p>But Kate Cocks, as she called herself, was the first woman in the British Empire to enjoy the same salary as her male counterparts, and to receive the same powers of arrest. Asked if she wanted six additional policewomen in her tiny office in Adelaide’s Victoria Square, she replied: “No, give me one woman. I don’t even know what I am going to do yet.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490284/original/file-20221018-23092-uqr2y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490284/original/file-20221018-23092-uqr2y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490284/original/file-20221018-23092-uqr2y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490284/original/file-20221018-23092-uqr2y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490284/original/file-20221018-23092-uqr2y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490284/original/file-20221018-23092-uqr2y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490284/original/file-20221018-23092-uqr2y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490284/original/file-20221018-23092-uqr2y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kate Cocks with the Women’s Police Office.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library South Australia/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Most of the time, Cocks walked the beat, patrolling railway stations, beaches and parklands for 60 hours a week in prim neck-to-ankle civilian outfits and one-and-a-half-inch heels. But Cocks was instrumental in solving several major crimes, too. </p>
<p>She received six honorary mentions (and ultimately an MBE) for resolving cases including the poisoning of children in a country town, abortion rackets, drug smuggling and a controversial sodomy case involving a prominent Adelaide hotelier and politician. </p>
<p>The staunch Methodist was known to hold all-night vigils with desperate mothers outside houses where their daughters were “living in sin”. She strode into opium dens to frogmarch young women out. And she regularly arrested “callous” fortune tellers “preying” on the wives and mothers of soldiers during World War I.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-kudnarto-the-kaurna-woman-who-made-south-australian-legal-history-185390">Hidden women of history: Kudnarto, the Kaurna woman who made South Australian legal history</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A childhood of drought and debt</h2>
<p>Three short biographies, drawing primarily on a series of interviews with Cocks for Adelaide’s The Advertiser after her 1935 retirement, paint the policewoman as highly empathetic – almost saintly (although she was in fact far more complex than that). They trace that empathy to a childhood of poverty, dislocation and faith. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490283/original/file-20221018-23092-y6n97j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490283/original/file-20221018-23092-y6n97j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490283/original/file-20221018-23092-y6n97j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490283/original/file-20221018-23092-y6n97j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490283/original/file-20221018-23092-y6n97j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490283/original/file-20221018-23092-y6n97j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1030&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490283/original/file-20221018-23092-y6n97j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1030&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490283/original/file-20221018-23092-y6n97j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1030&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fanny Kate Boadicea Cocks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library South Australia/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Born in Moonta in 1875 to a miner and a teacher, Cocks was two when her father swapped mining for farming in the Southern Flinders Ranges. The move was a disaster, with years of prolonged drought resulting in the family scattering across the nation to work and pay off debts. “Katie”, aged 14, was sent to finish her schooling with relatives in Victoria. </p>
<p>By 22, Cocks was a teacher and sub-matron at the Edwardstown Industrial School for neglected and delinquent children in Adelaide. As she told The Advertiser in 1936: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sheltered in a good home, I had not known anything of vice and cruelty, and I never bathed a neglected baby, or tended a sad-faced dirty child, without realising that I had been led by Providence to have my vision adjusted to see life in reality and try to alter some of its injustices.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>With the backing of mentor and State Children’s Council member <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/spence-catherine-helen-4627">Catherine Helen Spence</a>, Cocks was later appointed as the state’s first full-time juvenile court probation officer, spending nine years in the role and earning respect for her hands-on, practical approach with children and their parents.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-australia-became-a-nation-and-women-won-the-vote-78406">How Australia became a nation, and women won the vote</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A ‘natural pick’ to police immorality</h2>
<p>By 1915, prominent, pious and resolute in the view that prevention was better than cure, Cocks was the natural pick for the policing of immorality. Not that everyone was convinced of the need for women officers. </p>
<p>As Patricia Higgs and Christine Bettess write in <a href="https://southaustralianpolicehistoricalsociety.com/product/to-walk-a-fair-beat/">To Walk a Fair Beat: A History of the South Australian Women Police</a>, some senior members of the force believed women would be “quite useless”, and that women’s patrolling would be better aligned to “ladies connected with some philanthropical association”. </p>
<p>But the same voices who achieved world-leading suffrage rights for South Australian women were not to be drowned out. A progressive Labor government introduced legislation to change all existing Acts so that “every word of the masculine gender shall be construed as including the feminine gender”. </p>
<p>With the bill’s passage, “policeman” was suddenly a gender-neutral term, avoiding a vote on the necessity of women police – and indeed any debate over equal remuneration. </p>
<p>Cocks was not a saint. She was a complex character, both of her time and ahead of her time. She was a profoundly moralistic, staunch Methodist who loved a good perm and patronised Adelaide’s best tailors. </p>
<p>She found ways for young unmarried mothers to keep their babies, but did not believe in birth control. As she told The Advertiser in 1936: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In my opinion, a mother is the nearest thing to God upon this earth, because she, too, creates. That is why I am so opposed to all the abortive practices nowadays.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Though hailed in her biographies as “everybody’s friend”, she was not universally adored. Her nickname in some quarters was “Three Feet Apart”, because during night patrols she used a five-foot cane on any young couples not maintaining that distance.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491237/original/file-20221024-21-efdnki.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Book cover: Bert Edwards, King of the West End" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491237/original/file-20221024-21-efdnki.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491237/original/file-20221024-21-efdnki.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491237/original/file-20221024-21-efdnki.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491237/original/file-20221024-21-efdnki.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491237/original/file-20221024-21-efdnki.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491237/original/file-20221024-21-efdnki.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491237/original/file-20221024-21-efdnki.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&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>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the book <a href="https://www.wakefieldpress.com.au/product.php?productid=1545">Bert Edwards: King of the West End</a>, Patricia Sumerling highlights Cocks’ unprofessionalism during a controversial sodomy case. Cocks rifled through the belongings of a prime witness to find her diaries when she wasn’t home. She also interviewed the witness alone – which wasn’t against the rules, but threw the case into doubt when the young woman later claimed that Cocks inserted additional material into her witness statement. </p>
<p>In the book To Walk a Fair Beat, it’s noted that Cocks was so evasive during the initial hearing, repeatedly claiming privilege, that the magistrate described her as “a most difficult witness”. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-story-of-fook-shing-colonial-victorias-chinese-detective-94017">Friday essay: the story of Fook Shing, colonial Victoria's Chinese detective</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A complex legacy</h2>
<p>Perhaps no aspect of Cocks’ career is more complex than her legacy with the Stolen Generations and Forgotten Australians. Soon after retiring from the police force, at the age of 60, she founded a refuge that became known as the Methodist Home for Girls and Babies. </p>
<p>Around the time of her death in 1954, the home was renamed in her honour. In 2011, the Uniting Church of SA and UnitingCare Wesley Adelaide Inc (now Uniting Communities) issued an unreserved apology to mothers and children for the past practice of forced adoptions from the Kate Cocks Memorial Babies Home between 1937 and 1976.</p>
<p>In the 1987 book <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Mission_Story.html?id=A6uRAAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">Mission Story: The Story of the Adelaide Central Mission</a>, Ivor Bailey writes that during Cocks’ 15 years as superintendent at the home, 1,500 babies were cared for and 560 (or 37%) were adopted. Under her supervision, children could be left in the care of the home for up to three years while their mothers got themselves into a position where they could take their baby home. </p>
<p>Newspaper reports and records also confirm that some First Nations children, predominantly from the Northern Territory, were under her supervision. In 1941, Cocks told Adelaide’s Mail newspaper: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>There are no unwanted babies. At present I have quite 12 women who are eager to adopt little girls and five who want little boys […] but many of the girls are insistent that they keep their children.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Annual reports from the home, held by Uniting Communities, show that by 1971 – 17 years after Cocks’ death – the proportion of unmarried mothers having their babies adopted had risen to 90%. </p>
<p>When Cocks resigned from the force in 1935, Police Commissioner Brigadier-General Raymond Leane described her as “the biggest woman I have ever met”, who “never bungled anything”, despite using “the most unorthodox” methods he’d ever witnessed. </p>
<p>Kate Cocks’ legacy is complex and contradictory. But hers is a story worth telling.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191008/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lainie Anderson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Kate Cocks, South Australia’s first policewoman, was no saint – but she helped solve major crimes including the poisoning of children, abortion rackets and drug smuggling.Lainie Anderson, PhD candidate, University of South AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1826612022-05-12T20:04:38Z2022-05-12T20:04:38ZTo Australians sick of the election: this is why voting is not a waste of your time<p>Early voting has begun and election day is looming. Many of us were <a href="https://theconversation.com/this-worked-much-better-than-i-thought-why-you-need-to-watch-out-for-strategic-lies-in-the-federal-election-177449">disillusioned</a> with politics well before the campaign even began, and it’s been going for almost five weeks. </p>
<p>To the ordinary Australian, voting may appear to be ineffective and a waste of time. </p>
<p>The costs of voting - waiting in line or being hassled by volunteer campaigners - can easily seem to outweigh the benefits. It is also highly unlikely an individual vote will directly determine the behaviour of elected representatives.</p>
<p>So, you may be asking yourself, “what’s the point?”. </p>
<h2>It is your civic duty</h2>
<p>In a representative democracy like Australia, voting gives citizens the power to elect officials, appoint legitimate governments, and have their political concerns heard. </p>
<p>The purpose of voting is not always conclusively to decide the outcome of an election. In fact, the odds of doing so are next to nothing.</p>
<p>But casting your vote fulfils your civic duty. It also spares you an unnecessary <a href="https://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/non-voters.htm">A$20 fine</a> for not voting, as compulsory voting is strictly enforced in Australia.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Man casting his vote during a political election" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462603/original/file-20220512-2020-rwga4q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C0%2C5590%2C3741&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462603/original/file-20220512-2020-rwga4q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462603/original/file-20220512-2020-rwga4q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462603/original/file-20220512-2020-rwga4q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462603/original/file-20220512-2020-rwga4q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462603/original/file-20220512-2020-rwga4q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462603/original/file-20220512-2020-rwga4q.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">Australia is a representative democracy in which the government is elected by and for the people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alexandru Nika/Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>You could be in a marginal seat</h2>
<p>Candidates in marginal seats need every vote they can get. </p>
<p>Marginal seats, as opposed to safe seats, are those where the successful candidate beat their closest opponent by winning no more than 6% of the formal vote at the last election. </p>
<p>That means the electorate would need to convince this handful of voters to change hands this time around. That also means marginal seats could see a party win or lose the election.</p>
<p>For example, the 2019 election saw <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/federal/2019/guide/key-seats">electorates</a> with margins of less than 1% - including Gilmore, Corangamite, Herbert, Ford, Capricornia, and Cowan - swayed by hundreds of votes. </p>
<p>According to the ABC’S <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/federal/2022/guide/pendulum">2022 election pendulum</a> there are almost 50 seats (21 Coalition-held, 26 Labor and two independent) on a margin of 6% or less.</p>
<h2>Even if your candidate doesn’t win, your opinion is noted</h2>
<p>But even if you don’t live in a marginal seat, your vote could still be influential. </p>
<p>In the upcoming federal election, many traditionally safe Liberal seats are being challenged by teal independents dissatisfied with the Coalition’s policies on key issues like climate change. </p>
<p>From previous elections, we know many voters are too. In the millennial-dominated Victorian electorate of Kooyong, for example, every vote counts as Liberal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg fights hard to hold his seat against independent Monique Ryan. </p>
<p>Voting also allows ordinary Australians to express their views and opinions - sometimes convincing others to vote similarly. Social network research suggest that voters are <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/0004-5608.00183?casa_token=VmKqIhPuwjAAAAAA:4JxyKn9OZCpetmfDbzuU7pNrWXB33RLoD8he67XyakvyuyZr070MO5Y_TPdCZCGKquEe9kQeYV_7Ez7_rA">influenced</a> by events and people around them. They can change their vote based on political discussions with family or friends. </p>
<h2>Don’t forget the Senate</h2>
<p>Importantly, the <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/About_the_Senate">Senate</a> also provides an avenue to make your voice heard.</p>
<p>The upper house - comprising 76 senators - is a powerful body responsible for checking and reviewing the elected government. The Senate employs a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10361149950272?casa_token=_GX9skN0cxcAAAAA:MbAqZDbBd8VGt6JXkwxF6xvJmvc86uP2ReRmyBI1layJcJ2DYX3jK5TUMaGRxPYSddF2vfezlhMImLc">proportional representation voting system</a> which allows greater scope for independents and smaller-party candidates to be elected. </p>
<p>This system also enables a diverse range of issues across multiple states and territories to be included in the political agenda. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/race-for-the-senate-could-labor-and-the-greens-gain-control-181350">Race for the Senate: could Labor and the Greens gain control?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>We are lucky to vote</h2>
<p>Many voters may not appreciate that voting is not an automatic right, but one for which Australian suffragists had to fight and campaign. </p>
<p>Some ancient scholars like Socrates didn’t like the idea of non-expert citizens – let alone women or young people – shaping the functioning of government. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A stamp from 1994 commemorating the efforts of Australian 'suffragettes'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462608/original/file-20220512-16-rwga4q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462608/original/file-20220512-16-rwga4q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462608/original/file-20220512-16-rwga4q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462608/original/file-20220512-16-rwga4q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462608/original/file-20220512-16-rwga4q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462608/original/file-20220512-16-rwga4q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462608/original/file-20220512-16-rwga4q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australian ‘suffragettes’ led the charge for female enfranchisement through legislation passed in South Australia in 1895.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Property-owning men were <a href="https://australianpolitics.com/voting/features/history-of-the-voting-franchise">first to obtain the vote</a> in 1843, while <a href="https://officeforwomen.sa.gov.au/womens-policy/125th-anniversary-of-suffrage/the-south-australian-womens-suffrage-campaign">women were only granted a say</a> in South Australian state elections from 1895.</p>
<p>In 1924, compulsory voting was introduced for eligible citizens over 21 years of age to improve the low rates of voter turnout across the newly federated Australia. Shamefully, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were only granted the right to vote in 1962.</p>
<p>In 1973, the minimum voting age was lowered to 18 years.</p>
<h2>It’s been a long campaign, but …</h2>
<p>Mounting <a href="https://theconversation.com/this-worked-much-better-than-i-thought-why-you-need-to-watch-out-for-strategic-lies-in-the-federal-election-177449">political distrust</a> and pandemic fatigue may lead many Australians to view their vote as irrelevant. Those voting for the first time (there are more than 400,000 in 2022) may find navigating complex policy issues and candidate promises a challenge.</p>
<p>However, it is crucial all voters show up to the ballot box to ensure the issues of most concern to them make it onto the political agenda. This includes housing affordability, education costs, and climate change. </p>
<p>Just as little drops make a mighty ocean, your individual vote does contribute to a stronger democracy.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-will-young-australians-do-with-their-vote-are-we-about-to-see-a-youthquake-180883">What will young Australians do with their vote – are we about to see a 'youthquake'?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182661/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Intifar Chowdhury does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Voting is not just about getting a sausage sandwich and avoiding a fine. There are many reasons - historical, political and personal - to vote on or before May 21.Intifar Chowdhury, Associate lecturer, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1725812021-12-22T12:46:56Z2021-12-22T12:46:56ZThe radical history of scrapbooks – and why activists still use them today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/438423/original/file-20211220-21-gga1pc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=19%2C25%2C4230%2C2796&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">(Alice) Maud Arncliffe Sennett, English actress and suffragette, arrested four times for her activism.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/old-postcards-open-empty-book-vintage-115549870">Shutterstock/Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>You might think of scrapbooks as nothing more than a relic from the Victorian period, or an activity from your own childhood, but you would be wrong – because scrapbooking has a long and rich history connected with activism.</p>
<p>Indeed, in the run-up to the recent COP26 climate conference, the UK’s <a href="https://www.thewi.org.uk/about-us">largest women’s organisation</a>, the Women’s Institute (WI), asked for contributions to its “<a href="https://www.facebook.com/thewi/photos/a.185789386138/10158504954166139/?type=3&source=48">climate scrapbook</a>”. The <a href="https://mywi.thewi.org.uk/public-affairs-and-campaigns/current-campaigns/climate-change/the-whole-story-the-wis-campaign-for-cop26/climate-scrapbook">public affairs</a> team invited anyone, members and non-members alike, to use their “knowledge, experience, and creativity” to respond to a short but powerful question – “why does the UK government need to make COP26 a success?”</p>
<p>Answers could take various forms: a short piece of writing, a photograph capturing how climate change had impacted their local area, a drawing, painting, or piece of embroidery. These contributions would be photographed and uploaded to a digital scrapbook for WI members to browse and consider. A few copies would be printed and delivered to key government ministers, using a chorus of voices to call for greater urgency in dealing with the climate crisis.</p>
<p>It may surprise that the WI chose a scrapbook over a more conventional report or letter as the way to deliver its call to action. Or maybe the scrapbook was the perfect choice for an organisation that has celebrated women’s craft skills since <a href="https://www.thewi.org.uk/about-us">it was founded</a> in 1915. Either way, it shows how, for many communities, scrapbooking is still very much connected with activism.</p>
<h2>Write with scissors</h2>
<p>Scrapbooks are a democratic form of archiving, available to anyone who can buy (or make) a scrapbook, scissors and glue. They are, to use English professor Ellen Gruber Garvey’s apt phrase, a way for activists to “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/writing-with-scissors-9780199927692?cc=gb&lang=en&">write with scissors</a>”, by rescuing items such as newspaper clippings, photographs, letters, badges – anything at all to chart their activist lives.</p>
<p>A scrapbook is a blank canvas upon which any activist can paint their story. It’s for this reason that campaigners have used this genre to document their worlds. Activists from all shades of the campaigning spectrum have used scrapbooks to capture their activist energies: whether it be recording <a href="https://phm.org.uk/collections-display/?irn=19965">hunger marches</a>, <a href="https://www.bishopsgate.org.uk/archives/search-the-online-catalogue">strikes</a>, <a href="https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/library/special/peroni">fascist political activity</a>, or the work of <a href="https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/N15275967">women’s peace camps</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Scrapbooks." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/438469/original/file-20211220-19-xu0zxu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/438469/original/file-20211220-19-xu0zxu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438469/original/file-20211220-19-xu0zxu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438469/original/file-20211220-19-xu0zxu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438469/original/file-20211220-19-xu0zxu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438469/original/file-20211220-19-xu0zxu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438469/original/file-20211220-19-xu0zxu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Scrapbooks from the past, (author’s own collection).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Throughout history, many activists have used scrapbooks as a powerful act of protest. Unlike published memoirs or autobiographies, there is something intimate and tactile in the process of both compiling and reading an activist’s scrapbook. Sometimes these scrapbooks are private volumes. Other times, campaigners presented scrapbooks <a href="https://archives.lse.ac.uk/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=10/02&pos=119">as gifts</a> to each other, or used them to speak to a larger, public audience.</p>
<p>This was the case for (Alice) Maud Mary Arncliffe Sennett (1862-1936), who was not only a suffrage campaigner but <a href="https://blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2018/02/21/maud-arncliff-sennett-a-militant-suffragette/">an actress</a> and businesswoman. She joined fellow suffrage campaigners organising marches, writing to newspapers, smashing windows, and forming <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/womenvote/case-studies-women-parliament/suffragettes-in-trousers/men-from-the-north/">her own organisation</a>, the Northern Men’s Federation for Women’s Suffrage, after suffragette <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/davison_emily.shtml">Emily Davison</a> famously collided with a horse at the Epsom race course in June 1913. She also kept 37 scrapbooks where she documented her activist life on her own terms in rich, vibrant detail.</p>
<h2>A scrapbooking suffragette</h2>
<p>The pages of <a href="https://blogs.bl.uk/untoldlives/2020/12/suffrage-scrapbooks-forgotten-histories-of-political-activism-.html">Sennett’s scrapbooks</a> were somewhere for her to collate all her various readings on the suffragette movement sourced from pamphlets, newsletters and newspapers. Newspaper clippings record her window-smashing campaigns in 1919, while a police telegram chronicles the date of her court hearing, and letters share her joy at gaining the vote in 1918. Her 37-volume scrapbook collection was somewhere for her to talk back to writers, responding with her own views in the margins.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/438463/original/file-20211220-48933-d3c468.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Force feeding a suffragette." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/438463/original/file-20211220-48933-d3c468.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/438463/original/file-20211220-48933-d3c468.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438463/original/file-20211220-48933-d3c468.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438463/original/file-20211220-48933-d3c468.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438463/original/file-20211220-48933-d3c468.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438463/original/file-20211220-48933-d3c468.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/438463/original/file-20211220-48933-d3c468.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&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 suffragette on hunger strike in the UK being force-fed with a nasal tube in Holloway Prison, 1909.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maud_Arncliffe_Sennett#/media/File:Force-feeding_(suffragettes).jpeg">Wikicommons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The pages of her scrapbooks are like an emotional rollercoaster, with her frenetic layering of material visually presenting her activist world. Her strident, angry outbursts compel you to turn the next page, eager to see who or what is the subject of her next outburst. Alongside newspaper clippings, Sennett scrapbooked on her frustrations and loneliness, ranting against the Pankhurst family for excluding her from a large gathering of suffrage campaigners on Women’s Sunday in June 1908. In this way, activists’ scrapbooks are not just celebratory archives, but spaces that capture the messy, complicated lived experience of campaigning and political activism.</p>
<p>Nearly a century later, as a researcher sitting in the Reading Rooms of the British Library, I can request her scrapbooks, touch the newspapers Sennett read and feel the objects that meant something to her as a suffrage campaigner. Her scrapbooks are like time capsules, transporting us back to her busy, complex campaigning life. </p>
<p>While scrapbooking might not be the first thing that springs to mind when you think of activism, it has been a persistent way in which activists have amplified and archived their voices for the past, present and future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172581/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cherish Watton receives funding from The Wolfson Foundation. </span></em></p>A scrapbook is a blank canvas upon which any activist can paint their story.Cherish Watton, PhD Candidate in British Modern History, University of CambridgeLicensed 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/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/1345172020-06-08T12:25:34Z2020-06-08T12:25:34Z19 facts about the 19th Amendment on its 100th anniversary<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/337968/original/file-20200527-20219-pzyofi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=185%2C1149%2C7971%2C4165&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women portraying suffragettes walk with the Pasadena Celebrates 2020 float at the 131st Rose Parade in Pasadena, California, Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2020. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Rose-Parade/9e774400ab8f45be85d0a17bb0df94c8/13/0">AP Photo/Michael Owen Baker</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>One hundred years ago, the 19th Amendment enfranchised millions of women across the United States following a seven-decade campaign. The struggle to expand voting rights to women resonates today as the country continues to debate who should vote and how. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://cattcenter.iastate.edu/directory/karen-m-kedrowski/">scholars</a> <a href="https://cattcenter.iastate.edu/directory/dianne-bystrom/">of</a> <a href="https://cattcenter.iastate.edu/2019/01/14/introduction-from-director-karen-kedrowski/">civic engagement</a> and <a href="https://products.abc-clio.com/abc-cliocorporate/product.aspx?pc=A4580C">women’s suffrage</a>, we have compiled “19 Things to Know” about this landmark amendment. Together they reveal the strength and determination of the suffrage movement as it battled for this fundamental right of citizenship.</p>
<p><strong>1.</strong>
Many early <a href="https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/not-for-ourselves-alone/abolition-suffrage">suffragists were also abolitionists</a>. They include <a href="https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14850.html">Lucretia Mott</a>, <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/44gqy8bm9780252071737.html">Elizabeth Cady Stanton</a>, <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20439/20439-h/20439-h.htm">Susan B. Anthony</a>, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/lucy-stone-9780199778393?cc=us&lang=en&">Lucy Stone</a>, <a href="https://products.abc-clio.com/abc-cliocorporate/product.aspx?pc=B6198C">Sojourner Truth</a>, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00064246.1973.11760855">Frederick Douglass</a> and <a href="https://products.abc-clio.com/abc-cliocorporate/product.aspx?pc=B4127C">Harriet Tubman</a>. </p>
<p><strong>2.</strong>
The first women’s rights convention took place in <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/flexing-feminine-muscles-strategies-and-conflicts.htm">Seneca Falls, New York</a>, on July 19-20, 1848. Of the 11 resolutions demanding equality – in the workplace, family and education, for example – only women’s right to vote drew opposition before it was approved. Although abolitionists had called for women’s voting rights before 1848, suffragists later viewed the convention as launching the U.S. women’s suffrage movement. </p>
<p><strong>3.</strong>
In 1869 the movement <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/comrades-in-conflict.htm">split</a> over disagreements about the <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-xv">15th Amendment</a>, which granted voting rights to African American men but not women.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/national-woman-suffrage-association-3530492">National Woman Suffrage Association</a> lobbied for a federal amendment, while the <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/american-woman-suffrage-association-3530477">American Woman Suffrage Association</a> pursued a state-by-state strategy. Recognizing that a divided movement was hurting their success, the groups merged in 1890 as the <a href="https://www.crusadeforthevote.org/nawsa-united">National American Woman Suffrage Association</a>, or NAWSA. </p>
<p><strong>4.</strong>
Suffrage was a mass movement with diverse voices. They included the <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/national-association-of-colored-women-45392">National Association of Colored Women</a>, the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/womans-christian-temperance-union">Woman’s Christian Temperance Union</a>, <a href="https://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=9670&context=annals-of-iowa">farmers’ organizations</a> and the <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/womens-trade-union-league-wtul-3530838">Women’s Trade Union League</a>. Most of these organizations became active in suffrage after the creation of NAWSA. </p>
<p><strong>5.</strong>
Women’s suffrage depended on male supporters, among them state legislators and members of Congress. Only men could vote in state referenda to extend the vote to women. Men did so in <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814757222/how-the-vote-was-won/">Colorado</a>, <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501705557/women-will-vote/#bookTabs=1">New York</a> and <a href="https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=SU002">Oklahoma</a>. Meanwhile, <a href="https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/0399.htm">thousands of women</a> opposed suffrage. They thought it would undermine women’s influence in the home and family. </p>
<p><strong>6.</strong>
Several political and social movements during the <a href="http://www.crusadeforthevote.org/progressive-era-reformers">Progressive Era</a>, 1890-1920, prioritized suffrage. Women realized they needed voting rights to reform child labor laws, promote public health, and prohibit alcohol and prostitution. These suffragists framed their roles, as wives and mothers, as political virtues to advance a more moral government. </p>
<p><strong>7.</strong>
Besides the leadership provided by the national women’s suffrage associations, hundreds of local and state organizations engaged thousands of volunteers as well. Some of the earliest state associations were organized in <a href="https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/women-s-suffrage/14524">Kansas</a> in 1867, <a href="http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/exhibits/suffrage/IAWomenSuffrage.pdf">Iowa</a> in 1870 and <a href="https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/timeline/suffrage.htm">Washington state</a> in 1871. </p>
<p><strong>8.</strong>
African American women reformers saw suffrage as an important goal. They began forming their own clubs in the 1880s and founded the <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/national-association-of-colored-women-45392">National Association of Colored Women</a> in 1896. Unlike predominantly white suffrage organizations, the NACW called for other reforms to address the economic, educational and social welfare of African American women and children, such as job training programs, fair wages and child care. </p>
<p><strong>9.</strong>
Millions of women enjoyed the right to vote before the 19th Amendment was ratified. Women had full voting rights in 15 states and the Alaska territory, and limited suffrage, including voting in presidential elections, in another 12 states <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/timeline/html/cw08_12159.html">before 1920</a>. Their influence helped build momentum for the 19th Amendment. </p>
<p><strong>10.</strong>
In 1913 <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/alice-paul">Alice Paul</a> organized NAWSA’s first women’s suffrage <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/woman-suffrage-procession1913.htm">parade</a> in Washington, D.C. The police failed to provide the suffragists with adequate protection, and spectators attacked the marchers. Paul formed a rival suffrage organization, the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/collections/women-of-protest/articles-and-essays/historical-overview-of-the-national-womans-party/">National Woman’s Party</a>, in 1916.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alice Paul, 1920, celebrating the passage of the 19th Amendment.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/alice-paul-1920-celebrating-the-passage-of-the-19th-news-photo/646458988?adppopup=true">Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>11.</strong>
In a speech titled “<a href="https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/2017/03/21/the-crisis-sept-7-1916/">The Crisis</a>” at NAWSA’s 1916 convention, president <a href="https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/directory/carrie-chapman-catt/">Carrie Chapman Catt</a> outlined her “Winning Plan” to focus efforts on a federal amendment while encouraging women to work in their states for the level of suffrage that could be achieved. </p>
<p><strong>12.</strong>
In 1916 <a href="https://upcolorado.com/university-press-of-colorado/item/1790-jeannette-rankin">Jeannette Rankin</a>, a Republican from Montana, became the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress. Lawmakers greeted her with a <a href="https://history.house.gov/People/Listing/R/RANKIN,-Jeannette-(R000055)/">standing ovation</a> when she was introduced in the House of Representatives. A committed suffragist, Rankin voted for the 19th Amendment in 1918. </p>
<p><strong>13.</strong>
In 1917 the National Woman’s Party organized <a href="https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/snapshot/alice-paul-and-suffragists-were-first-picket-white-house">protests</a> outside the White House to pressure President Woodrow Wilson to support women’s suffrage. For several months, suffragists protested in silence six days a week. Wilson initially <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/president-woodrow-wilson-picketed-by-women-suffragists">tolerated</a> the demonstrations but later became embarrassed by them. </p>
<p><strong>14.</strong>
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/11/10/night-of-terror-the-suffragists-who-were-beaten-and-tortured-for-seeking-the-vote/">Thirty-three suffragists</a> picketing outside the White House on Nov. 10, 1917, were arrested and jailed. They were fed maggot-infested food, beaten and tortured. The suffragists protested with a hunger strike and were <a href="https://depts.washington.edu/moves/NWP_project_ch3.shtml">brutally force-fed</a>. They were released after the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/11/10/night-of-terror-the-suffragists-who-were-beaten-and-tortured-for-seeking-the-vote/">Washington, D.C. Court of Appeals</a> declared their arrests unconstitutional. </p>
<p><strong>15.</strong>
The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/09/15/carly-fiorinas-claim-that-the-gop-is-the-party-of-womens-suffrage/">Republican Party</a> was viewed as more supportive of women’s suffrage than Democrats until 1916, when both parties publicly supported state suffrage.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/People/Women/Part3_TheLastTrench.htm">Congress approved the 19th Amendment</a> in 1919 with bipartisan support: 83% percent of Republicans in the House and 82% in the Senate, and 53% of Democrats in the House and 54% in the Senate. Some Democrats from the South opposed voting rights for African American women.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Carrie Chapman Catt, women’s suffrage leader and advocate for world peace, in the mid 1910s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/mrs-carrie-chapman-catt-womens-suffrage-leader-and-advocate-news-photo/538789089?adppopup=true">PhotoQuest/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>16.</strong>
Carrie Chapman Catt founded the <a href="https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/2018/02/26/political-parties-and-women-voters-feb-14-1920/">League of Women Voters</a> on Feb. 14, 1920, at the NAWSA convention. <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/tennessee-women-s-history.htm">Tennessee</a> became the final state needed to ratify the 19th Amendment six months later.</p>
<p><strong>17.</strong>
Some 500,000 African American women could vote in states where their male counterparts were enfranchised, according to the <a href="https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/decade.1920.html">1920 U.S. Census</a>. But in the South, African American men and women remained disenfranchised through state-imposed literacy tests, poll taxes and violence. </p>
<p>African American women continued the fight for voting rights. In 1920 <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/mary-mcleod-bethune">Mary McLeod Bethune</a> of Florida led voter registration drives while risking racist attacks. <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/fannie-lou-hamer">Fannie Lou Hamer</a> of Mississippi organized African American voter registration efforts in the South in the early 1960s. The <a href="https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/voting-rights-1965">Voting Rights Act</a> of 1965 outlawed discriminatory voting barriers adopted in many Southern states after the Civil War. </p>
<p><strong>18.</strong>
Some 10 million women <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/century-of-votes-for-women/773D75DD40FA858F0412D8F2EE322B5C">voted in 1920</a>, a turnout rate of 36%, compared to 68% for men. Women voter turnout rates have gradually increased and exceeded male turnout rates since 1980, when 61.9% of women voted compared to 61.5% of men. <a href="https://cawp.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/resources/genderdiff.pdf">In 2016</a>, 63.3% of women voted compared to 59.3% of men. </p>
<p><strong>19.</strong>
In January <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/15/us/era-virginia-vote.html">Virginia</a> became the 38th state to ratify the <a href="https://www.equalrightsamendment.org/">Equal Rights Amendment</a>, following Nevada, in 2017; and Illinois, in 2018. The ERA was first introduced to Congress in 1923, approved in 1972 and ratified by 35 out of constitutionally required 38 states by 1974. </p>
<p>The recent resurgence of women’s activism has refocused attention on gender equality issues, including the ERA, <a href="https://www.equalrightsamendment.org/why">which supporters argue is needed</a> to protect women’s rights. Although the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/02/13/805647054/house-votes-to-revive-equal-rights-amendment-removing-ratification-deadline">U.S. House voted</a> in February to remove the original deadline set by Congress and pave the way for its final approval, <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/equal-rights-amendment-explained">no action is expected in the Senate this year</a>.</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/134517/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dianne Bystrom is affiliated with the League of Women Voters, a non-partisan, non-profit, political organization. She currently serves as the co-president of the League of Women Voters of Nebraska (2019-2021). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karen M. Kedrowski received funding from Humanities Iowa and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is also a member of the League of Women Voters. </span></em></p>On the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, women’s historic struggles to vote continue to resonate as the country debates who should vote and how.Dianne Bystrom, Former Director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics, Iowa State UniversityKaren M. Kedrowski, Director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center, Iowa State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1182432019-09-09T11:33:42Z2019-09-09T11:33:42ZThe hidden story of two African-American women looking out from the pages of a 19th-century book<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291159/original/file-20190905-175673-2jthxl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mary E. Harper (left) and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (right), whose two photos in 'Atlanta Offering' are unusual. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://rose.library.emory.edu/">Unidentified Artist, 1895, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, & Rare Book Library, Emory University</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>We are <a href="https://npg.si.edu/staff/kate-lemay">two</a> <a href="https://history.jhu.edu/directory/martha-jones/">historians</a> whose work focuses on American art and on how African Americans have shaped the story of American democracy.</p>
<p>Our two subject areas converged recently when one of us had a question, and the other helped her research the answer. </p>
<p>Kate was in the midst of organizing the National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition, “<a href="https://npg.si.edu/exhibition/votes-for-women">Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence</a>,” commemorating the more than 80-year movement for women to obtain the right to vote. This exhibition is part of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative, <a href="https://womenshistory.si.edu/">Because of Her Story</a>. </p>
<p>While doing her research, Kate encountered a character in history whose story she didn’t know, but who she anticipated would be important to the history the museum wanted to tell. </p>
<p>Who was Mary E. Harper? That’s the question Kate set out to answer. </p>
<h2>Kate’s story</h2>
<p>In curating the exhibit on the history of women’s voting, it became clear to me that the task at hand was not only to celebrate voting, its history and the ratification of <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendments/amendment-xix">the 19th Amendment</a>, but to expand the ways in which women are written into American history as major players, not as footnotes.</p>
<p>But how could we show that history? </p>
<p>Objects. That’s what we use in museums to shed light on people’s lives.</p>
<p>Photographic portraits, and genre paintings depicting scenes of everyday life, as well as items from history like posters, drawings and maps, help us learn about and understand the stories of the countless women who lobbied to include women’s voting rights in their state constitutions. </p>
<p>These women, along with those who organized and led the lobbying of states to <a href="https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=63">ratify the 19th Amendment</a>, which established women’s right to vote, have been <a href="https://www.neh.gov/article/forgotten-suffragists">left largely outside of American historical accounts</a>. </p>
<p>So I worked to make sure “Votes for Women” included portraits of women whose biographies are less well known. </p>
<p>And in my search for objects that would represent their lives, I came across a few surprises. </p>
<p>I was looking for portraits that were made from life – so a product of a personal meeting – and from the specific period of the suffragist’s life. </p>
<p>I very much wanted to feature the African American lecturer, novelist and poet <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-daughters-and-granddaughters-former-slaves-secured-voting-rights-all-180971660/">Frances Ellen Watkins Harper</a> (1825-1911), because of her activism in the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/American-Equal-Rights-Association">American Equal Rights Association</a>, the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Womans-Christian-Temperance-Union">Woman’s Christian Temperance Union</a> and other women’s groups affiliated with churches. </p>
<p>One <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-daughters-and-granddaughters-former-slaves-secured-voting-rights-all-180971660/">quote of hers</a> provides a glimpse of her ideals: “We are all bound up in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse of its own soul.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291165/original/file-20190905-175714-c0vub4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291165/original/file-20190905-175714-c0vub4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291165/original/file-20190905-175714-c0vub4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=160&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291165/original/file-20190905-175714-c0vub4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=160&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291165/original/file-20190905-175714-c0vub4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=160&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291165/original/file-20190905-175714-c0vub4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=201&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291165/original/file-20190905-175714-c0vub4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=201&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291165/original/file-20190905-175714-c0vub4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=201&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Newspaper clippings from 1871 praising Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s public speaking. Click to enlarge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6625113/frances_ellen_watkins_harper/">Newspapers.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I found the perfect object to represent her in the collections of Emory University. It was a first edition of <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=emu.010002585925">“Atlanta Offering</a>,” a book of Harper’s poetry published in 1895 in Philadelphia. An Emory archivist forwarded me a digital version of it, demonstrating its pristine condition. </p>
<p>Books like these often have a frontispiece, a picture or portrait of the author or the book’s subject in the opening pages, usually facing the title page of the book. </p>
<p>This book featured <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=emu.010002585925;view=1up;seq=9">a frontispiece of Harper</a> wearing a suit – a floor-length skirt and a sleeveless bodice with covered buttons down its front. Underneath the bodice, her velvet shirtwaist ends in cuffs with ruffles around her wrists, and at her neck is tied a ribbon. A bit of white ruffle at her neck suggests a shirtwaist worn under the velvet. </p>
<p>These details in costume signify a refined woman, while Harper’s gaze looking directly at the camera suggests great confidence. </p>
<p>When the book arrived and I opened it pages to display Harper, I saw something unusual. There was not just one portrait at the front of the volume – there were two. </p>
<p>I was surprised to see this second frontispiece because I had been looking at a digital version of the book and hadn’t been able to see both pages at once. The second portrait was a woman named <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=emu.010002585925;view=1up;seq=8">Mary E. Harper</a>. Who was this second woman?</p>
<p>I could see by examining the details of her costume that Mary was as dignified as Frances. But why would her portrait be featured so prominently in this work of poetry, and what meaning can we take away from this publication choice?</p>
<p>To answer my questions, I consulted with <a href="https://history.jhu.edu/directory/martha-jones/">Martha S. Jones</a>, an expert on Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.</p>
<p><iframe id="tc-infographic-433" class="tc-infographic" height="400px" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/infographics/433/c719a72d4622da95557504f1ac768ec71c282845/site/index.html" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Martha’s story</h2>
<p>I was as intrigued as curator Kate Clarke Lemay when I saw that the Frances Ellen Watkins Harper volume, “Atlanta Offering,” included not one but two portraits. </p>
<p>My intrigue ran deep because I am familiar with this particular portrait of Frances; it circulates widely and even illustrates my first book, <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807858455/all-bound-up-together/">“All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture</a>,” the title of which borrows from one of her speeches.</p>
<p>Increasingly, researchers like me are using materials that have been digitized – including books like “Atlanta Offering.” Clicking through images on a laptop risks missing interesting and important details. This was certainly true for me and helps explain how I had managed to overlook Mary E. Harper.</p>
<p>Overlooking Mary E. Harper’s portrait is an apt metaphor for how she has been overlooked in historical studies. </p>
<p>What I found when I went searching in archival material was that Mary is Frances’ daughter. She is largely absent from an extensive body of scholarship on her mother, who was <a href="http://jtoaa.common-place.org/welcome-to-just-teach-one-african-american/frances-ellen-watkins-harpers-forest-leaves-introduction/">a talented public speaker and prolific writer</a>. Still, there is one thing that scholars agree on: Frances was devoted to Mary. </p>
<p>Mary was just an infant when her father, Fenton Harper, died, leaving their Ohio household destitute. The widowed Frances left Fenton’s three children from a prior marriage in the custody of relatives, but she kept Mary with her and headed back east to rebuilt her life and her career. </p>
<p>We know little about Mary’s early education. It is likely she attended schools in Baltimore and Philadelphia. By the 1880s, in her teens, Mary followed in her mother’s path and enrolled in Philadelphia’s <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=lJJkAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA66&lpg=PA66&dq=Philadelphia+National+School+of+Elocution+and+Oratory.&source=bl&ots=9z5nb12dJl&sig=ACfU3U2Jq8pUNHE2ze70H52ar5Fh-b7qzg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjV9NqumrXkAhXsct8KHYXsDww4ChDoATABegQICBAB#v=onepage&q=Philadelphia%20National%20School%20of%20Elocution%20and%20Oratory.&f=false">National School of Elocution and Oratory</a>. </p>
<p>Graduating in 1884, Mary was poised to begin a career that turned on her capacity to deliver eloquent, polished and entertaining readings. Her first performances were in Philadelphia’s private parlors and a home for the elderly. But Mary was ambitious, and she set out to build a reputation that would win her audiences across the country. </p>
<p>Mary’s career did not merely mirror that of her mother, Frances, who had built her style and reputation on the demanding and unorthodox terrain of the <a href="http://common-place.org/book/the-other-frances-ellen-watkins-harper/">anti-slavery lecture circuit</a>. Mary’s presentations featured poetry and literature, and to a lesser degree temperance, not politics. Sometimes she <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=IwSiDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT108&lpg=PT108&dq=%22mary+e.+harper%22+african+american+musical+troupes&source=bl&ots=zEgZwaM4G_&sig=ACfU3U0awn6DsHyreCc1tiOjU-XRpXO7Jg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiFgNzom7XkAhWFmuAKHWz_A6QQ6AEwAHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22mary%20e.%20harper%22%20african%20american%20musical%20troupes&f=false">performed with musical troupes</a>. </p>
<p>Throughout, she carefully built a repertoire that maintained her appeal to respectable, middle-class and Christian audiences. By the late 1880s, <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/Women_of_distinction.djvu/page400-2469px-Women_of_distinction.djvu.jpg">she had broken through</a>. Newspapers report her traversing the country on tours that took her west to Ohio, Missouri and Wisconsin, north to Massachusetts, and south to Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. </p>
<p>The precise end of Mary’s life has eluded me. We know that she died in 1908, three years before her mother. <a href="https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/54552876/mary-frances-harper">The two are buried</a> side by side in a Delaware County, Pennsylvania cemetery. </p>
<p>I’d like to think that in 1895 Frances Ellen Watkins Harper made the extra effort to include Mary’s portrait alongside her own just so that curator Kate Clarke Lemay would find it. Frances would be pleased, I am certain, to know that her small tribute to a beloved and gifted daughter has inspired us to recover some of Mary’s remarkable life.</p>
<p>
<section class="inline-content">
<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263202/original/file-20190311-86690-1as1aac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=128&h=128&fit=crop&dpr=1">
<div>
<header>Kate Clarke Lemay is the author of:</header>
<p><a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/17233.html">Votes for Women:
A Portrait of Persistence</a></p>
<footer>Princeton University Press provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.</footer>
</div>
</section>
</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118243/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Clarke Lemay works for the Smithsonian Institution. She receives funding from the Smithsonian Institution.
Princeton University Press provides funding as a member of The Conversation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martha S. Jones 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 19th-century volume contained a mystery for two historians who combined their knowledge to tell the story of the women and their contributions to American democracy.Kate Clarke Lemay, Historian, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian InstitutionMartha S. Jones, Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and Professor of History, Johns Hopkins UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1165682019-05-17T10:44:32Z2019-05-17T10:44:32ZSame-sex couples have been in American politics way longer than the Buttigiegs have been married<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272580/original/file-20190503-103075-6tfwz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sophonisba Breckinridge and Edith Abbott</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://photoarchive.lib.uchicago.edu/db.xqy?one=apf1-00008.xml">University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-00008, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library/Bernard Hoffman, photographer</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since openly gay South Bend, Indiana, Mayor <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/us/politics/pete-buttigieg-announcement.html">Pete Buttigieg announced his bid for the presidency</a>, news outlets have been full of <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/06/politics/chasten-buttigieg-on-the-trail/index.html">stories about Buttigieg and his husband</a>. </p>
<p>By highlighting the novelty of an out presidential candidate, such stories obscure the long participation of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/style/lgbtq-gender-language.html">LGBTQ</a> people in American politics. </p>
<p>U.S. history is full of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Partner-Molly-Dewson-Feminism-Politics/dp/0300046219">examples</a> of politically active people in same-sex relationships. As I discuss in <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/82kcs3yk9780252042676.html">my forthcoming book</a>, Edith Abbott and Sophonisba Breckinridge were one such couple. </p>
<h2>‘A life partnership’</h2>
<p>Breckinridge and Abbott met in 1903 at the <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jah/article-abstract/78/1/357/758012?redirectedFrom=fulltext">University of Chicago</a>, one of the first U.S. universities to admit women to graduate programs. </p>
<p>Breckinridge earned her doctorate in political science in 1901 and a law degree in 1904; Abbott completed her doctorate in political economy in 1905. </p>
<p>In 1908, the two women joined forces at the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, where they became <a href="https://www.academia.edu/27628670/Gender_and_Professionalization_in_the_Origins_of_the_U.S._Welfare_State_The_Careers_of_Sophonisba_Breckinridge_and_Edith_Abbott_1890_1935">pioneers in the new profession of social work</a>. At the same time, they formed a <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0886109912437496?journalCode=affa&">close, personal relationship</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274992/original/file-20190516-69169-rns7yw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274992/original/file-20190516-69169-rns7yw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274992/original/file-20190516-69169-rns7yw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274992/original/file-20190516-69169-rns7yw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274992/original/file-20190516-69169-rns7yw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274992/original/file-20190516-69169-rns7yw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274992/original/file-20190516-69169-rns7yw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274992/original/file-20190516-69169-rns7yw.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">Sophonisba Breckinridge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2014686759/">George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Looking back on that pivotal period in their lives and careers, <a href="https://swk305.community.uaf.edu/files/2013/06/3againsttime.pdf">a former student mused</a>: “I wonder if they foresaw that they were starting a life partnership that would enrich their personal lives and make their professional careers so intertwined that they would always be thought of together.” </p>
<h2>Advocates for public welfare</h2>
<p>For 40 years, Abbott and Breckinridge conducted social science research and promoted social welfare policy at both the state and the national level. </p>
<p>In Illinois, they used <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/012285645">research on Chicago’s Juvenile Court</a> to promote the nation’s first <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Gender-Politics-Welfare-Reform-1997-06-21/dp/B01F9GAAD6">“mothers’ pension”</a> program. Established in 1910, the program provided financial support for single mothers and their children. </p>
<p>In 1920, they co-founded the <a href="https://ssa.uchicago.edu/history">University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration</a>, the nation’s first social work program affiliated with a research university. </p>
<p>Working closely with the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Right-Childhood-Childrens-Welfare-1912-46/dp/0252065778/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=a+right+to+childhood&qid=1557272721&s=gateway&sr=8-1">U.S. Children’s Bureau</a>, a federal child welfare agency established in 1912, they made the school a platform to promote public welfare policy at the national level. </p>
<p>Breckinridge and Abbott conducted <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/102366088">studies of state welfare programs</a> for the Children’s Bureau. They also promoted its innovative programs, including the <a href="https://images.socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/items/show/102">Sheppard-Towner Act</a>, which provided federal funding for health care for poor women and their children between 1921 and 1929.</p>
<p>Staffed and led by women – including Abbott’s sister, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Grace-Abbott-Reader-ebook/dp/B0170ZQCKY/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=grace+abbott&qid=1557852986&s=gateway&sr=8-1">Grace Abbott</a> – the agency functioned as a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Creating-Female-Dominion-American-1890-1935-ebook/dp/B000SBKYVQ">“female dominion”</a> in American government. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274999/original/file-20190516-69169-1fcoo0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274999/original/file-20190516-69169-1fcoo0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274999/original/file-20190516-69169-1fcoo0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274999/original/file-20190516-69169-1fcoo0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274999/original/file-20190516-69169-1fcoo0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274999/original/file-20190516-69169-1fcoo0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1013&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274999/original/file-20190516-69169-1fcoo0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1013&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274999/original/file-20190516-69169-1fcoo0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1013&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Edith Abbott.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edith_Abbott.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Responding to the Great Depression</h2>
<p>When the nation plunged into the <a href="https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/eras/great-depression/american-social-policy-in-the-great-depression-and-wwii/">Great Depression</a>, Abbott and Breckinridge focused their attention on national policies.</p>
<p>Breckinridge agonized over the plight of poor Americans. Years later, in a letter to Abbott, one of their former students vividly recalled a remark Breckinridge made about “being so troubled sleeping in her good warm bed. She seriously thought that she really ought to give it to someone who needed it, when the need was so dire and so widespread.”</p>
<p>In their journal, the Social Service Review, Abbott and Breckinridge called attention to “the inadequacy of private relief” and asserted that “federal aid” was “clearly necessary in this emergency.” They demanded <a href="https://www-jstor-org.weblib.lib.umt.edu:2443/stable/30009774?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">“national funds for a national crisis.”</a></p>
<p>In 1931, they launched a study of the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/30010392?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Chicago Renters’ Court</a>, which heard cases in which tenants were subject to eviction for nonpayment of rent. They used evidence from this study to advocate for federal relief for impoverished Americans. </p>
<p>In her <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sisters-Memories-Abbott-Writings-Sister-ebook/dp/B013LO4EIU">memoirs</a>, Abbott maintained that Colorado Sen. Edward Costigan’s inspiration for the nation’s <a href="https://heinonline-org.weblib.lib.umt.edu:2443/HOL/Page?men_tab=srchresults&handle=hein.journals/guild5&id=144&size=2&collection=journals&terms=1931%7CCostigan%20Bill%7CLaFollette&termtype=phrase&set_as_cursor=3">first federal relief bill</a> was a conversation he had about homelessness in Chicago with her and her sister in the summer of 1931. </p>
<p>“Our schools are full of hungry children, our streets are full of tired and resentful men,” Abbott told Costigan. “The Renter’s Court,” she continued, “was a nightmare —- women crying, children crying, everyone in despair.” </p>
<p>Breckinridge gave Costigan evidence that he presented in <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001339337">Senate hearings</a> on proposed relief legislation to fund public work projects and provide direct assistance to destitute citizens. </p>
<p>Abbott also <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015004725282;view=1up;seq=5">testified</a> on behalf of Costigan’s proposed legislation. Calling attention to the shortcomings of state programs, she asserted that “the science of social welfare” demonstrated the need for “a national system” in order “to take care of all the people who must have care.” </p>
<p>The <a href="https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/eras/great-depression/federal-emergency-relief-act-of-1933/">Federal Emergency Relief Act</a> was passed in 1933. It provided federal funding for both work-relief programs and direct financial assistance for needy Americans. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/eras/great-depression/federal-emergency-relief-administration/">new agency created by the act</a> then hired Breckinridge to supervise a <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/n/ncosw/ACH8650.1935.001/267?rgn=full+text;view=image;q1=what+we+have+learned">national program</a> to train the first generation of federal public welfare workers. </p>
<h2>Promoting the Social Security Act</h2>
<p>Abbott and Breckinridge were long-standing advocates of what Breckinridge called a <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100478723">“national minimum”</a> standard of living guaranteed by the federal government. </p>
<p>After <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/United-States-presidential-election-of-1932">Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election in 1932</a>, Breckinridge and Abbott joined a powerful <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Suffrage-Women-New-Deal/dp/0674069218">“women’s network”</a> of female New Dealers that included first lady <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Eleanor-Roosevelt-Defining-Years-1933-1938-ebook/dp/B00AFYO5ES/ref=sr_1_8?crid=WCGF0B5BYXB9&keywords=eleanor+roosevelt+biography&qid=1557853110">Eleanor Roosevelt</a>, Secretary of Labor <a href="http://francesperkinscenter.org/life-new/">Frances Perkins</a> and Democratic Party insider <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Partner-Molly-Dewson-Feminism-Politics/dp/0300046219">Mary W. Dewson</a>. The two used their connections with this group and with the Children’s Bureau to advance their aim of creating a comprehensive welfare state. </p>
<p>As Abbott explained in an article published in <a href="https://www.ebsco.com/products/magazine-archives/the-nation-magazine-archive">The Nation</a> in 1934, a “comprehensive plan” for social welfare should provide “adequate dignified relief for all in need.”</p>
<p>Abbott and Breckinridge worked with members of Roosevelt’s <a href="https://www.ssa.gov/history/reports/ces/cesbasic.html">Committee on Economic Security</a>, created in 1934 to design what would become the <a href="https://www.ssa.gov/history/35actinx.html">Social Security Act</a>, which laid the groundwork for the modern welfare state, including <a href="https://www.ssa.gov/history/35actiii.html">unemployment insurance</a> and <a href="https://www.ssa.gov/history/35actii.html">old age insurance</a> – now commonly referred to as “Social Security.” </p>
<p>Breckinridge and Abbott helped draft the child welfare portions of the bill. They promoted a new federal program, modeled on “mothers’ pensions,” which became <a href="https://www.ssa.gov/history/35activ.html">Aid to Dependent Children</a> (later Aid to Families with Dependent Children). They also supported new federally funded programs to provide <a href="https://www.ssa.gov/history/35actv.html">health care and financial support for poor and disabled children</a>.</p>
<p>Breckinridge dubbed the day that Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act, August 14, 1935, “the great date of the decade.” Breckinridge was immediately invited to join an <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=4jU3BKQlyRQC&pg=RA13-PA156#v">advisory committee</a> to oversee the act’s child welfare programs. </p>
<p>When Breckinridge was asked if she would be willing to attend the inaugural meeting of the committee at her own expense, she responded: “I think that I would crawl on hands and knees if it were necessary to try to be of service in connection with the Security Program!”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275001/original/file-20190516-69209-10wdhtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275001/original/file-20190516-69209-10wdhtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275001/original/file-20190516-69209-10wdhtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275001/original/file-20190516-69209-10wdhtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275001/original/file-20190516-69209-10wdhtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275001/original/file-20190516-69209-10wdhtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=635&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275001/original/file-20190516-69209-10wdhtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=635&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275001/original/file-20190516-69209-10wdhtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=635&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Food bank interior, King County, Washington, ca. 1934.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/digital/collection/fera/id/132">Federal Emergency Relief Administration Photographs, University of Washington Libraries</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘What a pair!’</h2>
<p>Abbott and Breckinridge never held political office. Nonetheless, they made their mark on public policy. <a href="https://www.ssa.gov/history/fbane.html">Frank Bane</a>, the first executive director of the Social Security Board (1935-1938), paid tribute to their partnership. </p>
<p>“In setting up the various relief administrations and Social Security, it was Edith Abbott with Sophonisba and a few others who gave us the greatest help,” he reflected. “Edith and Sophonisba – as the University of Chicago called them, A and B. – what a pair!”</p>
<p>Abbott and Breckinridge were not “out” as we now understand it, but neither were they “in the closet.” Rather, as was <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003ZUY0Y4/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">common</a> during their lifetimes, their contemporaries acknowledged their relationship without labeling them lesbians. </p>
<p>After Breckinridge’s death in 1948, Abbott received a flood of condolence letters praising the women’s partnership. Many pointed out that the couple’s personal relationship enhanced their political efficacy. As <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=rWwbAQAAIAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=zimmerman">Edna Zimmerman</a>, the state superintendent for child welfare in Illinois, put it: “You and she have shared a common lot these many years and your labors in behalf of human welfare have borne rich fruit.” </p>
<h2>Suffrage to civil rights</h2>
<p>The Buttigiegs belong to a long tradition of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Right-Side-History-Years-Activism-ebook/dp/B07H469G98/">LGBTQ political engagement</a>. </p>
<p>Lesbians played a key role in both the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Believe-Women-Lesbians-America-History-ebook/dp/B003ZUY0Y4/">suffrage movement</a> and the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Partner-Molly-Dewson-Feminism-Politics/dp/0300046219">New Deal</a>. Gay men led the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=VNKwvIWU5T8C&pg">1934 Longshoremen’s Strike</a> in California; <a href="https://qspirit.net/bayard-rustin-gay-saint/">Bayard Rustin</a>, who later became a gay rights activist, was Dr. Martin Luther King’s chief strategist in the movement for African American civil rights.</p>
<p>Abbott and Breckinridge’s personal and political partnership offers just one example of the longstanding contributions of LGBTQ people to American politics.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116568/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>Long before Chasten Buttigieg became a ‘not-so-secret weapon’ in his husband Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, another same-sex couple profoundly reshaped American social policy.Anya Jabour, Regents Professor of History, University of MontanaLicensed 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>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<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>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<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/1059072018-11-21T12:14:36Z2018-11-21T12:14:36Z100 years since women won the right to be MPs – what it was like for the pioneers<p>When some women won the right to <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/100-years-of-votes-for-women-49248">vote</a> in Britain in February 1918, the question arose as to whether women could now stand in parliamentary elections. Nine months later, the <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/womenvote/parliamentary-collections/nancy-astor/parliament-qualification-of-women-act/">Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act</a> was passed on November 21 1918, enabling women over the age 21 to become MPs. </p>
<p>A century on, the UK parliament now has <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-40192060">208 women MPs</a>. But what was it like for the first women in the House of Commons 100 years ago? </p>
<p>Only women over the age of 30 who met a property qualification were granted the vote in 1918, therefore there are numerous examples of women standing for parliament when they could not vote themselves. </p>
<p>The path to entering parliament was not an easy one for women; political parties prioritised male candidates and finances hindered many women from standing. In all, 17 women stood in the 1918 general election across the political spectrum, but only one woman was successful, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-43176232">Constance Markievicz</a>. As she stood for Sinn Féin, she refused to take her seat over the issue of Irish independence. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246537/original/file-20181120-161627-1vro83f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246537/original/file-20181120-161627-1vro83f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=766&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246537/original/file-20181120-161627-1vro83f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=766&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246537/original/file-20181120-161627-1vro83f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=766&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246537/original/file-20181120-161627-1vro83f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=962&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246537/original/file-20181120-161627-1vro83f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=962&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246537/original/file-20181120-161627-1vro83f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=962&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nancy Astor’s 1919 election leaflet.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/womenvote/parliamentary-collections/nancy-astor/astor-campaign-leaflet/">Parliamentary Archives.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It wasn’t until the following year that the first woman MP to take her seat was elected when <a href="https://www.historyextra.com/period/modern/life-of-the-week-nancy-astor/">Nancy Astor</a> was elected in a Plymouth by-election in 1919 for the Conservative Party. She was persuaded to stand by her husband, who previously held the seat, when he was elevated to the House of Lords following the death of his father. Women MPs inheriting their seats from their husbands became a common pattern in the interwar period. For Astor, being the only woman MP was an isolating experience. In 1923, she <a href="https://archive.org/details/mytwocountries1954asto">remarked</a>: “Pioneers may be picturesque figures, but they are often rather lonely ones.” </p>
<h2>A masculine space</h2>
<p>Parliament was, and arguably still is, an inherently masculine space. The corridors were lined with paintings of white male politicians, the bars and smoking rooms remained closed to women, and the female restroom was a quarter of a mile walk from the debating chamber. Outside of the chamber, Astor confined herself to the Ladies Members Room. As more women entered parliament, they shared this space. It was nicknamed the <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/get-involved/vote-100/voice-and-vote/">“tomb”</a> as it was cramped and poorly furnished. </p>
<p>Despite Astor’s success, most MPs remained adamant that parliament was no place for women. Winston Churchill, although a personal friend of the Astors who dined regularly at their country house, refused to speak to Astor in parliament. He <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p01lfw2p">revealed</a> later on in life, that by ignoring her, he and other MPs “hoped to freeze her out.”</p>
<p>In 1921, Astor was joined by the Liberal <a href="https://www.suffrage-pioneers.net/the-list/margaret-wintringham/">Margaret Wintringham</a> following her success in a by-election in Louth. She also inherited her seat from her husband who had died while in office. Despite being in different parties, Astor and Wintringham became great friends, working together on issues related to women and children. In her maiden speech, Wintringham spoke during a debate on the economy and <a href="https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1921/nov/09/exchequer-bonds-and-external-debt#S5CV0148P0_19211109_HOC_300">said</a> she felt “rather like a new girl at school”. Women MPs continued to enter parliament in slow numbers. By 1929 there were only 14 women MPs, despite 69 women standing in the 1929 general election. </p>
<h2>Appearances scrutinised</h2>
<p>The press became fixated on the appearance of early women MPs. Astor insisted on wearing simple clothing as she wanted her politics to be remarked on and not her outfits. Other women MPs adopted this “parliamentary uniform”, although there were some exceptions. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/case-study-radical-politicians-in-the-north-east/introduction/">Ellen Wilkinson</a>, Labour MP for Middlesborough, elected in 1924, refused to conform to Astor’s dress code. Nicknamed “Red Ellen” for her socialist views and fiery red hair, she had a colourful sense of fashion. When criticised for this in the press, she <a href="http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/232e67de-d26f-4f96-a4cb-a65db3bb85da">remarked</a>: “Can’t a woman do her work just as well in a dress of bright colour?” </p>
<p><a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/remembering-jennie-lee-lioness-labour-founded-open-university/">Jennie Lee</a>, the Labour MP for North Lanarkshire was elected in a by-election in March 1929, aged 24. At the time, she could not vote herself, yet still became the youngest MP in the Commons. Lee created chaos when she wore an emerald green dress into parliament. One press report of the occasion <a href="http://www.open.ac.uk/library/library-resources/jennie-lee-collection">recounted</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The dress, which was of a clinging variety and of ankle length… took the Speaker’s breath away … She swept to her place … with all the assurance of a Bond-street mannequin. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Women MPs today <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39416554">continue to face</a> sexism, bullying and comments on their appearance, and in the digital age, receive frequent <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38736729">abuse online</a>. While Westminster now has a nursery and considerably more female toilets, its archaic traditions still dominate. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1065163044236525568"}"></div></p>
<p>A century later, the UK still doesn’t have equal representation in parliament, and only 32% of MPs are women. While campaigns and policies such as <a href="https://5050parliament.co.uk">50:50 Parliament</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/askhertostand?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Ehashtag">#AskHerToStand</a> and Labour’s all women short lists are increasing the number of women MPs, a recent report from the <a href="https://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/News/women-candidates-face-explicit-resistance-and-discrimination-within-political-parties">Fawcett Society</a> concluded that: “Women still experience multiple barriers to being selected as candidates simply because they are women.” </p>
<p>The first women MPs were pioneering and paved the way for future generations. A century later, the spotlight is on Westminster as the fight continues for equal representation and the challenge against the notion of parliament as “the old boys club”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105907/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa Berry-Waite receives funding from The Leverhulme Trust.</span></em></p>It’s 100 years since women won the right to be MPs, but what was Parliament like for women back then?Lisa Berry-Waite, PhD Candidate in History, University of ExeterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/991832018-08-13T10:26:34Z2018-08-13T10:26:34ZSaudi women can drive, but are their voices being heard?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231497/original/file-20180810-2918-inqimf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A woman in Saudi Arabia drives to work for the first time in Riyadh.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Earlier this summer, Saudi Arabia lifted the decades-long ban on women’s driving. The move is part of a series of reforms that the country has been implementing. In April the kingdom loosened <a href="https://english.alarabiya.net/en/features/2018/04/03/Mohammed-bin-Salman-on-Saudi-women-s-rights-and-the-guardianship-laws.html">male guardianship laws</a> – under which women need the permission of a male guardian to work, travel or marry. And in 2015, women were granted the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-35075702">right to vote and run for elections</a>. The reforms serve to revamp the image of Saudi Arabia in the international arena.</p>
<p>More recently, however, in a diplomatic spat, Canada has criticized Saudi Arabia for human rights violations. Saudi officials have responded by <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-fix-big-mistake-saudi-foreign-minister-1.4777438">cutting all economic and diplomatic ties</a>, withdrawing investments and stopping flights. One of the <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/saudia-arabia-expels-canadas-ambassador-recalls-own-row-over-womens-rights-activists-arrests/">main issues for the Canadians</a> is the arrest by Saudi authorities of two prominent women’s rights activists. Tweets by Canadian diplomats called on the kingdom to release the activists. Saudi Arabia <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/20/middleeast/saudi-women-arrests---intl/index.html">arrested several women’s rights activists</a> in weeks prior and following the lifting the ban on women’s driving.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Gq1Xc74AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">scholar of gender politics in Middle Eastern societies</a>, I argue that all this goes to show that the kingdom is extending limited reforms to women to represent itself as modern but is adamant on not opening space for more voices. </p>
<h2>Women, nationalism and modernization</h2>
<p><a href="https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/gender-and-nation/book203639">Historically</a>, the status of women has often served as <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/colonial-fantasies/AA3BEA73927420CDF46E0CC595DCB9B7">a measure of social progress</a>. </p>
<p>Take for example, the regime of <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195117394.001.0001/acref-9780195117394-e-0504">Gamal Abdel Nasser</a>, who served as president of Egypt from 1956, until his death in 1970. Nasser promoted the participation of women in the public sector as a symbol of the success of the regime in modernizing Egypt.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231501/original/file-20180810-2915-mv30h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231501/original/file-20180810-2915-mv30h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231501/original/file-20180810-2915-mv30h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231501/original/file-20180810-2915-mv30h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231501/original/file-20180810-2915-mv30h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231501/original/file-20180810-2915-mv30h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231501/original/file-20180810-2915-mv30h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Women cheer for Gamal Abdel Nasser after he proclaimed a new Egyptian constitution that promised new rights for women in 1956.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Under Nasser, the state adopted a series of laws to encourage women’s participation in the workforce. Between 1961 and 1969, the participation of women in the labor force <a href="http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/El-KholyDefiance">increased by 31.1 percent</a>. </p>
<p>Paid maternity leave <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=18176">was granted to working mothers</a> during the day and child care was made available. Children and child rearing was no longer the sole responsibility of women, but increasingly that of the state and its institutions as well. There was no discussion, however, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/women-and-the-egyptian-revolution/1141AB709E596C0187C8D050FEB5F6B5">of men’s responsibility</a> or how to balance work and family.</p>
<p>Scholars, thus, argue that these reforms were not genuine efforts by the regime to alter gender inequalities. Rather, they were <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=18176">important symbols</a> in representing the Egyptian society as modern, socialist and progressive, where men and women were seen to work next to each other.</p>
<p>Also, the reforms did not include meaningful political rights. For example, while women were granted the right to vote in <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/international-woman-suffrage-timeline-3530479">1956</a>, unlike men, they had to petition the state to <a href="https://www.bookdepository.com/Gender-Citizenship-Middle-East-Suad-Joseph/9780815628651">include them on the list of registered voters</a>. The regime also moved to suppress independent feminists such as <a href="http://upf.com/book.asp?id=9780813014555">Doria Shafiq</a>, who campaigned for women’s suffrage for years.</p>
<h2>Using women for politics</h2>
<p>It was the same in many Middle Eastern and North African societies. The image of the woman was often constructed based on a political need at a given time and later deconstructed as well. </p>
<p>In Tunisia, for example, Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia’s nationalist leader and president, and after him President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali presented the image of the unveiled Tunisian women as a symbol of <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520225763/states-and-womens-rights">modernization, secularism and democracy</a>.</p>
<p>Following Tunisian independence in 1956, Bourguiba <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2012.730857">rejected the veil</a> and viewed it as a barrier to his modernizing project. In his Dec. 5, 1957, speech, he described the veil as an <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3992658">“odious rag”</a> and an <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2012.730857">obstacle to the country’s path to modernization</a> secluding women from participation in public space.</p>
<p>Bourguiba’s earlier views on the veil were, however, different. At the height of the nationalist struggle, during the 1930s to the 1950s against French colonial rule in Tunisia, Bourguiba emphasized the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2012.730857">significance of the traditional Tunisian veil</a>, the sefsari, as a symbol of national identity. The nationalist leader encouraged women to wear the sefsari as a way to oppose the colonial view. The <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300055832/women-and-gender-islam">colonial powers</a> pushed for unveiling women and viewed it as part of the <a href="https://groveatlantic.com/book/a-dying-colonialism/">modernizing process</a>.</p>
<h2>Crackdown on feminists</h2>
<p>Coming back to Saudi Arabia, the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has introduced <a href="http://vision2030.gov.sa/en">Vision 2030</a> an ambitious social and economic reform plan, that he first announced in 2016. His goal is to liberalize the Saudi <a href="https://www.sunypress.edu/p-2972-all-in-the-family.aspx">petro-state</a> and <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Political-and-Economic-Challenges-of-Energy-in-the-Middle-East-and/Jalilvand-Westphal/p/book/9781138706224">open its centralized oil market</a> to foreign investment. His promise is to bring larger parts of the Saudi population – especially women and youth – into the labor force. </p>
<p>At this juncture, reforms in women’s rights demonstrate that the kingdom is en route to modernizing. However, some of the actions of Saudi authorities – such as the arrest of prominent activists that Canada has expressed concerns over – are seemingly at odds with the image the reforms want to project. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231499/original/file-20180810-2921-ufd88q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231499/original/file-20180810-2921-ufd88q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231499/original/file-20180810-2921-ufd88q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231499/original/file-20180810-2921-ufd88q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231499/original/file-20180810-2921-ufd88q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231499/original/file-20180810-2921-ufd88q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231499/original/file-20180810-2921-ufd88q.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">Saudi women’s rights activist Souad al-Shammary, who has been jailed several times.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2018/05/24/saudi-arabia-arrests-womens-rights-activists/">The arrests started</a> less than a month before the kingdom was due to lift the ban on women’s driving, when the authorities <a href="https://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2018/05/24/saudi-arabia-arrests-womens-rights-activists/">arrested some of the feminists</a> who had campaigned for women’s rights to drive. Several pro-government social media groups were alleged to have launched a <a href="http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/human-rights-groups-slam-saudi-arabia-chilling-smear-campaign-against-activists-786866070">smear campaign</a> tarnishing the activists’ reputation and branding them as “<a href="http://www.al-jazirah.com/2018/20180603/ln29.htm">traitors</a>” and “<a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/05/saudi-arabia-chilling-smear-campaign-tries-to-discredit-loujain-al-hathloul-and-other-detained-womens-rights-defenders/">agents of foreign embassies</a>.</p>
<p>The list of detained activists included <a href="https://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2018/05/24/saudi-arabia-arrests-womens-rights-activists/">high-profile feminists</a> such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loujain_al-Hathloul">Loujain al-Hathloul</a> – a vocal Saudi activist who since 2014 has been arrested numerous times for defying the ban on women driving. </p>
<p>Following the decision to lift the ban on driving, the authorities approached the women who had been arrested, in addition to others who previously participated in protests against the driving ban and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-arrests/rights-groups-condemn-saudi-women-activists-arrests-idUSKCN1IK085">demanded</a> that they completely <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/09/29/brave-female-activists-who-fought-lift-saudi-arabias-driving-ban">refrain</a> from commenting on the decision. </p>
<p>Media coverage has made no mention of the role of activists who had long campaigned for women’s right to drive. Rather, it praised the <a href="https://en.vogue.me/fashion/news/inside-vogue-arabias-groundbreaking-first-ever-saudi-issue/">crown prince</a> for lifting the ban. </p>
<p>In my view, there are many contradictions that surround these recent reforms. By silencing activists, the crown prince appears to tie the decision to allow Saudi women to drive to burnishing his own legacy. More importantly, by imprisoning high-profile feminists, the monarchy attempts to weaken, if not abolish, the ability of women’s groups to organize, advance their rights and be heard.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99183/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nermin Allam 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>Saudi Arabia has arrested a number of feminists, while bringing in reforms for women. An expert argues why this goes to show that the kingdom remains adamant on not opening space for more voices.Nermin Allam, Assistant Professor of Politics, Rutgers University - NewarkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/932272018-03-19T21:44:44Z2018-03-19T21:44:44ZCanada’s curiously cautious commemoration of women suffragists<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210623/original/file-20180315-104673-blewrd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nellie McClung, a prominent Canadian suffragist in the early 1900s, is now being maligned for her racism and support of eugenics. Should the deep flaws of some suffragists from 100 years ago mean Canadian historians must pay them short shrift?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(National Archives)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>International Women’s Day has just passed, and, as always, there was little if no mention of Canada’s suffragists.</p>
<p>This <a href="http://www.swc-cfc.gc.ca/commemoration/cent/index-en.html">May 24 marks the centennial</a> of the federal act to give women the right to vote. Despite the fact that most Indigenous and some Asian women were excluded for decades, no other single piece of legislation enfranchised so large a proportion of Canadians. </p>
<p>Doubling the electorate was one clear step on the long road to full democracy.</p>
<p>But commemoration of that federal milestone, like that of its provincial counterparts beginning in 1916, is curiously low-key in Canada, especially in comparison with how it’s celebrated in New Zealand, Australia and <a href="https://ukvote100.org/">the United Kingdom</a>. </p>
<p>In the context of today’s urgent preoccupation with the democratic deficit — from low voter turnout to pervasive alienation from electoral politics — and enduring gender inequalities in wages and representation, Ottawa’s neglect, especially <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/03/16/i-am-a-feminist-trudeau-tells-un-crowd.html">with a self-proclaimed feminist prime minister</a> in office, demands explanation.</p>
<p>Part of the story lies with the misogyny and misunderstanding dogging conventional accounts of Canadian suffrage.</p>
<p>Suffragists have faced a century and more of popular and scholarly caricature and inattention. Women’s roles in forging Canada’s democracy have gone largely missing in official accounts of Canadian history. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209976/original/file-20180312-30961-1culk7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209976/original/file-20180312-30961-1culk7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209976/original/file-20180312-30961-1culk7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209976/original/file-20180312-30961-1culk7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209976/original/file-20180312-30961-1culk7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209976/original/file-20180312-30961-1culk7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209976/original/file-20180312-30961-1culk7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A suffragist cartoon from early in the the last century.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Grain Grower's Guide, February 1913</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Forgetting the suffragists’ bold battles for equality is not, however, the sole cause of today’s commemorative shortfall. The politics of remembrance has become a contemporary minefield. </p>
<p>Flawed historical figures from John A. Macdonald, <a href="https://theconversation.com/instead-of-renaming-buildings-why-not-truly-improve-indigenous-lives-83116">recently condemned for his advocacy of the residential school system for Indigenous children</a>, to Nellie McClung, <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/human-rights-lawyer-opposes-honour-for-right-to-vote-pioneer-nellie-mcclung/article1241485/">maligned for her racism and support of eugenics</a>, are grabbing the historical spotlight as today’s Canadians attempt to address historic and institutional injustices. </p>
<p>Challengers of racial prejudice like <a href="http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/pauline-johnson/">E. Pauline Johnson</a>, a Mohawk-English writer and performer who railed against the “might makes right” approach in Canada’s treatment of Indigenous peoples, and Black Nova Scotian <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/viola-desmond-banknote-north-end-halifax-map-1.4573407">activist Viola Desmond</a>, who demanded civil rights and whose face now appears on Canada’s $10 bills, correctly call for overdue respect. </p>
<p>In this heated climate, mainstream suffragists who pushed for women’s right to vote are risky subjects for nervous politicians. </p>
<p>Neglecting the recognition of the great strides made by suffragists, however, is no antidote for the ills of inequality that have plagued Canada. History has lessons to teach.</p>
<p>This year, UBC Press has launched its warts-and-all seven-volume series <a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/womens-suffrage-and-the-struggle-for-democracy"><em>Women Suffrage and the Struggle for Democracy in Canada</em>.</a> The first volume, by Trent University historian and women’s studies professor Joan Sangster, is entitled <em>One Hundred Years of Struggle: The History of Women and the Vote in Canada.</em> It reminds us why suffrage continues to matter.</p>
<h2>Advanced equality</h2>
<p>Even as prejudices of race and class affected their vision, suffragists advanced equality and raised issues that remain with us today — from violence against women and girls to the value of unpaid labour. </p>
<p>What’s more, the UBC Press series properly rescues from obscurity the anti-suffragists’ endorsement of an ultimately brutal regime of male — and class and race — privilege in families, education, the economy and politics, which continues to threaten democracy to this day. </p>
<p>Suffragists did not take Canada all the way to the <a href="http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/mcclung/times/times.html">“land of the fair deal” glimpsed by McClung</a>. But unlike the timid, the ignorant, and the reactionary — sometimes a majority, then as now — they spied that destination. The flawed beliefs of some of them should not blind us to the courage required to win the vote for most women, and to contest barriers to equality for all in general. </p>
<p>Today, just as when women won the vote, democracy remains a work in progress, its allies imperfect, its opponents many. </p>
<p>In 2018, official commemoration of women suffrage needs to tell that evolving democratic story. To do otherwise denies Canadians’ capacity for change.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93227/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span> I have received SSHRCC funding over many years. I am on the editorial board of Voices/Voix (<a href="http://voices-voix.ca">http://voices-voix.ca</a>) </span></em></p>Canada is strangely muted in celebrating women’s suffrage. That’s because the politics of remembrance has become a contemporary minefield.Veronica Strong-Boag, Professor Emerita, University of British ColumbiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.