Patents on the soles of your shoes...: Oh, women! 100-year commemoration of the ratification of the 19th Amendment

One hundred years ago, on August 18^th1920, the 19^th Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified, granting all American women the right to vote. The Amendment states:

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." [Original 19th Amendment document]

The 19^th Amendment, voted by Congress a year earlier, on June 4, 1919, was the culmination of an almost 70-year struggle led by the US suffragette movement. The milestone marked the institutional onset of gender equality in the US. However, in practice, many historians concur that suffrage for Black women (and men) in the South would have to wait for the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s, almost 40 years later, when Jim Crow Laws were abolished (Waxman, 2020). Indeed, Jim Crow Laws, such as literacy tests for voting and polling taxes, continued to effectively, and efficiently, disenfranchise both black men and women, as well as other disadvantaged minorities, such as immigrants and the poor. Together with local and state laws that upheld the “separate but equal” 1896 Supreme Court ruling, making it possible to prevent blacks from accessing transportation and public places, including schools, Jim Crow laws collectively functioned to segregate the South. Segregation laws that consolidated the malevolent legacy of White Supremacy, with justice in lynchings, that still fuels racial violence, and hatred, to date. A deep cleavage in American society, now clearly documented, unmasked, and condemned, anew, in the Black Lives Matter movement, a movement incidentally founded by three fearless women: Opal Tometti, Alicia Garza and Patrisse Kahn-Cullors.

Looking back at the 100 years since ratification of the 19^th Amendment, The Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse points out that while much has been gained in extending suffrage to women, much more still needs to be achieved in the struggle for gender equality. Interestingly, she states: “The history of women voting is still a history of having representation without being represented”. Indeed, Hesse informs us that the 19^th Amendment was voted by an all-male Congress. Fifty years later, just one senator and 10 representatives were female. In 2020, an all-time high of 127 women are representatives in Congress, which still comprises just one-quarter of the votes. As a result of the absence of parity, laws concerning women issues, such as abortion, maternity leave and childcare, are still being voted (or rejected) by a majority of men, even if the 19^th Amendment also produced women legislators on all sides of the political spectrum, both conservative and liberal.

Looking at positive change, for all, resulting from the 19^th Amendment vote, Hesse cites studies showing that the extension of suffrage to women corresponded to an increase in public health spending, as well as in health-related education campaigns for infectious diseases, such as diphtheria and typhoid fever. Thus, child-mortality rates also declined at that time. Likewise, education budgets increased, keeping children in school for longer periods of time. Indeed, according to Hesse, “spending increased and the government got bigger.”

However, on August 18, 2020, one hundred years post-ratification of the 19^th Amendment, another defining event should be recorded. A stimulating possibility that the 19^th century Suffragettes no doubt had foreseen as a perfectly logical consequence of universal suffrage. Indeed, the nomination of Kamela Harris, a black and Asian-American woman as Vice-President (potentially the second-in-command of the United States Executive) in the Biden 2020 presidential campaign, arises both as an extraordinary “first” and a natural consequence of the 19th Amendment—even if it is just a bit overdue.

To test your knowledge of the brave and daring 19^th century Suffragette movement, take the tests at the Women’s Vote Centennial Initiative website, QUIZ1, QUIZ2 and STATE QUIZZES. Also, remember to celebrate! Today is indeed a special day.

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