The 19th Amendment & Women's Equality Day

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Female representation.

We've been hearing a lot about it this past year, like tide Pods in The Undeniable Chemistry and a Star is Born Now not God, God, Bradley Cooper talking about Sam Elliott in his own mustache.

Where were we? But why is female representation in America important?

Now?

The reason we've been hearing so much about female representation is the twenty eighteen midterms.

A record number of women one.

Seats in Congress, which is great, but remember that's only twenty four percent of Congress and women make up fifty one percent of the population. So the vast majority of policymakers have never even experienced ovulation or childbirth or cat calling, except Ted Cruz. He's definitely been cat called, except it's usually people shouting smile less. I feel for you, buddy,

Those are like the Hemsworth Brothers of policy.

Plus, women are better at getting stuff done for everyone because we tend to be more bipartisan, even I was by partisan for a brief time in college, me and my roommate Abbey.

Sometimes I wonder which way she went it was the time to experiment.

We're just wait and read Fly come Aunt.

But to understand why we're only at twenty four percent representation, we need to take a look back at our history. When America was founded, all of our leaders were met. The signing of the Declaration of Independence was a serious sausage vest, which, by the way, is why we eat so many hot dogs.

On the fourth of July. What a patriot.

The first step in female representation was fighting for the right to vote, which began in eighteen forty eight at the First Women's Rights Convention. A group of abolitionists led by Elizabeth Katie Stanton and Lucretia Mott wrote the Declaration of Sentiments, which was modeled after the Declaration of Independence, making it not only the beginning of women's suffrage but

In eighteen seventy two, Susan B.

Anthony was arrested and tried for even attempting to vote.

Susan B was the Cardi B of her time. You couldn't fuck with her even.

If you wanted to, and their struggle ultimately paid off. In nineteen twenty, America ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, granting women the right to vote, which meant it was time to pall, except it was prohibition, so we couldn't properly celebrate for another thirteen years. The entire twentieth century was full of

I think I pulled it off. Since then, we've broken even.

More barriers, including the first woman Speaker of the House and first woman to be a major party's nominee for president.

I forget how that election ended. Let's just move on.

And even after all the progress we've made, the US is still only ranked seventy ninth in female representation out of one hundred and ninety three countries, which coincidentally is the same ranking I had at my high school. Diavemte still stings, but organizations like Emily's List and She Should Run are working to fix that by encouraging women to enter political races. The ER stands for the Equal Rights Amendment, not to be confused with the ER and baseball, which

They're my sheroes.

Anytime there's a nineteen twenty themed wedding, I show up dressed as a suffragette.

Elizabeth said. I pulled focus, but it was worth it. The main goal of.

The ERA is to prohibit discrimination and guarantee legal equality of the sexes in the Constitution. Because remember, nothing in our founding documents specifically protects the rights of women. The founding fathers said they were going to add it, but then they went out for cigarettes and never came back. Even the Declaration of Independence says we hold these truths to be self evident, that.

All men are created equal.

So technically we're less than self evident, which sucks. They totally left us out. It's like leaving all the women out of the Hunger Games posters. Now they just look like a JV luge team. And the worst part is America never fixed that oversight. So that's where the RA comes in. It would add the language A quality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex,

Everyone should be on board.

Yet the er sat in limbo for fifty years until nineteen seventy two, when it was finally passed by both houses of Congress. We did it, and the era fell three states short after, anti feminist BILLI. Schlafley led a conservative backlash against it. She even handed out fresh baked bread and apple pie to get people to vote against

Let me borrow your bet.

Sure, but there's still hope. In twenty seventeen, Nevada ratified the era. Than in twenty eighteen, so did Illinois. So now it just needs one more state.

Ding damn it. I was hoping that would work.

So now there are thirteen possible states and two very realistic possibilities include Arizona and Georgia. If you live in one of those thirteen remaining states, call your senators and ask them to support ratification. Maybe we can even get this era passed by its hundredth birthday. Then we can throw at a surprise party. We can make it twenty

Today is the one hundredth anniversary of American women winning the right to vote. It's an important moment in history, and surprisingly Donald Trump was aware of it.

President Trump announced he will issue a posthumous presidential pardon for Susan B. Anthony, a leader of the woman's suffrage movement. She was arrested and convicted for illegally voting in the eighteen seventy two election.

I will be signed a full and complete pardon for Susan B. Anthony. She was never pardoned. Did you know that she was never pardoned? What took so long?

Oh?

So, now voting illegally is okay? I mean, look, this is kind of a nice gesture, I guess, But based on what we know about Trump, I bet he's only pardoning her because he thinks she has dirts on him. Susan B. Anthony is a great figure in the women's beverage movement, and she also knows.

How to keep her mouth checked.

Great thing, powerful day. But as important as this date is, the passage of the nineteenth Amendment didn't help all women. As Dulce Sloan explains.

This month is one hundredth anniversary of the ninetieth Amendment, which gave women the right to vote and the ability to pose on the gramd was I voted stickers.

They're like first traps for democracy.

But while the nineteenth Amendment was a major victory for white women, the story is not so simple for black women.

The road to the.

Nineteenth Amendment started in eighteen forty eight with the Seneca Falls Convention, the first women rights to meet up in American history. Before that, the only time women could legally gather was to catch a bouquet. I don't need to use flowers, Beverly, Assuming you didn't sleep through tenth grade history, you probably know some of the people who were at

But you know who wasn't allowed to come? Black women.

The whole roster was just a bunch of white people and one black guy. It looked like the cast of a Mission Impossible movie, even though they weren't invited to the party. Black female activists were also fighting for suffrage throughout the nineteenth century.

Everyone's always talking about Susan B. Anthony.

Well, today Susan should be stepping aside to let some black lady shine for once. For example, let's talk about Mary Church Terrell. She was incredibly influential and advancing the cause for women's suffrage, and in eighteen ninety eight, she delivered a speech to white activists that was one of the first expressions of what we now call intersectional feminism.

Seeking no favors because of our color. We knocked at the bar of justice, asking for an equal chance. She is a better woman than me.

I would have taken a bar of justice and knock somebody upside the head and to realism alone. Activists like sojournal Truth, Harriet Tubman, and I to be Well all pushed for the vote alongside for guided activists like Maryanne Shad Carry and Francis Ellen Watkins Harper. They were fighting sexism and racism at the same time.

You know how hard that is.

You can't take your eye out either one for a second. If you're face to face with sexism, racism will speak upon you like one of those raptors in Jurassic Park. Clever racists anyway. By nineteen eighteen, thanks to all the tireless activism from black and white suffrages alike, President Woodrow Wilson endorsed the call for a constitutional amendment to legalize women's voting.

Bo Houses of Congress passed Susan B.

Anthony Amendment in the summer of nineteen nineteen and On August eighteenth, nineteen twenty, Tennessee became the thirty sixth and final state to ratify the nineteenth Amendment of the Constitution, which means, hooray, all women can now legally vote in federal elections and we all lived happily ever after.

Nah, who do you think this is a children's movie? Do it look like the Pixar lamp to you? Bruckle up, Cinderella, Because we ain't done yet. While white women got.

To stroll into the polls lot a problem, black women, like black men, still face major obstacles throughout the twentieth century, especially in the South. We're talking poll taxes, literacy tests, and even violence. If America put as much brain power to science as it did in denying black people to vote, we've been living in moon mansions getting served by robot

And elections on paper.

But even today, a Republicans continue inventing ways to make it harder for people of color to vote, like shutting down polling locations and black neighborhoods, and making voter id laws when they know black people are less likely to have ID. So, even though one hundred years of the Nineteenth Amendment is worth celebrating, America still has work to do when it comes to ensuring truly equal access to elections.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm about to seduce the.

Postman to make sure he delivers my mail in Ballid on time. And because he's fine, I see you in the shorts Gerald, you can get it same day overnight.

Earlier today, I spoke with New York Times editor Veronica Chambers. We talked about the one hundredth anniversary of American women getting the vote and about her new book on the suffrage movement. Chambers, Welcome to the Daily Social Distancing Show.

Thank you.

It's nice to be socially distancing from you.

I really appreciate appreciate having you on the show because you've done something that I honestly think is one of the most crucial things ever, and that is writing a book that teaches people about history. And although you've written it predominantly for middle schoolers, I feel like everyone should read this book because it's about the suffrages, you know, the suffrage movements in America. It's about women fighting for

Well, about a year and a half ago, maybe a little more, we were thinking. We knew the anniversary of the nineteenth Amendment was coming up, and we kind of gathered in a room at the New York Times and we said, what do we know? And it turned out not a lot. And so the idea of writing The Middle Scrape the middle grade book was really from that thing that journalists do, which is like, explain it to

I won't lie. One thing that I really found interesting in the way you wrote about their stories is they seem pretty badass, you know, Like normally when you read about the suffrage movement, it gets it sometimes can be portrayed as like and they asked for the right to vote, and they asked again, and they asked again, but you portray them as really tactical geniuses in politics.

One of the first things we did is we had a round table of historians and one of them, Kate LeMay from the Smithsonian, she was like, Suffrage needs a rewrite. This is not a boring history. These are badass political strategists who worked for ninety years to get the job done. And that's stuck in my head. So I really tried to let that infuse the writing. And I really fell in love with these women. I have to tell you,

This book is about the women who fought for their right to vote. It's also story, which is really difficult, of how women fought for the right to vote, but not all of those women were treat it equally when the vote was given to women. Tell me a little bit more about that.

Well, you know, the Sufferer's movement really has its history and abolition, the movement to end slavery, and then the Civil War comes and the fifteenth Amendment is up and they decide to push for black men to get the vote before white women, and quite frankly, you know, we have a sort of cultural moment of Karens. The Karens of the nineteenth century were not having it. They were just basically like, how dare these men who were just

You know, Susan B. Anthony is somebody that so many people look up to and they go like, man, if it weren't for her, women wouldn't have the right to vote. And this was wonderful, But she does have a complicated history as a journalist and as a writer. How did you try and navigate that story of somebody who has done something amazing but also has extremely problematic views and tried to hold other people back.

Well, that was definitely you've hit the nail on the head in terms of one of the challenges. But one of the things that I thought really strongly for I remember sitting in a meeting and someone said we should do a chapter called Susan B. Anthony is Canceled, And I was like, we are not canceling people in history. I'm sorry.

I'm like, We're just not.

It's so flip and so whatever. I mean, the fact is that she dedicated her whole life to it. You know, the movement took so long. Only one woman who signed that Seneca Falls lived to vote in nineteen twenty. That's how long this movement took. So I think that, you know, we just have to say some people have problems, and I think we can hold a more complicated Do now appreciate them for what they did and know that they had problems and hopefully teach our kids to learn from that.

You know, I really think this would be great for kids to see themselves, because yes, you have white women who are fighting for the right to vote, but they're joined by Black women who also fighting for the rights to vote, who, as you said, inspired much of the movement. You also have Asian women who are fighting for the right to vote. You have LATINX women who are fighting

You know, we think about diversities ticking boxes, but really, when you get into the story of these women of color and suffrage, they are really futurists. They are thinking about not just themselves but other generations. Sixteen year old Mabel Pinguali led one of the largest suffrage parades in history, knowing that the Chinese Exclusion Act meant that she herself would not be able to vote in nineteen twenty. These suffragists who were futurists were thinking not just about themselves,

You know, when kids are reading your book, what would you like them to take and apply to today? What would you hope that they try and inspire themselves to think about for tomorrow? Because many of them will go like, well, everyone can vote, so I guess the job is done. What would you hope that they've gone from this that they may not necessarily immediately you know, jump to well.

I think it's funny because you're saying that. I remember being in school and thinking, oh, the civil rights movement is done. I'm never going to have to fight that battle again. I think the one thing I would love for kids to know is that there's never just one thing going on at one time. And that's why it's actually hard to make a movement because white suffware just were like, we have to focus on women, and idom b Wells. Barnett comes in and says, we have to

I hope someone gets books like these to the White House, because I think they're not just fantastic for kids, but they're fantastic for adults who may read at a child's level. So thank you so much for joining us on the show, and congratulations on creating a wonderful, wonderful book that everybody should know about.

Thank you so much. It's been an honor.

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