Response Post Jan. 27

It always comes as a bit of a shock when I remember how recently women were granted the right to vote in America. It comes as even more of a shock when you look back on the history and realize how active women were in the abolition movement, yet they remained unrepresented themselves. Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s declaration is particularly moving for this reason. By placing her grievances within the language of the Declaration of Independence she certainly makes a powerful statement, one that, at least today, is equally if not more justified than the original Declaration. It highlights the hypocrisy of founding a nation on the principles of forming a government chosen by the governed when more than half of those governed people are completely without a voice.

It is almost strange to read these documents in the contemporary context as these goals seem so foreign and distant (evidence of the younger generation not connecting with this struggle can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uPcthZL2RE ). I looked up the suffrage dates in a few other countries, which brought the importance of women’s participation in government a little closer to home, at least by measurement of time. Those dates can be found here: http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/politics/womens-suffrage/world-suffrage-timeline . Some are pretty shocking; Mexico in 1953, Switzerland in 1971, Portugal in 1975 and South Africa in 1994. These aren’t countries that we see in the news as terribly unjust or radical in their views towards women, and yet what we have very quickly accepted (since 1920) as a basic right went unrealized for so long in some of the world’s most “civilized” countries. These documents, then, stand as a reminder of how near we are, in the schemes of things, to the very beginning of the fight for true equality.