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A review by ajsterkel
The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote by Elaine F. Weiss
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
slow-paced
3.0
This is a dense nonfiction book about how women got the right to vote in the US. It's not the most readable book because there are a ton of names and dates, and I can't keep that stuff straight, but it gave me a lot to think about.
I was surprised at how long it took for women to get the right to vote in every state. It took 72 years! This is the embodiment of the quote "If you're not at the table, then you're on the menu." Since female politicians were rare, women had to convince men to give them rights. Men in some states were more receptive to the idea than men in other states. Most male politicians were perfectly happy to make laws about women without any input from women.
It's interesting (but not surprising) that conservative women fought very hard not to vote. They said, "God doesn't want women to vote." And "We have to uphold traditional gender roles." And "Treating men and women equally is socialism." It makes me wonder how people will think about our time in 100 years. Will the stuff we're arguing about become rights that people take for granted? Will future people look at our politicians and go, "What the heck were you so afraid of?"
When we talk about women's suffrage, we also have to talk about racism. Some of the states only gave white women the right to vote. Many of the suffragists were fine with this and didn't keep fighting to get voting rights for all people. That's disappointing. Hopefully society learned something from it. (I'm guessing not. I don't have a lot of faith in humans.)
If you want to learn about women's suffrage in the US, then this book is worth reading. It's dense, but the knowledge I gained made slogging through the pages worth the effort.
I was surprised at how long it took for women to get the right to vote in every state. It took 72 years! This is the embodiment of the quote "If you're not at the table, then you're on the menu." Since female politicians were rare, women had to convince men to give them rights. Men in some states were more receptive to the idea than men in other states. Most male politicians were perfectly happy to make laws about women without any input from women.
It's interesting (but not surprising) that conservative women fought very hard not to vote. They said, "God doesn't want women to vote." And "We have to uphold traditional gender roles." And "Treating men and women equally is socialism." It makes me wonder how people will think about our time in 100 years. Will the stuff we're arguing about become rights that people take for granted? Will future people look at our politicians and go, "What the heck were you so afraid of?"
When we talk about women's suffrage, we also have to talk about racism. Some of the states only gave white women the right to vote. Many of the suffragists were fine with this and didn't keep fighting to get voting rights for all people. That's disappointing. Hopefully society learned something from it. (I'm guessing not. I don't have a lot of faith in humans.)
If you want to learn about women's suffrage in the US, then this book is worth reading. It's dense, but the knowledge I gained made slogging through the pages worth the effort.