right to VOTE

Women from the city of West Hollywood recently celebrated “We’ve come a long way…maybe” Women’s Equality Day commemorating the the 90th anniversary of the US Women winning the right to vote in 1920. Betsy Johnson, member of the National Women’s Political Caucus , recently sent us this reminder…

Photographs from the Records of the National Woman’s Party

“This is a story of our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers. Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote. The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote. Woodrow Wilson and his cronies tried to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. The doctor refused. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn’t make her crazy. The doctor admonished the men: ‘Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.’ ”

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And so the Global Women Project looks at how things stand with the issue around the world…we are still waiting for full voting rights in several countries.