A woman’s place

Acentury ago today, Tennessee became the decisive 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, decreeing the right to vote in America couldn’t be denied “on account of sex.” In hindsight, the fact that we ever debated whether women should participate in shaping their own government seems, like so many past battles fought over basic civil rights, absurd. But the 42 years between the amendment’s 1878 introduction and its ratification and certification remind us how difficult and dearly purchased the franchise was, the product of years of protests, arrests, hunger-strikes and organizing, much of it here in New York.

The amendment’s passage wasn’t the endpoint of the fight for women’s equality. It was a beginning. In the hundred years since, women have faced and fought countless other obstacles to fair treatment, and the battle continues.

In the late 19th century, some white women suffragists decided to isolate their own cause from the larger goal of racial equality, jettisoning strategic political alliances with Black men and women, a mistake that weakened their movement tactically and wounded America spiritually.

It took 44 more years after the 19th Amendment passed for Black women to achieve equal ballot access, after the 1965 Voting Rights Act became law.

American women of 2020, who deserve more female political leaders, are up against different foes than their 1920 counterparts: increasingly unaffordable childcare, medical and education costs. Those changes will be won in marches — and, thanks to their foremothers, at the ballot box.