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on The Political Power of Women
This is such a great point to raise: pragmatism was a fascinating element of activism for equal voting rights in many places, especially Wyoming (where the governor famously hoped equal suffrage would bring more women to the state) and Utah.
But, in many western states like Oregon and Washington, the majority of male voters resisted all rationales for women's voting rights--including arguments based on pragmatism--for decades. Consider Oregon's history:
1870: First Oregon suffrage organizations
1884: Woman suffrage on ballot 1st time
1900: Woman suffrage on ballot 2nd time
1906: Woman suffrage on ballot 3rd time
1908: Woman suffrage on ballot 4th time
1910: Woman suffrage on ballot 5th time
1912: Oregon women achieve the vote
Ultimately, pragmatism was one important argument for equal voting rights advanced by activists in western states, but in Oregon and Washington that argument alone could not win success for the movement. It took decades of work by female and male proponents of equal suffrage, to alter attitudes about gender in politics, before the majority of male voters in Oregon and Washington were willing to enfranchise women even for pragmatic reasons.
posted 2 years, 9 months ago
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on The Political Power of Women
@thx1138
A 2006 article in the New York Times cited labor department statistics that, for college-educated women in middle adulthood, the gender pay gap had widened during the previous decade. The phenomenon was attributed partly to discrimination, but also to “women’s own choices. The number of women staying home with young children has risen …. especially among highly educated mothers, who might otherwise be earning high salaries.”
The language attributing women’s lower pay to their own lifestyle choices is seductive—in an era when women are widely believed to have overcome the most serious forms of discrimination and in a society in which we are fond of emphasizing individual responsibility for life outcomes. Indeed, it is possible to point to a variety of ways in which women’s work lives differ from men’s in ways that might justify gender differences in earnings. Women work in lower-paid occupations; on average they work fewer paid hours per week and fewer paid weeks per year than men do; their employment is more likely than men’s to be discontinuous. As many economists with a predilection for the “human capital model” would argue, women as a group make lower investments in their working lives, so they logically reap fewer rewards.
At first blush, this argument sounds reasonable. However, a closer look reveals that the language of “choice” obscures larger social forces that maintain the wage gap and the very real constraints under which women labor. The impact of discrimination, far from being limited to the portion of the wage gap that cannot be accounted for by women’s choices, is actually deeply embedded in and constrains these choices ...
Learn more: http://bit.ly/aS7ZCg
US Dept of Labor / US Bureau of Labor Statistics 2009 Report on Women's Earnings: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswom2009.pdf
Harvard Research on Gender Discrimination in Salary Negotiation: http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/cfawis/bowles.pdf
posted 2 years, 9 months ago
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on The Political Power of Women
It's wonderful to see the history of the equal rights movement, including the remarkable work of Abigail Scott Duniway, featured on your show. But, as jmmedd points out, it can be dangerous to imagine that the story of suffrage victories in the Pacific Northwest is the story of one extraordinary white woman. Women throughout Oregon made vital contributions to the struggle for political equality, from African American women who successfully voted in Portland in 1870 (thereby playing an important role in the national New Departure strategy for suffrage) to immigrant laundresses who sued for labor rights in the early 1900s. Recognizing that Oregon's successful movements for equal rights required the efforts of many women--and wasn't the achievement of one extraordinary woman-- can help us better understand what it takes to continue advancing equality for all kinds of Americans, today.
Thank you for devoting a show to The Political Power of Women. I look forward to hearing more about this as Oregon's suffrage centennial nears!
posted 2 years, 9 months ago
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