Women in American political life are recent guests at the big table. Here’s a short tour of where we have been.
- Susan B. Anthony arrested for casting a vote in the Presidential election. She was convicted, and fined $100, which she refused to pay.
- Belva Ann Lockwood becomes the first woman admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1884 she accepted the nomination of the National Equal Rights Party and ran for president.
- Jeannette Rankin, of Montana, is the first woman to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.
- Nellie Tayloe Ross becomes the first woman to serve as governor of a state, in Wyoming.
- Hattie Wyatt Caraway, of Arkansas, becomes the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate.
- Frances Perkins is appointed secretary of labor making her the first woman member of a presidential cabinet.
- Margaret Chase Smith becomes the first woman to be placed in nomination at a Presidential convention, the Republican convention.
- Charlene Mitchell becomes the first woman to run for President in the general election as nominee of the Communist Party USA.
- Shirley Chisholm, of New York, becomes the first African-American woman in Congress.
- Shirley Chisholm becomes the first woman and first African-American to run for the Democratic Presidential nomination.
- Sandra Day O'Connor is appointed to the Supreme Court, making her its first woman justice.
- Dr. Sally K. Ride becomes the first American woman to be sent into space.
- Geraldine Ferraro, a Democrat, is the first woman to run for vice-president on a major party ticket.
- Carol Moseley-Braun, of Illinois, becomes the first African-American woman elected to the U.S. Senate.
- Janet Reno becomes the first woman U.S. attorney general.
- Madeleine Albright is sworn in as the first woman to be U.S. secretary of state.
- Lt. Col. Eileen Collins is the first woman astronaut to command a space shuttle mission.
- Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) becomes the first woman Speaker of the House of Representatives.
http://www.infoplease.com/...
http://www.greatwomen.org/
Oh, forget running for office. How about the vote? We didn’t always have it.
Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation,—in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States.
Declaration of Sentiments, Women’s Rights Convention, 1848.
http://ecssba.rutgers.edu/...
The human right guaranteeing the right to vote was won by women in 1920 in the U.S. It is the landmark event American women’s political history. Folks, it wasn’t all that long ago.
The 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920:
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/...
And the radical feminists chimed in:
That political issues and leaders should continue to be merely man-made is inconceivable.
New York Times editorial, August 29, 1920
http://www.fordham.edu/...
Only 35 American women have ever served in the U.S. Senate.
Only 209 American women have ever served in the House of Representatives.
http://www.senate.gov/...
http://womenincongress.house.gov/
"You’ve come a long way, baby." That was a slogan for a cigarette ad in the 1980’s. But it carried a larger meaning, even then.
We’ve come a long way. Hey, thanks for the right to vote! But progress at the national level can still be reduced to identifying the relative handful of women who have served in the U.S. Congress, and in federal executive positions. We’ve yet to get a Presidential nominee, let alone win that office. Look how many "firsts" are very recent, in the lifetimes of many of us. Relative to our numbers, we’re still vastly underrepresented. Feminism is a vital today as it ever was.
Organize, agitate, educate, must be our war cry.
Susan B. Anthony, suffragist, civil rights leader.
Yes, Campbell, there is a boy’s club. What we now have was earned, not inherited.