The 19th Amendment passed in 1920. That is 129 years after the Bill of Rights passed. Jeanette Pickering Rankin was the first woman to hold federal office in the United States. She joined the House of Representatives in 1916 from Montana. The first woman elected to the Senate was Hattie Wyatt Caraway in 1932. She first replaced her husband, Thaddeus, after his death but then won the seat on her own. If you are curious, the first Congress met in 1789.
One of the memories I have burned in my brain took place when Hillary Clinton first ran for President in 2008. A young man in my class told me that a woman had never led a major country. Some kids sank in their chairs. Girls groaned. I thought, at first, he was needling me. With help from students, we compiled a list of women who did successfully run a country. Since we were studying Julius Caesar, it started with Queen Elizabeth 1. Another male student during the discussion added that his history teacher said Queen Elizabeth was a slut.
Okay, that stopped me again. I asked him for the context of the comment.
He said because she had multiple lovers and hadn’t married. I deduced that this was what the young man had remembered and made the decision on his own. Sad, that seemed to be all he remembered.
Every year I taught teachers were asked what we were doing for Black History Month, Constitution Day, Patriots Day, but no one ever asked what we were doing for March- National Women’s Month. By Presidental Proclamation in 1987, this month is supposed to celebrate the accomplishments of women. But is it?
Maybe the treatment Hillary Clinton received in 2018 with Hillary nutcrackers sold in airports would make a change. No. The treatment she received by the press (her slipping going into a car, for example) and by the opposition in 2016 would cause a change. Nope.
Elizabeth Warren is not down and out by any means. Her comments yesterday (March 5, 2020) about whether sexism played a role in her not doing well in the presidential primaries, she said this, “Gender in this race. That is the trap question for every woman. If you say, ‘Yeah, there was sexism in this race, everyone says whiner, and if you say there was no sexism about a bazillion women would say ‘what planet do you live on’? I promise you this. I will have a lot more to say about this later on.”
I, for one, will be listening.