Conscious Choice: Ladies, it’s time to stop squandering our votes

November 2004 | BackWords

Ladies, it’s time to stop squandering our votes

by Val Gee

LADIES, I HAVE A CONFESSION. I am 55 and have never voted.

I don’t know why I never got around to voting when I lived in my native England. I suppose I always thought along the same lines as a young man who recently served us at a restaurant, who said he wasn’t going to vote because the U.S. presidential candidates “both seem as bad as each other.”

“Besides ...,” he added with a pained expression. “I’m just one person. I don’t make a difference.”

Since I was not a citizen for the past 20 years that I lived in this country I was conveniently exempt from making a decision. But I recently changed all that: I became an American Citizen. Ta-dah!

I hired an immigration lawyer and jumped through the hoops and hurdles of red tape, fingerprinting, FBI checks and everything else a non-citizen has to go through to become one of you. After I had sworn the Oath of Allegiance along with the other 140 individuals from 37 countries, the judge (a woman, I might add) said to us: “You now have the right to vote and to choose your leader. Please take advantage of your right. There are people outside the courtroom who will register you to vote in the coming November election.”

Of course, I registered. That’s the reason I decided to become a U.S. citizen in the first place. It could be something to do with age. I mean, I am now eligible to become a member of the Red Hat Society — fun, friendship and laughter for the over-50 woman. And believe me it is fun being over 50, not least of all because I live here in wonderful America with all its ethnic diversity, blah, blah, blah. The real reason I love America is because I can walk within a block and get my nails done, my body massaged, my hair titified (a quaint English expression), read books that are banned in other countries, buy specialty coffee, and any kind of food, dessert, or martini that my little heart desires.

America is a land for strong, healthy, beautiful women. We can have babies without a man being present, buy ourselves diamond rings for our little pinkies, and become a lap dancer, a lawyer, brain surgeon, politician or a stay-at-home mom. We have it made, ladies — we can do and be anything we want and we don’t have to chain ourselves to a railing, or go to jail, be force-fed, or violently beaten to do it.

But it wasn’t always like this. It’s because of women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) that not only can we vote but we also have freedoms that leave us with a bevy of choices that range from the serious, such as choosing a career that can give us economic independence, to the frivolous, such as deciding what color to paint our toenails.

Stanton not only helped gain women the right to vote but also joined other legal-rights struggles so married women could own property, have equal guardianship of their children and be granted a fair divorce from an abusive marriage. In 1913, women like Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, and Crystal Eastman organized the Congressional Union, later known as the National Women’s Party to push forward the suffrage movement. Even World War I failed to divert them from their campaign. Instead of calling a truce with President Wilson, they picketed the White House with signs demanding he extend democracy to women. These peaceful demonstrations ended with their arrest and imprisonment, hunger strikes and eventual force-feeding.

If you’ve seen the drama “Iron Jawed Angels,” you’ll know the cruel and inhumane treatment American suffragettes went through just so women like you and me can exercise our right to vote.

Meanwhile, in Great Britain suffragettes were suffering similar treatment for daring to unfurl some protest banners at a 1905 political rally. And consider Emily Davidson. Determined not to be force-fed during one of her prison hunger strikes, she barricaded the door of her cell, which was then flooded by a particularly cruel prison officer. She didn’t die then but it led her to think the suffragettes needed a martyr. She finally became one by throwing herself under the king’s horse in a 1913 race. I think she probably would be a tad upset with me for not voting.

Because I’m aware of the suffragettes’ history, I don’t know what the heck took me so long to realize that having the right to vote is such a very precious freedom. I can only say that I was asleep. Well, I’ve woken up, girls. I can no longer squander the power I have been given by all those brave women who in 1920 were finally successful in gaining the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which stated: “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 ...”

Maybe I’m just a late bloomer, but for the first time I understand how important it is to vote.

Maybe it’s because my two daughters have never voted, either — and if we continue this way — neither will my granddaughter.

And I wonder how many rights she will have, or not have, if we women don’t help elect the people who write the laws and pass amendments. As I look at my 5-week-old granddaughter I realize that it wasn’t so long ago that women of my grandmother’s generation were marching in the streets for me.

This is too big a country, with too much light to be weak or small-minded. So my fellow countrywomen — for the sake of all the girls who have been and are yet to be — please vote along with me.

Val Gee, the Chicago author of Super Service and The Customer Service Training Toolkit (McGraw-Hill), now plans to vote in every election.

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