Over at In A Strange Land Deborah has a list of 10 reasons why the women of New Zealand should have the vote.
They came from a leaflet published by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and include:
4. Because women are less accessible than men to most of the debasing influences now brought to bear upon elections, and by doubling the number of electors to be dealt with, women would make bribery and corruption less effective, as well as more difficult.
5. Because in the quietude of home women are less liable than men to be swayed by mere party feeling, and are inclined to attach great value to uprightness and rectitude of life in a candidate.
6. Because the presence of women at the polling-booth would have a refining and purifying effect.
7. Because the votes of women would add weight and power to the more settled and responsible communities.
8. Because women are endowed with a more constant solicitude for the welfare of the rising generations, thus giving them a more far-reaching concern for something beyond the present moment.
9. Because the admitted physical weakness of women disposes them to exercise more habitual caution, and to feel a deeper interest in the constant preservation of peace, law, and order, and especially in the supremacy of right over might.
How could you argue with that?
Ah, if only any of it were still true…
Ah, if only any of it were still true…
It never was MacD – that being said Universal suffrage is the way to go and something to be celebrated.