"The vote is a power, a weapon of offense and defense, a prayer."

Carrie Chapman Catt, 1920

It’s hard for many of us to imagine a democracy where women are not allowed to vote or hold elected office. And yet, it’s only been 83 years since women have had that right guaranteed by our constitution.

The campaign to allow women to vote originated at a meeting on July 19th, 1848, in Seneca Falls, New York. The participants drafted a "Declaration of Sentiments" to protest the political, social, and economic inferiority of women. This Declaration also included the first public demand for extending the right to vote to women.

The Civil War and other amendments to the Constitution put the suffrage movement on hold, however, as the nation’s attention was focused on the abolition of slavery and the extension of political rights to African-Americans, that is African-American men. Although the suffragists tried hard to tie their cause of "universal suffrage" to the political liberation of African-Americans, they were not successful.

In January of 1878, the suffragists persuaded Senator Sargent of California to introduce a suffrage amendment in Congress. But it quickly became clear that the sitting Congressmen were quite unwilling to risk their seats through a vote of an electorate that included women. The amendment sat in committee for nine years, and never did make it to a vote in the House during this period.

The suffragists turned to the states instead to try and pass a series of constitutional amendments to allow women to vote. Between 1882 and 1898, the suffrage question was placed on referendum ballots in 9 different states, but passed in only two: Colorado in 1893, and Idaho in 1896.

As the movement stalled, Theodore Roosevelt told leaders to "Go get another state" in order to persuade Congress to pass a federal suffrage amendment. In 1910, the movement won in Washington, and in 1911, California submitted a state woman suffrage amendment to voters which passed by a narrow margin.

These two victories propelled the movement forward. By the end of 1918, 15 states allowed women to vote in elections at every level of government. Congress began to feel the pressure as more Senators and Representatives were elected by women and began to use their influence to push hard for a federal constitutional amendment. The federal suffrage amendment was finally approved by the Senate on June 4, 1919 and the ratification process moved quickly through the country.

Within one month, eleven states had ratified the amendment. Within 6 months, 22 states had done so. Our own state of Nevada was the 31^st state to ratify the amendment on February 7^th of 1920. Finally, on August 26, 1920, 83 years ago, Tennessee became the thirty-sixth and final state to ratify and the Nineteenth Amendment became part of the U.S. Constitution. In the end, it came down to one vote in the Tennessee house, by 24 year old Harry Burn, who surprised observers by casting the deciding vote for ratification. At the time of his vote, Burns had in his pocket a letter he had received from his mother stating: "Don’t forget to be a good boy…and vote for suffrage."

[The political lesson: never underestimate a mother’s power of persuasion.]

But has winning the vote made a difference? Did the vote give women the power, the offensive and defensive weapons, the prayer that Carrie Chapman Catt spoke of? Do women express their values differently in politics? How seriously have women taken the right to vote and run for office?

In 1872, Susan B. Anthony was arrested for dropping a completed ballot in a ballot box in Rochester, New York, and subsequently was tried for illegal voting. She declared "that the right which woman needed above every other, the one indeed which would secure to her all the others, was the right of suffrage." Clearly the suffragists saw the vote as the mechanism by which they could gain power to change and improve their world.

Yet the passion of the suffrage movement has been diffused. Women are just as apathetic as men when it comes to voting and participating in the political process. We’ve gone from it being a crime for a woman to vote…to begging women (and men) to register to vote. Some young women today have forgotten that there was ever a time when they could not vote. 83 years is ancient history in their life experience, and yet, they quickly become engaged, sometimes enraged, when confronted with the feminine history of powerlessness.

Do women have different values than men in politics? Or are they just as split in their views as men? Is it gender that guides political thinking or a deeper value set that is more rooted in a worldview that understands, as the NY Times stated in an editorial in 1920, that "True citizenship means service and sacrifice, the giving as well as the taking."

The same editorial, written just after full ratification, had remarkable insight:

"Women in fighting for the vote have shown a passion of earnestness, a persistence, and above all a command of both tactics and strategy, which have amazed our master politicians…It is doubtless true that women will divide much as men have done among the several parties. There will be no solid "woman vote." Having individual opinions and preferences, they will be individually swayed by them in respect to any given political issue or personality.. But this is only half of the story….Hitherto the distinctively feminine instincts and aspirations have centered in winning the right of suffrage; but now that it is won, a vast, united force has been let loose. That political issues and leaders should continue to be merely man-made is inconceivable.

It is a fair guess, and indeed a fact already exemplified, that one distinctive interest of the woman politician will be in what is called welfare legislation – the regulation of the conditions of life and of industry with reference to the health and vigor of the nation, for the present and especially for future generations… Unlike suffrage, questions of human welfare can seldom be answered by a categorical yes or no. It is not a question of black or white, but of delicately shaded values and the interplay of a thousand nicely adjusted forces, economic and social. The talents required are openness to evidence, accurate foresight and wise tolerance.

Women are beginning to have a sense of this, and they are developing a flexibility of mind and a capacity for compromise that make political discussion a thing very different from what it has been."

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I can easily relate my own experience as a woman legislator to these eloquent words written 83 years ago. During my first term in office in 1999, we tried briefly to organize a woman’s caucus. It failed immediately when we discovered in the first meeting that our common female experience did not translate well into the political realm. We found very little we could agree on, as women, – and there were strongly held feelings around issues such as reproductive rights, the death penalty for juveniles, and indeed "welfare legislation" that prevented us from developing the relationships needed to work on any women’s issue of magnitude. Clearly we were not united in our values, or our politics, by our gender.

In the Legislature, I’ve seen men (and some women) wield power viciously and vindictively to advance personal and corporate wealth. I’ve experienced hearings where legislators have made racist and paternalistic remarks, and I’ve heard some of them invoke the values of their religion as they did so.

I’ve also seen power used forcefully to advance values that many of us here today share – I was in a conference room during this last session when a strong powerful woman turned to a group of opponents, mostly male, and firmly told them she’d rather cut off her arm then cut prescription drugs for seniors or health care for children. And they didn’t argue with her because they knew she had the power to back up that statement.

So I’ve seen determined women use their political power as "weapons of offense and defense" to defend their vision of economic justice. I’ve also seen women cry privately in frustration and anger – and I’ve seen the same women put aside their emotions and become ruthless negotiators, keeping their eye on the prize of social justice.

The right to vote and hold political office has changed our society for the better. I do believe that as more women have been elected to our state legislature, we’ve seen more progress on social issues – especially as these women have gained power through seniority and position. In the last decade our state has made remarkable strides forward on health care, children’s issues, services for the mentally ill, as well as progressing on issues of human rights in terms of the death penalty and reintegrating prisoners into society.

We must recognize the power of the vote as an agent of change as well as a prayer for the future. We must continue to raise our daughters and sons to aspire to public service, and encourage them to develop the flexibility of mind and capacity to compromise in order to become great leaders. We must teach them, by example, to be informed and exercise their right to vote and participate in the political process as a privilege and a right.

And lastly, we must celebrate the diversity that enriches our democracy and have the courage of our convictions to use the political process to further our goals of social and economic justice.