California NOW

The History of Suffrage and Women Voters

We interviewed Kate Kelly of the America Comes Alive website on the history of women's suffrage in the United States in honor of the anniversary of the 19th Amendment. 

Share with us something most women might not know about the struggle for suffrage.

People tend to forget that most types of social progress require a long time and a lot of effort. The Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 was a good first step with many others subsequent steps being taken by leaders like Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Carrie Chapman Catt.

It also involved—and required—regular women who did not get written about in the history books. I love this little-told story from Vineland, New Jersey. These were regular women who decided to try to exert their right to vote in 1868:

As was the custom of the day, male election judges sat at a table with a ballot box and supervised the election as voters came to drop in their ballots. Women set up a table opposite the men and placed on their table a similar box. As women arrived at the polls, they attempted to cast a vote in the regular ballot box. When they were turned away by the male judges, they approached the other table and dropped their ballots in the women's ballot box. They then went to the homes of friends and neighbors to care for those women's children so that the others, too, could protest.

How would you say the concerns over giving women the vote played out after suffrage? Were those concerns validated or invalidated?

They were resoundingly invalidated. Those against women gaining suffrage felt that the social fabric of the country would be destroyed, that families would fall apart, and that the women would organize a political party to elect only women candidates to public office.

A document created in 1914 by an association calling itself the Nebraska Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage created a 14-point flier about why women should not be given the vote. The document noted that because women were apolitical, they were best suited to run civic boards and oversee child welfare. Another reason noted was, “We believe that the interests of all women are as safe in the hands of men as they are in those of other women.”

What is the first year that we can really see the impact of a female voting block?

The 1956 presidential election was the first election where the winning candidate, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was greatly aided by receiving a significant bloc of votes from women. The proportion of women voting for Ike was six percent higher than the proportion of votes the candidate gained from men.

In 1964, more women voted than men for the first time. Since that time, women voters regularly outnumber men.

"Covered" Covers the World of Women and Tattoos

 I interviewed Beverly Yuen Thompson, the woman behind the documentary movie Covered, which examines heavily tattooed women, and women in the world of tattooing.

What drove you to make a film about women and tattooing?

I am a heavily tattooed woman myself, and the experience of having many tattoos has had a great impact on my life. I wanted to see if it was similar for other women, to learn how they dealt with the potential discrimination, and to formulate a community of women with whom I could communicate. Many of the heavily tattooed women I interviewed have faced a great deal of discrimination, and I hope that the movie Covered educates people so that they will not discriminate in such a way in the future. I also wanted to explore the history of women in the tattooing industry as well.

What kinds of perceptions does society at large have of women who are heavily tattooed?  Are these distinct from the societal perceptions of heavily tattooed men, and if so, how?

Heavily tattooed women face tremendous social sanctions for crossing the line into "heavy" tattooing. If women keep their ink gender appropriate by having it small, cute, and hidden, then it is practically socially acceptable. But when women have large, public tattoos depicting images such as zombies, the public reacts harshly. All of my participants have experienced harsh words from strangers, a great deal of strangers will come up and touch their tattoos unexpectedly, and employment discrimination is completely legal. Many of the women have been disowned by their family members, have faced a great deal of grief from family disapproval, but fewer have unconditionally supportive families. Heavily tattooed women definitely face more heavily sanctions than men, because tattooing has been considered masculine. Whereas men are just being masculine if they have many tattoos; women are also being masculine, and this makes them deviant. Often the public will assume these women are deviant in other ways, and will accuse them of being "sluts" or "lesbians." Women who are mothers, older women, and professional women are also transgressing lines of social norms. Mothers face a great deal of stigma from their children's teachers, at the PTA meetings and dealing with child care providers as well.

How do you see intersections of sexism and cultural stigmas against body modification play out with tattooed women?  Are there differences in how these impact women of color, lesbian and transwomen, or disabled women?

Women are suppose to enact femininity with their bodies, to do otherwise is to transgress social norms. So while getting "chick tattoos" is fine, becoming heavily tattooed has been stigmatized. Different women are differently impacted. Women of color face even more social sanctions, their tattoos intertwine with racism already experienced, so they become more stereotypical images of their ethnicity. Many communities of color have even stronger stigmas against women and tattooing than does the mainstream US culture, and so their families view their tattooing as extremely deviant, and perhaps as the worst outcomes of Americanization. For transwomen, tattooing provides an opportunity to further the embodied/engendered project, and they can utilize tattoos to represent more femininity or masculinity. For lesbians, being heavily tattooed often marks their sexuality as a question, and they may be more or less comfortable with that outcome. For lesbians who are not trying to achieve the feminine norm, they may be open to expressing themselves through heavy tattooing more comfortably than those who are trying to be more feminine. About 20-25% of my participants in Covered were lesbian or bisexual. For disabled women, tattooing can provide a way to reclaim the body and express their own desires and to respond creatively to their embodied experiences. While they may have felt out of control of their body experience in the past, through tattooing, they can re-signify their bodies.

Interview with Jacqueline Caster of the Everychild Foundation

What prompted you to establish the Everychild Foundation, and what sets it aside from other organizations funding work on behalf of children?

I was frustrated with the typical charity fundraising model which did not appropriately tap into my talents, training and abilities. I was fed up with only being asked to plan galas and solicit for dinner tickets and auction items. It was demeaning and inefficient. I felt that the focus of these events wasn't always about the cause. They also did not stimulate me intellectually. As to the cause itself - having my own children made me more attuned to issues that face the most vulnerable of our society.

What do you see as the greatest triumph of your work with the Everychild Foundation so far?

Directly serving over 350,000 local children in significant ways would be the obvious answer. However, 1) the fact that we have created a grant-making model that now has inspired at least 10 spin off groups and 2) that we only fund projects which can inspire replication and which have, in fact, done so, is very exciting to us. We have really leveraged our work.

You've worked closely on issues of foster care. What are some of the issues that face children in the foster care system?

There is a huge laundry list. One of the saddest is what happens to these kids when they age out of care. Upon their 18th birthday, they are on their own. In fact, some of them even arrive home on that day to find the locks changed and a garbage bag on the doorstep with all their belongings. Their prospects, as you can imagine, are dismal. The girls, for instance, are 3 times more likely to become pregnant by age 19 than their non-foster care peers. In Los Angeles and Alameda Counties, 50% of these kids will be homeless within 6 months. Less than 5% of these kids will ever complete college. As they age, their poverty and incarceration rates are also way above the norm.

Author Dean King Talks With Us About the Women on Mao's Long March

 I interviewed author Dean King on his book, Unbound: A True Story of War, Love, and Survival which documents the story of the women on Mao's Long March.
(Photo shows Dean King with Wang Quanyuan, the last surviving woman from the Long March)

How did you learn about this piece of Chinese history, and what inspired you to write about it?



The Long March was called to my attention by my editor at Little, Brown, Geoff Shandler. The story had some nice similarities to my last book, Skeletons on the Zahara, which told the tale of American sailors shipwrecked on the West Coast of Africa in 1815 and enslaved there by desert nomads, but it also had some key differences. I liked the fact that the Long March put women in a perilous situation and offered a great way to explore their experience under such trying circumstances. And I liked the way it offered a chance to look at China and modern Chinese history from a unique perspective.

When an author chooses to write the stories of those from a different cultural background, there can be questions of authenticity and appropriation. How have you attempted to ensure that your book is true to the lives and stories of the women you are writing about?



It all starts with having the right motives. When you want to tell a story fully, objectively, and compellingly, the rest falls into place. Having four sisters and four daughters, a mother as a hero and a wife for a best friend, I immediately felt connected to this empowering story about women and wanted to present it in a way that would move readers. The female side was not hard for me because I really empathize with women. Crossing the national/cultural/temporal barriers was more of a challenge, but checking my preconceptions at the door and opening my mind wholly to a different way of looking at a situation, through someone else’s eyes, is something I’ve trained myself to do. As a middle child, I think it comes somewhat naturally to me as well. I work hard to put myself in the shoes of the people I write about, whether early-19th-century mariners or 20th-century Chinese women. It requires that I ask fundamental questions of myself and challenge my own views. I want the reader to do this when they read the story too; after all, I am asking 21st-century American readers to relate to pre-WWII Chinese Communist peasants; it’s a big leap. Thorough research, including extensive travels in China, interviewing Wang Quanyuan, the last surviving Long March woman, and spending two weeks with a Chinese woman about the age of these Long Marchers allowed me to improve my perspective in telling the story.

The women you profile came from very disparate backgrounds, what was the appeal of Mao’s cause for them?



While some of the women were educated and from merchant or intellectual classes, most were poor. All could see that a pervasive inequality and corruption existed in the recently fallen Qing Dynasty Chinese society. The hurdles to social mobility were smothering. The mass of people were largely destitute and oppressed. The outlook for peasant women was grim, usually an arranged marriage, little or no education, and domestic servitude with little or no public life in a rural village. When the Communists came through, they promised opportunity, self-determination, equality, and exposure to the world at large. They would, of course, fall far short in these goals, but the appeal was immediate and the change in life-style, the relative freedom and access to education and public life was transformative. For a bold young woman, the choice was easy.

Interview: Marcia Reynolds & the Wander Women

We interviewed Marcia Reynolds, Psy.D., author of Wander Women on her take on women, careers, and the work/life balance.

Who are wander women? How did you recognize this trend, and why do you think this is happening now?

Wander women are smart, gutsy high achievers who aren’t afraid to speak up and are confident in their ability to do good work. They define success very differently from traditional societal markers of impressive titles and hefty paychecks. Although they may earn high-ranking, high-paying jobs, success means realizing their greatest potential while having a positive impact on the world around them.

However, they keep defining their full potential as something more than they are doing. So even if they are making a good living, they often feel underutilized, bored, frustrated, and even angry. The solution is often to wander from job to job, career to career, and business to business in search of fulfillment and purpose. Then after years of wandering, they start asking questions about the validity of their purpose and sometimes, they aren't sure who they are distinct from what they do.

I observed this shift in the demeanor of high-achieving women while coaching top talent and listening to women attending my leadership classes worldwide. Year after year, the women I work with are more hopeful and bold than ever before. They are also more stressed and confused about the paths they should take. When I tried to find resources I could share with my clients to help them better understand themselves and their choices, I found most seminars and business books for women still focused on the issues identified in the 1980's. My clients had different needs and challenges. I then chose to do my doctoral research to study this phenomenon. Even though I call myself a wander woman, some of the results surprised me. I was able to identify this new set of career needs and personal challenges, plus the specific societal factors that led to this emerging identity of women as they become more self-sufficient.