Writing Without Waffle
How do you vote?
photo credit: Suffragettes and petitions (LOC) via photopin (license)
Have you seen the new Suffragette film?
One of the most moving moments for me was the scrolling credits at the end, when it shows the year each country gave women the vote. It ends something like: ‘2015. Saudi Arabia. Still thinking about it.’
Years ago, I studied ‘women’s issues’ as part of my OU degree. At a talk at summer school, the audience was asked to list the reason why children shouldn’t have the vote. Suggestions included: ‘They don’t have the information to make a good decision’, ‘We know better than they do’, and ‘We’ll vote in a way that looks after them’. The speaker then pulled up a Victorian document that listed all the same reasons to justify why women shouldn’t vote.
That memory has stuck in my head for a looooong time.
However, voting can be unnecessarily complicated.