Suffragette Debate
Learn more about the Suffragette Movement through the eyes of two real people who were directly involved.
In honor of the 100th Anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, we’ve invited suffragette Anne Gannett and her mother-in-law, anti-suffragette Sadie Gannett, to argue their viewpoints.
Transcript
Guy: Hi, I’m Guy Gannett. Welcome to my home.
I was part of the Maine State Legislature. We had to decide on whether women should have the right to vote or not here in Maine.
Well, I was in a bit of a pickle. My wife Anne, pictured here, she’s what we call a Suffragette. She thinks that women should have the right to vote. It’s not so simple, though. My mother, pictured here, Sadie, she was the leader of the Anti-Suffragette faction here in Augusta, Maine.
So now I’m split in the middle. My wife’s a Suffragette, my mother’s an Anti-Suffragette. What am I going to do? I’ve got a decision to make here. So I’ve decided I’m going to introduce you guys to my mother and my wife. And I’m going to let them give their arguments to you on what I should do.
Anne: Hi, I’m Anne Gannett- Guy’s wife, I’m a suffragette, and that means that I believe that women deserve the right to vote.
Sadie: Hello, and I am Sadie Gannett – Guy Gannett’s mother, and I do not think women should have the right to vote.
Anne: Let’s debate.
Sadie: Guy, I am your mother, let me go first.
I don’t think women should have the right to vote simply because I value and appreciate the innate femininity of women. Women are too pure and too good to lower themselves to the corrupt and messy business of politics.
Anne: I’m going to have to stop you there, Sadie. To say that women are morally superior to men is actually quite insulting to the basic humanity of not only men but also women.
Sadie: Are you serious? No. Women already have too much responsibility – we are the housekeepers, we raise the children, we cook, we clean, we keep everyone alive! Suffrage would just be another difficult responsibility for the woman.
Anne: Well if you are discontent with the amount of responsibility you have from your assigned gender role, maybe you should pick up the fight for the right to vote. Voting is a way for us women to fight for the changes that we want to see in society.
Sadie: If you’re discontent with the state of the world then maybe you should have raised your children better. Women are not suffering from any injustice which giving them the ballot would rectify.
Anne: Women don’t have the same access to educational, medicinal, or vocational resources that men do. And the women that do hold jobs, don’t have very much power. By 1900 only 19% of jobs were held by women and most were very restricted. If a woman who has a job gets married, then she’s expected to go home and leave her job. And even at home, it is not her who decides, it’s her husband. God forbid she not want to have children. It’s illegal to even talk about birth control!
Sadie: My heavens! Silence! You have been reading too much of that Margaret Sanger woman’s nonsense! All of those things are natural and ordered by God. That is why there is a biological difference between the sexes! Besides, women don’t defend our country like men do. If women are too weak to pick up arms for the defense of the Republic then they’re too weak to vote.
Anne: Do women not need food, water, and air to survive? Do we not have eyes, ears, a mouth, and legs? Women are the same as men. Therefore we should be afforded the same rights as men. Women have never been afforded teh opportunity to defend their country because it is men who decides who does and who doesn’t go to fight.
And furthermore, isn’t it us women who work in the factories when men go off to war? Women also pay taxes. Women pay taxes to a government that doesn’t even afford us a full citizenship! What happened to ‘no taxation without representation?’
Sadie: You don’t need to have the vote to influence politics, dear. Women, by being the caretakers, nurturers, and providers of our society are responsible for raising and supporting our men. If they are doing something you don’t like, then it is within your power to change their minds through your own feminine privileges. Men pay taxes too, and it is their responsibility, not privilege, to represent us.
Anne: That is not even true! Women are expected to be submissive to men. All it takes is for one man to disagree with what a woman is saying, and he is well within his rights to silence her. By granting the vote to women, women will have power independent of men.
Sadie: You should refer to the founding document, the Declaration of Independence, which says “all men are created equal.” It refers to men because it acknowledges that politics are the sphere of men. The division of labor between men and women, women in the home and men in the world, was acknowledged by our Founding Fathers as the natural order of things.
Anne: But at the time it was written, both property-less men and African American couldn’t vote. But today they have that power. Isn’t it time that we women, who make up half the population, should be afforded the same rights as everyone else? There is no natural order of gender roles! Throughout history, women have led nations and led armies, and they’ve also served in politics!
Sadie: I bet you’ll deny science too! Mr. William T. Sedgwick, president of the American Public Health Association, says “It would mean a degeneration and a degradation of human fiber which would turn back the hands of time a thousand years,” if women were given voting rights- and he is a doctor! He says that we women are already under great strain from pregnancy and lactation and the stress of politics would be too much! Men don’t have to deal with those things and can shoulder the burden of politics.
Anne: Pregnancy and the female body are why we need the vote! We shouldn’t let men – who know nothing about what it’s like to be a woman – be able to take control and have power over what we can do. It’s like trusting someone who can’t read to run a library – they just don’t have the same experience to know what is best. Plus there are plenty of scientists and doctors who would agree. Madam Curie, for example, and Maria Mitchell!
Sadie: Posh. Plenty of women agree with me. Josephine Dodge, Sara Hale, and Alice Wadsworth all agree with me!
Anne: And plenty of women agree with me! Sojourner Truth, Anna J. Cooper, Abby Kelley, and Matilda Gage with me!
Sadie: I can’t reason with you. I’m done with this conversation.
Anne: You know you don’t have any real arguments, Sadie!
Sadie: Don’t speak to me that way!
Guys: Ladies, ladies. Why don’t we just bring it down a little bit?
Anne and Sadie: Hush Guy, you’re not involved in this conversation!