Dr. Shaw and Women's Suffrage

Elizabeth Howard Shaw, D.D., M.D., published an autobiography in 1915 entitled The Story of a Pioneer.  The Palmerton Area Library sells old books in the basement, and for reasons unknown, I bought the book.  I’m about half way through it, and it is fascinating.    Miss Shaw became a preacher (the only woman in her class at the seminary in Boston),  then earned a medical degree, and ended up as a soldier in the woman’s suffrage movement.

Here’s what she wrote: 

     We were entering upon a deeply significant period.  For the first time women were going into industrial competition with men, and already men were intensely resenting their presence.  Around me I saw women overworked and underpaid, doing men’s work at half men’s wages, not because their work was inferior, but because they were women.  Again, too, I studied the obtrusive problems of the poor and of the women of the streets; and, looking at the whole situation from every angle, I could find but one solution for women--the removal of the stigma of disfranchisement.  As man’s equal before the law, woman could demand her rights, asking favors from no one.  (pp. 151-152).

The 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, 92 years ago.  And we still get candidates like Rickie Santorum.  We still get proposals like the one before the Pennsylvania legislature mandating intrusive vaginal ultrasounds.  We get Rush Limbaugh calling a college student a slut for testifying on birth control.

I think Dr. Elizabeth Shaw would be very disappointed. I am.