ProgressOhio

Eighty-eight years ago today women "won" the right to vote. Another dull Women's History factoid until I consider the context. My own grandmother couldn't vote when she studied at Ohio University in 1918.

I think I understand why we as a nation settled the "All Men Are Equal" debate early on, but had a difficult time with women's voting rights. The suffrage movement got mixed up with the female-dominated temperance unions. I can empathize with turn-of-the-century men who were leery of dour women carrying banners.

Today, we have only a few role models, notably Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, as examples of what women can achieve in the political sphere. That doesn't surprise me at all. It's like the Gender Dance Adage: "Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, except backward and in high heels." It's doubly tough when you're a mature woman whose looks, voice and emotional nuances are constantly scrutinized.

But a lack of female leadership does not at all translate into lack of female power in the voting booth. Quite the contrary. While many of us are content with our support roles in life, that doesn't mean we are not independent thinkers.

Political involvement is a lot like going to church. At just about every church service I've ever attended, the preacher is male and the pews are filled with a 60:40 ratio of women to men. (I'm not complaining, just observing. I prefer to listen to low male voices myself.) The leadership is almost always male in religion and politics, but take away the women, and you've got nothing. No church. No democracy.

I wish my late 102-year-old grandmother could have seen last night's Dem convention.