Women and Our Right to Vote

This year, I realized the importance of my vote more than ever. I guess in years past I just thought it was important to vote to put another number into the total towards winning of whatever candidate I hoped for. I felt that my one number could make a difference. I didn't realize just how proud I am to be a woman, until I joined Business and Professional Women. It isn't just the club or the people, but going to the national conference this year as Ohio's young careerist representative, allowed me to meet many women who know how important the woman's voice is and how important it is to keep working so our voice is heard. What? Yes, as Carolyn Maloney, D-NY, stated as I saw her speak and subsequently read her book, "Rumors of our Progress are Greatly Exaggerated." I realized, being as liberal and feminist and independent as they come, that I assumed all this time that women and men are on equal footing. I think I got knocked on my rear when I realized that women do still have to fight just to obtain being allowed the freedom to have a voice. Our state BPW this year has gone "Back to the Future" to teach and re-learn women's history. I learned that women before me like Alice Paul and Susan B. Anthony and others were jailed because they wanted a right to vote and have a voice, they ate food with worms, were abused, ridiculed, and much worse, just so that I...and every other woman in the U.S....would be able to cast a vote on candidates and issues that would govern the country we all live and work in. But what about the ERA...the equal rights amendment...when will that pass? When will women have the rights of men? Sorry guys...but we do ten times the amount of work that men do, yet we have half the voice. Well, it is time for our voice to be heard again. It is time for our voice to become louder again. This year, the voices of women were heard around the nation for Hillary. We almost elected a woman to president of the United States of America! I just want every woman out there to feel proud of herself that she had the right to cast a ballot and not take for granted what all the women before us endured just so we could do so.