Ladies Against Feminism – Hot Button Issues

Women's suffrage over time

Academics have long pondered why the government started growing precisely when it did. The federal government, aside from periods of wartime, consumed about 2 percent to 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) up until World War I. It was the first war that the government spending didn't go all the way back down to its pre-war levels, and then, in the 1920s, non-military federal spending began steadily climbing. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal — often viewed as the genesis of big government — really just continued an earlier trend. What changed before Roosevelt came to power that explains the growth of government? The answer is women's suffrage. [This is one of those issues people would rather not touch with a ten-foot pole, but more than one historian has researched this thoroughly, and their conclusions should provoke us to think...]

Jan 5, 2008
http://www.ladiesagainstfeminism.com/artman/publish/


Women's suffrage over time
By John R. Lott Jr.
November 27, 2007


"If we took away women's right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democrat president. It's kind of a pipe dream, it's a personal fantasy of mine, but I don't think it's going to happen."
—Ann Coulter, Oct. 2 New York Observer


With Hillary Clinton still the leading Democrat in the race for president, a lot of news stories over the next year will discuss women voting patterns. Some women may well vote for Mrs. Clinton, even if they disagree with her policies, simply because she is a woman. Terms like "historic" will be thrown around a lot, but Mrs. Clinton's run really just represents a continuation of a trend that started about a hundred years ago, when women started voting in large numbers.

In fact, if you believe all the academic research that voters do a very good job of putting into office the right politicians who represent their interests, Mrs. Clinton's specific election is really besides the point.

Academics have long pondered why the government started growing precisely when it did. The federal government, aside from periods of wartime, consumed about 2 percent to 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) up until World War I. It was the first war that the government spending didn't go all the way back down to its pre-war levels, and then, in the 1920s, non-military federal spending began steadily climbing. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal — often viewed as the genesis of big government — really just continued an earlier trend. What changed before Roosevelt came to power that explains the growth of government? The answer is women's suffrage.

For decades, polls have shown that women as a group vote differently than men. Without the women's vote, Republicans would have swept every presidential race but one between 1968 and 2004.

The gender gap exists on various issues. The major one is the issue of smaller government and lower taxes, which is a much higher priority for men than for women. This is seen in divergent attitudes held by men and women on many separate issues. Women were much more opposed to the 1996 federal welfare reforms, which mandated time limits for receiving welfare and imposed some work requirements on welfare recipients. Women are also more supportive of Medicare, Social Security and educational expenditures.

Studies show that women are generally more risk averse than men. Possibly, this is why they are more supportive of government programs to ensure against certain risks in life. Women's average incomes are also slightly lower and less likely to vary over time, which gives single women an incentive to prefer more progressive income taxes. Once women become married, however, they bear a greater share of taxes through their husbands' relatively higher income. In that circumstance, women's support for high taxes understandably declines.

Marriage also provides an economic explanation for men and women to prefer different policies. Because women generally shoulder most of the child-rearing responsibilities, married men are more likely to acquire marketable skills that help them earn money outside the household. If a man gets divorced, he still retains these skills. But if a woman gets divorced, she is unable to recoup her investment in running the household. Hence, single women who believe they may marry in the future, as well as married women who most fear divorce, look to the government as a form of protection against this risk from a possible divorce: a more progressive tax system and other government transfers of wealth from rich to poor.

The more certain a woman is that she doesn't risk divorce, the more likely she is to oppose government transfers.

Has it always been this way? Can women's suffrage in the late 19th and early 20th century thus help explain the growth of government? While the timing of the two events is suggestive, other changes during this time could have played a role. For example, some argue that Americans became more supportive of bigger government due to the success of widespread economic regulations imposed during World War I.

A good way to analyze the direct effect of women's suffrage on the growth of government is to study how each of the 48 state governments expanded after women obtained the right to vote. Women's suffrage was first granted in western states with relatively few women — Wyoming (1869), Utah (1870), Colorado (1893) and Idaho (1896). Women could vote in 29 states before women's suffrage was achieved nationwide in 1920 with the adoption of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.

If women's suffrage increased government, our analysis should show a few definite indicators. First, women's suffrage would have a bigger impact on government spending and taxes in states with a greater percentage of women. And secondly, the size of government in western states should steadily expand as women comprise an increasing share of their population.

Even after accounting for a range of other factors — such as industrialization, urbanization, education and income — the impact of granting of women's suffrage on per-capita state government expenditures and revenue was startling. Per capita state government spending after accounting for inflation had been flat or falling during the 10 years before women began voting. But state governments started expanding the first year after women voted and continued growing until within 11 years real per capita spending had more than doubled. The increase in government spending and revenue started immediately after women started voting.

Yet, as suggestive as these facts are, we must still consider whether women's suffrage itself caused the growth in government, or did the government expand due to some political or social change that accompanied women's suffrage?

Fortunately, there was a unique aspect of women's suffrage that allows us to answer this question: Of the 19 states that had not passed women's suffrage before the approval of the 19th Amendment, nine approved the amendment, while the other 12 had suffrage imposed on them. If some unknown factor caused both a desire for larger government and women's suffrage, then government should have only grown in states that voluntarily adopted suffrage. This, however, is not the case: After approving women's suffrage, a similar growth in government was seen in both groups of states.

Women's suffrage also explains much of the federal government's growth from the 1920s to the 1960s. In the 45 years after the adoption of suffrage, as women's voting rates gradually increased until finally reaching the same level as men's, the size of state and federal governments expanded as women became an increasingly important part of the electorate.

But the battle between the sexes does not end there. During the early 1970s, just as women's share of the voting population was leveling off, something else was changing: The American family began to break down, with rising divorce rates and increasing numbers of out-of-wedlock births.

Over the course of women's lives, their political views on average vary more than those of men. Young single women start out being much more liberal than their male counterparts and are about 50 percent more likely to vote Democratic. As previously noted, these women also support a higher, more progressive income tax as well as more educational and welfare spending. But for married women this gap is only one-third as large. And married women with children become more conservative still. But for women with children who are divorced, they are suddenly about 75 percent more likely to vote for Democrats than single men. So as divorce rates have increased, due in large part to changing divorce laws, voters have become more liberal.

Women's suffrage ushered in a sea change in American politics that affected policies aside from taxes and the size of government. For example, states that granted suffrage were much more likely to pass Prohibition, for the temperance movement was largely dominated by middle-class women. Although the "gender gap" is commonly thought to have arisen only in the 1960s, female voting dramatically changed American politics from the very beginning.

John R. Lott Jr., a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland, is the author of "Freedomnomics," upon which this article is based.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/...11270007/1013&

Great article, Tom. Thanks for sharing.j

This is what bugs me,

Now, I understand views changing as one ages. It's like that expression, 'I used to be a liberal and then I grew up'. However, that part about women voting completely different after they've been divorced as opposed to how they voted while married really annoys me. If it was wrong (or right) when you were married, it doesn't change because your marital status has. I absolutely despise that type of convenient morality. The merits of an issue are generally static, they shouldn't change in regards to how they effect us personally.

A powerful arguement, but it does not convince me. It is not women's sufferage that is the cause in its entirety but Universal sufferage based soley on age.

Age is arbitrarily set and has little to do with ability to think through the implications of Policy. Gender is s simple two-fold distinction and again little to do with ability. That is even demonstrated in the writer's arguement.

No, the main factor is ability to think, not the various fears and desires at play at various stages of life or the different emphases of men as compared to women.

Far too many thick people vote. Far too many complete wastrels vote. Far too many people who have not lifted a finger to add to human competence, happiness or social management vote. Far too many young people who are only beginning to consider the issues and have yet to contribute a single useful societal input vote. Friggin' crooks vote.

There are far too many people who have the 'right to vote' who would be hard pressed answering, " which is the odd one out: Jesus, Einstein, Churchill, a house brick".

The right to vote is not EARNED. It ought to be. The vote ought to be limited to those who have demonstrated a capacity and a competence that is useful to society.

I agree.

However I think due to women's biological ties to child-bearing they will always tend to put personal security and protection at the top of their priorities, whether enabled through social customs like marriage or through state intervention. Men will still tend to prefer personal autonomy and smaller government.

Okay, more fuel for the fire:


Against Women's Suffrage
Female Misogynist blog
Thursday, July 3, 2008


“What then, in the next place, will be the effect of this fundamental change when it shall be established? The obvious answer is, that it will destroy Christianity and civilization in America. Some who see the mischievousness of the movement express the hope that it will, even if nominally successful, be kept within narrow limits by the very force of its own absurdity. They “reckon without their host.” There is a Satanic ingenuity in these Radical measures which secures the infection of the reluctant dissentients as surely as of the hot advocates. The women now sensible and modest who heartily deprecate the whole folly, will be dragged into the vortex, with the assent of their now indignant husbands. The instruments of this deplorable result will be the (so-called) conservative candidates for office. They will effect it by this plea, that ignorant, impudent, Radical women will vote, and vote wrong; whence it becomes a necessity for the modest and virtuous women, for their country’s sake, to sacrifice their repugnance and counterpoise these mischievous votes in the spirit of disinterested self-sacrifice. Now a woman can never resist an appeal to the principle of generous devotion; her glory is to crucify herself in the cause of duty and of zeal. This plea will be successful. But when the virtuous have once tasted the dangerous intoxication of political excitement and of power, even they will be absorbed; they will learn to do con amore what was first done as a painful duty, and all the baleful influences of political life will be diffused throughout the sex.

“What those influences will be may be learned by every one who reverences the Christian Scriptures, from this fact, that the theory of “Women’s Rights” is sheer infidelity. It directly impugns the authority and the justice of these Scriptures. They speak in no uncertain tones. “The husband is the head of the wife” (Eph. v. 23). “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands, as to the Lord” (v. 22). “The man is not for the woman, but the woman for the man” (I. Cor. ii. 9). “Let the woman learn in silence, with all subjection: but I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence: for Adam was first formed, then Eve: and Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression” (I. Tim. 2: 11-14). They are to be “discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands,” etc. (Titus ii. 5). How utterly opposed is all this to the levelling doctrine of your Radical. Women are here consigned to a social subordination, and expressly excluded from ruling offices, on grounds of their sex, and a divine ordination based by God upon a transaction which happened nearly six thousand years ago! The woman’s sphere is expressly assigned her within her home, and she is taught that the assumption of publicity is an outrage against that nature with which she is endowed. Now the politics which denounce all this as a natural injustice and self-evident folly cannot be expected to reverence these Scriptures; they must and will flout their whole authority. We must then make up our minds in accepting Women’s Rights to surrender our Bibles, and have an atheistic Government. And especially must we expect to have, presiding over every home and rearing every group of future citizens, that most abhorrent of all phenomena, an infidel woman; for of course that sex, having received the precious boon of their enfranchisement only by means of the overthrow of the Bible, must be foremost in trampling upon this their old oppressor and enemy. Its restoration to authority is necessarily their “re-enslavement,” to speak the language of their party.

“Second: these new excitements and temptations will utterly corrupt the character and delicacy of American women. It is indignantly asked, “Why should politics corrupt the morals of women more than of the `lords of creation’?” Suppose now we reply: American politics have corrupted the morals of the men? Suppose we argue that the retort is so true and just and the result has actually gone to so deplorable an extent, that were the female side of our social organization as corrupt as the male side has already become, American society would crumble into ruin by its own putrescence? It is better to save half the fabric than to lose all. And especially is it better to save the purity of the mothers who are, under God, to form the characters of our future citizens, and of the wives who are to restrain and elevate them, whatever else we endanger. Is it argued that since women are now confessedly purer than men, their entrance into politics must tend to purify politics? We reply again that the women .of the present were reared and attained this comparative purity under the Bible system. Adopt the infidel plan, and we shall corrupt our women without purifying our politics. What shall save us then?

“But there is another reply to this retort. Political excitements will corrupt women tenfold more than men; and this, not because women are naturally inferior to men, but because they are naturally adapted to a wholly different sphere. When we point to the fact that they are naturally more emotional and less calculating, more impulsive and less self-contained, that they have a quicker tact but less logic, that their social nature makes them more liable to the contagion of epidemic passions, and that the duties of their sex make it physically impossible for them to acquire the knowledge in a foreign sphere necessary for political duties, we do not depreciate woman; we only say that nature has adapted her to one thing and disqualified her for the other. The violet would wither in that full glare of midsummer in which the sunflower thrives: this does not argue that the violet is the meaner flower. The vine, left to stand alone, would be hurled prone in the mire by the first blasts of that history. In the case of the Amorites there was also this wise wind which strengthens the grasp of the sturdy oak upon its bed: still the oak may yield no fruit so precious as the cluster of the vine. But the vine cannot be an oak; it must be itself, dependent, clinging, but more precious than that on which it leans or it must perish. When anything, animate or inanimate, is used for a function to which it is not adapted, that foreign use must endamage it, and the more the farther that function is from its own sphere. So it will be found (and it is no disparagement to woman to say it) that the very traits which fit her to be the angel of a virtuous home unfit her to meet the agitations of political life, even as safely as does the more rugged man. The hot glare of publicity and passion will speedily deflower her delicacy and sweetness. Those temptations, which her Maker did not form her to bear, will debauch her heart, developing a character as much more repulsive than that of the debauched man as the fall has been greater. The politicating woman, unsexed and denaturalized, shorn of the true glory of her femininity, will appear to men as a feeble hybrid mannikin, with all the defects and none of the strength of the male. Instead of being the dear object of his chivalrous affection, she becomes his importunate rival, despised without being feared.

“This suggests a third consequence, which some of the advocates of the movement even already are bold enough to foreshadow. “Women’s Rights”, mean the abolition of all permanent marriage ties. We are told that Mrs. Cady Stanton avowed this result, proclaiming it at the invitation of the Young Men’s Christian Association of New York. She holds that woman’s bondage is not truly dissolved until the marriage bond is annulled. She is thoroughly consistent. Some hoodwinked advocates of her revolution may be blind to the sequence; but it is inevitable. It must follow by this cause, if for no other that the unsexed politicating woman can never inspire in man that true affection on which marriage should be founded. Men will doubtless be still sensual; but it is simply impossible that they can desire them for the pure and sacred sphere of the wife. Let every woman ask herself: will she choose for the lord of her affections an unsexed effeminate man? No more can man be drawn to the masculine woman. The mutual attraction of the two complementary halves is gone forever. The abolition of marriage would follow again by another cause. The divergent interests and the rival independence of the two equal wills would be irreconcilable with domestic government, or union, or peace. Shall the children of this monstrous no-union be held responsible to two variant co-ordinate and supreme wills at once? Heaven pity the children! Shall the two parties to this perpetual co-partnership have neither the power to secure the performance of the mutual duties nor to dissolve it? It is a self-contradiction, an impossible absurdity. Such a co-partnership of equals with independent interests must be separable at will, as all other such co-partnerships are. The only relation between the sexes which will remain will be a cohabitation continuing so long as the convenience or caprice of both parties may suggest; and this, with most, will amount to a vagrant concubinage….”

~~Robert Lewis Dabney [d.1898]

http://malechauvinist.blogspot.com/

And this, to my mind, is no 'bad' thing, but an inevitable and resonable thing. The inclinations of both genders and the desire for both rugged individualism/ sutonomy/small government on the one hand and security and protection on the other need to be melded in such a way as to satisfy as many people as possible.

It is a question of balance and direction.

Lott's arguement, to my mind, and upon reading it carefully, seems to be a case of the cart driving the horse.

He takes a concept that he does not like - women's vote - and makes a case that it, and while not alone, predominantly it is the 'cause' of higher taxes and bigger government. This is an unsupported arguement no matter how many times he wants to discuss Democrats and Republicans or other irrelevancies.

Democrats and Republicans are American parties, while women's votes are an international phenomenon. They are irrelevant as well as partial. They exclude, by their very focus, everyone and everywhere else, other parties and other Nations rationales for introducing Universal Sufferage, larger government and increases in taxation.

He not only excludes but also totally ignores the rationales for taxation and larger government that have nothing to do with women's votes or their particular gender-based desires. One only has to look to generalisable drives over the 19th C and into the 20th that called for larger, better, more effective government and the extension of government powers both national-internal and international.

He need only ask - and we too - where the money has been spent and where the regulation has been directed - in the main. I would hazard that inevitably and predominantly it has been on Infrastructure and Process which have been of great benefit to men as well as to women. Just think of roads and aircraft and electricity powerplants, trade, commodity exchange, warfare technology, the 'space race', health research and application and a host of other modern 'taken-for-granted advances. Few of these would have been accomplished without huge inputs of public funds and careful control.

Does anyone here really imagine that the sewers of London - the first great massive public health infrastructure project in history - could have been undertaken without public taxes? Or putting a man on the moon?

Could the second world war, a necessary undertaking to push back the greatest eveil of its day, could it have been undertaken without massive inflows of public monies - taxes - often against part of the public's will - and which committed several future generations to pay for it?

These and a thousand other necessary and desired 'doings' of our national and international societies have no bearing on the 'women's voting' issue and are not driven by it.

The 19C saw govermnent and taxation provisions becoming increasingly detached from requirement. A distinct lack of forward thinking and the undertaking of actions beyond countries' means, such as the Boer War, took down the the ability of Britain to sustain its Empire. The personal tax increases in Britain from 1903 to 1918 were a direct result of the Boer War, foloowed by WW1. The expenditures could not have been met without committing several generations to come being obliged to pay.

That women got the vote at that point is more a consequence that a cause.

Taxes and Government growth has been a result of a more complex world and a world constantly striving - a masculine concepts.

That is not to say that the world has or has not spent wisely and well. History in three hundred years will make its judgement on that. But for someone today to point the wagging finger of condemnation at women's voting influence on world developments, at the huge increases in standards of living, the vast increases in longeiveity, in the internationalisation of life - including overseas holidays (usually restricted to troops!), air travel, hospitals, roads, railways, oil wells and powerstations, nuclear energy and the Bomb, is plain arse about face.

Cart driving a hobby horse.


Addendum:

A small point of interest.

The first 'women's sufferage' in the western world was in Western Australia in 1900/01, when the then Premier wanted WA to become Federated with the rest of Australia. There were only two cities in WA: Perth and Kalgoorlie, the latter being the gold-mining town in the desert and almost wholly occupied by men. They didn't want the wealth flowing east to the main occupied parts of Australia. The Premier franchised the women of Perth so that the Perth vote would outweigh the vote of the men in Kalgoorlie.

Herbert Hoover, later an American politician after WW1 and the Depression, worked on the Kalgoorlie gold-fields.