By Brielle Ballantine
Editor-In-Cheif

The women in Neshaminy want to give away their right to vote. At least that’s what 136 females told me in a survey conducted as a social experiment. Back in January, senior Jennah Binda and I got an idea from our Woman Studies teacher to make a petition to “End Women’s Suffrage” and see how many females in the school would naively sign it. The results surprised us.

Women Suffrage is the right for women to vote and to be involved in politics. Feminists have been fighting for women rights since the birth of our country. Abigail Adams, wife to John Adams, was the first recorded feminist fighting for women’s rights when she wrote her famous “Remember the Ladies” letter in 1776 asking her husband not to forget the women in their new codes of law; he simply laughed in her face.

The women of the National Women’s Party (NWP) sacrificed everything they had to get the rights that they deserved. In the 1900’s more and more states started giving women the right to vote, but the NWP were not willing to give up until the whole country was on board. In 1917, the NWP started silently picketing the White House. They were branded the “silent sentinels” because they did not shout to get their point across, but still they demanded attention.

They stood silent during the cold, rain, wind and snow; all day and all night. On their banners, they displayed quotes of President Wilson, hoping to get a reaction from him. Once World War I broke out, they became the first Americans to ever protest the President during a time of war. Many people considered the feminists guilty of treason.

While picketing, Alice Paul, leader of the NWP, and her follower were attacked by mobs, spit on, hit, kicked and arrested for “blocking traffic.” Five hundred women were arrested, 168 of them served jail time and some, including Paul, were brutalized and beaten in jail.

While in prison, Alice Paul and her followers held hunger strikes and refuse to eat until they were roughly force fed through feeding tubes shoved down their throats 3 times a day for three weeks.

They were released from jail in 1918 and soon after, in 1920, the 19th Amendment was ratified by Tennessee and officially became a law.

After all that fighting and hardship that women went through for one single right, 93 years later, the women of today can’t even recognize the term.

Binda and I went around the school with our petition to end Women’s Suffrage and we asked 200 students and staff, all female, if they wanted to sign a petition to end woman suffrage. Only 64 of the people we asked declined.

“To actually see what those women went through to get the right to vote is unbelievable. Most women and girls don’t really know the whole story,” Women Studies teacher, Kathleen Houser said. “To have the opportunities we have today, we are lucky and have come a long way.”

Not only was it surprising to see how many students were unaware of the cause, but the amount of staff members who excitedly lined up in order to sign was unexpected.

“It was so weird seeing all the adults happy to end suffrage when they didn’t even know what it was,” Said Binda. “It just shows that it’s not a generation problem, it’s a society problem.”

I have been going to Neshaminy for the past four years and I honestly have only heard of the Women’s Movement once, and it was in my junior year. The coverage we did on it was very bleak and to the point. I never heard of Paul or the NWP or all the fighting they had to do to get us voting which really makes me think, why aren’t we taught more about our civil right history?

“I’ve learned a lot about suffrage in social studies classes and also from the media,” said sophomore Liz Fitzpatrick who signed the petition. “I was unsure of the meaning. The word suffrage sounded like ‘suffer’, leading me to believe it was a bad thing.”

You would think that a great hurdle in the civil rights movement would be told proudly to every woman born in this land but how come our mothers don’t tell us? How come our sisters, cousins, aunts and grandmothers don’t past down stories of the brave women who did the impossible at the time and broke through a part of the glass ceiling? People don’t realize that we wouldn’t have the rights we have today if someone didn’t fight for them. We take our rights for granted, and that’s for every person, any race, gender or religion.

“Sadly people still don’t recognize the term suffrage and when people see a petition for something, they usually are willing to sign it, because they probably feel they are helping in some way to end some injustice,” Houser said. “The purpose is to bring awareness to this issue and make people realize that they should not take our freedoms for granted.”

This experiment was not meant to insult the women of Neshaminy, but it was meant to show that our society is doing a poor job of honoring our founding mothers. The women who fought to make this country the way it is today worked hard and fought harder; the least we can do is to make ourselves aware of their accomplishments and hope for the future.

“I want girls and boys to always fight for what they want in life and to do what makes them happy,” Houser said. “No one should be told they can’t do something based on gender, race, ethnicity, religion, etc. I feel we have the right to live our lives the way we want to.”