La Conner Weekly News - Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper

Next Tuesday we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, women gaining the vote. Especially if we are white, we take universal suffrage for granted, that everyone can vote. No one alive today remembers when women did not have the vote, but for 131 years, from 1789 till August 18, 1920, women could not vote. That is more years denied the vote than having it.

Women have pushed men into the social evolution of our society. Into the 20th century – depending on where you lived, which state – women were considered property, without rights. They had to ask permission for...