Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: Female representation.
Speaker 3: We've been hearing a lot about it this past year,
Speaker 3: like tide Pods in The Undeniable Chemistry and a Star
Speaker 3: is Born Now not God, God, Bradley Cooper talking about
Speaker 3: Sam Elliott in his own mustache.
Speaker 2: Where were we? But why is female representation in America important?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 3: The reason we've been hearing so much about female representation
Speaker 3: is the twenty eighteen midterms.
Speaker 2: A record number of women one.
Speaker 3: Seats in Congress, which is great, but remember that's only
Speaker 3: twenty four percent of Congress and women make up fifty
Speaker 3: one percent of the population. So the vast majority of
Speaker 3: policymakers have never even experienced ovulation or childbirth or cat calling,
Speaker 3: except Ted Cruz. He's definitely been cat called, except it's
Speaker 3: usually people shouting smile less. I feel for you, buddy,
Speaker 3: And representation is important. Research shows that when women are
Speaker 3: in politics, it's more likely women's rights will advance in
Speaker 3: areas like pay equity, healthcare, family lead.
Speaker 2: Those are like the Hemsworth Brothers of policy.
Speaker 3: Plus, women are better at getting stuff done for everyone
Speaker 3: because we tend to be more bipartisan, even I was
Speaker 3: by partisan for a brief time in college, me and
Speaker 3: my roommate Abbey.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I wonder which way she went it was the
Speaker 2: time to experiment.
Speaker 1: We're just wait and read Fly come Aunt.
Speaker 3: But to understand why we're only at twenty four percent representation,
Speaker 3: we need to take a look back at our history.
Speaker 3: When America was founded, all of our leaders were met.
Speaker 3: The signing of the Declaration of Independence was a serious
Speaker 3: sausage vest, which, by the way, is why we eat
Speaker 3: so many hot dogs.
Speaker 2: On the fourth of July. What a patriot.
Speaker 3: The first step in female representation was fighting for the
Speaker 3: right to vote, which began in eighteen forty eight at
Speaker 3: the First Women's Rights Convention. A group of abolitionists led
Speaker 3: by Elizabeth Katie Stanton and Lucretia Mott wrote the Declaration
Speaker 3: of Sentiments, which was modeled after the Declaration of Independence,
Speaker 3: making it not only the beginning of women's suffrage but
Speaker 3: also the first all female reboot. Thankfully, twitter trolls hadn't
Speaker 3: been invented yet, and those women didn't just talk about representation,
Speaker 3: they fought to make it happen.
Speaker 2: In eighteen seventy two, Susan B.
Speaker 3: Anthony was arrested and tried for even attempting to vote.
Speaker 2: Susan B was the Cardi B of her time. You
Speaker 2: couldn't fuck with her even.
Speaker 3: If you wanted to, and their struggle ultimately paid off.
Speaker 3: In nineteen twenty, America ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, granting women
Speaker 3: the right to vote, which meant it was time to pall,
Speaker 3: except it was prohibition, so we couldn't properly celebrate for
Speaker 3: another thirteen years. The entire twentieth century was full of
Speaker 3: first for women in government. The first female representative and senator,
Speaker 3: the first major party presidential candidate, the first Black woman
Speaker 3: in Congress, the first Lady's Space princess, and the first
Speaker 3: female vice presidential candidate. We were proving that women belong
Speaker 3: in powerful jobs and also bullshit ceremonial jobs like vice president. Then,
Speaker 3: after the nineteen ninety to election, the number of women
Speaker 3: in Congress jumped all the way up to fifty four
Speaker 3: and what became known as the Year of the Woman.
Speaker 3: Though for me, nineteen ninety two is the year of
Speaker 3: the hammer pant.
Speaker 2: I think I pulled it off. Since then, we've broken even.
Speaker 3: More barriers, including the first woman Speaker of the House
Speaker 3: and first woman to be a major party's nominee for president.
Speaker 2: I forget how that election ended. Let's just move on.
Speaker 3: And even after all the progress we've made, the US
Speaker 3: is still only ranked seventy ninth in female representation out
Speaker 3: of one hundred and ninety three countries, which coincidentally is
Speaker 3: the same ranking I had at my high school. Diavemte
Speaker 3: still stings, but organizations like Emily's List and She Should
Speaker 3: Run are working to fix that by encouraging women to
Speaker 3: enter political races. The ER stands for the Equal Rights Amendment,
Speaker 3: not to be confused with the ER and baseball, which
Speaker 3: I've also a woman's plained. God darn so the Equal
Speaker 3: Rights Amendment. It was first proposed in the nineteen twenties
Speaker 3: by the National Woman's Party.
Speaker 2: They're my sheroes.
Speaker 3: Anytime there's a nineteen twenty themed wedding, I show up
Speaker 3: dressed as a suffragette.
Speaker 2: Elizabeth said. I pulled focus, but it was worth it.
Speaker 2: The main goal of.
Speaker 3: The ERA is to prohibit discrimination and guarantee legal equality
Speaker 3: of the sexes in the Constitution. Because remember, nothing in
Speaker 3: our founding documents specifically protects the rights of women. The
Speaker 3: founding fathers said they were going to add it, but
Speaker 3: then they went out for cigarettes and never came back.
Speaker 3: Even the Declaration of Independence says we hold these truths
Speaker 3: to be self evident, that.
Speaker 2: All men are created equal.
Speaker 3: So technically we're less than self evident, which sucks. They
Speaker 3: totally left us out. It's like leaving all the women
Speaker 3: out of the Hunger Games posters. Now they just look
Speaker 3: like a JV luge team. And the worst part is
Speaker 3: America never fixed that oversight. So that's where the RA
Speaker 3: comes in. It would add the language A quality of
Speaker 3: rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged
Speaker 3: by the United States or any state on account of sex,
Speaker 3: which shouldn't be controversial. It's like a free duck boat
Speaker 3: tour at Disney led by Tom Hanks.
Speaker 2: Everyone should be on board.
Speaker 3: Yet the er sat in limbo for fifty years until
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy two, when it was finally passed by both
Speaker 3: houses of Congress. We did it, and the era fell
Speaker 3: three states short after, anti feminist BILLI. Schlafley led a
Speaker 3: conservative backlash against it. She even handed out fresh baked
Speaker 3: bread and apple pie to get people to vote against
Speaker 3: the era, which is not fair. Okay, because people love equality,
Speaker 3: but they love carbs more so in twenty nineteen, women
Speaker 3: are still not guaranteed equal rights under the Constitution.
Speaker 2: Let me borrow your bet.
Speaker 3: Sure, but there's still hope. In twenty seventeen, Nevada ratified
Speaker 3: the era. Than in twenty eighteen, so did Illinois. So
Speaker 3: now it just needs one more state.
Speaker 2: Ding damn it. I was hoping that would work.
Speaker 3: So now there are thirteen possible states and two very
Speaker 3: realistic possibilities include Arizona and Georgia. If you live in
Speaker 3: one of those thirteen remaining states, call your senators and
Speaker 3: ask them to support ratification. Maybe we can even get
Speaker 3: this era passed by its hundredth birthday. Then we can
Speaker 3: throw at a surprise party. We can make it twenty
Speaker 3: stained already got my look picked out. If you also
Speaker 3: think it's ridiculous we haven't fixed this, go to supermajority
Speaker 3: dot com slash CC to find out how you can
Speaker 3: be part of the solution.
Speaker 5: Today is the one hundredth anniversary of American women winning
Speaker 5: the right to vote. It's an important moment in history,
Speaker 5: and surprisingly Donald Trump was aware of it.
Speaker 6: President Trump announced he will issue a posthumous presidential pardon
Speaker 6: for Susan B. Anthony, a leader of the woman's suffrage movement.
Speaker 6: She was arrested and convicted for illegally voting in the
Speaker 6: eighteen seventy two election.
Speaker 7: I will be signed a full and complete pardon for
Speaker 7: Susan B. Anthony. She was never pardoned. Did you know
Speaker 7: that she was never pardoned? What took so long?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 5: So, now voting illegally is okay? I mean, look, this
Speaker 5: is kind of a nice gesture, I guess, But based
Speaker 5: on what we know about Trump, I bet he's only
Speaker 5: pardoning her because he thinks she has dirts on him.
Speaker 5: Susan B. Anthony is a great figure in the women's
Speaker 5: beverage movement, and she also knows.
Speaker 1: How to keep her mouth checked.
Speaker 5: Great thing, powerful day. But as important as this date is,
Speaker 5: the passage of the nineteenth Amendment didn't help all women.
Speaker 5: As Dulce Sloan explains.
Speaker 8: This month is one hundredth anniversary of the ninetieth Amendment,
Speaker 8: which gave women the right to vote and the ability
Speaker 8: to pose on the gramd was I voted stickers.
Speaker 1: They're like first traps for democracy.
Speaker 8: But while the nineteenth Amendment was a major victory for
Speaker 8: white women, the story is not so simple for black women.
Speaker 1: The road to the.
Speaker 8: Nineteenth Amendment started in eighteen forty eight with the Seneca
Speaker 8: Falls Convention, the first women rights to meet up in
Speaker 8: American history. Before that, the only time women could legally
Speaker 8: gather was to catch a bouquet. I don't need to
Speaker 8: use flowers, Beverly, Assuming you didn't sleep through tenth grade history,
Speaker 8: you probably know some of the people who were at
Speaker 8: Seneca Falls. Elizabeth Katie Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and even our
Speaker 8: homeboy Frederick Douglass got his hair pressed specially for the occasion.
Speaker 1: But you know who wasn't allowed to come? Black women.
Speaker 8: The whole roster was just a bunch of white people
Speaker 8: and one black guy. It looked like the cast of
Speaker 8: a Mission Impossible movie, even though they weren't invited to
Speaker 8: the party. Black female activists were also fighting for suffrage
Speaker 8: throughout the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: Everyone's always talking about Susan B. Anthony.
Speaker 8: Well, today Susan should be stepping aside to let some
Speaker 8: black lady shine for once. For example, let's talk about
Speaker 8: Mary Church Terrell. She was incredibly influential and advancing the
Speaker 8: cause for women's suffrage, and in eighteen ninety eight, she
Speaker 8: delivered a speech to white activists that was one of
Speaker 8: the first expressions of what we now call intersectional feminism.
Speaker 1: Seeking no favors because of our color. We knocked at
Speaker 1: the bar of justice, asking for an equal chance. She
Speaker 1: is a better woman than me.
Speaker 8: I would have taken a bar of justice and knock
Speaker 8: somebody upside the head and to realism alone. Activists like
Speaker 8: sojournal Truth, Harriet Tubman, and I to be Well all
Speaker 8: pushed for the vote alongside for guided activists like Maryanne
Speaker 8: Shad Carry and Francis Ellen Watkins Harper. They were fighting
Speaker 8: sexism and racism at the same time.
Speaker 1: You know how hard that is.
Speaker 8: You can't take your eye out either one for a second.
Speaker 8: If you're face to face with sexism, racism will speak
Speaker 8: upon you like one of those raptors in Jurassic Park.
Speaker 8: Clever racists anyway. By nineteen eighteen, thanks to all the
Speaker 8: tireless activism from black and white suffrages alike, President Woodrow
Speaker 8: Wilson endorsed the call for a constitutional amendment to legalize
Speaker 8: women's voting.
Speaker 1: Bo Houses of Congress passed Susan B.
Speaker 8: Anthony Amendment in the summer of nineteen nineteen and On
Speaker 8: August eighteenth, nineteen twenty, Tennessee became the thirty sixth and
Speaker 8: final state to ratify the nineteenth Amendment of the Constitution,
Speaker 8: which means, hooray, all women can now legally vote in
Speaker 8: federal elections and we all lived happily ever after.
Speaker 1: Nah, who do you think this is a children's movie?
Speaker 1: Do it look like the Pixar lamp to you? Bruckle up, Cinderella,
Speaker 1: Because we ain't done yet. While white women got.
Speaker 8: To stroll into the polls lot a problem, black women,
Speaker 8: like black men, still face major obstacles throughout the twentieth century,
Speaker 8: especially in the South. We're talking poll taxes, literacy tests,
Speaker 8: and even violence. If America put as much brain power
Speaker 8: to science as it did in denying black people to vote,
Speaker 8: we've been living in moon mansions getting served by robot
Speaker 8: Butler's why yes, robot chiefs, I will have another drink. Finally,
Speaker 8: in nineteen sixty five, President LVJ signed the Voting Rights Act,
Speaker 8: which outlawed racial discriminations.
Speaker 1: And elections on paper.
Speaker 8: But even today, a Republicans continue inventing ways to make
Speaker 8: it harder for people of color to vote, like shutting
Speaker 8: down polling locations and black neighborhoods, and making voter id
Speaker 8: laws when they know black people are less likely to
Speaker 8: have ID. So, even though one hundred years of the
Speaker 8: Nineteenth Amendment is worth celebrating, America still has work to
Speaker 8: do when it comes to ensuring truly equal access to elections.
Speaker 8: So this August, y'all can celebrate Susan b. Anthony, But
Speaker 8: then y'all better be supporting candidates who have finally finished
Speaker 8: the job for everyone.
Speaker 1: Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm about to seduce the.
Speaker 8: Postman to make sure he delivers my mail in Ballid
Speaker 8: on time. And because he's fine, I see you in
Speaker 8: the shorts Gerald, you can get it same day overnight.
Speaker 5: Earlier today, I spoke with New York Times editor Veronica Chambers.
Speaker 5: We talked about the one hundredth anniversary of American women
Speaker 5: getting the vote and about her new book on the
Speaker 5: suffrage movement. Chambers, Welcome to the Daily Social Distancing Show.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 4: It's nice to be socially distancing from you.
Speaker 5: I really appreciate appreciate having you on the show because
Speaker 5: you've done something that I honestly think is one of
Speaker 5: the most crucial things ever, and that is writing a
Speaker 5: book that teaches people about history. And although you've written
Speaker 5: it predominantly for middle schoolers, I feel like everyone should
Speaker 5: read this book because it's about the suffrages, you know,
Speaker 5: the suffrage movements in America. It's about women fighting for
Speaker 5: the right to vote. But what I find interesting is
Speaker 5: that it tells a part of history that has oftentimes overlooked.
Speaker 5: Why did you think this book was so crucial?
Speaker 4: Well, about a year and a half ago, maybe a
Speaker 4: little more, we were thinking. We knew the anniversary of
Speaker 4: the nineteenth Amendment was coming up, and we kind of
Speaker 4: gathered in a room at the New York Times and
Speaker 4: we said, what do we know? And it turned out
Speaker 4: not a lot. And so the idea of writing The
Speaker 4: Middle Scrape the middle grade book was really from that
Speaker 4: thing that journalists do, which is like, explain it to
Speaker 4: me like I was a ten year old. And if
Speaker 4: you can explain it to someone like you'r a ten
Speaker 4: year old, you really actually have to learn a lot
Speaker 4: to distill it. And that's what we did, and it
Speaker 4: kind of shaped everything, including all the coverage we're doing now.
Speaker 5: I won't lie. One thing that I really found interesting
Speaker 5: in the way you wrote about their stories is they
Speaker 5: seem pretty badass, you know, Like normally when you read
Speaker 5: about the suffrage movement, it gets it sometimes can be
Speaker 5: portrayed as like and they asked for the right to vote,
Speaker 5: and they asked again, and they asked again, but you
Speaker 5: portray them as really tactical geniuses in politics.
Speaker 4: One of the first things we did is we had
Speaker 4: a round table of historians and one of them, Kate
Speaker 4: LeMay from the Smithsonian, she was like, Suffrage needs a rewrite.
Speaker 4: This is not a boring history. These are badass political
Speaker 4: strategists who worked for ninety years to get the job done.
Speaker 4: And that's stuck in my head. So I really tried
Speaker 4: to let that infuse the writing. And I really fell
Speaker 4: in love with these women. I have to tell you,
Speaker 4: they just became like my heroes. And I couldn't believe
Speaker 4: that I didn't grow up knowing about them.
Speaker 5: This book is about the women who fought for their
Speaker 5: right to vote. It's also story, which is really difficult,
Speaker 5: of how women fought for the right to vote, but
Speaker 5: not all of those women were treat it equally when
Speaker 5: the vote was given to women. Tell me a little
Speaker 5: bit more about that.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, the Sufferer's movement really has its history
Speaker 4: and abolition, the movement to end slavery, and then the
Speaker 4: Civil War comes and the fifteenth Amendment is up and
Speaker 4: they decide to push for black men to get the
Speaker 4: vote before white women, and quite frankly, you know, we
Speaker 4: have a sort of cultural moment of Karens. The Karens
Speaker 4: of the nineteenth century were not having it. They were
Speaker 4: just basically like, how dare these men who were just
Speaker 4: off plantations get the right to vote before us? And
Speaker 4: it really sets up a pecking order that we see today,
Speaker 4: which is, you know, white men, white women, black men,
Speaker 4: black women, and there's this clash and it really breaks
Speaker 4: apart the movement and it's difficult and it sets the
Speaker 4: tone for a lot. But I will say that I
Speaker 4: think that what Kimberly Crenshaw said about black women showing
Speaker 4: up and showing out, you see it so much in
Speaker 4: the history. As early as eighteen tens, eighteen twenty years
Speaker 4: before Seneca Falls, black women are giving speeches about women's rights,
Speaker 4: and the motto lifting as we climb is really about
Speaker 4: opening the doors wide as you can get it for
Speaker 4: as many people as you can get it.
Speaker 5: You know, Susan B. Anthony is somebody that so many
Speaker 5: people look up to and they go like, man, if
Speaker 5: it weren't for her, women wouldn't have the right to vote.
Speaker 5: And this was wonderful, But she does have a complicated
Speaker 5: history as a journalist and as a writer. How did
Speaker 5: you try and navigate that story of somebody who has
Speaker 5: done something amazing but also has extremely problematic views and
Speaker 5: tried to hold other people back.
Speaker 4: Well, that was definitely you've hit the nail on the
Speaker 4: head in terms of one of the challenges. But one
Speaker 4: of the things that I thought really strongly for I
Speaker 4: remember sitting in a meeting and someone said we should
Speaker 4: do a chapter called Susan B. Anthony is Canceled, And
Speaker 4: I was like, we are not canceling people in history.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: I'm like, We're just not.
Speaker 4: It's so flip and so whatever. I mean, the fact
Speaker 4: is that she dedicated her whole life to it. You know,
Speaker 4: the movement took so long. Only one woman who signed
Speaker 4: that Seneca Falls lived to vote in nineteen twenty. That's
Speaker 4: how long this movement took. So I think that, you know,
Speaker 4: we just have to say some people have problems, and
Speaker 4: I think we can hold a more complicated Do now
Speaker 4: appreciate them for what they did and know that they
Speaker 4: had problems and hopefully teach our kids to learn from that.
Speaker 5: You know, I really think this would be great for
Speaker 5: kids to see themselves, because yes, you have white women
Speaker 5: who are fighting for the right to vote, but they're
Speaker 5: joined by Black women who also fighting for the rights
Speaker 5: to vote, who, as you said, inspired much of the movement.
Speaker 5: You also have Asian women who are fighting for the
Speaker 5: right to vote. You have LATINX women who are fighting
Speaker 5: for the rights to vote. And it really does paint
Speaker 5: a more not just diverse, but really like superhero picture
Speaker 5: of this band of people who fought in different ways
Speaker 5: for this right. Do you think it's important for us
Speaker 5: to reframe the story and tell it with all of
Speaker 5: the color, excuse the pun that it truly deserves.
Speaker 4: You know, we think about diversities ticking boxes, but really,
Speaker 4: when you get into the story of these women of
Speaker 4: color and suffrage, they are really futurists. They are thinking
Speaker 4: about not just themselves but other generations. Sixteen year old
Speaker 4: Mabel Pinguali led one of the largest suffrage parades in history,
Speaker 4: knowing that the Chinese Exclusion Act meant that she herself
Speaker 4: would not be able to vote in nineteen twenty. These
Speaker 4: suffragists who were futurists were thinking not just about themselves,
Speaker 4: not just about the Graham. And that's what I try
Speaker 4: to teach my daughter and her friends is, you know,
Speaker 4: you don't have to have like likes to be a badass.
Speaker 4: You just have to do the right thing, be focused
Speaker 4: and like listen to your heart and try to help people.
Speaker 5: You know, when kids are reading your book, what would
Speaker 5: you like them to take and apply to today? What
Speaker 5: would you hope that they try and inspire themselves to
Speaker 5: think about for tomorrow? Because many of them will go like, well,
Speaker 5: everyone can vote, so I guess the job is done.
Speaker 5: What would you hope that they've gone from this that
Speaker 5: they may not necessarily immediately you know, jump to well.
Speaker 4: I think it's funny because you're saying that. I remember
Speaker 4: being in school and thinking, oh, the civil rights movement
Speaker 4: is done. I'm never going to have to fight that
Speaker 4: battle again. I think the one thing I would love
Speaker 4: for kids to know is that there's never just one
Speaker 4: thing going on at one time. And that's why it's
Speaker 4: actually hard to make a movement because white suffware just
Speaker 4: were like, we have to focus on women, and idom
Speaker 4: b Wells. Barnett comes in and says, we have to
Speaker 4: talk about lynching. And then you know, Rose Snyderman and
Speaker 4: Margaret Hinchy come in and they say, we have to
Speaker 4: talk about child labor laws and save factory conditions for
Speaker 4: poor women. And the fact is, that's the complicated thing
Speaker 4: about making a difference is knowing that nothing is happening
Speaker 4: in isolation. And really the trick of working through coalition
Speaker 4: and building a movement is being able to hear the
Speaker 4: voices at around you and gathering together to do the
Speaker 4: work of many issues. That is the challenge of leadership,
Speaker 4: and I hope the book gives a little bit of
Speaker 4: a glimpse of how these amazing women did that.
Speaker 5: I hope someone gets books like these to the White House,
Speaker 5: because I think they're not just fantastic for kids, but
Speaker 5: they're fantastic for adults who may read at a child's level.
Speaker 5: So thank you so much for joining us on the show,
Speaker 5: and congratulations on creating a wonderful, wonderful book that everybody
Speaker 5: should know about.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much. It's been an honor.
Speaker 5: Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by
Speaker 5: searching the Daily Show.
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