Women And The Right To Vote

Amidst the 2008 election activity I was having a conversation with my next door neighbor (who moved here from Sweden). He was asking me questions to try to understand how our country’s campaign and election process came to be the way it is today. This got me thinking about when women gained the right to vote in various countries. 

Below is when our ancestors and counterparts around the world gained this right- a right which our generation can’t imagine not having. 

1893 New Zealand 

1902 Australia 

1906 Finland (was a duchy of Russia at the time) 

1913 Norway 

1915 Denmark, Iceland 

1917 Canada (province of Ontario in 1884, by 1917 the rest of Canadian women except for Quebec who followed in 1940 and “First Canadians”, Native Indians, in 1960) 

1918 Austria, Russia, Germany, Poland (first woman elected to Parliament in 1919) 

1919 Netherlands (yet first woman elected to a political office was in 1917) 

1920 U.S.A. 

1921 Sweden 

1924 Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan 

1926 Turkey 

1928 England, Ireland 

1931 Spain 

1944 France (first extended to Parisian women in 1871, later revoked) 

1945 Italy 

1946 Algeria 

1947 Japan, Mexico, Pakistan, Argentina 

1949 China 

1950 India, Haiti 

1963 Morocco, Iran 

1971 Switzerland 

1976 Portugal 

1994 South Africa (for black women, was 1930 for white women) 

2005 Kuwait 

2008 Bhutan 

Source = Grolier Encyclopedia 

In the U.S.A. the petitioning and demonstrating formalized in 1756 and it took 164 years of insistence and protests (some enduring imprisonment and torture) to gain this right. 

In Lebanon today only women with proof of an elementary school education are allowed to vote (yet voting is mandatory for men of any educational level). In the United Arab Emirates and Brunei (a sultanate) neither gender is allowed to vote, although the E.A.E. has announced this may change in 2010. 

Only 2 countries today allow men to vote but not women: Saudi Arabia and the Vatican City (where the only election is that of the Papal Conclave, wherein only male candidates can run for the position of Cardinal). 

I was touched by the CBS interview of a 106 year old American Catholic nun living in Rome. Sister Cecilia Gaudette was 18 years old and living in New Hampshire when American women gained the right to vote. 

Although the online absentee ballot form’s date of birth field only went back to 1905, she persisted by sending in her identification, determined to contribute her vote in this presidential election. 

My own aunt is a Dominican nun in New York. At age 88, she is 1 of the youngest of the Queen of Rosary Convent residents. Remembering their childhood years when women were not allowed what the United Nations has categorized as a “basic human right”, these 100 or so nuns, equipped in walkers, wheelchairs, and whatever it took, waited in the rain to board several city buses to go experience the gratification of putting their ballots in the box at the poll. 

Thank you to the women who came before us who made our voting right possible! 

Copyright 2008 Amy Mosher

Your Health As Your Most Important Investment

Did you know that the word “wealth” comes from the Old English words “weal” (well-being) and “th” (condition) which taken together means “the condition of well-being”? Many of us associate good health (mental, emotional, and physical) with the term “well being” and perhaps the early English considered health to be one of their most valued assets.

Harvard Medical School, Harvard Law School, and Ohio University teamed up to conduct research on the correlation between illness and bankruptcy. When their 2001 report showed that half filed due to illness rather than financial profligacy, and that 68% of those who filed had health insurance, I wondered how many of us cultivate good health as a key component of our strategy for future decades and accordingly pay as much attention to building long term optimization of our bodies as we do our 401K’s? Recently the study reported 62.1% of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medical. Think you’re immune? The study additionally reported the mean age was 44.9 years, 60.3% had attended college, and 66.4% were home owners. More than 75% had health insurance yet were overwhelmed by medical debt.

While we all want to be healthy because we’ll feel better being so, when viewed in an economic light it is compelling to prioritize our health. Just as you wouldn’t pour inferior fuel into the gas tank of a car and think it will serve you well for years to come, what you put into our body can directly impact how much you’ll enjoy (or not) being in it later and what percentage of your finances you’ll need to spend on it.

As professionals we often go to great lengths to excel in our fields, sometimes working late (dinner being whatever is in the vending machine) and gulping down caffeine to keep going. We prioritize our job performance- yet how can we also prioritize our health, given that we’ll still be living in our bodies long after we have left the jobs we are in?

Nourishing food and beverage choices are one way of showing yourself respect. If you purchased an expensive race horse you wouldn’t give him/her a bucket of fries and a diet cola. Of course you wouldn’t, because you revere the horse and desire good performance from your investment. Don’t you deserve this same level of regard for your “lap through life”? You approach the projects of your career strategically- with a comprehensive and long term vision in mind you develop a methodical plan to purposefully deliver your intended results. Isn’t your biggest and most important project really yourself?
In your eating choices consistency counts more than occasional volume because your cells are continually replacing themselves and they build with what nutrients are available at the time each new cell is constructed. If you’d like some health tips, such as suggestions for easy substitutions to increase your nutrition, click here. By being strategic in how you care for your body over several decades you set yourself up for the best chance of enjoying good physical, mental, emotional, and financial health in your later years.

copyright 2009 Amy Mosher http://www.LiveLifeWellInfo.com