- Curiously Krulwich
Non! Nein! No! A Country That Wouldn’t Let Women Vote Till 1971
When Swiss women asked for the right to vote, Swiss men said no. And they kept saying no—in some areas till the 1990s. What's up with that?
I’m thinking of Hillary, all in white, in her “suffragette” suit at the Democratic National Convention.
A hundred years earlier that’s how women seeking the vote dressed—all in white, with white hats too.
White, as we know, is the “color” that includes all colors. With a prism, you learn that white light combines every hue in the rainbow, so what the suffragette suit suggests is that politics should be all embracing too: Every adult, women included, should be able to vote, run for office, be president. That feels right. Democracy seems, inevitably, to invite everybody in.
But that’s wrong. Democracy can go the other way. It can exclude. It does. And it has. In—of all places—Switzerland!
Women in Switzerland didn’t get the vote until
