Today's Women of Age

I never would have imagined in my lifetime that my right to vote as a female citizen of the United States would ever come into question. I’ve been voting since I turned 18 and have never missed a major election. I’ve been a responsible citizen all these decades. (I’ve worked, paid my taxes, given to charities and volunteered.) I’ve been law abiding. I’ve never even gotten a traffic ticket! But here we are in 2025 with a segment of the U.S. population wanting to take away my right to vote. And yours. And it infuriates me.

Not surprisingly this segment is mostly white, male and identifies as Christian and likely Christian Nationalist. They are people like pastor Dale Partridge who said: “Every legalized moral atrocity of the last 100 years was made possible by the female vote.” He includes in those moral atrocities the legalization of abortion and homosexuality and the proliferation of elected Democrats. He believes that women are meant “to follow and to feel” but that “emotions have no part in running or governing a nation.”

Ahhhh, so the real “problem” for Partridge and others is that women have voted for issues, legislation and candidates that they didn’t want. So now they need to figure out how to “fix” that. One prong of the attack is to assert that women by their very nature are “too emotional” to make rational choices and shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Another prong is to set up an alternative approach. Patriarchal pastors like Doug Wilson and Partridge favor a “household” vote. Wives and daughters can express their views on a particular measure or candidate, but it’s the men who cast the one vote for the household.

But this desire to disenfranchise women goes much deeper than just wanting to remove our right to vote. There is a real hunger by Wilson and others to get women out of business, politics, and the military and back in the kitchen. “I believe that a woman’s priority is the home. She is called to be “busy at home” (Titus 2:5), but once her duties there are discharged, she is free to be productive elsewhere, in any way that blesses her husband and family.”  So even in her limited free time, Wilson still wants wives to focus their time and energy on their husbands and family. Her needs and wants are of no consequence. (This literally sends a shiver up my spine.)

In Wilson’s world if you are born with a uterus and ovaries, your only “career” option is homemaker. Period. And he is not alone in this thinking. The late Charlie Kirk encouraged a teen girl in his audience who wanted to pursue a career as a political journalist by saying, yes, go to college, but go to find a husband and then settle down to be a wife and mother. The girl beamed back at him. (The brainwashing starts early.)

It’s one thing to choose a life in the home (and I am not denigrating that) but it’s another to be told by your religion, culture or society that as a female it is your only choice in life. The only reason you were born.

This cadre of men want to return to what they see as the idyllic 1950s lifestyle in the U.S. Only it wasn’t idyllic for women. (Or people of color. Or homosexuals.) After an exhausting and often lonely day of childcare, cleaning and cooking, her day wasn’t done. At night when husbands arrived home from work, wives were advised in ladies’ magazines to keep the kids quiet, have the house neat, dress attractively, have dinner ready, be happy to see him, be interesting, take off his shoes (!), don’t bring up problems, make the evening his….

Essentially wives of the 1950s were 24/7 unpaid servants. They had no purpose beyond their domestic duties (and providing sex on demand). No independent identity. No money of their own. This tiring, stultifying, isolating life left many depressed and stressed. It’s no wonder that valium, “Mother’s Little Helpers,” were widely prescribed during this time.

And this is the U.S. that Doug and Dale want–to reverse decades of rights, freedoms and legislation and put women back into what they feel is their God-ordained place.

All that said, do I think that the 19th amendment will get repealed? No. But other legislation like the SAVE Act could affect the ability of millions of women to vote. It’s one step in the direction they want.

The bill requires individuals to present a U.S. passport, birth certificate, naturalization papers, or certain Real ID-compliant government IDs to prove U.S. citizenship when registering to vote. But a significant majority of women (around 80%) change their last name upon marriage. Their original birth certificates would therefore no longer match their current legal name or their other forms of identification, such as a driver’s license…thus imposing extra steps and documentation requirements that could make the registration process much more difficult for an estimated 69 million women.

I am remaining watchful.