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Letter to the editor: It’s a man’s world, and some women are still treated as second-class citizens

Ralph Ragsdale
Silverthorne

Today’s generation finds it hard to believe the way women were treated in the past. Yet, if you look in some parts of the world today, you will see women still treated as second-class citizens.

Some people cite the story of Adam and Eve as the source of women’s subservient nature, but it predates that age. Differences in physical strength are often cited. The evolution of women’s rights has been slow and sporadic. We cite the natural and convenient reasons for the way men and women navigated differently the paths of existence and survival, such as a logical division of labor in the home.

Consider the right to vote. It seemed logical that less education was a valid excuse to deny females the right to vote. Led by the likes of the suffragettes, women’s right to vote was hard but successfully fought. Looking back, we find it hard to understand why there was even any question of that right. When credit cards were invented, a card had to be in the name of the husband. What?



We could name famous women leaders such as Margaret Thatcher. There was Marie Curie, the Polish/French physicist and chemist. She was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize and the first to win two such prizes. Yet, she was denied membership in the French Academy of Sciences in 1911 because she was a woman. So far, more than 50 women have run for president of the U.S. None have yet to succeed. However, a woman is commanding an aircraft carrier! Who would have thought it possible?

Women have special powers and skills. Not only intuition, the example normally given. We men lack the ability to even describe their powers. Someday, they will explain it to us, when they are ready.




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