The Revisionism of Women's Suffrage

Women spent centuries excluded from the political arena. In 1893, New Zealand became the first country to nationally recognize women’s right to vote. In Brazil, that right only arrived in 1932.

For decades, women’s suffrage was treated as an achievement permanently embedded in liberal democracies. However, the topic has resurfaced in several countries, including Brazil. Influencers, both men and women, have begun arguing that women should never have been allowed to vote, or that voting should belong to the family, exercised by the man.

The revisionism of women’s suffrage, much like the shape of planet Earth, would be just another internet curiosity — if it weren’t a worrying symptom.

There is a striking passage in The Handmaid’s Tale. Recalling the beginning of the Gilead regime, the narrator recounts that, after a terrorist attack, the Constitution was suspended under the argument that the measure would be temporary. From that point on, the loss of all other freedoms became merely a matter of time.

The passage isn’t about terrorism. It’s about how easily free societies come to accept the gradual erosion of rights when everything seems like just a small concession.

Every freedom includes choices that other people might not make. A woman can decide to be a homemaker, build a career, do both, or neither. What a free society protects is precisely that possibility of choice.

There is a chasm between advocating that a woman choose to dedicate her life to her family and advocating that she should not participate in the public arena. The first position is compatible with a free society. The second is not.

This line of argument is usually accompanied by the claim that women weren’t discriminated against for being women. “Back then, it wasn’t just women who couldn’t vote. Poor men couldn’t vote either, and neither could illiterate people.”

That’s true, but this argument omits precisely the central point. Economic and social restrictions affected both men and women. The restriction based on sex affected only women.

If a man was born into the right social class and race, or acquired enough property to meet the electoral requirements of the time, he could vote. If a woman possessed the exact same property, she remained excluded. She shared the same house, the same wealth, and often the same level of education as her husband, but had no political voice of her own. The only difference between the two was sex.

That’s why women’s suffrage wasn’t just another step in expanding the electorate — it was the elimination of a legal incapacity imposed exclusively on women.

Perhaps the most curious aspect of this revisionism is when it is promoted precisely by women who enjoy all the freedoms they wish to strip away from others.

They write books, give lectures, influence elections, and produce content for millions of people. Some aren’t even married.

If they truly believed that women shouldn’t participate in the public arena, consistency would require starting with themselves. It would be enough for their husbands — or, in their absence, their fathers, brothers, or another male relative — to speak for them. After all, it would be their opinion that counts in a world designed by these women.

Naturally, none of them intends to give up their own microphone. They just want other women to give up theirs.

Defending strong families has never required defending silent women. Nor does it require that women hand back rights won barely a century ago.

Rights rarely disappear all at once. They almost always start out being treated as an exception, a curiosity, or a seemingly harmless idea.

As Margaret Atwood warns, first they say it will be temporary. Then, they simply never go back.

Originally published in Portuguese by Crusoé.