People absolutely sincerely believed that not giving women the right to vote was for the best both for society and the women themselves. There wasn't some malic

People absolutely sincerely believed that not giving women the right to vote was for the best both for society and the women themselves. There wasn't some malicious conspiracy involving a majority of the voting population. Women were thought to be naturally uninterested in politics, and to not have the head for it anyway. Dabbling in politics was seen as an unwomanly thing ladies should be spared from. Not unlike how people today think that the scarcity of women in tech is due to them naturally having less interest in it. It's easy to ascribe the status quo to the natural order of things. Of writing of that era I like "Are Women People?"[1] It's written from a suffragettes point of view, but it includes some cherry-picked quotes from anti-suffragists, such as: "The grant of suffrage to women is repugnant to instincts that strike their roots deep in the order of nature. It runs counter to human reason, it flouts the teachings of experience and the admonitions of common sense."—N.Y. Times, Feb. 7, 1915." That was the kind of thing you could write in a newspaper of the time and have people agree with you. That should tell us something about how blind we can be to contemporary societal problems, and how silly we will look in hindsight. [1] http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11689/11689-h/11689-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11689/11689-h/11689-h.htm