Girl Power!

My niece and son went with me yesterday to vote.  It's something I've always let my boys do, as I wanted them to grow up knowing how important this freedom is.  This was a new activity for Tina though and she soaked up the process like a sponge.

They stood on either side of me and walked through the steps to cast my vote.  Before I made my choices, I let them point to who they would vote for, if they were old enough.  We later discussed reasons to vote for someone and why we should make informed decisions when doing so.

In addition to our yearly conversations about the importance of voting, I took it a step further and educated them on how women got the right to vote.  Neither of them realized that it wasn't always the "norm" for women to do so.  For me, it's been a honor to vote as long as I can remember and I hoped to pass down that sense of importance, pride, and responsibility to Tina today.  Noah counts down every year how much longer he has until he can vote, so I'm pretty sure it's been sinking in with him!

While researching interesting facts to share with them, I came across a few I thought I'd include with this post.  It seems surreal to think that less than a century ago, women did not have the same rights as I do today.  Perhaps this is why I feel such a drive to utilize this right that so many women before me did not have and fought so passionately to earn.  I am so very grateful for their sacrifices.  Knowing what they went through makes me very proud to be a woman, and to wear that little white sticker, with two small but powerful words, "I Voted!"


Did U Know?

•The American Women's Suffrage movement began at a New York tea party in 1848.

•The 19th Amendment to the American Constitution, which gave women the right to vote, was passed on August 26, 1920, after a group of women who called themselves the Suffragettes.  Led by Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, these women pent 72 years petitioning the government to recognize women's rights.

•Charlotte Woodward was the only original Suffragette to survive to see women get the vote in 1920.

•Even though women got to vote in 1920, Women's Equality Day wasn't made an official holiday until 1971.

•While America has not yet had it's first female president, many other countries have had female leaders, including India, Britain, The Republic of Ireland and Canada.

Read more: Women's Equality Day http://www.kidzworld.com/article/3763-womens-equality-day#ixzz1dEk25mXJ