The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified on August 18, 1920, roughly 105 years ago. Nevada was among the earliest states to pass it, in February of 1920. Roughly 100 years later, in 2019, Nevada elected the first female-majority legislature.
Between the two dates were many other milestones in the women's political movement, as UNLV Political Science Professor Rebecca Gill told KNPR.
"In Nevada, we had some women who were involved in governing before even Nevada allowed women to vote. So we had this very interesting trajectory," Gill said. "Fairly early on, we had some experiments with legislation that would allow women to serve as trustees in boards of education on and off, sometimes with superintendents and things like this. And they had this movement that was paralleling the national movement for suffrage, but it dates back well before they were able to get suffrage for women in Nevada, and then a couple of years later in the rest of the United States. In that intervening time, we did actually have women start to serve in the state legislature."
Shaina Taub, who wrote the book, lyrics and music for the Broadway show Suffs, discussed the story and its relation to contemporary reality. Taub was the first woman in history to win Tony Awards for Best Book and Best Score in the same season.
"My life as a woman in America is materially better than it would have been 100 years ago," she said. "I enjoy more rights and privileges, and yet, of course, we're seeing so many rollbacks to women's rights, especially in the arena of reproductive freedom."
Taub talked about the years-long process of researching the true story upon which her script was based. Eventually, she said, "as a dramatist, I had to realize I wasn't writing a history book, I wasn't creating a museum exhibit, I wasn't building a statue. It was my job to make a piece of human drama that humanizes these women — not glorify or vilify them, but find that human element in between."
UNLV's Gill shared that Nevada had its own share of interesting characters in the movement: "One I think is particularly interesting is a woman called Anne Martin," Gill said. "She actually graduated from the University of Nevada, Reno, which was the only University of Nevada (at that time), and then went to Stanford and started the History Department at UNR after that. And she took some time after that and went to England and participated in their suffrage movement. So, when she came back to Nevada, she was pretty raring to go."
Suffs runs Oct. 7-12 at the Smith Center in Las Vegas.
Guests: Rebecca Gill, UNLV political science professor; Shaina Taub, Suffs creator
