Editor’s note: This commentary is by Greg Guma, the Vermont-based author of “Dons of Time,” “Uneasy Empire,” “Spirits of Desire,” Big Lies, and “The People’s Republic: Vermont and the Sanders Revolution.” His latest book is “Green Mountain Politics: Restless Spirits, Popular Movements.”
[D]espite our state’s liberal image, politics in Vermont is still basically a private men’s club. The three-member congressional delegation is all male — and always has been. No woman has ever represented Vermont in Washington. And only one has been governor.
Unfortunately, it’s an old story. Even though Vermont’s constitution promised education for all, prior to the 20th century most women obtained little of it before becoming parents. “A woman was only remembered through her connection to her husband,” notes Cynthia D. Bittinger in her book, “Vermont Women, Native Americans and African Americans: Out of the Shadows of History.”
For many years, Bittinger also notes, the word “relict” — meaning a widow but also an inferior person — was carved on tombstones rather than the maiden name of the deceased woman. This chauvinistic practice demonstrates poignantly how women were deprived of their own identities, even in death.
For many pioneering women, male domination meant eventually leaving the state. One example was Emma Hart Willard, who opened a school for women in her Middlebury home in 1814. Willard may be the first woman to teach other women science and math. But she decided that Vermont was not the ideal place to pursue her vision of higher education for women.
Clarina Nichols made a similar decision more than 30 years later, after fighting for suffrage and other legal reforms. “She wanted to tackle a new state and set up new laws. Vermont was just too conservative, with patriarchy too entrenched,” Bittinger writes. The 19th century migration trend “often took the best and the brightest” out of Vermont. Even before the Civil War, almost 150,000 women left.
It took a century until the emergence of women politicians like Consuelo Northrup Bailey, Vermont’s first female lieutenant governor, and Gov. Madeleine Kunin.
So, despite the hype and assumptions, Vermont has often lagged behind on women’s rights. In fact, Vermont’s leaders resisted giving women the vote until the bitter end!
Years before that happened, Clarina Nichols’ appearance at the Statehouse — the first ever by a woman — outraged many men in the audience. Why? At least one major reason was male notions of how women should act and look.
Angered by Nichols’ determination, the editor of the Rutland Herald literally threatened to come to the capital with a man’s suit — and dress her in it. The same year that she left the state, when feminist leader Lucy Stone told people in Randolph that they should withhold their taxes until women had the right to vote, what did the papers say? They wondered why attractive young women in the audience were parading around in “unfeminine” bloomers.
Vermont’s leaders resisted giving women the vote right up to the end. A suffrage bill was finally passed by the state legislature in 1919. But Gov. Percival Clement, once a progressive fusion movement leader, called it unconstitutional and refused to sign. In 1920, when the state was pressured to ratify the 19th Amendment, he declined to help again, this time by refusing to call a special legislative session.
It became national law anyway. And one year later, Edna L. Beard, a former school superintendent, became the first woman elected to the state legislature.
Unfortunately, the composition of Vermont’s state leadership hasn’t changed much in the century since then. Today five of the state’s six constitutional officers are men. The only woman in that elite group is State Treasurer Beth Pearce.
Things have improved a bit in the legislature. Forty percent of Vermont’s House of Representatives is female now, and women there actually do the heavy lifting, chairing two-thirds of the standing committees. But only a third of the state’s 30 senators are women, they chair only a third of the standing committees, and only one is in the leadership.
Things are worse at the local level. The only female mayors of large communities are Winooski’s Kristine Lott and Montpelier’s Anne Watson.
Maybe this imbalance explains why so many problems, especially those surrounding health, equality and harassment, have been ignored, deflected or avoided for too long.
In other words, forget the official story. Women in Vermont still have a long way to go — and some serious jobs to do. One step forward would be more women in legislative leadership; better yet, more women seeking and winning the top state offices. One change would surely spark many more.
