100 Years Ago Today Women Got the Right to Vote - and Reinvented What It Meant to be a Woman

100 years ago today women gained the right to vote in national elections. Two points about that.

One, product and social invention are often intertwined.

20 years before 1900, a woman would carry about 10 tons of fuel (wood and coal) and 40 tons of water in and out of the house each year. The invention of running water and electricity made it easy for more women to shift their focus outside the home. The woman as a political force was born.
In 1960, the Pill was approved and women could decide whether and when to have children. In 1968, Yale began to admit women. Today, more women than men earn university degrees. The woman as an economic force was born.

Two, progress has a clear direction: it gives more people more ability to live a life of their own choosing.

There is a simple question to determine to ask of a policy question: will this ultimately give more people more options? Healthcare coverage that lets more people live longer, healthier lives is progress. A population that lives to an average age of 85 has more options about what to do with a life than one that lives an average of 55 years. Educational policies that give more kids more options about what to do for a living or how to shape or make sense of their world is progress. Making it easier for more people in a community to vote is progress. Environmental policies and technology that promise to give the billions of people who will be living here in 100, 300, and 500 years just as many (or more) options to enjoy nature and affluence are progress.

Giving women the right to vote - like ending slavery or radically reducing greenhouse gas emissions - will never be considered radical by future generations. It is the sort of thing that makes future generations think that "they" (that "we") must have been a different species.

Communication and transportation technology is continually being reinvented. So is what it means to be a woman. Progress moves forward on a series of inventions, some technical, some social and all with the potential to disrupt.

100 years ago, women got the right to vote. And given how differently they vote, it was none too soon.