Women's Suffarage in the late 1800's and early to mid 1900's.

-- Debate Function -- For those who like semantics and want to vote on the basis of the resolution alone, here is my official argument. First, the instigator's improper resolution leaves one to fill in the blanks and assume what Pro would be trying to prove. So far a personal assessment leaves one to reasonably conclude that Pro would have to defend suffrage between these years existing and I would have to demonstrate suffrage (the woman's right to vote) not existing... if you want to get technical. As such, my argument is as follows: As of 1995, women had a legal right to vote everywhere in the world except in 6 countries in the Middle East — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates — as well as in Brunei, a small oil-rich monarchy in Southeast Asia [1]. These countries and many others particularly in the same region could obviously also not vote in the aforementioned time frame. Now, depending on my opponent's response to this (if any) I'll craft the direction of my argument from there :P [1] http://www.pbs.org... This concludes the technical stuff; now onto my opponent's lazy yet honest way of acquiring information for his project. The conditions for voting should end here - thanks. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Response to Marshall -- Undoubtedly there are more PROS to Cons when discussing whether or not a woman should be able to vote, but nevertheless here's what I could come up with. As for Cons, one is that women could now be used as a voting bloc to oppress the rights of others. For instance, the push to grant Utah women's suffrage was at least partially fueled by the belief that, given the right to vote, Utah women would dispose of polygamy. It was only after Utah women exercised their suffrage rights in favor of polygamy that the U.S. Congress disenfranchised Utah women [2]. Of course I could refute this lol but keep in mind it's not easy to think of negative reasons for promoting equality and equal worth but I digress. Another argument you could possibly make is one that was used against women at the time - that women would not really be making their own choices, but rather simply echoing the beliefs of their husbands. Meh... there's really not much more I can say in this regard, sorry. If this is insufficient let me know what you think and I'll see if I can give you anything else. As far as PROS, are they not obvious? First, it's a human's right violation to deny a woman the same basic rights on the basis of her gender. It's immoral and unnecessary [3]. Suffrage is therefore simply right. Also, women have consistently registered to vote at a higher rate than men [4] meaning they take more initiative in government and helping to shape our society. It's been proven that women benefit directly from such participation -- for instance in helping tackle issues that affect women directly, such as rape laws and abortion. Moreover it's been demonstrated that with women in office, certain issues are brought to the forefront of political conscious specifically as a testament to various matters that particularly interest women regarding government. For example, political matters pertaining to education and health care to name a few. There are far more, but I'm pretty sure you could take it from here. Good luck. [2] Van Wagenen, Lola: "Sister-Wives and Suffragists: Polygamy and the Politics of Woman Suffrage 1870–1896," BYU Studies, 2001. [3] http://www.unesco.org... [4] Carroll, Susan: "Gender and Elections," Cambridge University Press, 2006. p. 53.