As long as brains trump brawn in the job market, women will inevitably equal or surpass men in professional positions. Professional women must juggle the competing demands of family and career. Many of them say that men do not do their fair share. While educated women today can pursue pretty much any career they choose, many women say that climbing to the top of the business or professional world in a society dominated by men is daunting. Women got the vote in 1920, and it took 62 years for Rhode Island to elect its first female statewide officeholder, in 1982.
Today there are no women in statewide elected office.
By 1950, the Colonial and Victorian architectural wonders of Newport and Providence stood in mocking glory of a state that reeked of the second-rate. You can still book a bet on a college basketball game in Providence, but organized crime is not the influence on the state's political and economic life that it once was. The state has long had a reputation for shady dealings by politicians. Recently, one of our top highway officials was busted for looting dented tins of butter cookies from debris left in the wake of a truck rollover. A former governor just got out of prison.