Frederick Douglass

In their 60th year after independence from British rule, a historic event occurred today in India. Mrs. Pratibha Patil, the former governor of Rajasthan, became the first elected woman to hold the elected office of President. She won over two-thirds of the vote among state assemblies, along with members of the Indian Parliament who were eligible to vote.

“Mrs Patil’s supporters say her election to the largely ceremonial role will be a boost to millions of Indian women. The BBC’s Sanjoy Majumder, in Delhi, says that while some see her victory as an important step towards gender equality in India, many view it as only a symbolic gesture. Millions of women in India face discrimination and poverty often linked to age-old traditions which require the parents of a bride to pay a large dowry to the family of her eventual husband.” (1)

Mrs. Patil had the following message to her supporters, along with the Indian people:

“I am grateful to the people of India and the men and women of India and this is a victory for the principles which our Indian people uphold.” (2)

Frederick Douglass was a champion for women’s suffrage, which was the term in his era for women’s rights. Here were his thoughts about the future influence of women as leaders:

“If intelligence is the only true and rational basis of government, it follows that that is the best government which draws its life and power from the largest sources of wisdom, energy, and goodness at its command. The force of this reasoning would be easily comprehended and readily assented to in any case involving the employment of physical strength. We should all see the folly and madness of attempting to accomplish with a part what could only be done with the united strength of the whole. Though his folly may be less apparent, it is just as real when one-half of the moral and intellectual power of the world is excluded from any voice or vote in civil government. In this denial of the right to participate in government, not merely the degradation of woman and the perpetuation of a great injustice happens, but the maiming and repudiation of one-half of the moral and intellectual power of the government of the world. Thus far all human governments have been failures, for none have secured, except in a partial degree, the ends for which governments are instituted.

War, slavery, injustice and oppression, and the idea that might makes right have been uppermost in all such governments, and the weak, for whose protection governments are ostensibly created, have had practically no rights which the strong have felt bound to respect. The slayers of thousands have been exalted into heroes, and the worship of mere physical force has been considered glorious. Nations have been and still are but armed camps, expending their wealth and strength and ingenuity in forging weapons of destruction against each other; and while it may not be contended that the introduction of the feminine element in government would entirely cure this tendency to exalt woman’s influence over right, many reasons can be given to show that woman’s influence would greatly tend to check and modify this barbarous and destructive tendency. At any rate, seeing that the male governments of the world have failed, it can do no harm to try the experiment of a government by man and woman united.”

Source: The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Chapter XVIII, Honor To Whom Honor.”

References

(1 and 2) First Female President for India, BBC News, 21 July 2007.