Maybe I agree with Pearcey after all (but not in the way you would think)

Nancy Pearcey's discussion of the "household vote" vs. "individual vote" confused me, so I pulled all the pieces together to make sure my historical assessment was correct......

In 1951, the U.S. tax code introduced the “head of household” filing status. (The reason I know this off the top of my head is because I have been reading tax law changes as part of my research for The Becoming The Pastor’s Wife…..otherwise I would have had no idea.) It was in my head yesterday as I was trying to make sense of Nancy Pearcey’s discussion of “household vote.” Unfortunately, I didn’t clarify tax status in my comment on The New Evangelical conversation with Tim Whitaker and Sheila Wray Gregoire. Hopefully that means folk confused by it looked it up (which is what you should do anyway).

I brought up the tax code because I was thinking about how Pearcey was using the term “household” and how it has been used historically. You see, Pearcey claims that the reason suffrage for women has been a “net negative” (her claim) is because of the shift from the “household vote” to that of the individual vote. She seems to perceive the ideal voting system as the household vote: male heads ‘covering’ female and child dependents. I find it ironic that the head of household tax status was created to help single people (like women) with dependents…not exactly the “household” that Pearcey is envisioning.

One of the things that makes Pearcey compelling is how much she gets right. Which means some of her arguments are accurate (such as the anti-suffragists use of the household vote argument). But, at the same time, she is historically ‘off’ about some things too (sort of like Dan Brown in the Davinci Code….).

So let me tell you what I know about the status of women, the idea of citizenship, the “household,” and the “household vote”. These are the pieces I was thinking through during our conversation yesterday. Most of it came out coherently, but not all of it, so this will help you understand my point better. Also, U.S. historians out there, feel free to weigh in and correct/nuance/add to my assessment here.

1. Coverture: There were a couple of moments in the conversation where I almost started talking about coverture and the legal status of women. I spend 1/3 of my suffrage class on coverture. What is coverture? Coredelia Beattie, a medieval historian, describes it well: “the common law doctrine which meant wives were under the guardianship of their husband, had no legal possessions of their own, and could not enter into economic contracts in their own name.” This system hardened across the early modern era and impacted both women in the U.S. and Europe in the nineteenth century.

2. Dependent status of women: one of the reasons the writers of the U.S. Constitution thought women were disqualified from voting was because of their dependent status (see coverture). In A Century of Votes for Women: American Elections Since Suffrage, Christine Wolbrecht and Kevin Corder state that independence was seen as “a crucial prerequisite for citizenship, particularly voting.” Because dependence was a key aspect of being female (according to legal, political, and social theory at the time) “the idea that women would cast ballots was unthinkable.” (28, Kindle) Male property holders, in contrast, were independent—they were not “beholden” to anyone and could make their own decisions.

3. Citizenship & the Vote: Pearcey argues that citizenship wasn’t always tied to the vote. She is right about this (although, as I argued in the conversation yesterday, some women saw things differently). When the Constitution was written, the framers didn’t talk much about the vote. Again, Wolbrecht and Corder illuminate this: “the Framers’ relative silence on the topic reflects the fact that they viewed voting and voting rights to be relatively minor and unimportant aspects of the political system they had created.” (29, Kindle) At first, this vote was only for a small percentage of the population: white, male, freeholders. At first, regulation of voting was left mostly to the states. At first, women were considered citizens even though they were not expected to vote (only a propertied white men could vote).

   But this changed quickly. And I mean quickly.

   1. The lack of specific exclusion of women in the Constitution and freedom extended to states meant that women were voting in some places within a few years of the Constitutional Convention. “A few women who owned property, especially single women and widows without husbands too represent the interests of their households, cast ballots in New Jersey, New York Connecticut, and several towns in Massachusetts in the late eighteenth century. For example, immediately after the Revolutionary War, the New Jersey state constitution provided suffrage rights to ‘all inhabitants’ of particular means, and a 1790 legislative act confirmed that female inhabitants were included in that provision.” (Wolbrecht and Corder, 29, Kindle)

   2. States began to drop property requirements and, soon, voting was not tied to the “household” (as Pearcey describes it)—it was tied to being a white man. By 1828ish, not only could virtually all white men vote (“a landmark in world history”) but “voting began to emerge as a central symbol of American democracy.” (Wolbrecht and Corder, 29, Kindle)

   3. Let’s sum this up: Yes, in 1787, citizenship was not expressly tied to voting and property owners (Pearcey’s “householders”) held the vote. By 1828, voting was inextricably tied to citizenship and property holding was no longer a requirement.

4. The concept of Household: In 2002, Reva B. Siegel published an illuminating article in the Harvard Law Review: “She the People: The Nineteenth Amendment, Sex Equality, Federalism, and the Family.” In the section “Voting and the Family,” Siegel makes an argument similar to what I have described above: property holders and free laborers were seen as independent enough to vote. I find the language that Siegel uses interesting (especially in contrast to Pearcey). This is what she writes: “only citizens who had the requisite degree of independence to vote their own judgement, rather than the interests of those to whom they might be beholden, had the capacity to exercise the franchise responsibly.” The right to vote as a “householder” was less about protecting your family and more about being independent enough to vote your own mind. It is also important to note, as Siegel does, that householder is synonymous with “adult, white, propertied male” who was in control of his own labor.

   Rather than focus on the independent vote of white men (who by the time conversations about suffrage begin in earnest are less limited by property qualifications—i.e. white men with or without households could vote), anti-suffragists focused on how the male vote should represent their household (i.e. women and children). Those against suffrage, in other words, used a defense of coverture as their argument—women belong under male governance.

   My confusion about Pearcey’s argument is now cleared up by Siegel’s essay—Pearcey is arguing for coverture: women belong legally and politically under male governance. I think it is the demise of coverture that she is lamenting in her statement that women’s suffrage has been a “net negative”. I’m even more speechless than I was yesterday.

Pearcey is right that coverture persisted through the nineteenth-century. Pearcey is also right (as I noted in our conversation yesterday) that those against women’s suffrage used the idea of coverture (male householder governance) to argue for why women didn’t need the vote. As Siegel summarizes, the “virtual representation argument” (the household vote by men covers women) was central to the anti-suffrage movement.

5. Reality of Pearcey’s “shift” from “household vote” to “independent vote”: I argued yesterday that Pearcey’s concept wasn’t a historical reality. This is my reasoning:

   1. 1) the independence of white male property owners was the reason they were considered able to vote—the emphasis was on how they couldn’t be influenced as easily by superiors not on how they were benevolent representatives of their household

   2. 2) voting became central to citizenship very early in U.S. history (the idea that citizenship did not necessarily include voting rights was short lived)

   3. 3) because of state autonomy, women in the U.S. legally voted (on and off) throughout the duration of the 75ish years of the suffrage campaign

   4. 4) the “household vote” concept admired by Pearcey only reflects a limited subset of the population—white property owners

   5. 5) most of Pearcey’s evidence arguing for the “household vote” stems from those arguing against suffrage

In short, a golden age of benevolent male householders using the vote to represent the “common good” of their families didn’t happen—although the idea of this golden age has proved useful for those arguing for male headship and female submission.

I think that Wolbrecht’s and Corder’s A Century of Votes for Women makes an especially insightful summary of the anti-suffrage movement. They are, in turn, summarizing the insightful argument of Corrine McConnaughy. I’m going to quote it all here (it is long), and I hope you will read it and think about it.

“In the United States, resistance to women’s suffrage is attributed to the resilience of traditional gender role ideology, which glorified gender differences and constrained women’s political role. Racism—specifically, fear that the enfranchisement of women might embolden and facilitate African American electoral participation in the South—also created an important barrier to suffrage expansion in the US. Federalism and the structure of representation in the US Congress gave Southern representatives significant veto power over national suffrage legislation. The powerful liquor industry, fearing that women voters would support Prohibition, committed significant resources to opposing state and national level efforts to enfranchise women. Urban political machines, powerful organizations in many states, generally opposed women’s suffrage as they feared it would disrupt the patronage system that underpinned their regime.”

Let me conclude with two final thoughts:

First, I actually think I agree with Pearcey: a shift was in process. Just not exactly the shift Pearcey articulates. It is a shift from coverture, the legal and political system that subjugates women to male governance, to a system that allows greater autonomy for women.

Second, do you know where the household vote came close to being implemented? In 1940s Vichy France.

I’ll just leave that for you to consider.