Voting Shares
A United States postage stamp issued in 1998 commemorating the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution granting women the right to vote. From Getty Images.
It is voting season. Although I prefer autumn, here we are. I have been receiving daily instructions on all the options for voting this year. Let no vote go astray.
It is hard to believe that women did not have the right to vote until 1920.
I think we take this hard-won achievement for granted.
The right to vote, or suffrage, was a constitutional event upon the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. But who had the right to vote?
The right to vote was restricted to property owners, predominantly men.
The State of New Jersey was the only state to enfranchise (The verb enfranchise is used when a group of people are given voting rights or freedoms they didn’t have before. ) all adult inhabitants who owned a specified amount of property, including women.
What triggered my interest in the history of voting rights started with a question.
If women owned stocks or shares of a company BEFORE the ratification of Amendment 19 [1], were they allowed to vote their shares?
When you buy the shares or stock of a company today, you become an equity owner of the company. Another way to say this is, you are a shareholder.
As an equity owner you may have the right to vote on certain matters regarding the company. Like voting for board directors.
If you own the stock of individual companies (outside of retirement accounts or mutual funds) you receive a ballot and an invitation to attend the annual meeting.
Companies like Berkshire Hathaway make a big day and a big deal out of their annual shareholder meeting. Owning shares is like a ticket to the biggest event of the season.
Voting in a public election is different than voting for a board of directors in a private company and I thought if women could own shares in the 1800’s, could they vote their shares? [1]
Then I backtracked.
Were women allowed to invest in the 1800’s? Could they buy shares? Could they own property?
The simple answers are yes, they could invest in the 1800’s if done through a male representative. [3]
Yes, they could buy shares if a male (husband, father, brother, candlestick maker) completed the transactions for them and yes, they could own property.
Could they vote their shares? This is more difficult to answer. So far, I have not been able to find conclusive evidence either way.
I have to assume that they would not be invited to attend a shareholder meeting. Unless accompanied by a male who would vote “on their behalf ”.
Owning property was also complicated. There were many conditions involved in “ownership”. If you were a woman who owned property before marriage, the property went to your husband upon marriage and you lost control.
In 1776 if you were a woman who owned property, the only place you could vote was New Jersey. Ultimately, New Jersey repealed voting rights for women who owned property.
Susan B. Anthony famously stayed single so she could own property and control her investments.
“Many early suffrage supporters, including Susan B. Anthony, remained single because in the mid-1800s, married women could not own property in their own rights and could not make legal contracts on their own behalf.”
That did not stop some women like Abigail Adams. Wife of John Adams, second president of the United States and one of the founding fathers. She was one of the earliest advocates for women’s rights. [2]
In a letter dated March 31, 1776 she said:
“I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And, by the way, in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”
It would take 144 years for women to have a voice and representation.
Abigail Adams was unique in many ways. She was one of the earliest known female bond investors. In the 1700’s women often ran the finances of the household. Abigail, against her husbands wishes to buy more land, became interested in government bonds.
If she owned bonds she kept control of the assets. If she bought property, all control went to her husband (the President).
“She had the foresight in her time to see the advantages in trading bonds over farmland and persuaded her husband, John, to do so, according to letters between the two displayed at the Museum of American Finance in New York.”
A mere 72 years passed after Abigail’s letter to her husband. In 1848 we see the beginning of the Womens Suffrage movement [4]
The word “suffrage” has nothing to do with suffering. The word suffrage comes from the Latin suffragiam and means “a vote” or “the right to vote”.
It took an additional 72 years , from 1848 to 1920 , for the 19th Amendment to the Constitution to pass the House, the Senate and 36 states who voted to ratify the amendment. [5]
Historically we can say it took 244 years for women to win the battle for votes.
Today we can invest, we can buy property, we can be completely independent, we have the right and the freedom to do more than the women who fought for us could imagine.
When I hear women say things like “it is easier to let my husband, boyfriend, uncle, brother or the candlestick maker invest for me” it is such a letdown.
Give up your right to invest?
I’ll close with this thought. I know you are going to vote in the upcoming election. Great. But it isn’t enough.
If you are not actively involved in investing or trying to invest , don’t complain about too few women as CEO’s, or too few women in finance, or breaking the glass ceiling.
Investing is the only way to level the playing field. Investing is the key to changing cultural obstacles women still face because investing builds wealth. Wealth matters.
Resources for this article include the following:
[1] Social Conceptions of the Corporation: Insights
[2] Women Suffrage Timeline Abigail Adams
[3] Decades Before They Had the Vote, Women Launched Their Own Stock Exchange
[4] The Women’s Rights Movement, 1848–1920
[5] American Women win full voting rights.
“Ladies of the Ticker: Women and Wall Street from the Gilded Age to the Great Depression” by George Robb
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