7. If Women Were Granted Suffrage, They Would Talk More
If women were deprived of the right to vote, the common belief was that they would remain at home and do most of their talking, chatting, and gossiping in their knitting circles at home with their female friends. If they chose to discuss politics, it would be in a way that was domestic and had little bearings on the men who actually ran (or thought that they ran) public life.
According to this line of reasoning, if women were given the right to vote and became politically active, those knitting-circle conversations would move to town hall meetings. Men would be forced to listen to women talk about politics, something that they clearly knew nothing about at all. After all, what could women possibly know about matters of war, affairs of the state, or how to cure society’s woes? Moreover, these men heard enough of their wives’ chatter and idle gossip at home. They certainly didn’t want to be embarrassed by the women’s antics in public!
The implication here is, of course, that women should stay at home and care for their husbands, who would go out and do the dirty work of participating in politics, sitting in town hall meetings, running for public office, and the like.