Math for Girls Counts                 

 

Before they were great-great-grandmothers, they stood

in lines for singular equality, for one scale blind

to gender, creed or color. But, their right

 

to vote was delayed until 1920 – 144 years after

propertied White men, 51 years after Black men,

as if women were mere household amenities

used as conveniences.

 

The vote hoped to move the line closer

to a public voice in fiscal and sexual values,  

but it took sixteen more years to change

birth control methods from obscene

 

to legal mail (hidden in plain brown envelopes)

to head-of-the-household husbands,

a married man the only

Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.

 

Connecticut’s 1965 defeat freed the pill

only for the sanctified wedded. I remember

unmarried, pregnant girls,

shamed and blamed for bad choices,

while boys were just being boys.

 

The 1982 ERA defeat subtracted sixty years

of female rights. One hundred years since suffrage,

fifteen states still have not ratified ERA,

now a dusty museum piece.

 

Defeat meant I had no credit, no bank account,

no property without my husband’s name, addressed as

Mrs. John Doe, my first name unimportant,

a nondescript dustpan beneath spousal steps.

 

The recent Hobby Lobby Act fractionalized

1973’s Roe vs. Wade by granting corporations

religious rights to reduce reproductive choice,

lost winnings to poker cheats.

 

Despite the centuries-old male monopoly,

women have done the math –

equal means equal, not less than.      

 

Patsy Asuncion 

                                       Reprinted in Nasty Women,  from Cut on the Bias