Editorial: Women won the vote a century ago; what took so long?

Despite the pervasive sexism that still plagues civilization today, it remains hard to imagine a time 100 years ago when women were denied the right to vote.

A century is a long time, beyond the span of most human lives. But it's really not such a long time.

For the older among us, our parents lived at a time before woman's suffrage in the United States. For many among us, our grandparents did. And for almost all of us, our great-grandparents did.

The time span feels a bit like looking in a mirror and seeing a black-and-white image almost like ourselves beckoning over our shoulder. A bit far away perhaps but only just beyond reach.

The 19th Amendment ensuring that woman had the right to vote nationally wasn't ratified until Aug. 18, 1920. And it wasn't certified, thus becoming the law of the land, until Aug. 26, 1920.

We will celebrate that centennial on Wednesday, Women's Equality Day.

It is a centennial worthy of note, reminding us, as Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

It is part of America's relentless journey toward a more perfect union.

Today, no matter your gender, it's hard to conceive of a time when women couldn't vote.

And yet, that time existed for more than half the nation's existence.

Not only that, but when the obvious idea of women's suffrage was suggested, it provoked lengthy and heated disagreement. It took decades for the idea finally to find passage.

There were people - learned and we suspect at least some of them well meaning - who vehemently argued against the notion.

Against a right that is so doubtlessly fundamental that none of us question it today.

What back then could they have been thinking?

How could they have been so trapped by their foolish dogma and bigotry and times to have been so blinded?

Which begs the question: How trapped are we today?

How will we look 100 years hence?

What assumptions do we make today, born of our own era's conventions, that may embarrass the memory of our generation in the future?

If only we could leap decades ahead and look back in retrospect.

Unfortunately, there is no foolproof protection against the unwitting ignorance and chauvinism that any age of history may engender.

All we can bring to the test of our progeny is a spirit of love and kindness and generosity. And the courage to challenge, always, our own truths.

Celebrate women's suffrage Wednesday. And continue humanity's march forward.