Choices

The glitzy metallic pink exterior of this voting booth belies the serious tone of Michele Pred’s creation for ArtsWestchester's 2017 exhibition, “Give Us the Vote.” Pred’s re-envisioned Votomatic-style voting machine (one of the “hanging chad” machines from the 2000 presidential election) highlights ongoing battlegrounds in the fight for women’s rights.

En route to the 19th Amendment, the suffragists helped write new laws that protected the rights of women, including laws that gave married women title to their own earnings and one that granted women joint custody of their children.

Since the achievement of the suffragists, women have struggled for equal pay for equal work, for the right to make decisions about their own bodies, and for access to basic healthcare, including to birth control. In 2017, an American woman makes $0.80 for every dollar a man makes, and the Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, which made abortion legal remains under attack. Pred says: “I feel a renewed urgency to defend Pro-Choice and Access to women’s services.”