MARIA

The last days I have met many different women, all of them fascinated me with their stories. It seems to me that women can bear so much of everything and see it as natural. Today I want to tell you about Maria:
She is an old lady that I massage sometimes; she is 88 years old, she was born the same year that females were given the right to vote in Sweden. Old pictures show a drop-dead-gorgeous woman, the woman I touch and listen to looks like any old woman - there is only a slight hint of her youthful beauty. What is striking are her eyes; they carry all the wisdom, joy and pain of a lifetime. She has had a hard life, this woman. She has known the biggest and truest love, given birth only to lose her child, danced and made love through the night, nursed her ailing husband. When she was young, she broke her hips but would not give up wearing pretty high-heeled shoes - no matter how much pain she sometimes experienced. She is animated when she speaks, her eyes glow, her cheeks turn pink. She is excited about the liberty women have today, and worried about how they sometimes use it.
Womens right is the result of generations' struggle for existence, acceptance and freedom. The freedom women experience today is something women once died for. (Not much different from the war against apartheid.) We must never forget what went before that what we take for granted. All the little old wrinkled ladies around us helped pave the road for us, and they should all be honoured and respected.

Wikipedia says:

Voting rights for women were introduced into international law in 1948 when the UN adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As stated in Article 21 “(1)Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. (3)The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.”

Women’s suffrage is also explicitly stated as a right under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, adopted by the United Nations in 1979.