On the Anniversary of Women’s Right to Vote, Own Your Space

Today in history marks a monumental moment for women. On this day in 1920, women of the United States got their right to vote. Since the 1920s, women have been battling for their place in this world, and after hearing about the latest discussion that is circulating on TikTok, we still have a long way to go.

Michael Rock alerted me to a TikTok that his wife had seen involving a little science experiment. He was telling me that a TikTok user pointed out that when a man and woman are walking down a hallway, the woman will be more likely to move out of the way than the man.

This had me scratching my head. This couldn’t possibly be true. My mind was teleported back to college, where I sat every day in my psychology class, and I remembered studying similar scientific tests about men and women. During this psychology class, we uncovered (through scientific observation) that women are “people pleasers” and are more apt to create more space at a crowded table or move over to create room for someone, or similarly, move out of the way in a crowded intersection.

This really bummed me out. It is so obvious that the dynamic for women has been engrained into us at a very young age to be the empath. We are trained to be complacent and avoid confrontation which is the result of former generations passing down these learned behaviors. On a smaller scale, you see that habit emerge as a man and woman walk down a hallway, and it’s the instinct of the woman to step aside.

This TikTok conversation has me “woke.” I believe in manners, but you will never catch me stepping aside or shrinking myself in any way.

On the anniversary of the women’s right to vote, I implore women to own your space. Push those learned behaviors of bashfulness and people-pleasing to the side, and strut with confidence.

It’s a new dawn, where it’s time to show the next generation of women that no one is superior to them. So, the next time you walk down a hallway, remember this TikTok experiment and let someone else step aside.