"What is a suffragette without a suffering household?"

In case you missed these when they made the rounds right after the election, the University of Northern Iowa's collection of women's suffrage postcards has some great examples (via Gwen Sharp) of postcards used as anti-suffrage propaganda. A number of them rely on the specter of men left to care for a household while their wives are off voting in luxury:

It's crude propaganda aimed at the fears of those already in power, not a credible argument meant to educate and persuade. Still, what an irony-free zone! The postcards basically say, wouldn't it be horrible if one sex got to go engage important public matters while the other was relegated to the domestic sphere?

Well, yes. It would.