Southern Indiana Business July-August 2020 | Page 26

A bipartisan
stage for thought
League of Women Voters
welcomes all voices
By Aprile Rickert
The South Central Indiana
League of Women Voters has
made a resurgence over the
past dozen years, but local
leadership says more activity
and diversity are needed to give it the
momentum to effect meaningful changes.
The League of Women Voters is a
national organization established in Chicago
in 1920, just six months before the
ratification of the 19th Amendment, giving
women the right to vote. Its original
purpose was to help educate the millions of
women on their new role as voters.
Today, the League continues as a “nonpartisan,
activist, grassroots organization
that believes voters should play a critical
role in democracy,” according to the
national website.
Barb Anderson, president of the South
Central Indiana chapter, which includes
Clark, Floyd, Harrison and Scott counties,
has been a longtime supporter of the
League, which was formed nationally
through the women’s suffrage advocacy
work of women like Mary Garrett Hay,
born in Charlestown in 1857.
“I believe in change the League championed
100 years ago for our right to vote,”
Anderson said. She first got involved with
the League locally in the 1980s, as a young
social worker in Southern Indiana.
“I think as a young woman when I came
into it, it was so impressive because women
were just coming into their own,” she said.
“It was a very strong group but there were
so many changes that had to take place in
Indiana … there were things on the books
that people didn’t realize.”
The group successfully pushed to change
laws affecting women, including one that
stipulated a woman couldn’t be beaten with
anything larger than a person’s thumb; it
was removed from the books in 1983.
“There were things that were antiquated
that needed to come out,” Anderson said.
“So we learned about the process, the
Statehouse and connecting.”
Teresa Bottorff-Perkins, longtime educator
and current member of the Greater
Clark County Schools board, recalled her
first involvement with the group when she
was in her 20s and 30s.
“I admired those women and learned a
lot from how they presented the issues,”
Bottorff-Perkins said. “They were a force
to be reckoned with and I just admired
the strength and the courage they had in a
bipartisan way.”
But membership faltered after this
period of strength and for years, there was
no League in Southern Indiana. Anderson
and Bottorff-Perkins were among a group
which supported its restart in the late
2010s.
League prompts changes through education,
activism
Among the issues taken up by the
League over the past few decades was
helping to establish statewide protocol on
school boards. Before, they were largely
appointed bodies, put in place by the government,
versus being elected by residents
of the communities.
Bottorff-Perkins said she feels the
elected board brings much more diversity
in thought.
“I think that’s very important and when
you’re elected you’re more likely to have
that diversity,” she said.
This is especially important in a district
like Greater Clark, she said.
“Our school district Greater Clark is
so diverse, we have downtown schools,
suburban schools, rural schools,” she
said. Board members have to live in their
respective districts, but are voted on by the
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