Rav Kook on women voting

 Rav Kook (Page 58 in Judge Elon’s Status of Women): The psychological reason for having women vote and for publicly calling voting by the name of “the right of women” is a consequence of the lowly state of women in the general population in these countries. If the condition of their families were truly tranquil and decent as we find in most of our families – then we would not have the women themselves, nor the academics or ethical authorities or idealists be trying to achieve what they call the “rights of voting for women.” It is something which in fact is likely to ruin the quality of family life. And this destruction of family life must of necessity lead to great destruction in the quality of communities as well as society in general. It is only because of the despair and psychological bitterness that results from the coarse conduct of men that secular family life has been ruined. Thus the secular society decided to try to improve the situation by means of giving more power to the community and to try with this to elevate the broken ruins of the family unit. But they have shown no concern for the negative side-effects and consequences from such a change since they already have so much breakdown in the family unit for other reasons. However, we in contrast have not descended to their lowly existence and we don’t wish to see our sisters in this degraded state. The home for us is even now a bastion of holiness.  G‑d forbid that we should degrade the brilliant light that exists in the life of our sisters and to create the possibility of embittering their lives by means of exposing them to the conflicting views and bitter disputes that are connected with the elections and the political issues concerning the nature of the country.