Are We Going Backward?

While doomscrolling on Facebook recently, I came across an article about something one of the candidates running for Kansas Secretary of State said that stopped me in my tracks.

Pat Proctor is on video claiming, "There's like, all these, like, women, uh, like 20 to 30-year-old women, who, you know, that you never saw at the polls before, and it's like a long line, the long line, and they're all there to vote. And it's just the — they're stealing it fair and square.” (Watch the video here.) He acknowledges that these women are legal voters who were exercising their right to vote. Calling it “stealing” should be raising all kinds of red flags.

And this isn't the first time I'm hearing people complain about women voting.

But when the person making the comment is running for Kansas' chief elections officer, I have another question: If a candidate for Kansas Secretary of State describes legal voters—specifically young women standing in line to vote—as “stealing it,” shouldn't we be asking whether that person is the right person to oversee our elections?

And that has me asking: Are we going backward?

More and more, I’m noticing something that’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore: women’s power is being questioned, dismissed, and, in some cases, actively challenged.

It shows up everywhere.

We're not believed.

Women's pain and medical concerns are often dismissed, with catastrophic results: lifelong misdiagnoses, unnecessarily disabling illnesses, and even deaths. The problem is even worse for women of color. In Kansas, Black women are dying during and after pregnancy at nearly six times the rate of white women.

Even our body parts and functions have been dismissed. For example, in 2026, for the first time in history, scientists have finally traced all the nerve pathways in the clitoris. Apparently, the penis got a head start a couple of decades ago. Yes, the scientists were women. (Read about it here.)

Pic: Credit: Ju Young Lee et al. 2026

Women are also being discredited when it comes to violence against us. Women who are murdered or abused by someone they know are too often disbelieved, blamed, or told that the warning signs weren't serious enough to matter until it's too late. And for women who are trafficked, justice can be painfully elusive; victims can be treated as criminals, witnesses, or evidence rather than as people who were exploited, leaving many without the accountability or support they deserve.

We’re not valued.

We're still not paid equally. Nationally, women working full-time earned about 82 cents for every dollar men earned in 2026. And here in Wichita, women working full-time and year-round earn just 79 cents for every dollar men earn.

Women have always faced workplace discrimination in hiring and promotions, but now we're teaching computers to do it. A 2025 study of more than 330,000 job postings found that most AI models gave preferential treatment to equally qualified men over women when recommending who should get an interview, especially for higher-paying jobs.

Our expertise is still questioned. We have to establish credibility over and over again to have our ideas taken seriously, even when we have the credentials and experience to back it up. Sometimes the dismissal is obvious. More often, it's subtle enough that we convince ourselves it doesn't matter.

Another way women are dismissed is that we're still the ones doing the majority of caregiving and all the invisible work that gets taken for granted. We're organizing the celebrations, mentoring newbies, taking the notes, remembering birthdays, smoothing over conflicts, and managing the emotional temperature in the room without a penny more in our bank accounts.

That's why when I go into meetings, I don't bring anything that will make me the notetaker.

Our rights can be taken away.

The modern way of restricting women's power isn't always to tell women they can't do something. Sometimes it's to make exercising that power harder. That's why we need to pay attention not only to laws that clearly take away rights, but also to changes that can create new barriers to exercising those rights.

In November, Kansas voters will decide whether to amend the state Constitution to explicitly say that only U.S. citizens can vote. Noncitizens are already prohibited from voting in Kansas state and federal elections. So why is this necessary? And why now?

We tend to think of rights as permanent once we've won them. They're not. Rights have to be protected, defended, and exercised. And sometimes the threat isn't an outright attempt to take a right away. Sometimes it's a series of seemingly reasonable changes that make exercising that right harder.

And that's why I think we need to pay attention.

Because it shows up when women exercise one of the most fundamental forms of power we have in a democracy—the right to vote—and someone calls it stealing.

A woman doesn't have to be told “you don't matter.”

She can simply be:

Interrupted.

Underpaid.

Passed over.

Disbelieved.

Undiagnosed.

Talked over.

Second-guessed.

Asked to prove herself again.

Made to jump through one more hoop.

Any one of those things might seem small. Together, they aren’t.

Maybe the question isn't whether we're going backward.

Maybe the question is how far backward we're willing to let ourselves go.

So what do we do about it?

We Power Up.

We stop apologizing for having opinions. We ask the uncomfortable question. We challenge the doctor who isn't listening. We negotiate. We speak up in the meeting. We question the policy. We vote. We pay attention.

Because power isn't something we should take for granted.

That's what my Power Up series is about. Short, practical ideas to help you recognize your power, use it, and, maybe most importantly, stop giving it away.

Because right now, I think we need women who are willing to Power Up.

Are you ready? Headmistress Jill

Learn more about the classes and register here!

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Because We’re Never Finished  

The Finishing School for Modern Women, located in Wichita, Kansas, offers classes to help women find their authentic selves, not because we need finishing, but because we’re never finished. We bring together women of all ages to learn from experts and each other how to claim our power in business, finance, communication, and life.

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