One 1, the issue isn’t women, it’s stupid people. They come in all sexes, gender preferences, colors, heights, etc. In fact, if there’s any validity to the bell curver then there’s more male idiots than female. Females have been the brunt of the Inane or Stupid Voter label as a matter of history and paternalism, not as a matter of necessity or validity. No, the problem is voting in general. A political vote presupposes the use of government force to get the minority to comply. Hence the issue isn’t the classes people allowed to cast votes, it’s the context of the vote and how it affects others. A ‘vote’ of No on good or service X on the market, even to the extent that it leads to X not being produced anymore due to a drop in demand, leaves me no worse off than I was prior to those votes. For political votes in a democracy, it’s implicit the minority will be worse off, and that they will be punished even to the point of death for trying to resist being made worse off. So, even if you presume women are child centered some how and voting for their kid’s best interest as if that were mutually exclusive with freedom, the problem isn’t their marginal preference for child safety over freedom but the government machine that enforces their marginal preferences categorically on everyone else should they win the majority.
The problem there is all people own property: themselves. And all people can no potentially own property too, at least in the US and all western countries I know of. So Property Owner is a class all people technically belong to, and even if you exclude self ownership as qualifying, all people are potential property owners. And, as before, the problem is not the class of voter but the votes themselves. Political vote result is the categorical enforcement of the marginal preferences of some on all. Marginal votes, choices on the market in other words, while they certain do affect other people, do not leave them implicitly worse off. Even if I like Sprite but demand drops such that Sprite is no longer produced, I am still all the wealthier for the Sprite I have purchased and consumed to date and no poorer for Sprite I did not purchase and no longer have a chance to since it was never mine to begin with. Sprite, no longer being available, is no longer where I allocate my soda budget. However, my budget is still allocated to my highest preference given the available choices. That’s simply not the case in the political system. There you are made worse off by the votes of others.
No to build upon that, why then would Property Owners, as in land owners, traditionally think non land owners shouldn’t vote? My guess is because the land owners knew damn well the monopoly of force they enjoyed and likely used to screw over non land owners, and also knew damn well that given the same power the non land owners would screw them over to the best of their ability. The unseen or unmentioned option is: why doesn’t everybody stop trying to screw everyone else over and just deal with each other freely rather than always showing up to a negotiation with a gun under the table? The expansion of the voting franchise is indeed a history of the expansion of the power to use the government to screw people. However, there is nothing noble in restricting that power to this class or that class be it Men or Land Owners, and there is everything noble in getting rid of that power, period.