If American politics are too dirty for women to take part in, there’s something wrong with American politics.

The remark turns a common exclusionary argument on its head. Instead of accepting the premise that politics is inherently “dirty” and therefore unsuitable for women, it treats that premise as an indictment of the political system itself. Ferber’s formulation implies that women’s participation is not a threat to propriety but a corrective: if civic life is corrupt, the remedy is broader democratic accountability, not keeping half the population out. The line also reflects a wider early-20th-century debate around women’s suffrage and public roles, where “cleaning up politics” was often invoked both to justify women’s entry and to criticize entrenched machine politics.