Just look at the time when women were granted voting rights (1).
The US, by some seen as the 'holy grail' of modern democracy, officially allowed women to vote in 1919 (ironically many of the Democratic party were opposed), had extensive voter supression such as literacy tests until the 60ies and arguably still does today.
Many European countries were not real Democracies until after WW2, or event until the fall of the soviet union.
60-70, or even 100 years is basically nothing. That's one long lifespan.
Let's see if we see it all go down in flames in our lifetimes. (Probably not. Let's hope not).
You have to appreciate the irony of a `Democrat` filibustering a woman voting rights act.
But that's our current view. Reading press articles from back then when this issue was discussed in many countries in Europe is quite entertaining also.
The basics of liberalism as we see it today - rule of law and representative democracy, are young. How many presently-unthinkable violations of liberalism were committed by a Western nation within the lifespan of someone who is 90 today, with full public support? Outright genocide, systematic persecution and disenfranchisement of whole races and genders, violent militarised colonialism, you name it.
Building a just state and society is a slow, delicate, multi-generational project of structural and cultural modification, and we are just at the beginning. We're just now getting to a place where we're moving past barbaric mass violence and mass racist persecution.
It's like people look around, notice that we're not in fact in some enlightened Star Trek utopia, declare the whole edifice rotten, and decide that the best response is to gleefully burn it all down.