Women's Equality Day is August 26

Women's Equality Day is August 26

Friday, August 26 marks the 96th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment which prohibits any United States citizen from being denied the right to vote on the basis of sex.

The women's suffrage movement organized after the Civil War, during Reconstruction (1865–77). During this period, women's rights leaders advocated for inclusion of universal suffrage as a civil right in the Reconstruction amendments (the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments). However, these amendments did not include women's suffrage.

The Nineteenth Amendment was first introduced in Congress in 1878, following Reconstruction. That attempt failed. Congresswoman Jeanette Rankin reintroduced it on Jan. 20, 1918. After passing in the House of Representatives that year, the suffrage amendment failed by two-thirds majority it needed to pass in the Senate. Reintroduced again in 1919, the “Susan Anthony Amendment” passed in June and the ratification process began.

The 19^th amendment effectively overruled Minor v. Happersett, when a unanimous Supreme Court had ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment did not give women the right to vote.

It was ratified by the requisite number of states a year later, with Tennessee's ratification the final vote to add the amendment to the Constitution. In Leser v. Garnett (1922), the Supreme Court rejected claims that the amendment was unconstitutionally adopted.

Note: The make up of the Supreme Court has always mattered!

However, many Southern states soon passed laws designed to disenfranchise women of color. It wasn't until the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that their voting rights were fully ensured once more. Yet the right to vote is still threatened, as we discussed in my Voting Rights Act blog post on Aug. 4.

Since 1971, America has observed Women's Equality Day on Aug. 26. One way to mark the anniversary is to fly your flag on Women's Equality Day to honor the generations of Americans who worked for 72 years to win the right to vote for women.

Another good way to mark the day is to check your voter registration status and encourage family and friends to register to vote. National Voter Registration Day takes place on Tues., Sept. 27. According to the NVRD website, www.NationalVoterRegistrationDay.org, "6 million Americans didn't vote because they missed a registration deadline or didn't know how to register,” in 2008.

Women's Equality Day is a time for all of us to remember that women weren't "given" the vote; they fought fiercely for that right. And women's votes are a vital tool we can use to shape the policy issues that affect us everyday.

The early suffragists believed that once women could vote, they would be able to right all the things that were wrong with society. They reasoned that “with how much was accomplished without the vote - how much more would be accomplished with the vote.” They though this might take five years.

But 96 years later, elected bodies in America haven’t changed all that much. They still don’t look much like the people they serve. Those elected are invariably too white, too male, too old, and too well-off to reflect their constituents, for the most part.

In fact, America is falling behind on electing women to government. In 1997, the United States ranked 52nd in the world for women’s representation in government. In 2016, we fell to 97^th place. We simply have not experienced the influx of female legislators into our political system in the way dozens of other countries have, even though for the first time there is a woman at the top of a presidential ticket.

The truth is, if you don’t have a seat at the table, you don’t have a voice. And that lack of a voice is reflected across the spectrum of social, economic and legal aspects of life.

We passed a lot of socially progressive legislation 50 years ago in the 1960s. Medicare, for example, enacted in 1965, is the nation’s health insurance program for seniors and younger adults with permanent disabilities. More than half (56%) of all Medicare beneficiaries are women.

Yet Medicare is an area where women are still shortchanged. In a new analysis of Medicare reimbursements, women physicians were reimbursed less than men across specialties. In a single year, Medicare reimbursed female physicians almost $19,000 less than male doctors, according to a new study published in Postgraduate Medical Journal.

And speaking of the pay gap, it is one of the most egregious of the economic injustices for women. According to AAUW’s The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap, the pay gap affects women from all backgrounds, at all ages, and of all levels of educational achievement, although earnings and the gap vary depending on a woman’s individual situation.

The wage gap affects every aspect of a women’s life – and that of her family. It means less money for essentials such as groceries or student loan payments. It affects where she can afford to live and if she can afford adequate transportation to get to work. It means less ability to save, compounding the significant the gender wealth gap, and a less secure retirement.

Since 1935, Social Security has been the bedrock of older women’s financial security – virtually the only source of income for 3 in 10 women 65 and older – and a critical source of disability and life insurance protection throughout their lives. Yet Social Security – the nation’s premier insurance plan for children, the disabled and older Americans – is again a target during this (and nearly every) political season.

Today's 65-year-olds can expect to spend an average of $130,000 on health care during retirement, from premiums to co-payments to eyeglasses, according to new estimates.

The average single 65-year-old woman can expect to need $135,000 to spend on health care in retirement, while a man will spend $125,000, according to estimates from Fidelity Investments. Figuring out how to afford retirement is even more difficult for women after a lifetime of lost wages (and Social Security benefits) due to the pay gap.

Needed changes won’t occur when, according to a recent Pew survey, 56 percent of American men believe that “the obstacles that once made it harder for women than men to get ahead are now largely gone.” By contrast, 63 percent of women believe that “significant obstacles still make it harder for women to get ahead than men.” 

The 19^th Century women who began the long road to suffrage knew that breaking down barriers – and attitudes – was key to moving women into full citizenship and participation in society. They knew that women’s issues are human rights issues. Women have never fought just for themselves. Our issues address larger injustices, wrongs that need righting, and ways that need to be changed so we can realize our full potential.