Happy Women's Equality Day--What's Next?
Tuesday, August 25, 2009 at 10:14PM To commemorate Women's Equality Day, which is the anniversary of the Nineteenth 
Alice Paul, author of the Equal Rights Amendment which has yet to pass, toasting the passage of the Women's Suffrage AmendmentAmendment, August 26th, check out the HerStory Scrapbook website--a compilation of over 900 links to articles, editorials, and letters in The New York Times Archive regarding the final four years of the fight for women’s suffrage.
This is an amazing story of vision, courage, and perserverance. It is also a tale that demonstrates the complexity of achieving a political goal only to lose much of its purpose. The suffragist leaders were split between those who felt that getting the right to vote was the end goal, and others, like Alice Paul, who believed getting the vote was necessary but only the beginning of a much larger agenda. Paul went on to write the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923. It has not passed--yet: this year it was reintroduced again, amidst debates about renaming it the Women's Equality Amendment or the Constitutional Equality Amendment.
I'm with the Alice Paul wing of the women's movement. I believe a movement has to move. We always need to be advancing an affirmative policy agenda. But for today, let's celebrate how far we've come and remember Paul's inspiring words:
So live as not to be scarred with the shame of
A cowardly and trivial past
So live that dying she can say:
All my life and all my strength
Was given to the finest cause in the world
The liberation of womankind.
http://www.GloriaFeldt.com/powered-women-blog
Reader Comments (2)
Medicare Insurance
Amazing story. Good to hear about the Women's Equality Amendment. I hope all the people will celebrate this day every year.