This is for all those who missed the party:
Women's Equality Day quietly came and went recently, not quite 100 years after passage of the Nineteenth Amendment -- the law that said women were equally entitled, along with men, to the right to vote. Since ratification of that groundbreaking law -- women should make choices just as men do?! -- an assortment of other rights have been won. But equality? Not quite.
It was the indomitable U.S. Representative "Battling Bella" Abzug who figured that all those rights -- won and yet to be won -- should have their own day. The New York Democrat introduced legislation establishing Women's Equality Day, to be observed annually on August 26th in commemoration of the 1920 passage of the 19th Amendment. A lot of other indomitable women, notably Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her suffragette friends Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony, laid the groundwork for the women's movement.
Fast forward to Women's Equality Day, 2014. In his official proclamation, President Obama mentioned "all those decades spent organizing, protesting and agitating," and took the occasion to list (in the proclamation) a few of the things that his administration has indeed accomplished to advance women's equality.
But in commemorative events such as the one this writer attended in San Francisco with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, there was a lot of talk about areas in which women are still not quite equal. Pelosi's focus, she explains, is a three-pronged "Middle Class Jumpstart," aimed at achieving equal pay for equal work, paid sick leave and quality affordable healthcare -- actions that would unquestionably boost equality for (and the lives of) women in the U.S.
What those ferocious ancestors of ours like Abzug and Anthony were fighting for was not just equality but justice. There's not much justice if you're a single mom having to send a sick child to school because you can't afford to lose a day's pay or manage a trip to the doctor. Nor is there much justice if that day's pay is 10% less than men on the same job are getting.
There's also not much justice for women in non-metropolitan areas who seek abortion services. Ninety-seven per cent of them have to travel long distances, navigate a maze of medically unnecessary restrictions and often also struggle through hostile protesters - assuming they can find the time and money to do this.
Are such issues -- reproductive rights -- equality issues? It's hard to feel equal -- to the men who don't face these issues, or to people with more money and power than you -- if you are a woman in any of the situations cited above. And given the strength of the conservatives who want to tip the scales ever farther downward, it's hard to feel optimistic.
But Pelosi and her "Middle Class Jumpstart" plans, reproductive justice groups like NARAL, Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation (to name just a few) and women's rights organizations of every sort are hard at work trying to keep the scales from tipping farther against U.S. women. Bella Abzug would be proud.
It's not too early to start planning for Women's Equality Day 2015.