How and Where Women Are Rising?

As a woman lawyer who has toiled in the field for many years, I sometimes look around and ask the question: How are women doing in this changing society? What achievements have women accomplished since the passage of the 19th Amendment, providing women the right to vote? How have they fared in Congress? In the White House? In corporate life? In law firm life? In the military? What barriers are left to overcome? Why is this important? Do we need the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to help overcome them?

How Far Have Women Come? The Suffragette Movement - A Brief History

While the Declaration of Independence proclaimed in 1776 that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,” we know it took 100 years for women to gain the right to vote. And we are still searching for equality.

The women’s suffrage movement was a decades-long fight to win the right to vote for women in the United States. It took activists and reformers nearly 100 years to win that right, and the campaign was not easy. An example of just how physically difficult it was to gain the right to vote is the story of suffragette Alice Paul, who was imprisoned, went on many hunger strikes, and was force-fed—all for her work to change the Constitution and allow women to vote.

The fight began before the Civil War but did not become serious until after the war, when a group of women, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, met in Seneca Falls, New York. Ironically, the suffragettes argued that women should be included not because they were equal to men but because they were different and needed their own recognition. This argument apparently worked to garner more support, and on August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. The amendment provides:

“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

This is now a right we take for granted, but we should recognize the work of our foremothers and make sure we all vote.

To read the full article, please click here (subscription required).

"How and Where Women Are Rising?" by Joan M. Bondareff was published in the American Bar Association Senior Law Division's Experience Magazine.