This Saturday, the American Association of University Women (AAUW) hosted its Women’s Equality Day celebration with the Newseum in Washington, D.C.
While the celebration reflected on the country’s 97 years of progress fighting for gender equality in political offices, in the workplace, and in civil rights movements for women starting with the passing of the 19th Amendment, AAUW and political experts say there is still work to be done in the fight for women’s equality.
“It would be easy to be disheartened by how long it’s taken to get to even where we are with some gaps closed but many still remaining,” said Anne Hedgepeth, interim vice president of public policy and government relations at AAUW. “But I certainly think that there is real increased activism and enthusiasm about taking on issues of inequality right now.”
AAUW’s advocacy on women’s equality and the Newseum’s commitment to protecting the First Amendment each reinforce the ongoing fight for both issues.
Today, women across the country are not only pushing for more legislative representation, they are also advocating and protesting for issues like equal pay, quality reproductive healthcare and childcare, and efforts to decrease poverty and homelessness.
Nancy Pelosi, the Minority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, asserts in her Women’s Economic Agenda that “when women succeed, America succeeds.” In the agenda, Pelosi advocates for better and equal pay for women, for workplace policies that allow work-life balance and paid maternity leave, and for more support of women business owners, among other policies, that will bring more economic support for all women.
Dr. Kelly Dittmar, a Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) scholar and a political science professor at Rutgers University-Camden, says that the country can improve gender equity by preventing the stagnation of women’s political representation found in recent decades.
