As the Equal Rights Amendment remains in limbo, artist and filmmaker Tiffany Shlain’s latest work traces the long fight for women’s equality and reminds us that the next chapter of feminist history is ours to write.
One week. That is all the time left before an election that will shape not only the future of women’s rights but also the health of our democracy itself.
Who governs our states, who sits in Congress, how our elections are run, whether every voice counts equally—all of it is on the ballot. The rights many of us assumed were settled are being rolled back. Institutions we assumed were permanent are being tested. A democracy is only as strong as the people who show up for it. This year showing up has never mattered more.
There are many nonpartisan principles and values foundational to voting for a more just future … and one of them is the principle of equal rights for all. So I am encouraging you to consider in the U.S. elections, the threats to the hard-earned rights for women to participate fully and to have agency over their own bodies.
Our democracy has always been a work in progress, and women have had to fight for every inch of it. It took 72 years to get from Seneca Falls to the 19th Amendment in 1920. For many Black, Native American and Asian American women, the vote came decades later still.
The Equal Rights Amendment was first proposed in 1923 and passed Congress in 1972. When Virginia ratified it in 2020, decades after Congress’ deadline, it became the 38th state to do so. Yet it has still not been certified and its legal status remains unresolved.
Most people don’t realize the Constitution still does not explicitly guarantee equal rights regardless of sex. We do have important protections against sex discrimination. Title IX opened classrooms and playing fields to generations of girls. The Equal Pay Act and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act made it illegal to pay women less for the same work or push them out of their jobs for being pregnant. But these are laws, not constitutional rights. What one Congress passes, another can weaken or repeal. Their strength depends on whoever holds the majority.
The Equal Rights Amendment would change that. It would place equality between women and men in the Constitution itself, pushing courts to treat sex discrimination with the same seriousness as other fundamental violations of our rights. Our progress would be far harder to roll back. Rights that can be repealed are not yet secure. When the rights of half the population can be rolled back, no one’s rights are secure.
That is what makes these midterm elections about democracy, not only about women. A democracy that does not reflect all its people is a democracy that is not finished.
Neither is the story of women in this country and around the world. Sometimes a story, well told, can help us see more clearly, and give us a different perspective on where we were, where we are now and where we are going.
Let me suggest the work of an award-winning multidisciplinary artist and activist whose work always adds perspective and context: Tiffany Shlain.
I have long admired the many ways she has optimized the power of film and her inventive creative process to not only create art, but to also ignite movements.
With multiple Sundance premieres, I was especially pleased when she chose to premiere one of her most powerful films, 50/50, about the 10,000-year history of women and power, at a TEDWomen conference. As is her usual practice, she made the film available to anyone interested in hosting a screening and the following spring, more than 10,000 groups around the world gathered to watch it together. Tiffany knows that a film watched together can become a movement.
Her latest work is Dendrofemonology: A Feminist History Tree Ring, a 65-inch sculpture of reclaimed cedar with 50,000 years of history hand-burned into its rings.
When I made the sculpture, I distilled 29 milestones from 50,000 years of feminist history. I then took the sculpture on a moveable monument tour … The installations serve as galvanizing events to bring leaders and the public together around protecting and expanding women’s rights.
Tiffany Shlain
It traces women’s stories from earliest societies, through the spread of patriarchy, documenting the nearly century long hard-won right for women to vote and up to the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.
The final entry reads “Today:” and is left open, because what comes next has not been written yet. It will be written by what we do now.
This moveable monument has traveled from the National Mall to Madison Square Park, to museums across the country and this summer to Seneca Falls, where the fight for women’s rights began in 1848.
On Tuesday, Oct. 27, Tiffany and her tree sculpture were in Texas,—the front lines of the battle over women’s rights—to premiere her new 17-minute film, Where Are We? It was introduced to a sold out audience at the Austin Public Library. The tree ring is on display at the Austin Public Library (Central, downtown) until Nov. 17; then it heads to New Mexico.
She is doing what she has done with many of her films: inviting anyone who wishes to have a free viewing party in their own homes. I can’t think of a more powerful invitation to offer to friends, neighbors and family a week before the midterms elections—a film that I believe will uplift the importance of protecting and expanding women’s rights and help voters see more clearly what’s at stake with every vote. After the screening, talk about it and help those who haven’t voted, make a plan.
The last ring on Tiffany’s tree still leaves room for “Today.”
What gets written there, for women and for our democracy, depends on what each of us does in the next seven days.
This article was originally published on Pat Mitchell’s weekly newsletter.
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A note from Ms. editors: We want to hear from you for The Majority, a new campaign collecting stories about how reproductive freedom has enabled readers to build the lives they want and need.
Poll after poll shows a majority of Americans support reproductive healthcare access. Yet public debate overlooks the lives shaped by abortion access, contraception, IVF, miscarriage care, maternal healthcare or comprehensive sex education—countless women who chose to pursue an education, have children, not have children, protect their health and chart their own future. What’s your reproductive freedom story? Add your voice. Together, these stories will help show not only why reproductive freedom remains a majority value, but also what it makes possible.
