At the 10th annual Take the Lead Conference on Women’s Equality Day, women’s rights leaders’ hopes were high and determination steeled that 2025 will see the first woman president and the ratification of the ERA.
Just days after Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the party’s official nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Gloria Feldt—former Planned Parenthood president and longtime women’s rights activist—convened the 10th annual Take the Lead Conference in Washington, D.C., on Women’s Equality Day (Aug. 26), bringing together champions of women’s leadership who hope Harris will serve as the first female president of the United States beginning in January.
Feldt co-founded Take the Lead in 2014 with the explicit mission of achieving “nothing less than leadership gender parity by 2025.” As of 2023, the United States ranked 43 on the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Index, with 75 percent parity, and the goal of gender parity has remained elusive globally.
But the hard-fought effort to have a woman command the bully pulpit seems both suddenly within grasp since Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris in late July, and more urgent than ever given the ongoing reversal of more than 50 years of gains for women and girls threatening to intensify under Project 2025’s blueprint for the next Republican president.
Nonetheless, given evident though inadequate advances, “there comes a time in a social movement when you have to acknowledge that you have actually won—you need to claim victory even though there is much work to be done,” said Feldt during the proceedings, which spotlighted an array of women leaders across sectors.
“You have to give people something to rally around,” said Feldt, as she recognized the ERA Coalition and its leaders, president Zakiya Thomas, and board co-chairs Jamia Wilson and Carol Jenkins, with the “Leading Advocate Award” on the anniversary of the adoption of the 19th Amendment, which in 1920 established women’s right to vote.
There comes a time in a social movement when you have to acknowledge that you have actually won—you need to claim victory even though there is much work to be done.
Gloria Feldt, former Planned Parenthood president
Equal Rights Amendment proponents argue that, like securing the vote, ratifying the ERA is essential to democracy. As the 28th Amendment, it would, in the words of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “provide courts with ‘an unassailable basis for applying the bedrock principle: All men and women are guaranteed by the Constitution equal justice under law.’”
Feldt has credited the fight for the ERA with starting her on her own path to advocacy in 1972 when it was on the ballot in Texas and she—as a self-described “desperate housewife in West Texas, with three little kids” and “no employable skills” made a three dollar contribution to Sissy Farethold’s campaign for governor.
In the 50 years since, Feldt has championed the ERA as just that central rallying point, born of her realization that securing equal rights for women would require cultural and systemic change, advanced by efforts such as her Take the Lead training and consciousness raising, and best secured by constitutional amendment.
Natasha Dupee, director of the D.C. Mayor’s Office of Women’s Policy, read Mayor Bowser’s Women’s Equality Day Proclamation as the Take the Lead panel presentations got underway: “In protest we are raising our voices … for public policies that create … a fairer and more just world.”
Brandishing a suffragist’s sash, Dupee advocated for bringing more people into the fold through every means, including the arts and championing women’s sports.
On the “Impact” panel, former U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.)—calling public service “the best career on earth” and most impactful way to help people—said that after her three decades in office, she was now “working full time as a volunteer lobbyist for the ERA.” Foremost on her agenda: to help secure the majority vote needed in Congress to “remove the arbitrary deadline” for ratification … to bring the ERA to a vote.”
“We can do it,” Maloney said, “we only need four more votes.”
(Of note, the American Bar Association adopted a resolution last month declaring the ERA fully ratified as the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.)
In her remarks on the Impact panel, ERA Coalition co-chair Jamia Wilson recalled meeting Gloria Feldt in 2002 at a Planned Parenthood Action Fund meeting. Wilson credited Feldt with teaching her “how to organize and how to lead” which are “integral in shaping an intergenerational movement. … You taught me about fighting forward.”
Throughlines from Feldt’s career promoting policies and education to advance women’s equality and leadership were evident among the panels on topics including Health, Wealth, Impact and Careers, featuring groundbreaking women leaders and innovators across generations, including:
- Dr. Sophia Yen, honored as co-founder of Pandia Health, an online birth control service that recently expanded to include menopause care.
- Dr. DeShawn Taylor, recognized as founder and president of Desert Star Family Planning in her self-described quest to “remove abortion care out of the silo that it has been placed in,” and integrating it into general care “in a holistic approach to abortion as healthcare—not a dirty word.”
- Angilee Shah, CEO and editor-in-chief of Charlottesville Tomorrow where she is “at the forefront of the national movement to redefine the relationship between local news and community.”
- Jenny Nguyen, owner of The Sports Bra—the first-of-its-kind pub, soon to go national, that celebrates and exclusively airs women’s sports.
Feldt’s fight for leadership gender parity has been forged in innumerable gatherings such as this over the past half century, where women come together to iteratively strategize, empathize, fortify, regroup and, as the conference theme says, “power up.” The mood was celebratory, with many resplendent in red, a color symbolically “associated with our primal survival,” signifying strength and resilience … subconsciously inspiring the wearer “to take action and succeed.”
Hopes are high and determination steeled that 2025 will see the first woman president and the ratification of the ERA. For the hundreds of women and dozens of presenters and organizers who took part in the Take the Lead conference, promoting women’s power at every level and in every field has always been essential to the formula for that success.
As Angilee Shah reflected in the context of a local versus international or national newsroom, “There is power at all levels—sometimes the closer you are to the ground the more effective you can be.”
“Women raised hell about” the right to vote “not being in the Constitution,” Feldt said in conclusion. “We still have a lot of hell to raise—we start here, we start today.”
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