More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Like other fans of Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, I’ll be binge-watching when the fourth season of the hit series finally drops on Friday, Feb. 18.
I can’t help but wonder if the fictional Midge Maisel was influenced by the real-life Mary Ware Dennett or what would happen if they met. From 1915 through the 1930s, Dennett’s pioneering battles against U.S. government censorship helped pave the way for the freedom of speech Mrs. Maisel relies on and fights to expand.
Without women like Coretta Scott King, Mamie Till-Mobley and Fannie Lou Hamer and women whose names we may never know, passing the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and much of the progress toward justice during the Civil Rights Movement would not have been possible.
We’re now at a crossroads for voting rights and are asking our elected officials which side of history they’ll be on: the one that upholds justice at the ballot box, or the side that upholds voter oppression.
Weekend Reading for Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation.
This week: Remembering Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to U.S. Congress; how can the Republican Party recruit more women candidates?; election highlights for women, including the women elected to the NYC Council; the case for canceling party primaries; and more.
From widespread physical abuse during slavery to Breonna Taylor’s death in 2020 at the hands of police, Black women have experienced their humanity, their very right to exist, be violated. The complete story of Black women’s multi-century struggle to participate in this democracy and make their voices heard is messy and complex.
In “We Demand: The Suffrage Road Trip”, middle-aged lesbian Swedish immigrants Ingeborg Kindstedt and Maria Kindberg advocate for women’s suffrage in 1915.
I fell in love with Ingeborg and Maria when I retraced their route in 2015, and was astonished to find they’d gotten so little recognition for all they did—likely because they were older, working class women who spoke accented English.
The convention will continue two more days, and the struggle will go on for as long as may be necessary. But if future advocates of equality for women have the same dedication as those present today, there is no doubt that Elizabeth Oakes Smith’s prediction of victory will prove true, and those who can say they were among the first to begin the work of winning total equality for women will be especially honored.
The Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum is decades in the making. For more than 20 years, I have been working to pass a bill that would give women our rightful place in our nation’s history and capital city. As with so many advancements for women, this one was hard-fought.
Rachel Nichols’s lack of solidarity with Maria Taylor as two women marginalized at male-centric ESPN and her dismissal of Taylor’s unique experiences as a Black woman suggest how timely that famous refrain attributed to Sojourner Truth remains: “Ain’t I a woman?”
Though all suffragists have the same goal of “Votes for Women,” some give priority to winning suffrage on a State-by-State basis, using conventional methods, while others focus on passage of the Susan B. Anthony (nationwide woman suffrage) Amendment, and take a more militant, though non-violent, approach.
Ninety-nine years ago, ERA author Alice Paul opined in the local Washington newspaper that women’s equality would easily be won by 2023. It’s painful that her prediction is so wrong—but last month’s vote in the House of Representatives to remove the deadline for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment means American women are closer to constitutional equality than ever before.