Celebrating Women’s Right to Vote

Post #8 – Rosie’s Daughters: The “First Woman To” Generation Tells Its Story – Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett

Today, August 26, we celebrate the 88th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment that allowed women to vote for the first time.  It may seem like ancient history to young women. Yet when my mother was born, her mother could not vote.  My mother was 11 years old before the the Woman Suffrage Amendment became law in 1920.

It took many years and untold numbers of women working together to achieve the goal of women voting. One hundred and sixty years ago, in 1848, the Seneca Fall Convention voted on and passed a Declaration of Sentiments. The 9th resolution, much ridiculed, was the declaration of a woman’s right to vote. The stories are legend of the struggle to finally pass an amendment to the Constitution that secured this right. The names of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, Carrie Chapman Catt and others still echo in our ears. Many of the women who worked in factories during World War I, perhaps the original Rosie the Riveters, urged President Wilson to push for a woman’s right to vote. Their petitions and marches emphasized that if they were valued enough to work for the country’s war efforts, they should be valued enough to be given the right to vote.   

Thanks to Bella Abzug, August 26th is known as Women’s Equality Day, a date chosen to honor the passage of the 19th amendment. Bella Abzug. Many of us remember this fiery woman with her trademark hats, first Jewish woman elected to Congress, Founder of Women Strike for Peace, Co-founder of National Women’s Political Caucus, and so much more. Not long after she was elected to the House of Representatives, she began working for a day to officially celebrate this important turning point in women’s history and was successful in 1971.

Abzug represents another of the early torchbearer women who broke through gender barriers so that other women might follow in her path.  In our book, Rosie’s Daughters, we celebrate a whole generation of women who collectively broke more barriers than any previous generation.  They opened doors for Boomer women who have carried on with creating new opportunities for following generations of women.  

But let’s not just celebrate Women’s Equality Day today. Be sure to celebrate again on November 4 (or a month earlier if you vote by mail) when you exercise your hard won right to vote.