by On The Issues Magazine
It has been 90 years since women won the right to vote, and what’s happened since then?
Today is Women’s Equality Day, designated by Congress at the request of Rep. Bella Abzug in 1971 to mark the anniversary of women’s right to vote. On The Issues Magazine’s summer edition “EQUALITY: How Much Further Away?” looks at what’s been achieved and what still needs attention.
In The Cafe, Sonia Pressman Fuentes discusses the legal rights that women have acquired, from the Equal Pay Act to Roe v. Wade, in “Advancing Rights: 1964 Marks the Beginning of a New Era.”
“On this anniversary of our first right — the right to vote — it is good to remember where we were and how far we’ve come,”she writes.
Other articles in the issue remind us of how far we are from real equality. Cindy Cooper, in “Gender Equality: Devil in the Details,” exposes the reality behind the all-too-common view that today women have it made, ranging from employment to education to health to reproductive rights.
“Perhaps one of the biggest impediments to women’s equality in the United States is a pervasive, persistent and too-common myth: it’s all been done,” she writes. “It’s a cruel trick.”
Carolyn A. Cook, in “Say I Do”: Constitutional Equality Is Forever, argues that the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), is a crucial piece in the struggle to achieve gender parity.
“Every woman of every race, age, class, orientation and ability must live with dignity and respect under the law,” she writes.
Writers Angela Bonavoglia and Rev. Becky Turner will discuss the new issue on Blog Talk Radio tomorrow morning at 11 AM EST. Tune in to hear Bonavoglia on Catholic women’s resistance to patriarchy or Turner on the difficulty of mixing gender identity and the church. The episode will stream and be archived on the OTI homepage.