International Women's Day ~
Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
- Muriel Strode
March 8th is International Women's Day, and it hard to believe that 87 years ago women won the right to vote. The battle for the vote and equality was led by ordinary women who took a stand and became mavericks because they refused to be seen as second-class citizens.
We owe it all to suffragettes like Susan B. Anthony, founder of the American Equal Rights Association in 1866, who petitioned Congress with 10,000 signatures every year for 37 years years until she died in 1906. Anthony was instrumental in the passing of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in 1920 - that guaranteed all women the right to vote. Women like Carrie Chappman Catt, who replaced Anthony as President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and pushed for the Susan B. Anthony Amendment (19th.Amendment).
We hail women like Sojourner Truth who fought both racism and sexism and rallied for the rights of all women in her famous, 1851 speech “Ain’t I a Woman?” in Akron, Ohio, at a women’s rights convention. Like Truth, Ida B. Wells- Barnett also fought for women's rights and civil rights. Refusing to give up her seat on a train 71 years earlier, she was a predecessor to Rosa Parks' act of civil disobedience. Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus in 1955's segregated Montgomery, Alabama.
Today women continue to make great strides in everything from business to space exploration to politics. And this may be the decade of the woman, with Condoleezza Rice as the first African American woman as Secretary of State, Nancy Pelosi as the first woman Speaker of the House, Hilary Clinton running for president and an unprecedented number of women holding prestigious positions in the the corporate world.
Women have come a long way and it all starts with someone bulldozing aside the doors for others to follow through. We owe the rights and freedoms that we enjoy today to a host of brave, determined and passionate women whose voices and acts - such as sit-ins, marches, lobbying and vigils - broke down barriers to get us where we are today. Words like courageous, selfless and inspiring come to mind.
And while I'd like to say thank you to those women, to women like you and me - mothers, sisters, aunts, teachers - I'd like to say: Celebrate yourself and make your own history. Challenge yourself and rise above expectations.
Copyright 2008 © Dawn Prince. Not to be reprinted without expressed permission.
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