Our Daughters, Ourselves: On Women’s Equality Day, a Reality Check
Ninety years ago today, the 19th amendment was ratified, granting women the right to vote. It was revolutionary, for the time—Alice Paul, then a young political activist, was beaten, imprisoned and force-fed for simply daring that women be engaged in political process. But if our grandmothers were born into a world where they weren’t allowed to have a political voice, what will the world look like for today’s young women? On the anniversary of women’s suffrage, a reality check:
* Today’s young girls will learn that while she may be able to vote for president, she still probably won’t be one. Even the 3-year-old daughter of Newsweek’s own (outgoing) editor knows this: after the 2008 election, she cooly informed her historian father that “girls can’t be president.” Ouch. Those faces on our dollar bills—42 men, not a single woman—really say it all.
* She’ll have to work harder if she wants to enter into politics, too. Sarah Palin may call herself a feminist, but women still hold just 16.8% of seats in Congress, and there are less than 20 female world leaders presently in power.
(Read the rest here.)
