honoring the women who came before us
and the women who will follow us
by reeta bochner wolfsohn

National Women’s History Month (March) is an opportunity to think about and to reflect upon where women are today, how we got here and where we are going. The future success of every woman depends on remembering and learning from our past struggles.

The Women’s Rights Movement was born on July 13, 1848, when five women met for tea in upstate New York. These women sent a notice to their local newspaper announcing a “convention to discuss the social, civil and religious conditions and rights of women.” They held this event in Seneca Falls, New York, six days later. The outcome, a Declaration of Sentiments (read the complete Declaration of Sentiments at closeup.org/sentimnt.htm) clearly laid out how ill-treated and disrespected women were at that time.

In it Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote, “The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.” Then it went into specifics:

• Married women were legally dead in the eyes of the law
• Women were not allowed to vote
• Married women had no property rights
• Husbands had legal power over and responsibility for their wives to the extent that they could imprison or beat them with impunity
• Divorce and child custody laws favored men, giving no rights to women
• Most occupations were closed to women, and when women did work, they were paid only a fraction of what men earned
• Women were not allowed to enter professions such as medicine or law
• Women had no means to gain an education since no college or university would accept women students

It took seventy-two years for the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the vote, to finally be ratified. During that time far too many women lived “lives of quiet desperation”; lives that denied them the right to vote or to have an abortion; lives that deprived them of access to education, divorce, birth control, property ownership, etc. Many of those women devoted their lives to working to change women’s second hand status in this country.
Women’s rights didn’t just happen. They weren’t “granted” because a patriarchal society re-thought its position and changed its laws and attitudes. They were “granted” because women made it happen. Women gathered to address these injustices in meetings, with petitions by public speaking and through lobbying. For the most part they came together peacefully, democratically and deliberately. They never quit, and they never took no for a final answer.

While winning the vote did not accomplish gender equity, it was the start of women’s activism and a critical first step in the direction of expanding women’s rights. Every woman who goes to work, wears pants, is a lawyer or a doctor, owns property, has a college degree, etc., is able to do so because of the diligent efforts of the courageous women and men who worked so hard and so long to gain these rights for women.
The only way to acknowledge the efforts of those who cleared the path for us is to never take our rights for granted, to always make good use of each of our votes, and to elect government officials who support laws that are pro-women, pro-children and pro-family.

All we can do is to honor their efforts by making certain to register to vote and then voting wisely, making certain to tell our elected officials how much we each care about women’s rights and women’s issues and how we want them to vote on those rights/issues.

By honoring them we honor ourselves, and we honor the daughters, granddaughters, sisters, nieces and other young women who will follow in our footsteps. Let’s make certain our legacy is one we can be proud of and one that will stand the test of time as theirs did.

Reeta Bochner Wolfsohn, CMSW, the founder of the Femonomics Institute (femonomics.com) is a therapist, author, motivational speaker and trainer who teaches Financial Social Work to other social workers. The Femonomics Institute provides individual counseling, products and programs that help women to create emotional stability and financial security.
[ 828.658.1919, reetaw@charter.net]