2022 Women’s Equality Day: How To Keep Pushing for Equality
A fundamental right of US citizens is the right to vote and share your voice in our government. However, it wasn’t until 1920 that women were granted this privilege via the 19th amendment. It took years of fighting and women proving their value in the country’s World War I efforts for the United States to recognize that women have a place in the decisions that our nation makes. 102 years later we are grateful for the rights women hold in this country, but we are still fighting for more.
August 26th commemorates the passage of the 19th amendment and stands as a day to celebrate the advancements made in women’s equality since then, but also to recognize where we can continue to push the limits that still exist for women’s rights in our country.
Legally, our voting rights may be protected under the law, but women face a number of other systemic issues – issues that have been around for centuries. In honor of the women who fought for the basic rights we hold today, it is critical that we identify and counteract the barriers that still stand in the way of female progress.
This week, let’s take a look at four key issues surrounding women's rights.
Women’s Suffrage
While we can acknowledge the passage of the 19th amendment as the passage of legal voting rights for women, it didn’t guarantee the right to vote. In reality, the 19th amendment only prohibited denying voters their ballots based on their sex. Similar to many of the attempts we see to limit voters in the US today, women still faced a plethora of obstacles to placing their ballot on voting day.
Most significant of those barriers was the continued prohibition of voting for Black women – and Black men, too. The 15th amendment had been previously added to prevent racial discrimination against voting, but many states, specifically in the South, had local laws in place to prevent Black people from voting at the polls.
Technicalities, surprise constitutional tests, and difficult registration processes were all designed to prevent women, and specifically Black women, from being able to exercise their newly earned right. These women faced both physical and verbal intimidation from officials, sending many home without casting their ballots, feeling defeated and voiceless. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 finally prohibited voting practices or procedures that discriminated on the basis of race or color, solidifying the right for non-white women to vote 45 years later than the passage of the 19th amendment.
As we all push for progress, it is important to recognize the disparities between white and non-white women in the movement for equality. As women, we must recognize when we hold these privileges and know that equality for women does not always mean all women. Even today, these disparities have carried through to present day issues, often causing inequalities to have a much more drastic affect on non-white, in comparison to white women.
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IAMAVOTER **Founded by HeyMama Member Mandana Dayani
Pay Gap for Moms
The pay gap that exists for women has been an issue for as long as women have been in the workforce. However, as we study and better understand the pay gap, it has become clear that an even more severe pay gap exists for women who have children. This is known as the “Motherhood Penalty.” This pay gap is particularly exacerbated for women who take maternity leaves and are often passed over for promotions or raises due to their absence.
Women earn 5% less per child, even if they only take a year off. Unfortunately, there is no way to make enough time in a day for most mothers to work full time and take care of their children – especially in the year after giving birth. However, taking the necessary time to care for your child, especially when it is arranged and approved by your employer, should not impact your pay and earnings in such a drastic way – if at all.
To look at the numbers, women experience a $0.82 uncontrolled wage gap. However, women who indicate that they are mothers or primary caregivers, experience a $0.74 uncontrolled wage gap. An uncontrolled wage gap does not consider factors like education, job title, or industry, showing how the overall wage differences reflect the lack of higher paying jobs and roles that women, especially mothers, hold in comparison to men.
Caring for a child is expensive and time consuming– and many mothers need to work to be able to support their children. Women cannot be expected to have children, care for children, and then not be fairly paid for the work that they are doing to provide for their children. Furthermore, the fact that men do not face penalties for being working fathers proves the sexist nature of these wage differences for women. The overall wage gap has been slowly closing over the years, but more consideration needs to be given to how the wage gap is persisting for mothers.
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Gender Gap in Leadership
Despite record-high female representation during elections in 2018, advancements in lessening the leadership gap have stalled in recent years. Women comprise over 50% of the US population, but they do not hold nearly as many leadership roles as men.
To put this into perspective, consider these figures:
In the legal field, women make up only 22.7 percent of partners and 19 percent of equity partners.
In medicine, only 16 percent of permanent medical school deans are women.
In academia, only 32 percent of full-time professors and 30 percent of college presidents are women.
In Fortune 500 companies, only 12.5 percent of chief financial officers are women.
In the top 1000 companies, women only makeup 25% of C-suite positions.
Despite this lack of professional representation, women make up 57% of all undergraduate degrees and 59% of all masters degrees, showing there is no lack of qualified women in these fields in comparison to men. These numbers are also similarly reflected in legal, medical, and business education. The association of “leadership qualities” with men over women allows men to surpass women in these roles, despite often having the same abilities as their female counterparts.
Naturally, female leadership inspires others to challenge expectations and norms and become leaders in their industries or communities when they can. In the 2018 elections, much of the surge in female representation was due to Hilary Clinton’s loss in the 2016 presidential election, despite winning the popular vote. To see change in leadership, seeing oneself reflected in the leaders around them is critical. Women need to be given the space to step up in order to inspire others to do the same.
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Family Leave
Tied closely to the problem of the “Motherhood Penalty” is the US’s status as one of the only countries in the world without a nationally mandated paid family leave policy. However, the majority of children are being raised by working parents and the majority of women and mothers work outside of the home – meaning paid leave is often necessary to afford (the time and the money) to care for children.
To everyone’s benefit, research has revealed that protected, paid family leave can lead to: income and gender equality, reductions in infant/maternal/paternal mortality rates, improved physical and mental health for family members, improved family stability, increased economic growth, and more productive businesses. These are logical connections, as parents cannot be expected to perform well at work and maintain proper health under the stress of a demanding newborn baby and a demanding full-time job.
Paid family leave also includes paternity leave, to help support women and prevent the expectation that women will forfeit their careers and stay home indefinitely while men work and earn money. Fathers also have a right to be involved in the home life of their families, especially in these early months. Paid family leave is truly for the benefit of everyone, not just moms.
There is such a lack of consistency of paid family leave policies in the United States, making the journey of motherhood even more difficult by having to navigate conversations with employers which often end up forcing moms to prove their commitment to their work over their child. Creating a clear commitment to the mom’s at your company makes employees feel protected and valued. For example, when Google extended their paid maternity leave to 18 weeks (instead of 12 weeks), their attrition rate for mothers dropped by 50%.
Beyond the tangible benefits of paid family leave, it is important to establish policies like these to alleviate the two sided guilt that many new-mothers experience. Women should not have to feel guilty for taking time off of work or stressed that their pay will be affected or their boss will view them differently. However, women also should not feel guilty for having to leave their child in the care of someone else because they want to be able to work alongside their responsibilities as a mother. Adequate paid leave allows women to take time to navigate these new, different dynamics and identify how they want to divide their commitments.
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For Small Businesses: How Small Companies Can Offer Great Paid Leave Programs
These issues all touch on important aspects of women’s equality, but they are also all intrinsically connected by the way that they reflect the value that society puts on women and their roles as employees, as leaders, as caregivers, and even just as citizens in the US. Women and mothers are already full of many valuable qualities, skills, and opinions – we just must keep fighting to have them recognized and valued. This work is important for working mothers everywhere today, but is even more important for the world of our children’s generation in hopes that they can also continue the work of their mothers and of women’s suffrage activists in 1920.