Photo: “Our Hat is in the Ring”
Louis,
Today is International Women’s Day, and I want to take the opportunity to celebrate the strength, resilience, and achievements of women in Colorado and across the country. As the first Democratic woman elected as Colorado’s Secretary of State, I know firsthand the power of breaking barriers — and the responsibility that comes with it…
— Email from Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold
Yes, March 8 was International Women’s Day.
I can’t say whether I’ve ever met an “International Woman”… but if I did, she didn’t make a big deal of it. I have, however, known a number of women who could speak more than one language, so perhaps that’s what the organizers of International Women’s Day are referring to.
Judy, my neighbor, owns a condo in Mexico, and I suppose that qualifies her as an International Woman.
I got an email on Saturday from Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, encouraging me to celebrate International Women’s Day, although her email didn’t address ‘International Women’ per se. She mostly talked about ‘Colorado Women’, and her own personal fight “to keep Colorado a place where women are free to make our own choices about our futures.”
Colorado is a place where women are allowed to vote. They can even be elected Secretary of State.
Being permitted to vote is something, but it’s not everything.
The American women’s suffrage movement in the late 1800s was closely tied to the ‘temperance movement’. In those days, alcohol abuse and domestic violence went hand-in-hand here in the U.S., and temperance advocates believed that, if women were given the vote, they might eventually manage to prohibit the sale of alcohol.
Naturally, the “liquor interests” campaigned heavily against women’s suffrage. “Domestic violence? Never heard of it…”
Then, in November 1893, Colorado’s male voters went to the polls and granted Colorado women equal voting rights, by a 55% margin. Whether these male voters had been drinking when they went to the polls, I’ve not been able to determine.
Soon enough, nearly all of the western U.S. had granted women the right to vote. (But not Texas.)
It would take many more years, however, before women could vote in all U.S. elections.
Of course, March 8 was not necessarily about American women and whatever rights American males allow them to have. It was ‘International Women’s Day’.
An International day. A global celebration. Which is not so much about alcohol sales, and more about human rights. The right to divorce your worthless husband, for example. (I could write an entire column on that topic, but maybe some other time.)
I read something yesterday about the 30th Anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, celebrated last September. Women and girls (and a few guys) gathered at the United Nations headquarters in New York to commemorate the Beijing Declaration. The event was organized by the governments of China, Denmark, France, Kenya and Mexico.
Some of us might not think of Beijing as a fountain of women’s rights, but it turns out that China’s Constitution has guaranteed equal rights for women since 1954.
Article 48. Women in the People’s Republic of China enjoy equal rights with men in all spheres of life, in political, economic, cultural, social and family life.
The U.S. Constitution, by comparison, still doesn’t guarantee equal rights for women.
Or… maybe it does…?
The Equal Rights Amendment was passed by the U.S. Congress in 1972. The original resolution included a seven-year time limit for the necessary ratification by three-quarters of the states, and the amendment itself stated that it would take effect two years after ratification. That meant, 38 state legislatures had to ratify the amendment. Within seven years.
Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.
The 38th state — Virginia — ratified the ERA in January 2020. Which I believe was more than seven years from 1972. But maybe Congress had no constitutional right to put a time limit on the ratification process?
Congress regularly does things they have no right to do.
I guess we all do. Congress, Presidents, everybody.
On January 17 — just 72 hours before handing the keys to the White House over to Donald J. Trump — President Joe Biden declared the ERA to be officially part of the U.S. Constitution. As we all know, Presidents can make those kinds of declarations. And then the next President can declare something totally different. That’s why we love America.
But all those issues aside, the best thing about International Women’s Day, here in Colorado, was free admission to the Center for Colorado Women’s History in Denver, where you could view the historic house that accommodates the Center, take photos at a vintage photo station, and “celebrate the accomplishments of women both past and present.”
There’s nothing quite like free admission, especially when it includes a vintage photo station.