By: Kathy Telban, NFBPWC Women’s Equality Day Team Lead  

On August 24^th we commemorated Women’s Equality Day by expanding it from just acknowledging the certification of the 19^th Amendment that gave women the right to vote to include the continued effort to get the 28^th Amendment in the Constitution. These two       amendments are the bookends to women’s equality.  

 

When the founders were planning for the United States, they left women out of the Constitution by design. Not long ago, I looked up the 19^th amendment to see the actual text and realized that the 28^th amendment (The ERA) had similar language to the 19^th. 

19th Amendment (Began 1848 - Passed 1920)	28th Amendment (Introduced 1923 - PendingPublication)
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.	Equality of rights under the law  shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

Given all the misinformation about what the ERA would do, once you compare them side-by-side you clearly see that the 19^th only focuses on voting and the 28^th is everything else. The ERA is the foundation that says everyone has equal rights under the law and you cannot treat someone differently based on their sex! 

According to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, “Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it.  It doesn't.”  

Our expert panel educated us on these two amendments and the road that women have traveled on their way to full equality for 4 generations. Tina Cassidy, author of Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait? Alice Paul, Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the Right to Vote (2019) shared the strategies that women used to get the attention of the President and have the 19^th amendment ratified and published. Wendy Murphy, law professor and pioneer in Title IX work, educated us on the ERA with facts from her recently published law review article titled: Unequal Protection of the Laws for Women is Constitutional Terrorism, so How Come Nobody Knows About It? You can find it here: (https://tinyurl.com/4xmw48sx).

Kamala Lopez a filmmaker and Founder/President of Equal Means Equal shared stories, strategies, and how her documentary Equal Means Equal was used to educate and inspire voters in the last three states of Nevada, Illinois, and Virginia to ratify the ERA. This film is still playing on Prime and a must see. She also encouraged attendees to join her Final Impact project by taking a picture with a phone and uploading it to a site that will produce large posters with many individual pictures of people calling Joe Biden to ask him to call the Archivist to direct her to publish the ERA. Learn more here: https://finalimpact.org

This commemorative event was well attended with 58% (70) of the 122 registrations. Of the total registrations, 70% were not members! Attendees took action at the event by signing petitions, a letter to Jill Biden, and texting both President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to get the ERA published. You also can sign these petitions: bit.ly/3I9zvnj sponsored by Shattering Glass; www.sign4era.orga National student led petition; and sign this letter to Jill Biden https://equalmeansequal.org/signjillsletter/sponsored by Equal Means Equal. Also text daily “Publish the ERA Now” to President Biden 302-404-0880 and Vice President Harris 301861-2977 until the ERA is published.

The Women’s Equality Day event was recorded, and a link will be available soon. You can watch and share it with others!  

I want to thank President Barbara Bozeman who came up to me after the Biennial Conference to ask me what I’d like to do for NFBPWC and when I shared this idea, she put me in charge and supported me the whole way. Also, thanks to Emily Van Vleck our VP of Advocacy for helping me plan and prepare for this event. In my experience the only way you can pull off an event like this in a short period of time is to have a professional team that gets the job done!