I want to thank Miami Dade College – West for the opportunity to speak to you I want to recognize Jane Doe for her efforts to blah blah blah as well as John Doe for his compassionate blah, blah, blah.
One hundred years ago women in the United States won the right to vote. I say won, because it was a contest, a struggle, a marathon. Women were scorned, spat upon and beaten. It was a bare knuckle fight, and we won. Women have been winning ever since. There have certainly been set backs and defeats, but the movement for women’s equality will not be defeated.
This wasn’t the struggle of one woman, it was the struggle of every woman. Women who didn’t mobilize for the right to vote still benefited from the work of others. I am here today to urge you to take your place in the movement for women’s equality.
Some of
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you might think that you have all your rights and have not been discriminated against. Consider yourself fortunate, but here are five reasons that we need to come together as a community of advocates to ensure that gender equality, women’s rights and women’s empowerment are central to the new millennium. Reproductive Rights Family planning has been a game-changer in the history of women’s empowerment. Reproductive choices in the private sphere have enabled women to play a greater productive role in the public sphere. Yet today, sexual and reproductive health still eludes too many women and girls. Every day, 800 women die from causes related to childbirth and pregnancy. More than 200 million women want—but lack access to—effective contraception. From Niger to Afghanistan, from Bangladesh to Tajikistan, girls continue to be forced to marry against their will – a clear violation of their reproductive rights and a devastating form of violence. However, this issue is not limited to the developing world. The threat to birth control and abortion rights is a most salient battle for women in the United States. There has been an orchestrated effort by anti-abortion advocates to roll back abortion care and contraceptive care, the endgame being to bring a case to the Supreme Court and overturn Roe v. Wade. Health Care The sweeping reforms of the Affordable Care Act were a major triumph for women. The act also bolstered Medicare, 56 percent of whose beneficiaries are women. Provisions in the ACA provide preventive care for women (such as mammograms) without copays, forbid sex discrimination in insurance policies, support victims of domestic violence and provide affordable prenatal care–but conservatives want to overturn the ACA. Denying women access to health care services because of ill-defined religious or moral objections is discrimination based on sex. We must actively oppose attempts to repeal the reproductive health services provided under the Affordable Care Act. Court appointments No decision made by a U.S. president has such far-reaching consequences as Supreme Court appointments. Four of the nine justices are over 70 years old, so it’s possible one or more could retire during the next administration. Even though the court has said for decades that the equal-protection clause protects women (and, for that matter, men) from sex discrimination, Associate Justice Antonina Scalia claimed that women's equality is entirely up to the political branches. "If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex," he told an audience at the University of California's Hastings College of the Law, "you have legislatures." Your choice for president will determine who makes the next lifetime appointments to the Court. Violence Against Women There still seems to exist this very complex network of ideological and cultural norms that still plague our society and that make global misogyny the most pressing issue of our age. Make no mistake, this is not just limited or restricted to the third world. First world men and women readily understand that millions of women are subjugated globally.
We must acknowledge that the same dynamics exist within our own culture and I'm not just talking about sexual crimes.
Shockingly, surveys suggest that a quarter of people think that a woman is in some way responsible for being raped if she wears sexy or revealing clothing. Around one in five people think it would sometimes be acceptable for a man to hit or slap his partner if she wore sexy or revealing clothing. Pervasive phrases like “Bros before hos” reflect a disposability of women in our culture. Even the common use of the term “females” reduces women to a clinical gynotype.
Here in the United States the Violence Against Women Act has had bipartisan support since it was introduced in 1994, but the rightwing-controlled House is countering with a new version of the bill that would diminish the protections of the act. That bill would deny support to LGBT survivors of domestic violence, fail to continue protection of Native American women abused on tribal lands and eliminate the visa process that helps immigrant survivors of violence.
Economic
security Women have made big strides in this economy. Women are getting advanced degrees. They are starting new businesses. They are leading major corporations. The Fortune 500 now has 24 women CEOs. Women still make just 77 cents on a man’s dollar. The pay gap impacts women. But even worse, it impacts women through the entire arc of their lives. Equal pay is not just a problem for women, but for families, who are trying to pay their bills, trying to get ahead, trying to achieve the American Dream, and are getting a smaller paycheck than they have earned for their hard work. Congress has blocked action on the Paycheck Fairness Act four times, including twice in the Senate as recently as September, 2014. The Paycheck Fairness Act is just one of the bills that would help right that injustice, by protecting employees from retaliation if they inquire about pay differences and allowing them to sue if they discover gender disparities in wage. Conservatives have strongly opposed the legislation. Anti-women agendas are no accident. Let us be bold as we go forward together. We need to all make our voices heard. Let us envision a world where every woman and every girl has equal rights and opportunities. It is not enough to open doors, we must hold them open for those who follow us.
When most people think of Texas legacies they think of Sam Houston or Davy Crockett, but they don’t usually think of people like Jane Long. Jane Long is known as ‘The Mother of Texas’. She was given that nickname because she was the first english speaking woman in Texas to give birth.
Today, women and men have equal rights, however not long ago men believed women were lower than them. During the late eighteenth century, men expected women to stay at home and raise children. Women were given very few opportunities to expand their education past high school because colleges and universities would not accept females. This was a loss for women everywhere because it took away positions of power for them. It was even frowned upon if a woman showed interest in medicine or law because that was a man 's place not a woman’s, just like it was a man 's duty to vote and not a woman 's. The road to women 's right was long and hard, but many women helped push the right to vote, the one that was at the front of that group was Susan B. Anthony.
During America's early history, women were denied some of the rights to well-being by men. For example, married women couldn't own property and had no legal claim to any money that they might earn, and women hadn't the right to vote. They were expected to focus on housework and motherhood, and didn't have to join politics. On the contrary, they didn't have to be interested in them. Then, in order to ratify this amendment they were prompted to a long and hard fight; victory took decades of agitation and protest. Beginning in the 19th century, some generations of women's suffrage supporters lobbied to achieve what a lot of Americans needed: a radical change of the Constitution. The movement for women's rights began to organize after 1848 at the national level. In July of that year, reformers Elizabeth Cady Stanton(1815-1902) and Lucretia Mott (1793-1880), along with Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) and other activists organized the first convention for women's rights at Seneca Falls, New York. More than 300 people, mostly women but also some men, attended it. Then, they raised public awar...
Women throughout the suffrage act were faced with many challenges that eventually led into the leading roles of women in the world today. Suffrage leaders adopted new arguments to gain new support. Rather than insisting on the justice of women’s suffrage, or emphasizing equal rights, they spoke of the special moral and material instincts women could bring to the table. Because of these women taking leaps and boundaries, they are now a large part of America’s government, and how our country operates.
This movement which was inspired by the ideologies of courageous women and fueled by their enthusiasm and sacrifice is often unacknowledged by most historians in the chronicles of American History. Today the movement is often misunderstood as a passive, white upper class, naive cause. But a deeper study would reveal that the women’s suffrage movement was the one that brought together the best and brightest women in America, which not only changed the lives of half the citizens of United States but also changed the social attitudes of millions of Americans.
There were many women, who thought the fact of not being able to vote was outrageous. They wanted the same rights as men and nothing was going to stop them. Obtaining the right to vote wasn’t going to be an easy process for women. So the many campaigns, petitions, pickets and organizations in the mid 1800’s to the early 1900’s were a start to many rights. This lengthy process began on July 19, 1848. On this day the Seneca Falls Convention took place in New York, New York. Over 200 men and women came in participated and gave their opinions on votin...
One of the most horrible things that has erupted from the subjugation of women is rape culture. Rape culture is the downplaying of the crime of rape to appease the violator, the accusation that the victim made a choice that led to their rape, or even jokes that suggest rape. According to Jessica Valenti’s, “In Rape Tragedies, the Shame Is Ours,” in today's world many people give in to rape culture by participating in these acts that somehow change our mindsets into believing that, “it is more shameful to be raped than to be a rapist”. Once ...
Cross-cultural research has shown that rape is most common in cultures that are dominated by males and violence. This means cultures in which males dominate the political decisions and cultures adhering to the male ideology of toughness, interpersonal violence and war (Groth 7). In a culture of people with more traditional or sexist gender role, attitudes are more tolerant of rape than are people with more nontraditional attitudes. Traditional men are more likely to report that they would commit rape if they knew they would not be caught; some researchers have found that a traditional man is much more likely to commit a rape than a nontraditional man is. Many attitudes in our culture perpetuate rape, for example: A husband is entitled to have sex with his wife," "A 'real man' never passes up a chance to have sex," and, "A women who 'leads a man on' deserves what she gets (Growth 7). “ Some media depictions may promote rape. Many movies make violence appear attractive and some movies convey myths about rape. Such as slasher films that make violence seem exciting, or movies suggesting that women like to be forced to have sex or that women's only value...
The entire Women’s Movement in the United States has been quite extensive. It can be traced back to 1848, when the first women’s rights convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York. After two days of discussions, 100 men and women signed the Declaration of Sentiments. Drafted by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, this document called for equal treatment of women and men under the law and voting rights for women. This gathering set the agenda for the rest of the Women’s Movement long ago (Imbornoni). Over the next 100 years, many women played a part in supporting equal treatment for women, most notably leading to the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which allowed women the right to vote.
“The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality,” this was stated by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a very crucial women’s suffragist. Over time, women’s history has evolved due to the fact that women were pushing for equal rights. Women were treated as less than men. They had little to no rights. The Women’s Rights Movement in the 1800’s lead up to the change in women’s rights today. This movement began in 1848 with the Seneca Falls Convention. For the next 72 years, women continually fought for equal rights. In 1920, they gained the right to vote which ended the movement and opened the opportunity for more change in women’s lives. Because of the Women’s Rights Movement, women today are able to vote, receive
Last week the White House released a short, celebrity packed, 60-second public service announcement (PSA) on the topic of sexual assault. 1 is 2 Many addressed those who are in control of preventing sexual assault as its intended audience was those who can put a stop to sexual violence: the perpetrators or would-be offenders. Although this one minute announcement completes the task of bringing sexual assault to the forefront of discussion, it fails to encompass central issues of rape culture: societal perceptions, the victim, and the justice system. Sexual assault is a phenomenon that has been around for centuries. The culture of sexual assault is rooted in both legal practices and societal perceptions; in order for its reforms to be effective, they need to target both aspects of rape culture, as one factor by itself is not enough to maintain reforms and foster needed change. The culture of rape—how it is defined, its victims and its offenders (and how they are perceived by society), myths, and its laws—has changed throughout the years, and in particular during the first wave of legal reforms in the 1970’s. Although these legal and social changes are improvements from past conditions, they can be further developed and expanded.
Beginning in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, women began to vocalize their opinions and desires for the right to vote. The Women’s Suffrage movement paved the way for the nineteenth Amendment in the United States Constitution that allowed women to have that right. The Women’s Suffrage movement started a movement for equal rights for women that has continued to propel equal opportunities for women throughout the country. The Women’s Liberation Movement has sparked better opportunities, demanded respect and pioneered the path for women entering the workforce that was started by the right to vote and given momentum in the late 1950s. The focus of The Women’s Liberation Movement was idealized off The Civil Rights Movement; it was founded on the elimination of discriminatory practices and sexist attitudes (Freeman, 1995).
From the beginning of time, females have played a powerful role in the shaping of this world. They have stood by idly and watched as this country moved on without them, and yet they have demanded equal rights as the nation rolls along. Through the years the common belief has been that women could not perform as well as men in anything, but over the years that belief has been proven wrong time and time again. So as time marches on, women have clawed and fought their way up the ladder to gain much needed equal respect from the opposite sex. However, after many years of pain and suffering, the battle for equal rights has not yet been won. Since women have fought for a long time and proven their importance in society, they deserve the same rights as men.
This is evident in the voices of the victims, who we never allow to speak. It manifests in our own silence as well. No one is the first to admit that they are part of the problem. The everyday person is not a rapist. But they could be the marketing team who uses a woman as an advertising technique, who sells their bodies like a product. They could even be in the top 100 list on iTunes, hiding ugly words behind a catchy melody. The obvious example here is Robin Thicke’s popular Blurred Lines. In which he intentionally degrades women in the most taboo ways possible because he is “the perfect [guy] to make fun of this”. Apparently being married with kids qualifies you to degrade women. You’ve proved that you 're not completely despicable so you get to do whatever you like. It’s not bad enough that one man believes he can get away with this behaviour, but imagine the effect of millions of listeners hearing the lyrics “I know you want it” everyday on the radio and associating it with a song they really like. That message won’t come off as negative to them. It will excuse a harmful ideology in their minds. They will find reasons to justify why they like that song, ignoring the fact that it promotes a dangerous message. Robin Thicke is not the only one guilty of doing this. Turn on the radio for ten minutes and that fact becomes obvious. Imagine the effect of us constantly convincing ourselves that this is excusable. Eventually these themes move
Women have fought for their civil rights for a long time. They have slowly gained these rights. Today, women have a lot more rights than they had in the past. Despite this fact, there are still some problems about women’s rights. It has not been easy for women to gain their rights and freedoms. However, they have never given up their fight. In