Woman wonders

Mixed feelings about Women’s Equality Day, which is today. As a commemoration of the certification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution on this date in 1920, well, hurrah.

(Hello? The Nineteenth granted women the right to vote across the nation. Only 131 years after the implementation of the Constitution itself, and 50 years after certification of the Sixteenth Amendment declaring “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 race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”)

Basically, the Nineteenth Amendment certified that, yes, surprise, surprise: women are full citizens and therefore cannot have their right to vote denied or abridged by the United States or any state. The campaign for female suffrage had its beginnings at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, and the push for a Constitutional amendment to sort it out once and for all began in 1878, so as you can imagine, there was considerable discussion of the matter. And you might have thought that with its implementation, we’d be ready to accept that equality in citizenship should imply equality of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and move on.

But you’d be wrong.

Ergo the creation of Women’s Equality Day in 1971 by Bella Abzug. And my dismay about it. Because even 45 years after that attempt to keep the issues of equality before our eyes, we still seem to be unclear about the fact that this includes equal opportunity in the workplace, in housing, in access to healthcare and education, and…like all that.

Some very depressing global statistics on these issues here. And I’ll just close my eyes and throw a dart at the myriad posts I’ve written about some of the ludicrous events in the worlds of business and politics. Because this sort of resistance to making room at the table is more ubiquitous than Starbucks, and even more pernicious. It’s as though we were demanding at gunpoint some revolutionary upturning of all that’s held sacred.

Oh, wait…

I get it: if you have a scarcity mindset, you think that the pie that comprises all worldly (and possibly unworldly) things is finite. Money, status, power, space on the bus, love—whatever portion someone else has of any of those things means there’s less for you. And every alteration to the status quo becomes a threat to your existence, to your happiness. That scarcity mindset is what’s been driving marketing and political campaigns for…well, a long time.

But what if you consider a different proposition: by allowing women, non-white folks, people with disabilities or indeterminate gender to join the enterprise on an equal basis, and contribute to their full capabilities—what if that expands the pie, and creates more for everyone? What would that world look like?

Also consider how it would reduce the stress that all that anger, fear and bile puts onto your system.

In a conversation I had with a colleague about the variety of attacks made on female political candidates (Clinton, Fiorini, Palin, Pelosi—all the way back to Geraldine Ferraro, and probably to Margaret Chase Smith), I pointed out that it didn’t matter which side of the political spectrum either the candidates or the attackers were on. Right, left, progressive, conservative—the slime thrown is almost universally tied to one's chromosome configuration. She’s had cosmetic “work” done! Her glasses! Her pantsuits! Her hormones! The same holds true for women having the nerve to take leadership roles in business or the military or other fields.

And said no one ever about a male candidate, commander or CEO. Ever.

I told my colleague I really hope that by the time his daughters (one in high school, one in elementary school) hit the workplace some of this will have diminished. I could see him processing the idea and rejecting it based on what we experience today. That saddened me.

So here’s my fond wish: that we can hold out the ideal of true women’s equality, and that we won’t just think of it one day a year, but that it’ll be so commonplace that we can look back and say, “Hey—so glad we don’t have to deal with this anymore, and can focus all our considerable capabilities on solving sustainable energy and delivering safe drinking water to all homes globally.”

Ah—a girl can dream.