Blog
This Women’s History Month is a Call to Action
This Women’s History Month is a call to action to remember the vital work of the women who fought for our rights. It is a call to action about the health and sustainability of our democracy. This Women’s History Month, let’s look to history as a guide and use our knowledge of the women who came before us.
Women’s History Month has never been more important.
One hundred years of slow progress on gender justice is under attack. This Women’s History Month is a call to action to remember the vital work of the women who fought for our rights. It is a call to action about the health and sustainability of our democracy.
The connection between women’s rights and democratic health is not accidental; it is structural. Across history and across borders, authoritarians often gain power by extolling a return to “traditional structures,” including patriarchy. We have seen this repeatedly — the Chinese government’s population control measures, the Taliban’s denial of education to girls once they were back in power, the repression of women in Iran. Denying women their freedoms makes it easier for the government to exert control.
In the United States, recent developments also raise serious concerns. The rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), the Dobbs decision restricting reproductive care, the EEOC’s abandonment of its anti-harassment guidance, changing the requirements for military service, attacks on transgender athletes, and the hypermasculinity of pull-up competitions — all of this causes real harm. The administration’s relentless attacks on DEI have impacted women both directly and acutely. Nearly 300,000 Black women alone have been fired or laid off from federal employment. For those who remain, pathways to leadership, career opportunities, and mentoring are narrowing. Since the Dobbs decision, 14 states have banned most kinds of abortion, depriving women of critical health care. We cannot ignore the connections between these individual eviscerations of gender justice and the larger impact on the health of our democracy.
Research reinforces what history has long shown. Scholars Erika Chenoweth and Zoe Marks have found that when women participate in large numbers in social movements against authoritarianism, those movements are more successful, more resilient, and more creative. And, when successful, democracy and gender equality are better because of women’s participation and leadership in the social movements that led to change.
This Women’s History Month, let’s look to history as a guide and use our knowledge of the women who came before us. Ida B. Wells’ investigative journalism exposed the horrors of lynching. Fannie Lou Hamer’s fight for voting rights. Dolores Huerta’s relentless organizing for farmworkers. Patsy Mink’s championing of Title IX and women’s rights. This Women’s History Month, we must remember their courage and organize our present-day selves to act. The work of protecting and strengthening democracy has always depended on women’s leadership. It does now, and it will again.
