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On International Women’s Day and during Women’s History Month, it is worth considering and reflecting on the triumph and tragedy of our current situation. As we celebrate the many accomplishments of women who have managed to lead and succeed in extraordinary ways, we must also reflect on how far we are from gender parity and commit to doing whatever it takes to become a more gender-equal nation.
There are many successes worth celebrating this year. The first of these is the rise of America’s first female vice president, a powerful and historic representation of how far women have come 100 years after we first won the right to vote. Also in the winning category is the record number of female CEOs in the Fortune 500, now more than 8 percent, including more women of color than ever before. And in science, women have been instrumental in the development of Covid-19 vaccines and helped NASA land a rover on Mars. And in the world of sports, women are breaking new ground as coaches and leaders, including the appointment of Kim Ng as the new general manager of the Miami Marlins and Katie Sowers becoming the first coach to reach the Super Bowl in 2020 and beyond. .
However, despite all the success, we are still a long way from achieving true equity. As much as women are successful, they are struggling.
Even before the pandemic, women faced serious problems. Women were already disproportionately poor, more likely to work low-wage jobs, and struggling through a child care crisis that was driving them out of the workforce.
The 2019 Global Gender Gap report ranked the United States 53rd in the world for gender equality (behind Bangladesh, South Africa, and Mexico, among others). Now, in 2021, the outlook is even bleaker. As the Covid-19 crisis drags on, women from across America’s economic and social strata are being crushed and pushed to the brink.
How is it possible that the United States is behind so many other nations in achieving equity?
For generations, the concerns of American women have been ignored in public policy and priority setting. Beginning in the 1970s, when the feminist movement emerged and women began entering the workforce in increasing numbers, there were massive calls to invest in social and political infrastructure to support them, which were never fully met.
At the 1977 National Women’s Conference in Houston, women called for a federal response to the multitude of issues facing women, primarily including passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, federal investments in child care, addressing violence from gender and workplace harassment, equity in health care, and cabinet-level gender equity secretary. Because the agenda also included calls for access to abortion and LGBTQ rights, everything associated with these initiatives was attacked, undermined and swept away by the increasingly powerful Christian right, culminating in the election of Ronald Regan in 1980 and the defeat of the ERA in 1982. During that same period, much of Europe passed extensive progressive legislation to support women’s equality and establish the social structures to enable them to work and prosper.
There is also the decades-long fight for paid family leave. The United States remains the only industrialized country that does not guarantee paid family leave. Under President Clinton, the passage of the Family Medical Leave Act in 1993 progressed piecemeal by offering protected work leave without guarantee of payment. The result, for more than 30 years, paid leave for the birth of a child or to care for a sick relative has been a privilege of the wealthy. Only 19 percent of Americans have paid leave associated with their job. Asking women to choose between going to work within days of giving birth and feeding their family is inhumane. In the pandemic, emergency paid family leave was first passed nationally as part of the latest pandemic relief bill and then quickly expired at the end of the year. If the new $ 1.9 trillion Covid-19 aid package is approved, it will reinstate the national paid license. Finally. All previous administrations and congresses had the opportunity to do this and failed.
So how do we force women’s issues to be more central to our national priorities and progress to be a more gender-equal nation? The answer is through political power. Women have been the majority of the electorate since 1980 and have outnumbered men in every election since then, but between elections. But they have been less likely to rally around critical issues or use collective action to force elected officials to take their concerns seriously.
The last four years were a wake-up call for many, as evidenced by the massive participation in the Women’s March in 2017, the rise in female political activism since the election of a new record number of women in public office, of course. Joe Biden’s victory. and Kamala Harris in 2020. Now is the time to ensure that the issues and concerns that hold women back remain a high priority for those in power.
The Biden administration has made equity a centerpiece of its policymaking, establishing a new Gender Policy Council and using executive orders to force all of government to prioritize equity in everything. And he absolutely deserves credit for putting more women in his cabinet and in leadership positions than any previous administration. It’s a start.
On International Women’s Day and every day, we must work to create a society where the contributions, struggles, experiences and lives of women are valued. It is time to start responding in a real and urgent way to the needs of the 51 percent. We cannot afford another 30 years of progress little by little. Years have passed the time to act.
Lauren Leader is the co-founder and CEO of All In Together, a nonprofit, nonpartisan civic education organization for women. All opinions expressed here are solely his. She tweets @LaurenLeaderAIT
