Celebrating Women’s Equality Day | The White House

Celebrating Women’s Equality Day | The White House. – Unfortunately, the original link to this interesting article has been removed from The White House website by the current administration.  So I will share with you what has been written about it from others:

What is Women’s Equality Day?

Women’s Equality Day has been celebrated on August 26th annually in the United States since 1973.  It commemorates the 1920 adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment (Amendment XIX) to the United States Constitution, which prohibits the states and the federal government from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex.

The date reflects the 1920 date when Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby signed the proclamation granting American women the constitutional right to vote.

In 1971, following a 1970 nationwide Women’s Strike for Equality, and again in 1973, as the battles over the Equal Rights Amendment continued, Congresswoman Bella Abzug of New York introduced a resolution to designate August 26 as Women’s Equality Day.

On August 16, 1973, Congress approved H.J. Res. 52, which stated that August 26 would be designated as Women’s Equality Day and that “the President is authorized and requested to issue an annual proclamation in commemoration of that day in 1920 when American women were first guaranteed the right to vote”. That same same day in 1973, President Richard Nixon issued Proclamation 4236 for Women’s Equality Day, which began, in part: “The struggle for women’s suffrage, however, was only the first step toward full and equal participation of women in our Nation’s life. In recent years, we have made other giant strides by attacking sex discrimination through our laws and by paving new avenues to equal economic opportunity for women. Today, in virtually every sector of our society, women are making important contributions to the quality of American life. And yet, much still remains to be done”.
Every president since Richard Nixon and including Barack Obama has issued a proclamation designating August 26 as Women’s Equality Day.

President Obama’s Proclamation of August 25, 2016,   read, in part: “Today, as we celebrate the anniversary of this hard-won achievement and pay tribute to the trailblazers and suffragists who moved us closer to a more just and prosperous future, we resolve to protect this constitutional right and pledge to continue fighting for equality for women and girls”.

Below is a picture from https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53598663, showing prominent women celebrating the 96th anniversary of Women’s Rights to Vote in 2016: