Today, Saturday, August 26th, we are celebrating Women’s Equality Day, where we highlight the enormous women’s civil rights achievement that created the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in 1920, giving women the long-awaited and hard-fought-for right to vote in the United States.
As a studio mainly made up of women, we are sometimes shocked at how long this took and yet how little we think of it today. In the past year, three of our team members have become citizens and now have the right to vote, and we were reminded of how momentous it is.
We have come a long way and we all know there is still more work to do both in the United States and around the world in terms of women’s equality. Currently, the wage gap for women persists in the United States, with women earning on average 80 cents to the dollar. For women of color and mothers who are head of households, the wage gap is even larger.
We recognize that around the world today, women are fighting for equality in rights to economic resources, opportunities for leadership, representation, and access to education. In Yemen, not only do women need their husband’s permission to leave their own home, but in court cases, women only count as half a witness.
While we recognize that there is more work ahead, we still will be celebrating Women’s Equality Day today. Let’s use this suffragette movement as an inspiration to continue working toward a future of women’s equality in the United States and around the world.
