We can recognize how far we’ve come since August 26, 1920, when the 19th Amendment giving women the constitutional right to vote became law, but we must also acknowledge how far we still have to go to achieve actual economic, social, and political parity and the disturbing push AWAY from equality for women in 2025.
In 1972, Richard Nixon became the first president to issue a proclamation designating Aug. 26 as “Women’s Rights Day.” Since then, every year, every president has proclaimed Aug. 26 “Women’s Equality Day.”
It’s time to stop celebrating empty proclamations and pass the Equal Rights Amendment guaranteeing women in the United States full citizenship and equality.
On June 24, 2022, in the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the authoritarian majority in the Supreme Court (including the two credibly accused of sexual violence) decided that women are most certainly NOT equal. The ONLY constitutional right guaranteed to women post-Dobbs is the right to vote under the 19th Amendment.
Project 2025 declares that “the Dobbs decision is just the beginning” and advocates for an ardent pursuit of “pro-family policies” and celebration of “the heroism of every choice to become a mother.” Project 2025 promotes a brand of Christian Nationalism that preserves bodily autonomy and civil liberty for men as the head of household but seeks to drive women back into coverture and domestic servitude where “good” women know their place, obey their fathers, and submit to their husbands.
On August 7, 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on X his support for the repeal of women’s constitutional right to vote. Hegseth has already purged women from the military’s top jobs, leaving no female four-star officers on active duty and none in pending appointments for four- or three-star positions.
The higher up the pyramid of power we look, the fewer women we find — just a few tokens, the exceptions that prove the rule. At the bottom, women are hugely over-represented, especially women of color.
Globally, our national “pro-family” values include a refusal to support the human rights of women and children anywhere on the planet. The United States is the only participating nation that has not signed the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) or the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Granting human rights to women and children would undermine the patriarchy.
Here at home in Indiana, Hoosier “equality” for women does not even include the right to vote. Indiana ratified the Equal Rights Amendment in 1977 and amended our state constitution in 1984 to guarantee fundamental rights to “all people” rather than “all men,” but on June 30, 2023, in the wake of Dobbs, the Indiana Supreme Court declared that our 1984 amendment was “purely stylistic” providing “no substantive change” because the Indiana Constitution has treated men and women equally since 1893 (27 years before women were even allowed to vote).
Indiana seems poised to embrace Christian Nationalism, protect the patriarchy, and afford women only those federal rights that survive the current national rollback. This binary, patriarchal view of humanity is harmful to everyone — our sons and daughters alike.
It does seem to me that when pushed to its extreme, the patriarchy will crack. I’ve been listening to Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem”: “There’s a crack in everything — that’s how the light gets in. The deeper the divide, the greater my hope that the light will soon get in.”
Women’s rights are human rights. The key to all our futures locally, nationally, and globally is social, political, and economic equality for women. This Women’s Equality Day let’s stop paying lip service to women’s equality and persevere together toward liberty and justice for all.
Laurie Gray is an attorney in Fort Wayne and the Legislative Coordinator for Indiana NOW.
