Women have taken the right to vote to a powerful level

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Shelby Marie Kimmel
  • 71st Comptroller Squadron
VANCE AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. --  Women's Equality Day, held Aug. 26, celebrated the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave women the right to vote.

The amendment was passed Aug. 26, 1920, following 72 years of petitioning the government to recognize women's rights by a group of women called the Suffragettes. These brave women were led by Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

"The day will come when man will recognize woman as his peer, not only at the fireside, but in councils of the nation," said Susan B. Anthony. "Then, and not until then, will there be the perfect comradeship, the ideal union between the sexes that shall result in the highest development of the race."

Women's Equality Day became an official holiday in 1971 and symbolizes the importance of how far women have come in the last century and how far they still have to go.

Women have taken that right to vote to a powerful level. Of the 109.5 million women ages 18 and over in the United States, 72.9 million are registered voters. That's 66.6 percent of women who are eligible to vote and 53 percent of all United States voters.

Women who have accomplished much in American politics include:
  • Victoria Woodhull, who in 1872, was the first woman to run for president of the U.S.
  • Jeannette Rankin was the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1917.
  • Rebecca Latimer Felton was the first woman to serve in the U.S. Senate in 1922.
  • Frances Perkins was the first woman to serve in the presidential cabinet in 1933.
  • Shirley Chisolm became the first black woman elected to Congress in 1968.
  • Sandra Day O'Connor became the first woman on the Supreme Court in 1981.
  • And in 2007, Nancy Pelosi became the first woman to lead the House of Representatives.
This year, Forbes magazine included the following U.S. politicians in its list of the world's 100 most powerful women:
  • No. 2 -- Hillary Clinton, secretary of state
  • No. 9 -- Janet Napolitano, Homeland Security secretary
  • No. 28 -- Nancy Pelosi, House minority leader
  • No. 31 -- Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services
  • No. 61 -- Margaret Hamburg, U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner
  • No. 65 -- Mary Schapiro, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
  • No. 69 -- Ertharin Cousin, executive director of the United Nations World Food Program