In 1971, years before Women’s Foundation California existed, Bella Abzug and fellow feminist rabble rousers called for a Women’s Equality Day. They chose August 26th. A date that over 50 years earlier marked the passage of the 19th amendment giving *some* women the right to vote. It would still be decades until Black, Asian, Latinx and Native American women were able to exercise their right to vote. Today, many folks, especially women of color, still have to navigate obstacles to make their voices heard at the ballot box.
While we celebrate the 19th amendment and women’s suffrage, we can also acknowledge its many racist shortcomings. And as we push towards women’s equality, we can embrace a more expansive understanding of gender.
As we mark this years’ Women’s Equality Day, we want to lift up the importance and relevance of our collective progress and continued work toward equality; especially as it relates to the intersectionality of gender, race, and economics with our history, our economy, our politics, and our families.
Gender Pay Gap
The painful truth is that Latina women in California earn about 41 cents for every dollar that a man is paid. A Black woman might be taking home 60 cents and a white or Asian woman would top out at 80 cents. At the end of the year, that means that – on average – a man is making seven thousand dollars more than his female counterpart. And overall transgender women are four times more likely to experience poverty.
Pink Tax
Despite existing legislation, it is still far too easy for products marketed towards women to cost more. Charging women more for essentially the same product is gender discrimination, plain and simple. And that’s why we need legislation like the Pink Tax Repeal Act.
The Pink Tax Repeal Act rectifies an injustice in our marketplace that has dramatic implications for the day-to-day lives and financial futures of women across California.
Let’s say that a mom in Fresno wants to buy a bicycle for her 11-year-old daughter to ride around the neighborhood. Right now it would be perfectly legal for that bicycle to cost sometimes as much as thirteen percent more because it’s pink and marketed towards girls. This kind of gender-based manipulation of the market is nonsense all on it’s own, but when you factor in the realities of our state’s gender pay gap it becomes all the more critical to rectify.
Political Representation
When Kamala Harris became vice president, it meant there was no longer a single Black woman in the Senate. Women make up 50.3% of California’s population, but currently hold only 38 of the State Legislature’s 120 seats. Unlike over half of US states, California has never had a female-identified governor.
These are just a few of the nearly endless reasons we celebrate Women’s Equality Day while acknowledging how far we’ve come while holding the truth of how far we still have to go. So on August 26th and all 364 other days of the year let’s be intersectional and feminist in our approach towards building something better for all of us.
These are just a few of the nearly endless reasons we celebrate Women’s Equality Day while acknowledging how far we’ve come while holding the truth of how far we still have to go. So on August 26th and all 364 other days of the year let’s be intersectional and feminist in our approach towards building something better for all of us.