19th Amendment, Women's Suffrage: Then and Now

Today women such as Nancy Pelosi, Oprah Winfrey, Hillary Clinton, and many others have helped transform a new identity for women throughout the country. Using privileges and obligations that women adhere to today because of the efforts from women in year's past to help build towards an everlasting state of power and social classification for the women of tomorrow. It shows us the necessary steps are being taken for equal rights for women.

By the age of only seventeen years old Susan B. Anthony was laboring for women's equality. A teacher in New York, Anthony was lobbying for equal pay for teachers to no avail which constituted her first women's movement called the Daughters of Temperance. In 1848 the Declaration of Sentiments was created by Elizabeth Cady Stanton to make a grieve status against women's voting rights, equality for education, employment, and nine other resolutions. The two women met during a meeting in 1851 building an everlasting relationship and known by many as the leaders of women's movements in the United States. Meetings and lectures flourished over the next eighteen years intertwining movements of abolition which increased the views of the public eye. In 1869 the NWSA (National Woman Suffrage Association) was founded by both women and by 1890 was partnered with the AWSA (American Woman Suffrage Association). This started a nationwide campaign to provide the right to vote for women which finally made substantial progress in 1893 when Colorado became the first state to grant women the right to vote. More states were soon to follow in the upcoming years but it wasn't until 1919 until the House of Representatives and Senate passed the Federal Woman Suffrage Amendment written originally by Susan B. Anthony in 1878 giving women the right to vote on federal government issues.

As the NAWSA became a prolific organization in America, although it was merely a stepping stone to integrate other rights for women. Soon after the FWSA was passed, the Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor was formed. The bureau was created to build better working conditions for women based on researching informations in the workforce to bring valid documentations to the forefront which would help promote employment, efficiency, and welfare of working women. Many women were coming accustomed and enjoying their often changing rights and it provoked many other movements or organizations to tackle different issues like Planned Parenthood, the National Council of Negro Women, The Daughters of Bilitis (first ever lesbian organization), President's Commission on the Status of Women (established by J.F.K.), National Organization for Women (workplace discrimination), and many others that would help shape America for women and build towards a complete democracy as it was ever so intended.

The rule of the people or what as better known as democracy has built an everlasting affect on women's rights. Giving women the power to vote has also greatly improved other issues in the United States today such as economic opportunities, health insurance issues, education, and more recently political empowerment in our government. However, there is still many issues that have been lingering on for many years for women to sustain a complete equality of their male counterparts. A major issue in todays current events is women's ongoing efforts to combine the responsibilities of having a career and containing a family life without neglected either one. It is said that forty-two percent of corporate women are without children by the time they reach forty years of age, even though fourteen percent of those actually planned for the situation. Another issue is the lack of pay in the workplace compared to those of men which has lasted for one-hundred-seventy years back when Susan B. Anthony was lobbying for equal pay for teachers as early as 1937. Society however can be misinformed in accounts such as equal pay rights where statistics show that women of working age make approximately twenty-three cents on the dollar less then that of men even though making up fifty-nine percent of the working population today. The U.S. Census Bureau sites that although true this interpretation is misconstrued with many women having occupations such as waitresses, secretaries, cashiers which constitute lower hourly wages. Unfortunately this I believe will be an issue amongst society for many years to come.

Philanthropists in our modern society like Oprah Winfrey who built the Oprah Winfrey Foundation helps push women empowerment to the forefront of society along with helping children around the world in need. An excellent example of Winfrey's efforts are shown in the Oprah Winfrey Academy Foundation which was built in order to service leadership towards young girls not only in the United States, but elsewhere in the world where she has donated over $40 million dollars. The power of the media and her hit television show The Oprah Winfrey Show, has been used in great lengths to make the world a better place and build stability in America for not only women, but children and their rights. More notable her efforts in 1991 were initiating the National Child Protection Act which was eventually passed as the "Oprah Bill" by Bill Clinton in 1993 to create a national data base for convicted child abusers. While these are only a few of her achievements over the years it gives great reason why she has been on Time Magazines- 100 Most Influential People list since 2004.

You will find many achievements of all different aspects of women throughout the business, economic, and social world of the United States. The business and economical world has produced some of the most powerful women with major companies in the United States today like CEO Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo, CEO of Xerox Anne Mulcahy, CEO Irene Rosenfeld (Kraft Foods), Sara Lee Chairman and CEO Brenda Barnes, and many more. Even the Internet world has produce many women leadership roles in their particular fields like Google's SVP, Business Operations Leader Shona Brown, CFO Sharon Decker (Yahoo), and President of Ebay Meg Whitman who's total compensation is over $10 million dollars per year. On the federal government side women are taking great strides such as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi who provided America with the first woman to become Speaker and the first in her Democratic Party. Hillary Rodham Clinton became the first female senator to represent the state the state of New York, and is biding to become the ultimate achievement in women's rights as the first female President of the United States.

For what was fought for by many so long ago and started by minuscule events from few, blossomed into an ongoing effort to live a free and equal life within the United States for women. As old issues are resolved, new issues arise, which makes one wonder if it will be a journey for eternity to bring women equal to men with the laws of our society. Engaging in the domestic principles of the United States to be true to it's word for both sexes ultimately building a stronger society as one entity. Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and all those that followed in their footsteps from the beginning would be proud and would cherish the sights of what women are accomplishing today.