First Women’s Equality Day Forum held in Fort Dodge
Event features diverse panel of women addressing issues of gender inequality
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The first Women’s Equality Day Forum in Fort Dodge was held at the Fort Dodge Public Library on Tuesday evening. The event featured a diverse panel of six women, speaking to around 40 people in attendance.
Women's Equality Day is celebrated annually in the United States to commemorate the official certification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on Aug. 26, 1920, which granted women the right to vote. At the local forum, the panel first discussed the history of the women’s suffrage (right to vote) movement, followed by a focus on current women’s issues, challenges, and concerns. The panel was moderated by Amber Rouse of Fort Dodge, who serves as one of two cochairs of the Democratic Party of Webster County, which sponsored the forum.
The panel included Rachel Burns from rural Sac County, who is a candidate for the Iowa House of Representatives, District 7. She is employed as a speech language pathologist in private practice, medical examiner investigator for two counties, and community college adjunct instructor.
Other panelists included, Rhiannon Rippke-Koch, Cori Theroux, Belinda Cardona, and Meka Dillard - all from Fort Dodge.
Rippke-Koch is a licensed medical health counselor and board president of the Fort Dodge Pride Festival. Theroux is the owner of the Green Dragon Bookshop and director of the Iowa Indie Bookshop Tour. Cardona is a certified advocate employed by the Domestic and Sexual Assault Outreach Center. Dillard is a paraprofessional with the Fort Dodge Community School District.
At the start of the forum, Rouse recounted the origins of the women's suffrage movement, which was a decades-long struggle by women to gain universal suffrage – the legal right to vote for all. The movement began with the Seneca Falls Convention in New York in July 1848, she said. Rouse noted that groups of women, such as the National American Woman Suffrage Association, organized petitions, lectures, state campaigns, and demonstrations, to gain universal suffrage. Some activists, such as Susan B. Anthony, even spent time in jail for voting illegally. The suffrage movement culminated in August 1920, with the ratification of the 19th Amendment.
The 19th Amendment prohibits all U.S. states and the federal government from denying the right to vote to any U.S. citizen on the basis of sex. Many important changes occurred in government programs as a result of women gaining the right to vote, Rouse said.
"Soon after women gained the right to vote, for example, the mortality rate of children dropped by 50 percent," she said. This was likely because women were voting for candidates who favored programs that provided assistance to families with children.
While the 19th Amendment prohibited the denial of voting rights based on sex, however, true suffrage for all American women was not achieved in 1920, Rouse said.
"State-level discriminatory barriers, such as poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and outright violence effectively barred many African American, Latina, Native American, and Asian American women from voting for decades," she said. "It wasn’t until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that legal protections were securely in place to allow women of color to vote in elections,"
Rouse and other panelists emphasized that Women's Equality Day serves a dual purpose: honoring the historical achievements of the suffrage movement, while also drawing attention to ongoing modern gender disparity issues.
Such issues include the gender pay gap that favors men over women, the underrepresentation of women in both corporate and governmental leadership, and domestic inequalities in the home that continue to place a greater burden on women than men.
The panelists discussed various changes in women’s rights and equality they have witnessed in their lifetimes, and the changes they believe have had the greatest impact on women and American society. They also discussed current issues of gender inequality involving access to education, business, healthcare, and government.
Several of the panelists emphasized the importance of women supporting and standing with each other in solidarity, especially when facing inequality, discrimination, and underrepresentation in social institutions.
"It begins with lifting each other up," Rippke-Koch said. "In our community it's all about representation, even at local levels. We need to encourage women who support our rights to run for school boards, city councils, and any and all boards - that's where it all starts."