AUGUST 27, 2024 – Walter Reed joins the rest of the nation in celebrating Women’s Equality Day on Aug. 26 and every day. Women’s Equality Day celebrates the day American women gained the right to vote with the ratification of the 19th Amendment.
“One Piece at a Time,” is this year’s theme which was established by The Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI). The theme reflects on the lives and contributions of remarkable individuals who played pivotal roles in women gaining the right to vote.
Among them are Frederick Douglass, Wilhelmina Kekelaokalaninui Widemann Dowsett, Harry T. Burn, Zitkála-Sá (also known as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin), Adelina Otero-Warren and Tye Leung Schulze. Their collective efforts paved the way for gender equality beyond suffrage.”
Although women served in some capacity in every conflict America has participated in, it wasn’t until 1917 that they were first allowed to openly serve in the military, when they were allowed to work as nurses near the front lines. In 1948, with the Women’s Armed Service Integration Act, women were allowed to receive regular permanent status in the armed forces, but women were still not allowed to fly in combat missions until 1991. In 2013,
Congress lifted the ban on women in combat. Today, more than 200,000 active-duty women serve in the U.S. military, and just this year, Army Capt. Molly Murphy, a pediatric intensive care unit nurse at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, became the first female nurse to complete the U.S. Army’s elite Ranger Course. Last year, U.S. Navy Capt. (Dr.) Melissa Austin became the first woman director of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in its 13-year history.
The late New York Congressperson Bella Abzug is credited with establishing Women’s Equality Day after introducing a resolution before Congress in 1971 to designate Aug. 26 as the day for the observance. This was precisely a year after approximately 50,000 women marched down New York City’s Fifth Avenue not only celebrating the 50th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, but also demanding changes to childcare and health policies, and education and employment opportunities. The march was called the Women’s Strike for Equality March because many did not go to their jobs that day.
Going further back in history men and women suffragists who gathered at Seneca Falls in 1848 for the first women’s rights convention are credited for establishing the origins of Women’s Equality Day.
“Frederick Douglass was an outspoken activist who fought for the freedom of enslaved people. His beliefs and advocacy of equality extended to the women’s rights movement as well. He was invited to the First Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York. There, he expressed impassioned support for suffrage and began working with famous suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. He remained influential in the movement until his death in 1895,” according to DEOMI.
“In respect to political rights, we hold woman to be justly entitled to all we claim for man. We go farther and express our conviction that all political rights which it is expedient for man to exercise, it is equally so for women,” Douglass is quoting as saying.
“Our work as a Nation is never done — realizing the full promise of the 19th Amendment is as important today as ever before. We are making tremendous progress, but more must be done to ensure equal rights and opportunity for women and girls. This Women’s Equality Day, let us recommit to building a country and a world where our daughters have the same opportunities as our sons. Because when women thrive, we all thrive,” from the Presidential Proclamation recognizing the 2024 Women’s Equality day.
Story by Bernard Little
Walter Reed National Military Medical Center