26th August: Womens Equality Day

On this day in 1920, the United States Congress ratified the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, providing women full and equal voting rights. Every year on August 26, we observe National Women’s Equality Day to recognise this right.

Birth of a Movement

While in London at the World Anti-Slavery Convention 1840, several women were denied access to the convention floor planting the seeds for a women’s rights movement. Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Staton, along with Martha Wright, Mary Ann McClintock, and Jane Hunt, set in motion plans for the first woman’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York. Held at Wesleyan Chapel on July 19-20, 1848, the conference drew 200 women the first day. On the second day, the convention opened to men, and some did attend.

On July 30, 1971, Rep. Bella Abzug (D-NY) presented a bill designating August 26th as Women’s Equality Day. That year, rallies, celebrations and political debate filled the country on August 26th. By 1973, Congress passed a joint resolution declaring the day to be observed on August 26th of each year. Every year since each president declares this day as Women’s Equality Day commemorating the certification of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution.