Throughout this past semester my
blogs have solely focused on the rights and equality of women around the world primarily
on the country of India. In the beginning I found it fairly difficult to find current
events that focused only on women around the world, but also realized that that
the information was there I just had to dig a little bit deeper into it all. As
I was doing some research I ran into several feminist websites that focused on topics
of equality and rights for all women. On
these sights other women can get together and fight their cause. Through my
analysis I wanted to find a sort of connect issues that all women were having
around the world including in the United States.
Ironically just yesterday in my
Black Women in America class we talked had a discussion about an important
point in American history in which there was a massive suffrage March that occurred
in March 1913 in which women from all over the world came together to join hands and fight for the right to vote
and women’s rights. One day before the inauguration of President Woodrow
Wilson. Organized by Alice Paul for the National American Woman Suffrage
Association, the parade, calling for a constitutional amendment, featured 8,000
marchers, including nine bands, four mounted brigades, 20 floats, and an
allegorical performance near the Treasury Building. Though the parade began
late, it appeared to be off to a good start until the route along Pennsylvania
Avenue became choked with tens of thousands of spectators mostly men in town
for the inauguration. Marchers were jostled and ridiculed by many in the crowd.
Some were tripped, others assaulted. Policemen appeared to be either
indifferent to the struggling parades, or sympathetic to the mob. Before the
day was out, one hundred marchers had been hospitalized. The mistreatment of
the marchers amplified the event and the cause into a major news story and led
to congressional hearings, where the D.C. superintendent of police lost his
job. What began in 1913 took another seven years to make it through Congress.
In 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment secured the vote for women.
It is now the year 2013 and yes we
have come a long way in fighting for the rights of women and yet women are
still not treated as they should be. In March of this year Delta Sigma Theta, a
Greek sorority had a reenactment of this March in Washington D.C for their 100th
year anniversary. Delta Sigma Theta Sorority retraced the footsteps of their
founders who participated in the Women's Suffrage March of 1913. There several
thousand of the sorority's members commemorated the 100th anniversary of the
march and the role the organization's 22 founders played, marching from the
Capitol to the Washington Monument, diverting their route from the Mall to walk
past the White House. The march was preceded by a rally that included D.C.
Police Chief Cathy Lanier as one of the speakers. Although the disenfranchisement and oppression
of women have been taking place since the begging of time, these two events in history
mark a time in which women came together from all over the world, no matter the
race/ethnicity, religion, size or shape unified and stood for what they
believed in.
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