Women's Equality Day

Since 1971, August 26 has celebrated the anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment (which, everyone should know, assured women the right to vote in 1920). Every year the President issues a proclamation declaring August 26 a day of rememberence and honor for women in the past and women now who are working toward equality.

I now work in women's studies and am constantly surrounded by information and voices about the inequalities in our world. I have to work hard not to get depressed at the state of my sisters around the globe and to funnel my energy into doing something to help people.

It has also occurred to me that I really don't know what equality is supposed to mean. I know that God has said there is neither male nor female, that we all are created in the image of God, and that He loves all people equally. What I don't know is how best to act that out.

I don't think the answer lies in a role reversal of 1950s stereotypical marriages or in gender-blindness. But I think it starts in the way we view people, viewing everyone how God does, as having equal worth. That everyone means the same and they are worthy because they have been created by God.

Women getting the vote in the U.S. is an old story, but it's not in much of the world. And still a number of disenfranchised women live in this country. If we want to work toward equality we have to acknowledge inequality.