Women's eNews has provided a consistent, bold and courageous voice for women and girls throughout the world since its inception, in the year 2000. As we celebrate our 20th Anniversary this year, and today, on International Women's Day, we are introducing a new logo which not only embodies our voice, but emboldens it. While keeping with our founding colors, red and black, we have added the image of a retro vintage microphone which was designed approximately 100 years ago, around the same year that the 19th Amendment was ratified, enabling women's constitutional right to vote.
Since then, and much more recently, women have been boosting their voices on the congressional floor as elected officials defending and advancing women's rights, and via the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, by calling out perpetrators of sexual assault.
But we need more, much much more — and time is of the essence.
While ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment has overcome some major hurdles in the last few months with Virginia becoming the crucial 38th state to ratify it and U.S. House removing the deadline for ratification, an increasing number of legal challenges are being made in attempts to block it. Women's reproductive choice and health is increasingly on the line as Republican-led states, emboldened by the Supreme Court’s new conservative majority and the Trump administration’s anti-abortion policies, passed 59 abortion restrictions last year. The Violence Against Women Act, aimed at preventing sexual violence and assault, was stalled in the US Senate, and Title IX, the 1972 law prohibiting “discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive Federal financial assistance,” is being reintroduced with proposed regulations that define harassment far more narrowly. It will also require schools to hold live hearings, while permitting cross examination by attorneys, which will only increase the victim's trauma.
These are just a few of the reasons why the voices of women, and similarly-minded men, who support equal rights need to be broadcast everywhere from the home to the workplace, and in private and public gatherings, to ensure our safety is no longer endangered, and that gender equality becomes the law of the land!
And now, I'd like to introduce you to just a sampling of women who are devoting their work, and their lives, to supporting and advancing the rights of women, as our honorary '21 Leaders for the 21st Century' 2020. I hope you'll join us in celebrating them in the evening of Monday, May 4th, in NYC. We need them, and you, more than ever!
In solidarity,
Lori Sokol, Phd, Executive Director
