March 8 is International Women’s Day (IWD). March is Women’s History month. So, it is a good time to reflect on the status of women.  

IWD is celebrated to focus attention on women’s contributions to society and their right to equality, suffrage, reproductive rights, and freedom from violence and abuse. IWD originated in the labor movements in Europe and North America around 1909. It was observed sometime in late February or early March in many countries including Austria-Hungary, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland. The March 8, 1917, date was announced by Lenin after a women’s textile workers strike helped precipitate the Bolshevik Revolution. It was sporadically observed in other countries over the next four decades. However, it was forgotten in the U.S. until 1969, when observance of IWD led to a call for March to be Women’s History Month.  

The United Nations acknowledged IWD in 1975. In 1977 the United Nations General Assembly invited member nations to name a day as “United Nations Day for Women’s Rights and International Peace.” March 8 was the traditional day for this. However, IWD never took off. In the 21st century, sadly, it was corporatized, like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and other holidays seemingly made for card companies. I suspect that in the United States, for at least the next four years, both Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day will be all but forgotten. 

While women’s status in the U.S. has improved over time, women do not have equality with men. The gender gap in pay has been stable over the past 20 years. In 2022, women earned an average of 82% of what men earned. In Pueblo, Colorado, it was 79%. This is similar to the pay gap in 2002, which was 80%. (Pew Research Center March 1, 2023, by Carolina Aragao). 

 When asked why there is a gender wage gap, half of U.S. adults say women are treated differently by employers. A smaller number mention that women make different choices about how to balance work and family (42%). Women are the primary caregivers of children and the elderly, so they often sacrifice their careers to fill those roles. Women who interrupt their careers to become mothers do not make as much over their lifetime as women who do not.  

Around the globe, women perform more than three-quarters of unpaid care and domestic work. This unpaid work is essential to the functioning of the economy but goes uncounted and unrecognized. If it were assigned a monetary value, it would exceed up to 40 per cent of the GDP in some countries. (https://ilostat.ilo.org/topics/unpaid-work/measuring-unpaid-domestic-and-care-work/.) Investment in the care sector could create almost three times as many jobs as that investment in construction. Now that would be an efficient way to spend federal dollars, don’t you think?  

Executive orders banning any mention of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) have resulted in attacks on efforts towards gender equality. Federal agencies have terminated employees, contracts, or projects that even hint at DEI or gender equality. The impact of this on women’s empowerment programs is catastrophic. Gender equality is no longer a goal for the U.S. government, even though women’s participation in the economy is a benefit for everyone, contributes to GDP growth and is more effiicient than when women are not allowed to participate. 

Government antagonism to DEI also affects the private sector. In the past, many firms such as VISA, Mastercard, and Goldman Sachs placed importance on women’s rights and economic empowerment. However, corporations are now worried about being sued. Conservative activists have filed lawsuits against multiple companies and nonprofits for allegedly discriminating against them with their DEI programs. At least 37 federal lawsuits targeting DEI programming were filed in 2024, against companies like Target, Lululemon, and IBM, and also against small organizations helping women entrepreneurs. Thus, many companies have discontinued programs that benefit women. 

Rather than be discouraged, we should remember how long it took women to gain the vote. In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote a book called A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. At a regional women's rights convention in Ohio in 1851, disrupted by male opponents, Sojourner Truth delivered her famous speech "Ain't I a Woman?" Finally, in 1920, the 19th amendment was finally passed. As Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, wrote, “To get the word male in effect out of the Constitution cost the women of the country fifty-two years of pauseless campaign...During that time they were forced to conduct fifty-six campaigns of referenda to male voters; 480 campaigns to get Legislatures to submit suffrage amendments to voters; 47 campaigns to get State constitutional conventions to write woman suffrage into State constitutions; 277 campaigns to get State party conventions to include woman suffrage planks; 30 campaigns to get presidential party conventions to adopt woman suffrage planks in party platforms, and 19 campaigns with 19 successive Congresses. Millions of dollars were raised, mainly in small sums, and expended with economic care. Hundreds of women gave the accumulated possibilities of an entire lifetime, thousands gave years of their lives, hundreds of thousands gave constant interest and such aid as they could.”  

Ultimately, the actions of the current administration will not destroy efforts toward gender equality and women’s rights. Perseverance furthers...As Martin Luther King stated, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice."

Elizabeth (Beth) Kinney moved to the Valley in 1993, attracted to Alamosa by Valley-Wide Health Services. She worked as a family practice physician for seven years and then moved to emergency care. Kinney worked as an emergency physician first at the Alamosa and Rio Grande Hospitals and later at the Conejos County Hospital until retiring in 2017.