Women's Equality Day: Celebrate the Victories. Confront the Backlash.

Women’s Equality Day: Celebrate the Victories. Confront the Backlash.


PUBLISHED 8/22/2025 by Ms. Editors




Alice Paul, vice president of the National Women’s Party, broadcasts from her desk at the Capitol, on April 27, 1922. (Bettmann Archives / Getty Images)

Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2025, marks 104 years since the 19th Amendment was certified, recognizing women’s constitutional right to vote. But anniversaries like Women’s Equality Day are not just about looking back. They remind us of unfinished business. After helping securing women’s right to vote, leading suffragist Alice Paul in 1923 drafted the original version of the Equal Rights Amendment. Paul and other women’s rights activists believed the right to vote was only a first step and that full legal equality required constitutional protection through an amendment guaranteeing equal rights for all sexes.

Last week in Knoxville, Tenn., activists unveiled the Tennessee Woman Suffrage Heritage Trail Museum—just blocks from where, in 1920, Tennessee cast the deciding vote to ratify the 19th Amendment. That museum honors the suffragists who fought for decades, often facing ridicule, arrest and violence.


(Courtesy of the Tennessee Woman Suffrage Heritage Trail)
. . . .


The Power of Women’s Votes

Women’s votes have consistently shaped U.S. elections:

Since 1980, women have turned out at higher rates than men.
In 2020, a record-breaking gender gap allowed Joe Biden to triumph over Donald Trump.
In 2022, young women—many voting for the first time—swung key races in states like Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania.
In 2023 and 2024, women helped beat back antiabortion ballot measures and extremist candidates.
. . . .


View of marchers as they walk along Pennsylvania Avenue. Visible in the center background is the United States Capitol Building.A rally in honor of the 75th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, in Washington, D.C., Aug. 26, 1995. (Mark Reinstein / Corbis via Getty Images)

But wins are possible. As Ms. readers may know:

Tennessee was the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment on August 18, 1920, pushing the amendment past the two-thirds majority of states that women needed. But the vote was a close one: It only passed when Harry Burn, a 24-year-old member of the House of Representatives, decided at the last minute to reverse his longstanding opposition to women’s suffrage. Burn was the youngest member of the state legislature, and wore a red rose boutonniere that day to signify that he would vote against the potential new law. (Those in favor of ratification wore yellow roses, while those against wore red.) Going by the roses’ colors, many anticipated that the vote would end in a gridlock. That was, until Burn received a note from his mother, Phoebe Ensminger Burn. In the note, she wrote, “Hurrah, and vote for suffrage! Don’t keep them in doubt.” In a nod to suffragist leader Carrie Chapman Catt, she then added, “Be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt put the ‘rat’ in ratification.” Still clutching his mother’s note, Burn voted “aye.” And only a few days later, on August 26, the 19th Amendment went into effect as law, ending suffragists’ half-century long campaign. Burn later defended his change of heart by saying, “A mother’s advice is always safest for her boy to follow, and my mother wanted me to vote for ratification.”

This Women’s Equality Day, we invite you to remember Tennessee’s suffragists—and finish what they started. Sign the national petition at Sign4ERA.org (https://www.sign4era.org/) urging Congress to do what the Constitution, and history, demand: Affirm the Equal Rights Amendment as the 28th Amendment.

https://msmagazine.com/2025/08/22/womens-equality-day-era-equal-rights-amendment/