while you were out drinking (the official PITS weekend in review, vol. 2): revisiting the women's suffrage movement

Suffragists marching down Pennsylvania Ave.

In case y'all missed it, this past weekend marked the 100th anniversary of the Women's Suffrage Parade in Washington, DC.  The parade was staged from March 1st through March 3rd and highlighted the lack of political enfranchisement (i.e. voting and running for public office) for American women.  While the 19th Amendment wouldn't come until seven years later, this Parade served as one of the first nationally organized protests.

You can read further about it and see more cool pictures from the events of that weekend here:

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/03/100-years-ago-the-1913-womens-suffrage-parade/100465/

I bring this up because it is historically significant and important to note given the political stance of some of our less progressive federal and state representatives.  For example, we can look at the state of Texas where draconian family-planning budget cuts to planned parenthood are now thankfully being reconsidered.  Seems some conservatives are rethinking their defunding stance in the name of fiscal sanity and it strikes me as funny how social conservatives parade as fiscal hawks:

"In the fiscal crunch of 2011, the Legislature cut the state’s family-planning budget by two-thirds, with some lawmakers claiming that they were defunding the “abortion industry.”  Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, found that more than 50 family-planning clinics had closed statewide as a result.

Now, amid estimates that the cuts could lead to 24,000 additional 2014-15 births at a cost to taxpayers of $273 million,  lawmakers are seeking a way to restore financing without ruffling feathers."

You can read the entire article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/01/us/texas-may-restore-some-family-planning-budget-cuts.html?_r=1&

Beyond protecting women and their reproductive rights and the long term fiscal benefits of such a political stance, we've also recently had to endure the congressional debate for reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act.  This measure was mercifully approved, most graciously advanced by the wholly reluctant and largely culturally backwards House of Representatives last week.

It's important to raise these issues because living in a patriarchal society as we do, it is easy to dismiss claims about discrimination against women as invalid or otherwise commonplace and therefore, not newsworthy.  Which is exactly what this fine Princeton administrative official does here, in defending the University's policy to not publish the findings of a study that find 1 in 6 women at Princeton claim they have been sexually assaulted:

"I don't know that there is a real benefit to releasing it," Sandoval added. "I think if we had found something very different from the national average, that would be one thing, because that's a real story. A story that Princeton's rates of students who have been assaulted is on line with national averages is really not a story, but I mean in this news environment, people would make a big deal about it."

No, of course not Ms. Sandoval, routine sexual assaults are never newsworthy?!  The results were ultimately leaked outside of the official administrative channels because the University seems entirely disinclined to actually raise awareness.  These are precisely the conditions that contribute to social and cultural amnesia when it comes to addressing social justice in modern day America.

You can read the report of the survey's findings and see the actual data summary here:

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2013/03/04/32954/

Lastly, the above report lends itself to further exploration into the issue of sexual violence on college campuses and there are notable events happening right here at the University of Montana that I will have to follow up on later.  

For now, time is running out on this blog post so I leave you with this final graphic for y'all to consider the present state of affairs for women's earnings compared to their male counterparts in present-day America. 

While great progress has certainly been made in the past 100 years, there are clearly more steps to take to advance the protection of Women's rights and aid their total enfranchisement in the United States of America today and into the future.

Thank you, as always, for reading.

-PPG