We've Come a Long Way, Baby...

Celebrating the wins over the course of our (mid) lifetime on International Women's Day...

Photo: Anna Spoka/Shutterstock

Today we celebrate International Women’s Day, and all month long we recognize the countless contributions and profound impact that women have had throughout our history. An impact that for large swaths of that history was undervalued, unrecognized, uncelebrated. By way of quick background, the first Women’s Day took place in New York City in 1909, the precursor to International Women’s Day. Later, through organizing, lobbying and great perseverance, Women’s History Week was nationally recognized in 1980 by presidential proclamation, and we finally got the whole damn month beginning in 1987 by congressional proclamation.

The month of March belongs to women…

And though this is a piece about the great strides we’ve made thanks to incredible trailblazers and fierce advocates who came before us, it goes without saying that there is always more work to do. That rings especially true now, when it feels like we are backsliding in some very distressing ways. But when I think about the progress we’ve made in just my own lifetime, I am filled with gratitude for the countless women who worked so hard and risked so much to fight for equality. Women who bravely challenged the status quo, and who understood that we could never be truly free without social and economic independence.

If you’re reading this, chances are you’re a midlife or midlife-adjacent woman, born sometime in the 60’s or or 70’s, when shockingly, many of the simple rights we take for granted today were nonexistent. We all know about the suffragettes and their hard fought campaigns that led to the ratification of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote in 1920. But did you know that many of the other rights and freedoms we enjoy- things as simple as applying for a credit card- were not available to women as individuals until almost the mid-70’s and beyond? 

I often think about my late mother-in-law, a brilliant woman who dropped out of medical school to marry my husband’s father. When they separated in the early 70’s, she was a mother of three young boys who couldn’t apply for a credit card without her soon-to-be ex-husband’s signature or that of another male cosigner. She couldn’t even be sure that a bank would allow her to open an account in her own name without those signatures. Because until the passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, banks routinely discriminated against women, refusing to allow them to open accounts without a husband’s involvement and denying them credit and loans as well. When credit was given, some banks discounted women’s wages by half when calculating the limits. Incredibly, unmarried women were often refused services altogether. 

Without the ability to obtain credit, a woman would have had no way to build a financial history; no way to show lenders that she was fiscally responsible and credit-worthy so that she could buy a car, a home, etc; in essence, no way to establish a financial life independent of her husband’s. No way to be free.

Bella Abzug, a fierce advocate who did so much to advance women’s rights, sponsored the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974.

I thought it would be interesting to take a look at some other facts and profoundly important advancements that have occurred just within our lifetime: 

• Birth Control: While birth control became legal nationwide for married couples in 1965, single women did not gain the right to obtain/use the pill until 1972. 

• Sex-Based Discrimination in Education:  Most of us think of Title IX (of the Education Amendments of 1972) as the law that increased opportunities for women in college athletics, but it also outlawed other forms of discrimination by institutions that received federal dollars (and almost all, even private institutions, do). For instance, up until its passage in 1972, most medical and law schools limited the number of women they would admit- usually 15 or fewer.  Now, women now make up more than 50% of med school and law students.

• Pregnancy Discrimination: Until 1978, a woman could be fired from her job (or denied a job she was otherwise qualified for) because she was pregnant. Not until the passage of The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 was this practice prohibited.

• Sexual Harassment: Sexual Harassment in the workplace was not a considered a cause for legal action until 1977, even with the earlier establishment of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It wasn’t until 1980 that sexual harassment was defined as a form of sex discrimination by the EEOC, and the Supreme Court did not address the issue until 1986 when it ruled that “that severe or pervasive” sexual harassment of an employee by their supervisor violated federal law.

• “Head and Master”: I cringe as I type these words, but once upon a time in the not-so-distant past some states had property laws on the books that designated a husband “head and master” of a household giving him unilateral control over property owned jointly with his wife. This gave a husband the right to sell or dispose of said property without his wife’s knowledge or consent. These types of laws were finally struck down by the Supreme Court in 1981. 

• Health Insurance “Pink Tax”: As recently as 2010, until the passage of the Affordable Care Act, women were routinely charged more for the same level of health insurance as men, and could be denied coverage for past pregnancies which were sometimes considered preexisting conditions. 

• Women in Power: As of 2023 with the 118th Congress, women make up more than a quarter of all members, which is a record high. And on Corporate boards, women are also gaining in numbers. In 2022, according to a Harvard Business Review analysis, 45% of new Fortune 500 board appointees were women and the percentage of women on corporate boards has risen to almost 30%. 

I sometimes get so caught up in being incensed by the current state of affairs- the erosion of reproductive health rights, the gender health care gap that I highlighted in the Midlife Cheat Sheet, and the general state of affairs in our politics, that I forget about how very far we have come in a relatively short time- in the course of my own lifetime. But I think it’s really important to celebrate the wins, even when the thing remedied was outrageously unjust in the first place, so that we can feel hopeful and stay motivated to continue fighting. 

And we must keep fighting. For all of it. Demanding inclusion, the theme for this year’s IWD. Fighting for gender parity. Banishing all forms of sexism. Rooting out ageism.

I hope that someday my daughter-in-law/granddaughter (manifesting here!) is making a list like this one, noting for her contemporaries all of the progress for women in her own lifetime. Truly equal pay for equal work. Female presidents. Menopause policies in the workplace. Doctors trained in all aspects of women’s health. Women having autonomy over their bodies in all 50 states. Robust government funding for women’s health care. Insurance coverage for all of the things we need, like ultrasounds for dense breasts. National childcare policies. Just a sampling as it pertains to women, but my wishlist is LONG.

And a final note- not only did my mother-in-law get the credit she needed to by a home for her and her boys post-1974, but she also used it to go back to school and earn a doctorate degree in Education. She specialized in Gerontology, was a co-founder of the Alzheimer’s Association, wrote books, taught at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in NYC, and changed countless lives. Incredible things happen when we are empowered!

My mother-in-law was a force.

Happy International Women’s Day- there’s more ground to cover, but we’ve come a long way, baby…

Dina xx