19th Amendment at 90

Today is the 90th Anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment which granted women the right to vote. It's gloriously simple, so I'll quote it in full here:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Forbes has some thoughts on the road behind and the long road ahead. The litany should be familiar to anyone with half a brain and a vague connection to the world we live in today. Women get the majority of college degrees these days and yet earn 78% of what men do. They're expected to be (and usually are) the primary family caregivers in families, even today. Yes we have 3 female Supreme Court Justices for the first time ever, but only 17% of Congress is female and only six out of 50 governors are women.

Birth control, access to abortion, the strides women have made in the past 90 years are amazing, but there's a long road ahead. While women have the right to choose to end a pregnancy, there's a quiet battle being waged for women to have a right to choose how to have their baby, with midwives and women facing off against the money and power of the industrial medical complex. Women still haven't made it to the top spot in the country, despite oodles of other countries electing women, some of them multiple times now. Let me say again: women make up about the majority of the workforce and yet only earn 78% of what men do. Women who choose to stay at home and raise their kids are facing even steeper barriers when it comes to re-entering the workforce and are being failed not only by modern feminism but by society as a whole.

Yes, 90 years later there is still plenty of work to be done, but there is also hope for the future. Sarah Palin, for all her many faults seems to have done the impossible and broken open the glass ceiling for conservative women in this country and they, as a group are on the rise. Iowa, who has yet to send a women to Congress in any capacity is on the verge of sending either a Senator (Roxanne Conlin) or Congresswoman (Miller-Meeks) to Congress for the first time ever.

But I'm going to be bold and say that women are on the verge of a serious breakthrough and by the time the 19th Amendment gets to be 100 years old, we will have a woman as President of the United States.