This article was originally published by Forbes
By Holly Corbett
While America is celebrating its 250th anniversary this year, it’s been only 106 years since women have had the legal right to vote.
Women’s Equality Day happens each year on August 26th to honor the anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment in 1920 that gave women the constitutional right to vote. This ratification didn’t happen overnight, but took decades and even generations of organizing and activism, driven by the women’s suffrage movement.
The truth is that even after the passage of the 19th Amendment, barriers such as literacy tests and poll taxes blocked many Black women and other marginalized groups from being able to cast their ballot. Forty-five years after the passage of the 19th Amendment and largely the result of the civil rights movement, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 helped remove barriers that prevented many Black women and other women of color from being able to cast their ballot.
Women’s Equality Day reminds us that exercising the right to vote is so critical—especially right now with the midterm elections around the corner. Voting is a fundamental right of citizens to help choose leaders that represent their views, push forward the issues that matter most to them, and help influence how their tax dollars get spent.
Remembering The Women Behind The Suffragist Movement
Women’s Equality Day honors the generations of people who fought for women’s right to vote and for women’s role in expanding equal rights and democracy. It’s an opportunity to look back at the stories of the women who overcame tremendous barriers and backlash in fighting to secure the right to vote. When we know about our history, we can learn from the past to find strategies to more effectively organize today.
Suffragists, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, worked to document the movement as well as the movement makers in the History of Women’s Suffrage. In 1869, they co-founded the National Woman Suffrage Association.
Gage is the least known among the trio, having held more progressive views at the time that diverged from some of the other leaders in the suffrage movement.
“The women leading the movement illustrate that women are not a monolith. We do not all want the same thing, and we do not all think that the point A to point B has to be the same route,” says Ciarrai Eaton, executive director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation in Fayetteville, New York. “Even though they didn’t agree, they were still building coalitions, creating community, and working together in the 1850s and beyond. More than a 100 years ago women were saying, ‘This isn't right, and the only way things are going to change is if women get involved, get into the working world, get into the political sphere, get into activism.’”
Gage believed that protection of rights were connected, and the right to vote, the right to one’s body, the right to religious freedom (she said if we lose religious freedom, it wouldn’t matter who voted) were all intertwined. Gage championed reproductive rights, saying, “Enforced motherhood is a crime against the mother and the soul of the child.”
Gage championed abolition and her home became an official stop on the Underground Railroad. She stood up for Indigenous rights. At a time when gender equality was a very radical idea, she looked to her neighbors, the Haudenosaunee or the six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, for a model of a more gender-equal society. Through her Indigenous neighbors, Gage was able to see a world of women having empowered equality, and that’s the energy she brought to the planning of the first women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls, NY.
In 1852 at the third National Woman’s Rights Convention, Gage stood up from the crowd to deliver a speech, saying, “Although our country makes great professions in regard to general liberty, yet the right to particular liberty, natural equality, and personal independence, of two great portions of this country, is treated, from custom, with the greatest contempt; and color in the one instance, and sex in the other, are brought as reasons why they should be so derided; and the mere mention of such, natural rights is frowned upon, as tending to promote sedition and anarchy.”
Her radical views at the time nearly got Gage erased from history, says Eaton, who is working to keep her legacy alive and recently celebrated Gage’s 200th birthday at the Matilda Joslyn Gage Center.
Gage’s story reveals important lessons for the women’s rights movements of today. “Many of us may think our generation is the first to fight this fight, but there are still women alive today who were fighting to get bank accounts in the 70s and the right to decide whether they wanted to have children, or women who fought against the glass ceiling in the early 2000s,” says Eaton. “We’re not the first ones to fight this fight.
The State Of Voting Rights In 2026
Women’s Equality Day is also a reminder that democracy isn’t a spectator sport, but rather requires participation from all citizens. In 2026, we’re still fighting for many of the issues the suffragists fought for more than a hundred years ago, such as reproductive rights, equal pay, and protection of voting rights.
“Every single generation had to do something to protect suffrage and voting rights, and this is our moment to do it in this generation,” says Celina Stewart, CEO of the League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan, grassroots organization focused on protecting Americans’ freedom to vote. “The League [of Women Voters] was founded in 1920 during the women's suffrage movement, but even with achieving the right to vote for women in 1920, it did not include all women. Despite organizing, marching, advocating, and fighting for the right to vote, Black women in particular, Latino women, Indigenous women, weren't included in that. It wasn't until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that we got full representation across the womanhood spectrum.”
This year alone there have been many measures to restrict citizens’ ability to vote ahead of the midterm elections in the name of election security.
SCOTUS’ April 2026 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais weakened Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to make it harder for plaintiffs to obtain fair representation and fight vote dilution. This month, the Supreme Court lifted an injunction against parts of President Trump’s executive order targeting mail voting, finding that the states’ challenge was premature. The Court did not rule on the executive order’s legality. A separate injunction remains in place in League of Women Voters of Massachusetts v. Trump, a case brought by the League of Women Voters and other nonpartisan voting rights organizations and continues to block USPS from implementing the challenged mail-voting restrictions for the 2026 elections.
The SAVE America Act, which would require showing specific documents as proof of citizenship in person to register to vote, passed in the House in February of 2026, and could be up for debate in the Senate in September. Stewart says that requiring voter ID, such as a government-issued ID like a military ID or state ID card, is different from the strict voter ID requirements in the SAVE America Act for proof of citizenship, such as with birth certificates and/or passports. The SAVE America Act would prevent far more citizens from being able to vote (particularly women) than it would serve to block the rare incidents of noncitizens from voting, which haven’t been proven to impact election outcomes. For example, it could be a barrier for the eight in 10 women in opposite-sex marriages who took their husband’s last name if they don’t have a passport and their birth certificates do not match their current legal name.
“It's not just about one election; it's about being engaged around the things that affect our lives, whether it's healthcare, the price of gas or groceries, or whatever it is that matters to you, as there is someone in public office who makes decisions about that,” says Stewart. “Voting rights is a singular, important path for making sure that you elect the people who are going to protect you, your family, and the values that you all hold as a community.”
###