It's Women's Equality Day in the USA today, the 26th August, a day celebrating and commemorating a change in the laws which meant women got the vote.
Technically, this commemorates the 1920 adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which stops both individual states and the USA wide government from denying the right to vote to US citizens on the basis of sex.
While we may take our right to vote today for granted, like all advances made by and for women, the vote was hard won. Monday sees the 106th anniversary of the day when 10 suffragists being arrested while picketing the White House. This was in 1917 - three years before the 19th Amendment was passed. Hundreds of other suffragists had protested there, and while they protested peacefully, they were often violently opposed. Women including Alice Paul continued to protest, to plan, and work for their ultimate aim - that women be recognised in law as equal citizens.
We don't have a women's equality day here in the UK but here at RISE we know we stand on the shoulder of giants. The women who went before us, setting up RISE and building it have our eternal thanks. And the women who went before them, who paved they way, and inch by inch, pushed forward - we thank you.
