Women's Equality

Iowa women discuss why they still don’t consider the fight for women’s equality as being finished 100 years after the ratification of the 19th Amendment.

Transcript

I think that we’ve come a long way in a hundred years and that’s very clear especially with voting. We can vote now, we couldn’t vote 100 years ago. But that doesn’t mean that it’s over.

Do you think the fight for women’s equality is done?

No. I don’t.

No, absolutely not.

No, I think we still have quite a ways to go unfortunately.

It’s not over for women.

I think we should all have the same opportunities, and we don’t.

Well, I think things are much better now than when they used to be. I don't think they'll ever really, really be equal. But I think we're in a much better situation right now.

I think we've made strides but we're not there yet. I mean all you have to do is look at the relative amount of money earned in any given field. It's always more for men than it is for women.

I think we need to get equal representation within politics, which we don’t have right now. We’re getting closer but it’s definitely still not there.

I think that we need to have more women in government positions or higher up positions that will show that women can do anything that they want and that they have the same power and responsibility that men have.

I think another entire set of battles that need to be fought too is on the social side. We see that within the home, the work that happens within the home, care of the family, laundry and cooking and all of those kinds of domestic chores still fall disproportionately on women and that men perceive that men are doing more and they are doing more but they’re not doing anywhere near half. Until we actually have achieved greater equality in the domestic sphere, it’s going to be a challenge to have equality in the public sphere.

Right now I think a lot of people who have privilege don’t look at others and see their circumstances and realize there’s a need for change anymore, but I think that it takes those people who have privilege to look and say, oh, we’re not equal, and that everyone needs to be fighting for equality.