Women Equality Day
Celebrating women equality and success without smoking!

For a brief history of the Women's Equality Day Click here.

Dear Editor:

As we celebrate the 85th anniversary of women’s right to vote on August 26, Women’s Equality Day, we need to draw attention to the effect of tobacco-related diseases on women. Tobacco advertising has linked women’s liberation with smoking (e.g., "You've come a long way, baby") and connects thinness with cigarettes. Among women, lung cancer has surpassed breast cancer as a leading killer of women. Last Year, the Surgeon General released an important report on the health effects of smoking recognizing the 40th anniversary since the first report was issued when only men were identified as suffering from tobacco-related diseases. In those 40 years researchers have found that both men and women suffer from tobacco–related diseases.

It is not by accident that tobacco use has increased to the point of creating an epidemic among American women. The tobacco companies have developed slick advertising campaigns that glamorize smoking. A recent Federal Trade Commission report on tobacco advertising revealed that advertising expenditures have increased by more than $4 billion since 1998, for a grand total annual expenditure of $15.1 billion. In our state, tobacco companies spend (get number from www.tobaccofreekids.org Web site) to advertise their deadly and addictive products.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now providing a community toolkit to help combat the problem of tobacco use among young girls and women, Dispelling the Myths about Smoking. This is good news because tobacco use among young girls in (state) has been on the increase. We must fight back.

Smoke Free Society offers free information, plans, techniques and products that are designed to help smokers quit and stay smoke free in just 17 days without the use of any substance or drug. But most importantly with donations received for helping smokers quit smoking, they are able to provide preventive programs to educate children not to start smoking. Also, educate parents to help them lead by example and quit smoking and how to communicate with their kids about smoking and tobacco use. To help a loved one quit smoking this important Women’s Equality Day, mothers, grandmothers, aunts, family and friends should visit its website at SmokeFreeSociety.org today!

We may not have the resources that the tobacco companies have, but we have hearts that react to the pain and suffering caused by tobacco use. All of us must work together to keep children safe from tobacco use and to help those who want to quit their deadly addiction.

Sincerely,
(Your name and affiliation)

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Brief history of the Suffrage Movement and Women's Equality Day

On July 13, 1848, five women met for tea in upstate New York. Having commiserated about the lot of women in American society, they did something brash and wonderful...they sent off a notice to the local newspaper announcing "a convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious conditions and rights of woman" to be held just six days later in Seneca Falls. The Women's Rights Movement was born!

Perhaps inspired by the sovereignty of Iroquois women, convention participants drafted a Declaration of Sentiments which began: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, That all men and women are created equal..." One of the resolutions called for universal women's suffrage. One hundred women and men from all walks of life signed that Declaration. Only one, nineteen-year-old Charlotte Woodward, lived to see women win the vote.

On August 26, 1920, after a 72-year struggle, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the U.S. was finally ratified, granting women the right to vote nationwide.

President Carter designated August 26 as Women's Equality Day, as a reminder of women's continuing efforts for equality.

Of course, the struggle for women's rights didn't end in 1920. To read more about the women's movement in contemporary times, I recommend "The Women's Rights Movement: Where It's Been, Where It's At," a talk by Sonia Pressman Fuentes.