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On Choice + Challenge – Let’s celebrate all year

Insights & Inspiration, Personal Development, Reinvention | 0 comments

On Choice + Challenge – Let’s celebrate all year!

International Women’s Day is celebrated on March 8 every year. For many it is the month of March. I prefer to celebrate it every day all year. Why? Let’s face it: without women none of the rest of us would be here. In that spirit, I offer some ideas on the 2021 theme for the day:  #ChooseToChallenge.

I held back adding to the slew of posts, articles and emails typically sent the day of commemoration. I didn’t want to lose the foundational reason we recognize it.

Foundational Focus

Yes, it is to celebrate the contributions of women. For sure.

Maybe even more important is because this day is rooted in the right of women to VOTE.

The part of humanity responsible for perpetuating humanity needs to have an equal voice – over their own decisions, and in the decisions that are made to govern how their communities operate. We need to reinforce that all day, every day.

Because doesn’t everyone want that? Don’t you?

That’s what the #ChooseToChallenge theme is about: to choose the candidates they prefer and have a voice on legal matters placed on any ballot during elections for the public to decide about. To have a say in what goes on those ballots. And every other decision for each of our lives.

We need to challenge limitations on the exercise of those choices for women, especially women of color, and anyone else marginalized from being able to weigh in.

Choices And Challenges

In my reinvention work with clients – career and life redesign – with any choice often comes challenge. So, it is close to my heart to advocate choosing to challenge all barriers that exist for anyone to create the exceptional life that all humans deserve.

That is, in my view, our birthright. Every one of us. And overcoming the challenge to choose is how more people will be supported to create their own exceptional lives.

Let’s take a look at all that in the context of voting rights as we celebrate International Women’s Day, any day, every day, every year.

Some History

  • This commemorative holiday dates back to March 8, 1914
  • First observed in Germany, it was dedicated to women’s right to vote. Ironically, German women were not granted the right to vote until 1918
  • Meanwhile, in the U.S., it was in 1870, after the Civil War that black men finally gained the right to vote. The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified to prohibit states from denying their male citizens the right to vote based on “race, color or previous condition of servitude.”
  • And while in 1920, U.S. women were ostensibly granted the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment, that right did not practically extend to women of color.
  • During a recent trip to Italy, I was surprised to learn that while the Italian Constitution guaranteed formal gender equality – like the Equal Rights Amendment that has yet to pass in the United States – equality around choice, having a voice and exercising it in elections, was minimally included. Italian women could vote in local elections as of 1924.
    • Equality notwithstanding, though, it wasn’t until after World War II, in 1945, that Italian women were given the full legal right to vote
    • However, even then, it took until 1963 for Italian women to be part of political parties and hold all offices. (Prior to that they could only occupy posts men had rejected. Thanks a lot.)
  • Back in the U.S., it was a similar situation for women of color. So much for women’s right to choose – in elections or otherwise.
    • The ratification of the 19th Amendment, in 1920, technically granted some women the right to vote. That right did not initially extend to most women of African American, Asian American, Hispanic American and American Indian heritage. Widespread voter suppression continued to keep them from the polls.
    • It wasn’t until after passage of the Voting Rights Act – nearly half a century later on August 6, 1965 – that women of color got the right to vote, practically speaking. For them, as it still is in many countries around the world, there is a difference between the opportunity and actually being able to exercise that right.  

According to a Pew Research Center analysis of women’s enfranchisement measures in 198 countries and self-administering territories, at least 20 nations preceded the U.S. in extending the right to vote to women.

Other countries also lagged behind – and continue to.

Challenges To Exercising Choices

Still today, there are many places in the world where women are limited in being able to exercise what right to vote they may have. Reasons include requirements based on:

      • cultural norms for male permission for women to leave home
      • limitations on women interacting with men in public place
      • women expecting children being prohibited from being seen in public, or even
      • women being allowed to make their own major decisions (like, for example, accessing medical care).

Many women who must tend to household and childcare duties are unable to find the time to travel to and from polling stations. In some places, it is still unsafe for them to do so.

The result is that a huge portion of women are simply unable to go out to vote – to exercise their right to choose, even if they have one.

If you have the right to vote, to have a voice in communicating with those in government who make decisions that may impact you, then by all means vote, work to help get out the vote and make your views known to the representatives elected to represent you. voice.

And if you are also privileged to make choices about your own life, stop just thinking or dreaming about the exceptional life you want. I encourage you to take action to create it and get moving in that direction.

Choice + Challenges In Creating Your Exceptional Life

While challenges often precede getting the right to choose to begin with, along with exercising our choices often come challenges – and they can be overcome. Don’t limit or stop yourself. Where you encounter obstacles or roadblocks, there are detours or ways around. If you need help to make your dreams for work and life the reality of your choosing, invest in making it happen.

Because you only go around in this life once – and life is too short to miss out on the fullest expression of love, truth and beauty possible for yours.

The philosopher Plato equated the experience of love, truth and beauty with the experience of God. God is everything there is in the creative universe, being part of that is a definite birthright.

But getting to the full expression of your birthright isn’t magic: it’s about choice – and that is yours to pursue.

Go for it.

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