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Two different kinds of posts were prominent on Facebook on Wednesday (August 26):
In a world where women are definitely still not equal with men (representation in media, government, or pay, to name just a few examples; see TIME for a great infographic), the prominence of celebrating canines over half the human race bothered me immensely.
Curious about the origins of both days, I did a little research.
National Women's Equality Day became such after a Joint Resolution was passed by Congress in 1971. The date was chosen to celebrate the day in 1920 when women in the United States of America finally won the right to vote (for interest and comparison, New Zealand was the first nation to grant full suffrage in 1893, Australian women followed in 1902 (though Aboriginal women were excluded and not granted the right to vote until 1967), and as recently as this week, women in Saudi Arabia were finally given the vote. The Inter-Parliamentary Union has an interesting chronology of the history of women's suffrage).
National Dog Day was created much later, in 2004, to bring public awareness about the number of dogs needing to be rescued each year.
- Posts celebrating dogs in honor of National Dog Day, and
- Posts asking people to remember that, although dogs are awesome, it was also National Women's Equality Day
In a world where women are definitely still not equal with men (representation in media, government, or pay, to name just a few examples; see TIME for a great infographic), the prominence of celebrating canines over half the human race bothered me immensely.
Curious about the origins of both days, I did a little research.
National Women's Equality Day became such after a Joint Resolution was passed by Congress in 1971. The date was chosen to celebrate the day in 1920 when women in the United States of America finally won the right to vote (for interest and comparison, New Zealand was the first nation to grant full suffrage in 1893, Australian women followed in 1902 (though Aboriginal women were excluded and not granted the right to vote until 1967), and as recently as this week, women in Saudi Arabia were finally given the vote. The Inter-Parliamentary Union has an interesting chronology of the history of women's suffrage).
National Dog Day was created much later, in 2004, to bring public awareness about the number of dogs needing to be rescued each year.
According to Parade Magazine, over half a million tweets were sent celebrating #NationalDogDay. A Google search for news articles on National Dog Day returned over 26 million results. The same search for National Women's Equality Day returned 1.9 million results.
Google search for news articles on National Dog Day
The same search for National Women's Equality Day
This disparity is disturbing. Why did the organizer's of National Dog Day choose this day as their day of celebration? My guess is they simply didn't know about the conflict. As well intentioned as the organizers of the various National Women's Equality Day events and publicity were, much of it, like this National Women's History Project brochure, seems out of touch and irrelevant in today's social media saturated world.
The best publicity for National Women's Equality Day came from Broadway. Led by Tony Award winning Fun Home (the first Broadway musical with an all-female writing team to win a Tony Award for Best Original Score), Broadway stars posted pictures of themselves imitating Rosie the Riveter in support of the Equal Rights Amendment (a constitutional amendment expressly prohibiting discrimination against women and girls on the basis of gender).
It would be wonderful to see National Women's Equality Day get the recognition it deserves, and for women to be treated equally in all spheres of life.
I was very pleased to see the following on the National Dog Day website -
It would be wonderful to see National Women's Equality Day get the recognition it deserves, and for women to be treated equally in all spheres of life.
I was very pleased to see the following on the National Dog Day website -
Although we have been celebrating National Dog Day on August 26th for the last 11 years, this year it was brought to our attention that National Dog Day was drawing focus away from Women's Equality Day and thus, out of respect for this extremely important day of recognition and observation for women's rights everywhere, we are happy to permanently change the date of our celebration to August 31st, to end the Dogs Days of Summer with a grand celebration.
Hopefully next year, National Women's Equality Day will be more prominent, and not because of its relation to dogs. I hope that by 2020, the 100th anniversary of American women winning the right to vote, we will live in a world where women are more equally represented in the media, in government, and receive equal pay for equal work.
In the meantime, we have a lot of work to do.
In the meantime, we have a lot of work to do.