US Women’s Rights Hero: In Celebration and Appreciation of Lana Moresky
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Angelos Sofocleous
Publication (Outlet/Website): Assorted In-Sights (In-Sight Publishing)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/11/13
An Ohioan women’s rights hero has been at the forefront of the fight for women’s rights for decades. Her name is Lana Moresky, who is a Shaker Heights resident in Cleveland, Ohio. She acted as the President and Coordinator for the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1972 after moving to Ohio, where she was previously living in Pittsburgh. Her fights for women’s rights, and against the regressive forces in American culture and society, have been for the “legalization of abortion, employment equity and the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, an effort that failed in 1982,” the Advance Ohio reports.
The tremendous, arduous, and emotionally difficult efforts have extended to work to have women elected into office through attempts to have the first woman appointed to the Northern Ohio federal bench. Moresky continues the same fight for women’s rights right into the present, which is a noble aspiration, actualized, and an inspiration for many. No doubt. Women’s rights in the United States began, effectively, in the 1920s.
By which we mean, American democracy began in the 1920s, as Louis CK astutely noted in the opening section of one time that he hosted Saturday Night Live, because women finally got the right to vote at that time. Moresky relates her personal experience in tears within the video (linked in the first paragraph) because at the start of the decades-long work she did not expect to see these kinds of events in her lifetime necessarily.
These kinds of changes appeared too far into the future, but now girls can see a woman in power and making decisions with an impact as a leader in the most powerful country in the world. She made a powerful statement in this recent, brief, interview about finally feeling a part of the country, of The United States of America. It provides an insight to the status of women, emotionally, in that many probably felt, and sometimes likely still feel, like outsiders to the mainstream political process and socio-cultural milieu.
Women are still unfairly treated in a society that often praises itself to be one of the most democratic in the world. It is not the largest democracy in the world. India is the largest democracy in the world, but America has made significant progress compared to other countries on freedom of speech, for example. However, as noted earlier, women in the United States only gained the right to vote in the 1920s, which makes democracy relatively recent in the US.
In 2016, American women fall below men in various sectors – education, job prospects, salaries, and government representation. Black and Latino American women have it even worse. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) notes that American women make 78 cents for every dollar earned by American men and also that over 1,000 public K-12 schools in the United States have single-sex education programs. What is more, women take less than 20% of the seats of the United States House of Representatives.
As Jabril Faraj brings it, “For much, if not all, of human history, women have been little more than property — subjected by men, bought and sold (in the name of “marriage”) and viewed as not much more than vessels for procreation.” Thankfully, things have changed now. But we’re anywhere where we need to be on protecting women’s rights and ensuring sex equality. Lana Moresky is a notable example of people who take action against inequality and advocate women’s rights by pressuring to get more women elected into office. Moresky has been a top Democratic activist and fundraiser for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign during the last year and it’s women like Moresky that brought about any change in women’s position in society and their representation in the political life.
Lana Moresky stresses the fact that it’s a major mistake that women are considered unable to make decisions or lead an organization. In fact, she emphasizes that when NOW pressures to get more women involved into politics it faces fierce opposition from male politicians or members of the government. A notable example is the unwillingness of the Senate to vote for the ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which is an international treaty that has been signed and ratified by 189 UN states, following states like Somalia, Iran, and Tonga.
The CEDAW focuses and aims exactly on what its name says: ending the elimination and discrimination against women in marriage, employment, political participation and education. The United States of America does not have a right to be proud of respecting mothers of newborns as it’s the only high-income developed country that does not offer a paid maternity leave to women. The gender gap is clear in wage inequality as the USA ranks 65th out of 142 countries in wage equality for similar work, according to the 2014 Global Gender Gap Report. These are all immediate and long-term concerns that need to addressed persistently by activists, politicians, and citizens of the US. Lana continues her work into the current, urgent, and ongoing issues for women throughout America, and we wish her success in her pursuits, and wish this to be positive highlight and expression of appreciation for her tremendous dedication and long-term commitment to women’s rights in the US. Here’s in celebration and appreciation of Moresky!
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightjournal.com.
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