Crossposted on JVoices

A few years ago, I read Devil in the White City, Erik Larson's non-fiction account of the history of the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, complete with architecture, politics, and a murder mystery.  Good stuff.  But I didn't realize that the Chicago World's Fair was also the site, 115 years ago this week, of the first Jewish Women's Congress, which was part of the Fair's World Parliament of Religions.

Thirty-eight years ago today, thousands of women nation-wide responded to Jewish feminist Betty Friedan's call for a Women's Strike for Equality. In addition to a huge march down New York's 5^th Avenue, women around the country demonstrated in support of three main goals: free abortion on demand, free 24-hour community-controlled child care centers, and equal opportunity in jobs and education.

Are younger generations of women "afraid" of feminism? Has the media slashed and distorted women's choices about balancing work and family? Must women vote for female candidates?

Today is the 35^th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, legalizing abortion. In commemoration, I’ve been reading Behind Every Choice is a Story, by Gloria Feldt, former president of Planned Parenthood – a book that I’ve been meaning to read for a while.

I once had the privilege of hearing Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg speak in person. She’s a tiny person with huge, almost caricature-scale glasses, but she conveys an unmistakable weightiness in her speech – well-articulated, certain, and slow (surely she is the slowest speaking Jew ever!).

On this weekend twenty six years ago, women paraded down New York's Fifth Avenue to mark the tenth anniversary of Women's Strike for Equality and the sixtieth anniversary of the women's right to vote.

It’s the story of an immigrant struggling to survive economically in the big city, a woman running for president, a crusade against pornography and birth control, a decades-long debate on how to achieve political equality for women.

I became a historian not just because I like poking through people’s stuff (though I am pretty nosy), but because I believe that history offers us the best way to understand how to make change in that history offers us the best way to understand how to make change in the world – and our world could use some serious change. I draw inspiration from the stories of people who came before us and made a real difference. But sometimes looking back at history makes me depressed, especially when it seems like we’re stuck in the same arguments and issues, or even losing ground.