Catholic women's equality requires a shift on the night watch

Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois marches down Via della Conciliazione toward the Vatican during a demonstration Oct. 17, 2011, in Rome. (CNS/Paul Haring)

by Nicole Sotelo | Jan. 5, 2017

One hundred years ago, Jan. 10, 1917, was a cold Wednesday morning. There was nothing exceptional about the day and that's important to note. Women's history isn't made in exceptional moments. It is often made by the long striving of a woman who has called together some friends for a cup of tea and their conversation leads to freedom, whether in society or the church.

I don't know if tea was brewed on this particular January morning, but I do know that after much discussion by Alice Paul and other suffragists in preceding weeks, a dozen women of the National Women's Party met at their headquarters in Washington, D.C. They picked up cloth banners and marched across Lafayette Park to stand in front of the White House.

Once unfurled, passersby read the homemade signs: "MR. PRESIDENT WHAT WILL YOU DO FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE" and "MR. PRESIDENT HOW LONG MUST WOMEN WAIT FOR LIBERTY." Indeed, women had been waiting for generations.

At the time, nearly 70 years had passed since the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y., Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had passed away. A new generation of women had entered the movement, one that was seemingly slow in progress. Having failed to secure a federal amendment for equal suffrage, women now campaigned state by state in an arduous bid for freedom, in addition to ongoing federal lobby efforts.

https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/young-voices/catholic-womens-equality-requires-shift-night-watch