Jeannette Rankin.

If you don’t know why she is important or have never heard her name, it’s time you know her and know you should.

In our quest to bring you new role models and sheroes, we bring you an excerpt from Kamala Lopez‘s post from September 2008 at the Huffington Post. Sarah Palin’s annoying and repetitive cries of “maverick” prompted Lopez to write a piece on true historical maverick, Jeannette Rankin, the subject of A Single Woman.

On a cold distant November in 1916, a true Republican maverick and reformer became the first woman elected to the United States Congress. Her name was Jeannette Rankin and as an indefatigable champion of peace, justice and equality for all, her ghost stands in stark contrast to the Republican woman being hailed today as a loveable patriot and agent of change.

Should Sarah Palin be voted into office come this November, ninety two years after Jeannette’s historic election, she may well be responsible for change: a change back to a time before the struggles of thousands of women and men succeeded in providing a framework upon which the Women’s, Peace and Civil Rights movements could weave themselves into the fabric of America.

When Jeannette Rankin ran for Congress from Montana, not only were there no women in the US government – women across the United States couldn’t vote. Three years later the nineteenth amendment was ratified granting all American women the Federal right to cast their ballot. Today more than fifty million American women are not registered. Of registered female voters in the last election, twenty two million of us didn’t bother.

It is the most painful irony to watch Palin stand on Jeannette’s shoulders in order to dismantle that which Rankin gave her life to build. At the time that Jeannette was campaigning, there were several states in which it was still legal for a husband to terminate his wife’s pregnancy without her consent. Choice and abortion are not synonyms. Choice is a word with connotations that reach far and deep into a woman’s life – her finances, her sexuality, her body, her opportunities, her control over her own destiny. Rankin believed that these choices should be available not only to all women, but to all peoples.

Continue reading the original post here.

Learn more about Kamala Lopez  by clicking on the following links:

ERA Today (Official Facebook page)

Global Girl Media

Heroica Films

Las Lopezistas

One of my former students sent me a link to Nicholas Kristof’s latest op-ed piece in the New York Times. He explores the world of child marriages and makes a correlation between societal violence and the degree of female repression in that society.

It’s hard to imagine that there have been many younger divorcées — or braver ones — than a pint-size third grader named Nujood Ali.

Nujood is a Yemeni girl, and it’s no coincidence that Yemen abounds both in child brides and in terrorists (and now, thanks to Nujood, children who have been divorced). Societies that repress women tend to be prone to violence.

Not only was I excited to read yet another piece by Kristof detailing the global injustices waged against girls and women, I was excited that Samantha had sent me that link the morning after I had attended the Half the Sky event in celebration of International Women’s Day. The event created  an educational platform to foster dialogue about global women’s rights violations, make these violations center stage and offer solutions and examples of triumph. Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn authored the book that inspired the movement and last night’s event.

Last night’s event and this morning’s message from Samantha linking me to Kristof’s article came after an inspiring morning with my classes yesterday and the women from Global Girl Media and Heroica Films. The morning was an inspiring mix of presentation and brainstorming. The power of the new media, online social networking and spreading the word became inspiring themes, themes that are not unfamiliar to many of us but themes that came alive for many for the first time and became alive again for many others (myself included).

These 3 events combined have stoked the fire anew. After decades of activism and consciousness-raising, I can never be reminded enough about the power of community, the connections that spark our imaginations and hearts and the power of spreading the word by any means necessary.