Column: Women's rights are human rights
James Brown sang, “This is a man's world, but it wouldn't be nothing, nothing, without a woman or a girl.”
On the contrary, this is a woman’s world.
The roles of women in our world hardly need to be emphasized. However, they are so often stifled and downplayed. Women’s History Month displays the shining, irreplaceable value of the female presence, without devaluing men. Women have proudly overstepped social boundaries in history in our present day in athletics, academics, the arts, and politics.
American suffragist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, gathered her fellow women and demanded rights, spring-boarding from the U.S. Constitution. In July of 1848, Stanton boldly presented the Declaration of Sentiments, which began as follows:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”
Stanton argued that women’s rights are human rights. Countless women have taken this mantle of boldness, declaring in their everyday lives the human rights which women deserve.
Stanton further stated, “Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation, - in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States.“
Stanton crafted a document which paved the way in the United States for women’s rights. Stanton, of course, is one of millions of strong women who have shaped history and the rights that women have today. This month we celebrate women- not only in the United States, not only those who have been formally recognized, but women as a whole.
During Women’s History Month we exemplify those who have stood fearlessly in the face of opposition, for their own sake and on behalf of their sisters, as well as those who bravely have endured in silence. We celebrate generations of women, we celebrate women from all ethic and religious backgrounds. We celebrate mothers, wives, daughters, the single woman, we celebrate women of all sexual orientations.
We celebrate women’s rights as human rights.
Columns written by editors and writers of Pacer Times reflect the opinion of that writer. Letters to the editor may be emailed to Editor-in-Chief Cecilia Maddox at cmy@usca.edu, and will be published at the editorial staff’s discretion.
