Women's Equality Day, 2009

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Part VI

The President

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Proclamation 8402--Women's Equality Day, 2009

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Title 3--
The President

Proclamation 8402 of August 25, 2009

Women's Equality Day, 2009

By the President of the United States of America

A Proclamation

Today, our country renews its commitment to freedom and
justice for all our citizens. As we prepare to
celebrate this women's day of equality, we reflect on
the sacrifices once made to allow women and girls the
basic rights and choices we freely exercise today. The
future we leave to our daughters and granddaughters
will be determined by our willingness to build on the
achievements of our past and move forward as one people
and one Nation. The fight for women's equality is not a
woman's agenda, but an American agenda.

We honor the resilience, accomplishments, and history
of all women in the United States. We celebrate the
courageous women who fought to uphold a fundamental
principle within our Constitution--the right to vote--
and in so doing, protected the cornerstone of our
vibrant democracy. These visionaries of the Seneca
Falls Convention of 1848 sought to ensure that our
country lived up to its founding ideals. Although only
one, Charlotte Woodward, at the age of 81, had the
opportunity to exercise her newfound right, the
struggle reminds us that no righteous cause is a lost
one. We also commemorate women like Frances Ellen
Watkins Harper, a poet and lecturer who formed the
National Association of Colored Women; Antonia Pantoja,
a tireless advocate of education equality within the
Latino community; Sarah Winnemucca, a voice for peace
within the Native American community; and Patsy Mink,
author of Title IX and the first woman of color and
Asian American woman elected to the United States
Congress. These women's talents, and the contributions
of countless others, built upon the framework of 1848
and forged paths for future generations.

Our Nation has come a long way since that ground-
breaking convention in New York. Women have occupied
some of the most significant positions in government.
They have delivered justice from the bench of our
highest court, fought for our country in foreign lands,
discovered cures to diseases, and joined the ranks of
the greatest business leaders of our time. Female
college graduates now outnumber their male
counterparts. Women have sought equality through
government, demonstrated by the signing of the Lilly
Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, and the establishment
of the White House Council on Women and Girls. They
have sought equality through advocacy, exemplified by
the efforts of thousands of women's organizations.
America has made significant progress toward becoming
the fair and just society the suffragists once
envisioned.

Yet, today, our work remains unfinished. Far too many
adult women remain mired in poverty. Women are still
subject to pervasive discrimination at school and
harassing conduct in the workplace. Women make, on
average, only 78 cents for every dollar paid to men.
Underrepresented in many facets of our economic and
public life, from government to boardrooms to the
sciences, women have yet to eradicate all barriers to
professional development.

We stand at a moment of unparalleled change and a time
for reflection and hope. We cannot allow the vibrant
energy and passionate commitment of our trailblazing
women to fade, and we can never forget the
responsibility

we bear to the ideals of liberty and equality for all.
Each generation of successful women serves as a
catalyst to empower, enlighten, and educate the next
generation of girls and boys, and we must devote
ourselves to promoting this catalyst for change now and
in the future.

On this Women's Equality Day, we resolve to continue
the important work of our Nation's foremothers and
their successors, and turn their vision of a more equal
America into our reality.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the
United States of America, by virtue of the authority
vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United
States, do hereby proclaim August 26, 2009, as Women's
Equality Day. I call upon the people of the United
States to celebrate the achievements of women and
recommit themselves to the goal of true gender equality
in this country.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this
twenty-fifth day of August, in the year of our Lord two
thousand nine, and of the Independence of the United
States of America the two hundred and thirty-fourth.