By © Sarah Becker 2026

“If we consider her as a citizen, as a member of a great nation, she must have the same rights as all other members.” Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1892

The American Equal Rights Association [1866-1869], an organization founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass, worked hard to “secure Equal Rights to all American citizens, especially the right of suffrage, irrespective of race, color, or sex.”

The AERA won the black man’s bondage battle, his right to vote [Amendment 15, Section 1, 1870], only to lose the war for women’s equality.

Today’s woman values the vote. In June 2022 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade 6-to-3. Since then, abortion has been on the ballot in seven States and each time anti-abortion advocates have lost the popular vote.

Another of women’s articulated wants: Equal Pay! “Underpaying women and undervaluing their work not only hurts women and their families, it damages the entire U.S. economy,” the American Association of University Women [AAUW] said.

“In 2021, when comparing full-time, year-round workers, women were paid just 84 cents for every dollar paid to men,” the AAUW continued. “When the calculation included all workers, the earnings discrepancy was substantially larger. Women took home only 77 cents on the dollar.”

The data-aggregate “demonstrates that there is not just one pay gap, but rather many pay gaps—in earnings, benefits and wealth,” the AAUW concluded. Asian-American women, for example, earn 99 cents on the dollar; White women 82 cents, Black women 69 cents, Native American women 59 cents, and Latinas 57 cents.

The AAUW’s solution: Congressional passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act of 2023 [H.R. 17, S. 728], “an update which would strengthen the [61 year-old] Equal Pay Act of 1963.” The two bills were simultaneously introduced —in March 2023—then left to linger in Committee.

“When President [John F.] Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act in 1963, our country codified the basic idea that all workers should earn ‘equal pay for equal work regardless of sex,’” U.S. Representative Bobby Scott (D-VA3) argued in 2021.

According to the Department of Labor the Equal Pay Act of 1963 “protects against wage discrimination based on sex…All forms of compensation are covered, including salary, overtime pay, bonuses, life insurance, vacation and holiday pay, cleaning or gasoline allowances, hotel accommodations, reimbursement for travel expenses, and benefits.”

If Major George Washington could advocate for equal pay in 1754 [the French and Indian War], then why cannot Congress act on behalf of today’s working woman?

“Giving up my commission is quite contrary to my intention,” Washington wrote Virginia Lt. Governor Robert Dinwiddie. “[B]ut to be slaving dangerously for the shadow of pay, through woods, rocks, mountains,—I would rather prefer the great toil of a daily laborer, and dig for a maintenance, provided I  were reduced to the necessity, than serve upon such ignoble terms; for I really do not see why the lives of his Majesty’s subjects in Virginia should be of less value, than of those in other parts of his American dominions; especially when it is well known, that we must undergo double their hardship.”

“We can’t conceive, that being Americans should deprive us of the benefits of British Subjects; nor lessen our claim to preferment,” Washington added in 1757.  “We are defending the Kings Dominions, and altho the Inhabitants of Great Britain are removed from (this) Danger, they are…equally with Us.”

Subject, as defined by the American Heritage dictionary: “one who is under the rule of another: especially a government.” To what extent are today’s women ruled by men: husbands and the Law of Coverture; religious leaders, politicians and or justices. Only 28% of today’s popularly elected Congress is female: the highest percentage in U.S. history.

Said Victoria Woodhull [1838-1927], a member of the Equal Rights Party and the first female candidate for President [1872]: “There is something wrong with a government that makes women the legal property of their husbands. The whole system needs changing, but men will never make changes.”

March is women’s history month. “In discussing the rights of woman, we are to consider, first, what belongs to her as an individual,” Stanton suggested in 1892. “If we consider her as a citizen, as a member of a great nation, she must have the same rights as all other members.”

Women are not cultural subsets of American society. They are individuals who in the collective seek gender equality!

Lucy Randolph Mason [1882-1959], the daughter of Episcopal minister Landon Mason—born at Clarens on Alexandria’s Seminary Hill—tells of many “instances where mill-town preachers, invoking the authority of the church, collaborated with millowners and local police to deny civil rights.” A dedicated activist, Miss Mason died four years prior to the passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963.

“Equal work deserves equal pay,” Congressman Don Beyer (D-VA8) said in 2015. “This isn’t simply an issue of fairness, it’s about strengthening our middle class—putting food on the table, gas in the tank, and ensuring moms, daughters and sisters are not cheated out of their paychecks.”

Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter [2015-2017] was the first to “open all military occupations to women.” There is no gender pay gap, even if there are fewer women because “at every rank, men and women are paid equally.” By contrast, today’s Trump administration favors Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s definition of inequality.

In 2017 the non-profit Contentedly Foundation found that “although women hold half of all state and federal service jobs, they make 10% less than men. Also in 2017: former President [2017-2021] now President Donald Trump (R-FL, NY) “froze an equal pay wage data rule.”

The EEOC was ordered “to halt pay data collection.” Compliance, Trump said “imposed an incredible amount of burden” on business. Soon after, the White House removed the Equal Pay Pledge from its website.

The Equal Pay Pledge as of December 16, 2016: “The White House launched the Equal Pay Pledge in June at the first-ever United State of Women Summit [USOW], encouraging companies from across the American economy to take action to advance equal pay…Equal Pay has been an Administration priority since President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law in 2009….”

Lucy Randolph Mason a direct descendant of George Mason, author of the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights, supported state labor laws that would ensure safer workplaces, end child labor, raise minimum wages and shorten work hours.

In 2019 the Bureau of Labor Statistics said that “women accounted for 51.8% of all workers employed in management, professional and related occupations.”

Also in 2019: the McCrain- Palmer study “found a substantial pay gap between male and female congressional staff.”

Today’s “wage gap cannot be dismissed entirely as the inevitable by-product of “women’s choices” in education, career and family matters,” The American Bar Association said. “Even when all relevant career and family attributes are taken into account, there still is an unexplained gap between men’s and women’s earnings.” Working women collectively lose out on more than $500 billion a year.

Working women, women generally need to rethink the status quo. To cast their hard-earned November votes prudently. In 2023 the Equal Pay Act was not only DOA, the disunited Senate scrapped the Equal Rights Amendment [S.J.Res.39, 2023].

“To the horror of hundreds of millions of American people, women in America have far fewer rights today than they did even a year ago,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer [D-NY] then said.

About the Author: Sarah Becker started writing for The Economist while a graduate student in England. Similar publications followed. She joined the Crier in 1996 while serving on the Alexandria Convention and Visitors Association Board. Her interest in antiquities began as a World Bank hire, with Indonesia’s need to generate hard currency. Balinese history, i.e. tourism provided the means. The New York Times describes Becker’s book, Off Your Duffs & Up the Assets, as “a blueprint for thousands of nonprofit managers.” A former museum director, SLAM’s saving grace Sarah received Alexandria’s Salute to Women Award in 2007.  Email: abitofhistory53@gmail.com