Women suffragists march in 1912 during NYC parade | The New York Times Photo Archives
August 26 is Women’s Equality Day, which marks the anniversary of the ratification of the 19th amendment, giving women the right to vote. Congress could have called August 26 Suffrage Day, but they didn’t. In 1971, Congress member Bella Abzug, the New York Democrat known for fighting for women’s rights on the House floor, wrote the resolution that named it Women’s Equality Day instead, and she did that on purpose. The vote was a tool. It was never supposed to be the outcome.
So this Women’s Equality Day, I’m not celebrating the 106th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment. I’m pulling the report card.
Here’s what we’re grading to gauge women’s equality in the US: pay, jobs, health, and the voting right itself. Where the country kept its promise, and where it’s falling short.
Economic Participation
Let’s start with the freshest number, because it’s brutal. Women accounted for 100% of the labor force decline in July 2026, according to NWLC’s analysis of BLS data. Since January, 845,000 women have left the labor force. Men? 406,000. Women also absorbed every single job loss the economy posted in July, in a workforce where they make up just over half.
This is not women opting out. Women are being pushed out by a country that still has no federal paid leave and childcare that costs more than rent.
Look at what just happened to the childcare subsidy system itself. In July, federal regulators rescinded the rule that capped what low-income families pay out of pocket for subsidized childcare at 7% of their income. There’s no federal ceiling anymore. States decide now, and costs can climb from there.
When the subsidy disappears, the daycare costs more than the paycheck that’s being brought home, and the job refuses to bend, something has to give. And it’s nearly always the mom.
If we’re handing out grades, this one’s a D.
Equal Pay
Here’s a number that should make your jaw drop. At the current pace, equal pay for women doesn’t arrive until 2088.
Say that out loud. 2088. Not next year. Not in our working lives. Sixty-two years from now, if nothing changes, women will finally get equal pay to men. I’ll be dead.
Make no mistake, this isn’t happenstance. There’s a mechanism behind it. With no paid leave, the skyrocketing costs of childcare that are outpacing inflation, and return-to-office mandates spreading, mothers lean toward the fields built to bend around a family. Fields like teaching, nursing, and jobs that offer flexibility but cap out lower, while men have an easier path into tech and finance and the higher-paying fields that don’t ask for that same trade-off. Occupational segregation like this accounts for roughly half of the overall gender wage gap. That’s not two people making different choices. That’s one group having to take the flexible job that lets them leave for a sick kid, and the other getting the job that pays what they’re worth.
The system leaves mothers no real alternative. Then the culture turns around and calls that trade a preference. A choice.
But a choice made because there was no real choice isn’t a choice.
Mothers pay for this twice. Once in the paycheck and then again in the career they gave up to make the math work. And the gap doesn’t even close in return.
2088 isn’t a passing anything. This one’s an F.
Health
The US has the highest maternal mortality rate of any high-income country in the world. We are one of a small handful of nations globally where that number is rising instead of falling.
Look at who it falls on hardest. Black mothers die at roughly three times the rate of white mothers, and that gap holds even when you control for income and education. It’s not about resources. It’s about who this country protects.
More than half of pregnancy-related deaths happen after delivery, not during it, in a postpartum period this country treats as finished the moment you clear a single six-week checkup.
Maternal mental health belongs in this conversation too. Up to 1 in 5 postpartum deaths involve suicide. Postpartum depression and psychosis don’t check your income or how put-together you look from the outside before they show up. We’re watching proof of this in real time. Lindsay Clancy’s case is still working its way through the courts. And this week, the country is reckoning with Hayden Panettiere, who spent years speaking openly about her own postpartum depression, long before most people were willing to say the words out loud.
I’m not going to make a joke out of this one. F.
The Vote Itself
This is the entire reason Women’s Equality Day has a name at all. Seventy two years of fighting got women the right to vote, and that exact right, the one Women’s Equality Day exists to mark, is under attack right now.
Two bills are moving through Congress, both requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register, and photo ID at the polls.
The SAVE America Act already passed the House, folded directly into the National Defense Authorization Act. It needs 60 votes to clear the Senate filibuster. And there’s a second route: a budget reconciliation framework directing $10 billion toward SAVE Act-style programs in the states, due by September 11. Reconciliation only needs a simple majority. It’s a way around the filibuster entirely.
Either path lands on the same requirement: a birth certificate matching your current legal name, or a passport, shown in person. However, an estimated 69 million women don’t have that because they changed their name when they married. That’s an extra document. An extra trip. Sometimes an extra fee, just to keep a right you already have.
On a report card built entirely out of unfinished business, this was supposed to be the one category we’d already passed. Grade it “Incomplete.”
Source: Center for American Progress
Women Are Not Failing, the Country Is Failing Women
The overall grade for our country this Women’s Equality Day: D-
None of these grades belong to us. We didn’t design the labor market that pushes mothers out, or price childcare out of reach, or let maternal mortality climb while other countries brought theirs down. We didn’t write the bill that makes voting harder for 69 million of us. We just live inside all of it, and get told to do better.
The suffragists fought for 72 years to win the vote. We don’t have that kind of time, and honestly, we don’t need it. We already know how to organize. We already know how to find each other. So let’s build a country that works for moms. One that gets an A far before 2088.
Grades don’t change on their own. Here’s where to put the energy:
- Protect the vote. The League of Women Voters is leading the fight against the SAVE Act suite. Use their quick form to write a letter to Congress.
- Tell us your moment. As part of the American Motherhood Tour, we’re collecting stories about when you realized this country wasn’t built for moms.
We’re Bringing No Country for Mothers to San Francisco
Mark your calendars: on September 28, me and the Moms First team are bringing No Country for Mothers to the West Coast for the first official stop on the American Motherhood Tour. We’re screening the full film in San Francisco at The Presidio Theatre, 6-9 PM complete with a panel discussion after. If you’re in the Bay Area. I’d love to see you there. Capacity is limited, so don’t wait.
Register by August 31.
Photo Courtesy of Working Women’s Network (WWN) at Yale University During Their Community Screening of No Country for Mothers
No Country for Mothers: Screenings Happening Near You
We’re on pace to hit 700 scheduled screenings next week of No Country for Mothers across the US. The energy has been amazing. Grab a mom friend and attend a screening near you, or RSVP for a virtual watch party.
- East Point, GA, Aug 24, 6-8:30 PM at Vesper Theatre — RSVP
- East Troy, WI, Aug 24, 6-8:30 PM at Honey Creek Collective — RSVP
- Albuquerque, NM, Aug 24, 6-8 PM at Guild Cinema — RSVP
- Virtual Screening (Harrison, NY), Aug 25, 1-2 PM — RSVP
- West Jordan, UT, Aug 25, 5:30-8 PM at Viridian Event Center — RSVP
- Burnsville, MN, Aug 25, 6:30-8:30 PM at Trove Brewing — RSVP
- Decatur, GA, Aug 26, 6-8 PM at First Christian Church of Decatur — RSVP
- Austin, TX, Aug 26, 5:30-8:45 PM — RSVP
- Virtual Screening (Chicago, IL), Aug 26, 6:30-8:30 PM — RSVP
- Virtual Screening (Harrison, NY), Aug 26, 8:30-10:30 PM — RSVP
- Mountain View, CA, Aug 26, 6-8 PM — RSVP
- Virtual Screening (Harrison, NY), Aug 27, 9:30-10:30 AM — RSVP
- Little Rock, AR, Aug 28, 17:30-9:30 PM — RSVP
- Phoenix, AZ, Aug 28, 6-9 PM — RSVP
- Meadowview, VA, Aug 29, 10-1 PM — RSVP
- Berea, KY, Aug 29, 6-9 PM at Rebel Rebel Studio & Lounge — RSVP
- Decatur, GA, Aug 30, 10AM-12 PM at Timothy Cox & Co. Realtors — RSVP
- Madison Heights, MI, Aug 30, 11AM-2 PM — RSVP
- Portland, OR, Aug 30, 10:30 AM-12:30 PM at Wy’east Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Community for Positive Aging — RSVP
- Reno, NV, Aug 30, 2-4 PM at Biggest Little Baby — RSVP
Want to host your own? Watch parties can be in your backyard, living room, a local library, your church, movie theater, or wherever moms gather. Help bring moms together in community to talk, watch, and support one another.
Head to our Host Hub for all the info you need to set up your event.
A D- isn’t a verdict on you. It’s the country’s grade, earned one missing paycheck, one postpartum experience, one harder-to-cast ballot at a time. We’re not here to accept it. We’re here to make the country deliver something better.
Grading on a curve is over,
