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Texas Tech University Celebrates Women’s Equality Day
- Updated: September 4, 2015
by Eric Galatas
LUBBOCK, Texas – Texas Tech University is celebrating Women’s Equality Day in true 21st-century style.
Since students always are looking at their smartphones or tablets, said Tricia Earl, coordinator of the school’s Women’s Studies Program, the program decided to launch a national tweet chat at #WED2015 – an interactive, real-time conversation on the history and ongoing struggles for women’s equality.
“If you remember back in the ‘50s and ‘60s, women would get together at different houses, and those were called consciousness-raising groups,” she said. “That’s what Twitter is today, so it really gives students – and all of us here on campus – a way to kind of see that we’re not alone.”
Texas Tech University celebrates Women’s Equality Day today. Photo: Gajus.
Earl said the events on campus – including a voter-registration drive and an evening forum on race and gender – commemorate the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920. She said digging into the history of why it took so long for women to win the right to vote helps gain a greater understanding of the situation women face today.
A recent report from WalletHub ranked Texas 47th nationally for empowering women in politics, workplace environment and education equality. The study examined 11 key metrics, including the percentage of female lawmakers in the state Legislature and the disparity in income between women and men.
Charlotte Dunham, a Texas Tech associate professor, said Women’s Equality Day is an opportunity to stop and reflect.
“It’s a reminder to women to not give up the fight, that we can do this,” she said. “We can make a better world for women – and, incidentally, a better world for women is a better world for men, too.”
The WalletHub report ranked the United States 54th globally for its gender gap in political empowerment. It found that women hold 52 percent of all professional-level jobs, but less than 15 percent of executive officers are women and less than 5 percent are Fortune 500 chief executives.
The report is online at wallethub.com.