Marking America’s 36th Women’s History Month
What a month for American women!
The anniversary of:
- Abigail Adams’s iconic 1776 letter urging her husband John to “Remember the ladies” while he helped frame the Declaration of Independence
- the election of the first female member of Congress, Jeanette Rankin, in 1917
- the first Women’s Suffrage Parade, which drew 8,000 women to Washington in 1917
- the appointment in 1934 of Frances Perkins as Secretary of Labor, the first female member of the Cabinet
- the Congressional passage of legislation designating March as Woman’s History Month in 1987
With the theme of this year’s Women’s History Month being Celebrating Women Who Tell Our Stories, Temple Emanu-El is proud to welcome New York’s junior senator to talk about her own tale, about where we’ve been, where we are and where she hopes we will be by America’s 100th Women’s History Month.
Since she was first elected to Congress in 2006, Kirsten Gillibrand has been a leader on some of the toughest fights in Washington. She wrote and passed the STOCK Act, led the effort to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell,” and passed the historic 9/11 health bill, which ensured first responders and survivors got the health care they deserved. More recently, she helped pass provisions from her bill making gun trafficking a federal crime as part of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, and helped lead the fight to pass the PACT Act, which ensured veterans exposed to toxins during their service would get the care and benefits they earned. After a nearly decade-long fight against the epidemic of sexual assault in the military, she led the passage of critical reforms to the military justice system. She is chair of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel, and also serves on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Senate Agriculture Committee, and Senate Aging Committee.
Followed by a post-service Q&A