Womens Equality Day - 26th August

From the Capital Flyer:

This year is the 90th anniversary of women winning the right to vote in the United States. At the first women’s rights convention in 1848 the call for women’s right to vote was heard. That call was answered on Aug. 26, 1920, when the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was officially approved.  At a time when women were intended to be seen and not heard, American suffragists braved reprimand and hardship by speaking out on behalf of all women.

For 72 years the non-violent movement continued. Extraordinary women arose in each state and became part of history themselves when they successfully secured civil rights and political independence for American women. This 90th Anniversary offers a unique opportunity to pay tribute to their bravery, determination, and tenacity and to their lasting achievement.

The League of Women Voters of the District of Columbia invites all women and men to join them on Thursday at Lafayette Park, Washington, D.C., to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

The Ebell Club

From the New York Times:

... the Ebell Club, a women’s social club that still operates in one of its original buildings, erected in 1927 in the Hancock Park neighborhood. Established in 1897 as a substitute for the university education that women were largely denied, the club had 2,500 members in its heyday in the 1920s, and activities included Shakespeare, gardening and art appreciation.

The club, one of the first of its kind in the country, is now struggling with a 21st-century problem: how to convince modern women that such a club has contemporary value to them.

Women’s clubs were established in American life shortly after the Civil War. “It was a time women all over the country decided a woman’s place is not in the home, that they needed to get out,” said Karen J. Blair, a history professor and expert on women’s clubs at Central Washington University. “So they got together to study literature, history, philosophy and poetry.”

In 1868 in New York, a journalist named Jane Cunningham Croly founded her own club, Sorosis, after she was denied entry at an all-male press club where Charles Dickens was speaking. Ms. Croly was instrumental in the creation of clubs throughout the country, whose missions soon began to include various political and social welfare agendas, from women’s suffrage to child labor to public health.

The Ebell was named after Adrian Ebell, a German professor who traveled around California forming study groups for women. In the beginning of the 20th century, the Ebell was one of the largest and most elite clubs in the nation, rivaled only by the Friday Morning Club in downtown Los Angeles.

Sotomayor Quits Womens' Group

From Kenneth P. Vogel @ the Seattle PI:

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor resigned from an elite women's-only group Friday under pressure from Republican senators who suggested her membership could violate judicial codes barring judges from belonging to discriminatory groups.

In a letter to the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is considering her nomination, Sotomayor reiterated her belief that the group, the Belizean Grove, "does not practice invidious discrimination and my membership did not violate the Judicial Code of Ethics, but I do not want questions about this to distract anyone from my qualifications and record."

The New York-based group, with about 120 dues-paying members, was little-known until Sotomayor disclosed her membership in a questionnaire submitted earlier this month to the Judiciary Committee.

Founded nearly 10 years ago as the female answer to the Bohemian Grove — a secretive all-male club whose members have included former U.S. presidents and top business leaders — the Belizean Grove's membership includes Army generals, Wall Street executives and former ambassadors.