But we get somehow mythologized either as women, people who cannot, or people who are somehow super and can do it all and it’s very difficult to bring that conversation back down. And as we see American women entering into new spheres of power, don't we also see then, if you will, the backlash, the criticism, the commentary. This is a legacy that African American women leave to us. Why can’t womanhood jettison its biocentrism to expand its political horizons and include people like Marsha P. Johnson? Watkins Harper was born in Baltimore, but became a activist of great reputation in part for her speaking style. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our, What Does It Mean to Be a Woman? Maybe there would be some insight in the dictionary. In 1949, the French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir asserted that “one is not born, but rather becomes a woman”; in doing so, she grasped how the raw facts of our bodies at birth are operated on by social processes to transform each of us into the people we become. But we know, for example, that American women still face a series of scourges. Of course, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't talk about women as leaders, women as policy makers, women who are at the helm of these institutions. And that is, frankly, one of the legacies as well of the 19th Amendment and it is a legacy that we still are grappling with even today. Grandma also dedicated her time to gift me with my knowledge and passion for sewing, unknowingly shaping my future career and life passion. It's Complicated. My mom sacrificed so much of her life to fight for mine to ensure my successful future. Grandma Seeley taught me that I can have it all in life, that whatever I seek or desire can be mine if I truly want it. Both of my female role models defied stereotypes, psychology, biology and the dictionary! But it’s also recognizing the strengths that come with womanhood – the strength of your heart, your mind, and your body, which differ from woman to woman, which differ culturally. I sat down to write a blog on the subject. Nothing came out. ©2020 Verizon Media. I watched my single mom tirelessly work three jobs in order to provide a healthy and stable environment in which I could flourish. Sign up to receive the top stories you need to know now on politics, health and more, © 2020 TIME USA, LLC. I can often forget the deep passion and intuition that I was born with (that all women are born with!). But within certainly radical political coalitions, there’s no companion proposals coming out of Congress for women's votes. I just think there's no shortcut around those conversations. Labeling others contrary to how they have labeled themselves is an ethically loaded act, but “woman” remains a useful shorthand for the entanglement of femininity and social status regardless of biology—not as an identity, but as the name for an imagined community that honors the female, enacts the feminine and exceeds the limitations of a sexist society. Whether it's for African American women, it’s health disparities or economic disparities. Today, American women are facing a gnarly fight over the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, still a live question many, many, many decades, almost a century after Alice Paul first put forward the Equal Rights Amendment. Pushing past my self-criticism, I tapped into my intuition. That is something we will have to be vigilant about if we want that amendment to have meaning in our lives. And the question is how to put these questions not simply on the agenda in an exchange with a colleague or friend, right, but how do you put that question on the agenda in a state legislature in Congress for policy makers. In order to dive head-first into this conversation, I needed the perspective of many women. You make MPR News possible. Martha S. Jones is a historian and writer. And it requires, of course, us citizens to be vigilant and to breathe meaning into something like the 14th Amendment. Nine African American women posed, standing, full length, with suffragist Nannie Burroughs holding banner reading, "Banner State Woman's National Baptist Convention" Even though Black women joined other suffragists in fighting for the right to vote, many weren’t able to cast a ballot after the 1920 adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment because of racism.