Where are the women in history books and federal holidays? A Minnesotan looks for answers

NINA MOINI: Well, on this day in 1913, a group of suffragists met with the new President, Woodrow Wilson, to ask him to support votes for women. They left that meeting without any promises and spent years fighting for the passage of the 19th Amendment. That included picketing the White House and enduring violent harassment, arrests, and jail time.

In a new book, a Minnesota law professor argues that their struggle, and others like it, are still obscured by stories that keep men at the center. Jill Hasday is the author of We the Men-- How Forgetting Women's Struggles for Equality Perpetuates Inequality, and she joins me now on the line. Thanks for coming back to be with us, Jill.

JILL HASDAY: Thanks for having me.

NINA MOINI: Yeah. Usually, you come on and you put a lot of things into perspective. And this is kind of like the perfect book for you, I think. That's probably why you wrote it. Tell me a little bit about why your work kind of led you to want to write this book now.

JILL HASDAY: I had had this book in mind for a long time, but what really pushed me to write it now is the 250th anniversary of the United States is coming up in 2026. In all previous commemorations, women have either been blocked out entirely or relegated to a footnote.

And it struck me that this is an important moment when Americans are going to tell stories about ourselves, and I want America's stories to include women as much as men. I think commemorations are so fought-over because people recognize on all sides that historical memory shapes present thought and future action. It's not a surprise that the Trump administration has already announced its task force for planning the 2026 celebrations, with Donald Trump himself as the chair.

NINA MOINI: And so, thinking about the 250th anniversary of the country coming up, 2026, the current political climate, different discussions that are happening, it is interesting that you noted that there are zero federal legal holidays dedicated to women. 8% of statues around the country represent women.

It is women's history month this month. Tell me more about the importance of things like statues, and holidays, and coins.

JILL HASDAY: The book isn't only about commemoration, but I do think commemorations are really important because they shape our background understanding of America that we get on ordinary days and in special occasions. Think about walking through a park to go into a public building, I'm very confident that your initial vision of that statue was a white man, probably on horseback.

And then as you're looking at that building, you're assuming a man's name over the door. I think it's easy to imagine that this is just inertia. But, in fact, one of the things my book shows is that there have been bitter struggles over women's commemoration.

The reason there aren't more statues is because of opposition. For instance, Donald Trump himself, starting from when this plan was first announced in 2016, has opposed placing Harriet Tubman's image on the $20 bill. Obviously, there's many, many consequences of Donald Trump winning the presidency again in 2024, but one of them is that it's probably unlikely that Harriet Tubman will be on the $20.

NINA MOINI: So moving on from commemorations, like you said, there's a lot more to the book-- in the legal world, in the world of the courts and judges, you also explore how judges refer to women in their rulings. What do you want people to understand about women in the courts?

JILL HASDAY: Well, I think anyone living in 21st century America has heard someone who announces or assumes that the sexist bad old days are behind. But one of the things I was so surprised to discover in writing this book is how early those declarations of victory started. They predate the 19th Amendment, which ended sex-based restrictions on the franchise.

And courts don't make these kind of declarations of success randomly. They're most likely to make them in the course of issuing a judgment that denies women rights. And I have over a century of examples extending to Dobbs, the case overturning Roe v Wade.

One of the court's arguments for why it was OK, women shouldn't be worried about losing constitutional protection for abortion rights, was this idea that women already have it made. And the court stresses, for instance, that women are a majority of the voting population, which is true. But they don't get into persistent disparities. For instance, the Mississippi anti-abortion law that's upheld in Dobbs was passed by a legislature that was more than 85% male.

NINA MOINI: And so, speaking about the Dobbs decision, you were writing this book before that, right? But how did it change kind of your approach?

JILL HASDAY: So I started the book before Dobbs, and I'll just say my introduction was initially written as, obviously, women's rights and opportunities have expanded over the last half century, but there's more work to go. After Dobbs, I changed that to women's rights and opportunities have expanded over the last century, because it's not clear to me that women are better off now than we were in 1973 when Roe extended constitutional protection to abortion rights. So that's an example.

But ultimately, although I didn't expect the court to overrule Roe in one fell swoop, ultimately, Dobbs felt very familiar to me because this move, where the court is never more willing to make kind of broad statements about America's progress toward sex equality at the precise moment that the court is denying women something they want, is so familiar. Dobbs is just the latest example of that.

NINA MOINI: And the Equal Rights Amendment is also something that you've helped with the proposal, I understand, for that in the state constitution. So this proposal has failed, correct? Can you tell us a little bit about just the history of the ERA and where that is at?

JILL HASDAY: Well, I wouldn't say "failed." I would say it's ongoing. One of the lessons of the book is that any advance women have fought for, they usually take generations to achieve against fierce opposition. So the ERA is first proposed at the federal level by Alice Paul, who had been one of the more militant suffragists.

She gets her allies in Congress to introduce it in 1923. Congress finally agrees to send it to the states in 1972. But ERA opponents manage to get a seven-year ratification deadline inserted into the resolution. By the time the seven-year deadline ends, there's only 35 of the 38 states that have ratified.

Then feminists, starting in the early-'90s, come up with what they call the three-state solution, which points out the Constitution doesn't include any discussion of being able to have a ratification deadline. It's already hard enough to amend the Constitution. So they get three additional states to ratify the ERA. The 38th is Virginia in 2020.

By that point, Donald Trump is in his first term. His lawyers declare the deadline is binding and the last resolutions don't count. The ERA isn't ratified. There were a number of efforts to get Biden to basically order the archivist, who's in charge of officially recognizing amendments, to recognize the ERA, but he didn't do it.

At this point, personally, I think the best strategy is if Congress passes a statute either directly recognizing the ERA as part of the Constitution or removing the seven-year ratification deadline, that would make it difficult for the supreme court to deny recognition to the ERA. The court has never denied recognition to an amendment that Congress accepts.

NINA MOINI: And so, looking back over history, it's kind of like, aw you know, that's too bad. And what is the kind of the "here's what should be done about it?" Does your book explore kind of the "so here's what needs to happen," or is it just, you think, a matter of time?

JILL HASDAY: My book ends, the last section is called "hope."

NINA MOINI: OK.

JILL HASDAY: And it ends with-- right, it's not just doom and gloom. It ends with unfinished reform agenda that spans teaching, commemoration, legislation, litigation, political representation in everyday life. And I actually think that my book can be a source of hope in anti-feminist times, because it shows that every generation of women in the United States has confronted moments of rollback, and regression, and resistance, and they've persisted nonetheless.

So I think it is really important to take the long view. And there's plenty of work. There's plenty of work still to do.

NINA MOINI: Jill, thank you so much for stopping by and telling us about your book. Sounds like a fascinating read. Thank you.

JILL HASDAY: Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

NINA MOINI: Thank you. That was Jill Hasday. She's a distinguished Mcknight University Professor at the University of Minnesota law school. Her new book, again, is called We the Men-- How Forgetting Women's Struggles for Equality Perpetuates Inequality. It's available now.