{"id":43799,"date":"2025-08-26T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bahaiteachings.org\/?p=43799"},"modified":"2025-07-07T06:12:55","modified_gmt":"2025-07-07T13:12:55","slug":"women-key-human-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bahaiteachings.org\/women-key-human-progress\/","title":{"rendered":"Women: the Key to Human Progress"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On August 26th, the day in 1920 when the United States certified the 19th<\/sup> Amendment to the Constitution, which granted women the right to vote, Americans observe Women\u2019s Equality Day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, the country sets aside one day out of 365 days in each year to celebrate equality for half of humanity. Somehow it just doesn\u2019t seem quite proportional, does it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Baha\u2019i<\/a> teachings call on mankind to implement full equality for womankind. In fact, the Baha\u2019i teachings say that humanity itself cannot progress until both genders have equal rights:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Now in the two lower kingdoms of nature we have seen that there is no question of the superiority of one sex over the other. In the world of humanity we find a great difference; the female sex is treated as though inferior, and is not allowed equal rights and privileges. This condition is due not to nature, but to education. In the Divine Creation there is no such distinction. Neither sex is superior to the other in the sight of God. Why then should one sex assert the inferiority of the other, withholding just rights and privileges as though God had given His authority for such a course of action? If women received the same educational advantages as those of men, the result would demonstrate the equality of capacity of both for scholarship. – Abdu\u2019l-Baha<\/a>, Paris Talks, p. 161.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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The world of humanity is possessed of two wings: the male and the female. So long as these two wings are not equivalent in strength, the bird will not fly. Until womankind reaches the same degree as man, until she enjoys the same arena of activity, extraordinary attainment for humanity will not be realized; humanity cannot wing its way to heights of real attainment. When the two wings or parts become equivalent in strength, enjoying the same prerogatives, the flight of man will be exceedingly lofty and extraordinary. Therefore, woman must receive the same education as man and all inequality be adjusted. Thus, imbued with the same virtues as man, rising through all the degrees of human attainment, women will become the peers of men, and until this equality is established, true progress and attainment for the human race will not be facilitated. – Abdu\u2019l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 375.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

When we celebrate Women\u2019s Equality Day, we often don\u2019t realize that it took the American women\u2019s suffrage movement almost seventy-five years of committed, painful struggle to achieve voting rights for women. A half-century before women could vote, a chance meeting on a train set the 19th<\/sup> Amendment in motion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At that point, the famous suffragettes Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had just drafted the simple, 29-word text of what would become the 19th<\/sup> Amendment:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, in 1872, Susan B. Anthony\u2014Quaker, suffragette, anti-slavery activist and internationalist\u2014met a Congressman from Nevada City, California, Aaron Sargent, and his wife Ellen Clark Sargent. Anthony\u2019s fervent desire for a women\u2019s suffrage movement convinced the Sargents to become supporters of the movement, and Aaron Sargent subsequently became the first person to ever utter the word \u201csuffrage\u201d in the United States Congress. Since women could not vote or hold office, it took a man to advance the 19th<\/sup> Amendment:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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God\u2019s Bounty is for all and gives power for all progress. When men own the equality of women there will be no need for them to struggle for their rights! – Abdu\u2019l-Baha, Paris Talks, p. 164.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n

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\"Susan<\/a>
Susan B. Anthony<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Elected to the Senate in 1873, Sargent interceded with President Grant when Susan B. Anthony was jailed for registering to vote\u2014his efforts secured her release. In January of 1878 Senator Sargent introduced the \u201cSusan B. Anthony\u201d Amendment\u2014and for the next 40 years it would annually be introduced unsuccessfully in Congress, until it finally passed during Woodrow Wilson\u2019s administration in 1919, forty-one years later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From their home in Nevada City, the Sargents carried on the long battle for suffrage. A year after Aaron Sargent\u2019s passing, in 1888, when the famed abolitionist, pacifist and suffragette Julia Ward Howe (the author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic<\/em>) visited California, Ellen Clark Sargent hosted an important meeting in San Francisco that brought together some of the nation\u2019s most powerful and influential women\u2019s suffrage advocates\u2014Phoebe Hearst, Sarah Dix Hamlin, Emma Sutro Merritt, M.D., and several others. Phoebe Hearst, one of the wealthiest American women and a strong supporter of women\u2019s rights, became a Baha\u2019i a decade later, in 1898. In that 1888 meeting the women formed the Century Club of California, often noted as the fulcrum of emerging female power in the West, and a major supporter and funder of the campaign to pass the 19th<\/sup> Amendment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During that same period, when most civic, political and religious organizations opposed, fought against or even criminalized the women\u2019s rights movement, the Baha\u2019i Faith strongly advocated the equality of men and women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abdu\u2019l-Baha<\/a>, who met with many suffragist leaders and spoke encouragingly to suffragette groups in Europe and America, clearly enunciated the Baha\u2019i teachings on the question when he addressed a women\u2019s suffrage meeting in New York City in 1912. He questioned, in fact, the underlying premise of any attitude that opposed the equality of the sexes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Woman must be given the same opportunities as man for perfecting herself in the attainments of learning, science and arts. God has created the man and the woman equal, why should she be deprived of exercising the fullest opportunities afforded by life? Why should we ever raise the question of superiority and inferiority? In the animal kingdom the male and female enjoy suffrage and in the vegetable kingdom the plants all enjoy equal suffrage. In the human kingdom, which claims to be the realm of brotherhood and solidarity, why should we raise this question? \u2013 The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 167.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The great global movements for freedom, the Baha\u2019i teachings say, never take place in a spiritual vacuum. Instead, Baha\u2019is believe that the civil rights and women\u2019s rights movements; the various movements for justice for workers; the anti-war and anti-nuclear movements and every other mass uprising that has called for peace, justice and equality since the mid-19th<\/sup> Century all have their genesis in the deep spiritual principles revealed by Baha\u2019u\u2019llah<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Every age requires a central impetus or movement. In this age, the boundaries of terrestrial things have extended; minds have taken on a broader range of vision; realities have been unfolded and the secrets of being have been brought into the realm of visibility. What is the spirit of this age, what is its focal point? It is the establishment of Universal Peace, the establishment of the knowledge that humanity is one family. \u2013 Abdu\u2019l-Baha, Star of the West, Volume 3, p. 4.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In the Baha\u2019i Faith, the equality of women and men forms one of the great pillars of the oneness of humanity, the central prerequisite for peace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On August 26th, the day in 1920 when the United States certified the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which granted women the right to vote, Americans observe Women\u2019s Equality Day….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":87790,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2948],"tags":[2994,3162],"series":[1924],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bahaiteachings.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43799"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bahaiteachings.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bahaiteachings.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bahaiteachings.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bahaiteachings.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43799"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bahaiteachings.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87793,"href":"https:\/\/bahaiteachings.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43799\/revisions\/87793"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bahaiteachings.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bahaiteachings.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bahaiteachings.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bahaiteachings.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43799"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bahaiteachings.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=43799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}