BATON ROUGE — The American Association of University Women of Louisiana (AAUW Louisiana) invites its coalition partners and the public to attend a special commemoration in honor of the 96th anniversary of women’s suffrage, to be held at the Louisiana State University (LSU) Women’s Center, 5 Union Sq., in Baton Rouge, on Women’s Equality Day 2016, Friday, August 26, 2016, from 4:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.
Light hors d’oeuvres and anniversary cake will be served.
Not only will the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 be celebrated, but awareness will be brought to the continuing need for full gender equality.
Louisiana has been ranked as the worst state to live in for women, coming in dead last in many important cultural and socioeconomic categories, including having the distinction of being ranked 51st in the nation in gender pay inequity. Women on average earn just 65 percent of what men do, with the gap being even greater for women of color.
Serving as keynote speaker will be State Representative Helena Moreno (D), District 93, New Orleans. A leading women’s rights advocate, who, throughout her tenure has legislated for all forms of equality for all of the citizens of our great state; Moreno will give an overview of her new women’s rights “No Joke” campaign and share with attendees how they can participate and help move women upward from the bottom rung of the statistical ladder.
Also addressing the audience will be Barbara Leach, Manager, Natchitoches Office of the Louisiana Workforce Commission, Office of Workforce Development, Louisiana Department of Labor. Leach will bring attendees up-to-date on the Department of Labor’s efforts in partnering with women’s groups in the fight for equal pay. Additionally, as a historian and former adjunct professor at Northwestern State University, Leach will take attendees back in time to the 70-plus year fight for suffrage from the middle 1800s to the early 1900s, when Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and later Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, won a long and arduous campaign to give all women in America the right to cast their ballot alongside their male counterparts. This right, to this day, is the only Constitutional right women specifically possess. She will further spotlight the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and the continuing struggle for gender equity throughout our state and nation.