Women’s Equality Day: Honoring the Women Who Help Us Find Our True North
Every August 26, we recognize Women’s Equality Day, a day rooted in history but still deeply relevant to the lives women are living today.
It commemorates the certification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, which prohibited denying the right to vote on the basis of sex. It was a monumental step forward, achieved after generations of women organized, marched, spoke out, challenged expectations, and refused to accept that their voices should matter less.
But Women’s Equality Day is about more than looking backward. It gives us an opportunity to ask an important question: What does equality look like in a woman’s everyday life today?
At True North Wellness Services, we believe part of the answer is having the freedom and support to build a life in which your voice, health, choices, goals, and well-being matter.
A Right That Was Decades in the Making
The struggle for women's voting rights did not happen overnight. Women spent decades organizing for greater political representation and equality.
Congress passed the 19th Amendment in 1919, but three-fourths of the states had to ratify it before it could become part of the Constitution. Tennessee became the critical final state to ratify the amendment in August 1920. On August 26, 1920, Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the amendment.
It was an extraordinary achievement. It was also not the end of the story. Although the 19th Amendment was a major legal victory, many women—particularly Black women, Native American women, Asian American women, Latinas, and others—continued to encounter laws, policies, discrimination, intimidation, and other barriers that prevented them from fully exercising their voting rights.
That fuller history matters because equality has never been one simple finish line. Progress can be real while there is still more work to do.
From the Right to Vote to the Right to Be Heard
More than 100 years later, women's lives look dramatically different in many ways. Women lead businesses, organizations, classrooms, hospitals, nonprofits, families, communities, and movements. They are physicians, social workers, attorneys, caregivers, educators, elected leaders, entrepreneurs, scientists, advocates, and so much more.
Yet equality is not only about what women are allowed to accomplish. It is also about whether women have the opportunity, resources, respect, safety, and support to thrive while doing it. For many women, life includes balancing careers, relationships, parenting, caregiving, finances, health concerns, community responsibilities, and expectations—often while feeling pressure to keep everything together.
Sometimes empowerment looks like standing in front of a room and speaking. Sometimes it looks like quietly saying, “I need help.” Sometimes it is negotiating a salary, returning to school, starting a business, voting, leaving a situation that no longer serves you, caring for your mental health, setting a boundary, advocating for someone you love, or beginning again after life takes an unexpected turn. Those moments matter, too.
Equality Includes Mental and Emotional Well-Being
At True North Wellness Services, we talk often about navigating change, finding direction, asking for support, and recognizing that caring for yourself is not something you have to earn. That belongs in conversations about women's equality.
Women have historically carried tremendous amounts of unpaid caregiving and emotional labor. Even as opportunities have expanded, many women continue to balance multiple roles and responsibilities.
Supporting women's equality therefore also means creating environments where women can talk openly about stress, burnout, grief, anxiety, caregiving, major life transitions, and mental health without being viewed as weak or incapable.
A strong woman does not have to be a woman who handles everything alone. Strength can include knowing when something needs to change. It can include accepting support. It can include setting limits. It can include resting. And sometimes strength means admitting, “I don't know what comes next, but I know I cannot stay where I am.”
Remembering That Women's Experiences Are Not All the Same
As we recognize Women's Equality Day, it is also important to remember that there is no single experience of being a woman. Race, age, disability, income, culture, geography, family responsibilities, education, health, and access to resources can dramatically influence the opportunities and barriers someone encounters.
Meaningful equality requires us to listen to experiences that may be different from our own. It means making room at the table—and paying attention to who still isn't there.
It means mentoring younger women, supporting women-owned businesses, encouraging women entering leadership positions, advocating for accessible services, supporting caregivers, challenging discrimination, and creating communities where women do not have to navigate difficult seasons entirely by themselves.
Equality Can Begin in Everyday Moments
Most of us will never lead a national movement. We do, however, have opportunities to influence the spaces around us. We can listen when a woman says something is wrong. We can give credit for her ideas. We can encourage someone who doubts whether she belongs in the room. We can support a woman returning to work after years of caregiving. We can respect boundaries instead of questioning them. We can mentor, advocate, vote, educate ourselves, speak up when someone is being treated unfairly, and make room for perspectives different from our own.
And women can extend some of that same equality inward. Give yourself permission to have needs. Give yourself permission to change direction. Give yourself permission to want more—or to decide that what you once wanted no longer fits. Give yourself permission to ask for help. Give yourself permission to become someone different from who you were five, ten, or twenty years ago. Your voice matters in your community, but it also needs to matter in your own life.
Finding Our True North
Women’s Equality Day honors women who refused to accept that the world had already decided what their lives could be. That legacy is worth celebrating. Their courage also leaves us with a responsibility: to continue building communities where the women who come after us have more choices, stronger voices, greater opportunities, and fewer barriers.
At True North Wellness Services, our name represents the idea of finding direction—even when life changes the map. Sometimes finding your True North means advocating for others. Sometimes it means using your voice. Sometimes it means helping someone else find hers. And sometimes, especially during seasons of change, it means remembering that you have a voice in the direction of your own life, too.
This Women’s Equality Day, we honor the women who fought before us, the women continuing that work today, and the women quietly finding the courage to take their own next step. Because equality is not only about having a voice. It is about knowing that your voice deserves to be heard.-
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