Remember the “good” old days? When women couldn’t get their own credit cards. When women weren’t allowed to enter military academies — or Yale or Harvard. Before the legal concept of sexual harassment existed.
This wasn’t as long ago as you might suppose. The federal law requiring credit card companies to issue women their own credit was passed in 1974. Women began entering US military academies in 1976. Yale admitted its first female students in 1969; Harvard didn’t do so until 1977. And finally, it wasn’t until 1986 that the Supreme Court ruled workplace sexual harassment was a violation of the Civil Rights Act.
These are examples of the past that, right now in 2025, the administration is pushing us back into. So happy Women’s History Month! Here’s a brief and incomplete list of the ways the current assault on diversity, equity and inclusion are also an assault on women:
• Endangering women’s health
Eliminating gender differences puts research on woman-only conditions like pregnancy and menopause on hold. Ignoring gender difference in clinical trials puts us at risk of adverse drug side effects. And new abortion restrictions are connected with a dramatic rise in maternal death rates.
• Making it harder for married women to vote
In a crazy Orwellian twist, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (already passed once in the House but stalled in the Senate) would do the opposite of safeguarding the votes of married women. Why? Because if a woman changes her legal name when she marries, her birth certificate no longer matches her name. Under the SAVE Act this would require her to show additional proof of citizenship — something like a passport, which naturally we all carry around on the regular.
