Rockville Celebrates Women’s Equality Day

Those enjoying happy hour drinks and tapas at Restaurant Friday night may have been wondering what was going on in the entrance lounge, from the women in early 1900s garb to the vintage signboards to the politicians to the frequent applause and laughter. 

Just another Friday night, really—celebrating the 91st anniversary of women winning the vote, and the 163rd anniversary of the women’s rights movement. President Obama’s declaration of Aug. 26, 2011 as Women’s Equality Day was marked locally with memories, sisterhood and determination to continue working for women’s equality into the future.

The celebration was sponsored by Montgomery County Business & Professional Women, United for Equality, Montgomery County NOW (National Organization for Women), AAUW (American Association of University Women), Women: Back to the Future, WBO (Women Business Owners of Montgomery County), Peerless Rockville Historic Preservation Ltd. and R.E.A.L. (Responsible for Liberty and Equality). 

Special guests included Rockville Mayor Phyllis Marcuccio, State Senator Jennie Forehand (wearing the purple Votes banner of the suffragists) and Kate Campbell Stevenson as suffragist Alice Paul (author of the ERA). 

Montgomery County BPW Secretary Susan Horst was credited as the mastermind behind the commemoration in Rockville, and BPW was well represented at the event, including BPW President Anne Witt, Secretary Grace Yang and others. Bernice Grossman has been in BPW since the 1960s and was Executive Director of the Rockville Chamber of Commerce 1979-1994. Sophie Steinberg is also a longtime member of BPW.  “Bernice and Sophie have served BPW for so long now,” said Horst, “they’re our treasures.”   

Montgomery County NOW (National Organization for Women) was represented by Action Vice President Mike Hersh and Membership Chair Jeannette Feldner, who is also with BPW. Carolyn Cook came from United for Equality, fighting for passage of the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment).  Jeff Imm represented R.E.A.L., and told the gathering that people around the country have not given up on the ERA and on equality. 

Marcuccio told a story of having been denied entrance to her chosen profession as a young woman because its union wasn’t open to women. She challenged other women in the room to tell their stories of inequality, promising each a deck of Votes for Women playing cards.

Senator Forehand, whose grandmother was a suffragist, said that early on when women started entering the legislature, they had to use public restrooms in the capitol and stand in line with the tourists while the male legislators had nice private facilities. And when one of her female colleagues said that they needed more women in the leadership, a male leader brought her up to the podium and gave her a fur-lined toilet seat and called her chair of the restroom committee. 

Horst told about she didn't get a job she applied for just out of college because, the interviewer said, women in the workplace distracted the men. Grossman, who has been involved in the service organization Kiwanis since they let women join in 1988, told of going to her first convention, in Virginia, and when she arrived having the organizers not welcome she and other women she went with as members, but rather asked, “where are your husbands?”

While many of the women in attendance had participated in the women’s movement in the 1960s and 70s, the younger generation was represented too, including by the mayor’s niece Sasha Whitaker.