WIESBADEN, Germany - Aug. 26, Women's Equality Day, came and went for most with little notice. Crafted from the struggles of women promoting suffrage and honed from the fight for equal rights, the day which celebrates the 19th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution passed with little fanfare.
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But Camille Howes, U.S. Army Garrison Wiesbaden customer service officer, compared the day to a classically trained violinist playing on a crowded Metro station platform in Washington, D.C.
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She referenced the 2007 video-taped session of Joshua Bell - viewable on YouTube - performing intricate and complicated musical pieces in the midst of busy commuters.
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As that cultural experiment by the Washington Post proved, the greatest of accomplishments are encountered every day by ordinary people too busy to notice.
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"There are probably people out there that want to use their faculties for something great," Howes told her audience during a Women's Equality Day workshop on Wiesbaden Army Airfield.
"It'd be a pity if we missed it because of the pace at which we run."
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Howes showed black-and-white photos of women on picket lines, of men crowding the booths of a national association opposed to women's right to vote and of three women each bearing a likeness to Old Mother Hubbard rather than that of radical zealots they were vilified as for speaking out on women's rights.
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In the late 1800s and early 1900s the women's rights movement marched alongside abolition and civil rights, topics that stirred emotion, elicited threats and damaged reputations and careers.
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The trailblazers of women's rights were women. They were mothers, wives, daughters and grandmothers. They were egged by opponents not only in the verbal ribbing sense but in a physically humiliating reality that sent yolk down the faces of activists such as Susan B. Anthony.
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Each grainy photograph Howes showed reflected a stark picture of the fight for women's rights in the United States.
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"Thank God they suffered so we wouldn't have to," said Howes, a former U.S. Air Force mechanic for F-15 fighter jets. "(Those activists) paid a price, and they were marked, forever marked."
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Congress passed the 19th Amendment in 1919. The amendment which prohibits state and federal governments from denying any citizen the right to vote because of a citizen's sex was ratified by the states in August of 1920. In 1971 Congress designated Aug. 26 as Women's Equality Day.
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The Women's Equality Day workshop was the first for the Wiesbaden garrison and is part of an ongoing effort by the garrison's Equal Employment Opportunity Office to tie together personal and professional development.
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"(Howes' presentation) was an enlightenment and a reminder of what women in our history have gone through to get us to where we are today," said Equal Employment Opportunity specialist Ron Vitiello. "And second it was a reminder that the struggle isn't over yet."
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Standing before the projected images of Secretaries of State Madeline Albright, Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton followed by the images of inventions engineered by women, Howes clicked to the next slide.
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"Are we equal yet'"
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The numbers displayed reflected a discrepancy in pay for white, black and Hispanic women as compared to men - 78 cents, 68.7 cents and 59 cents on the dollar earned respectively compared to men. Howes shared her own story of pay discrepancy.
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Despite graduating in the top 1 percent of her class from the University of Georgia, Howes was surprised and a little "ticked" to learn that a male classmate with a lower grade point average and none of her real-world experience was offered a higher paying job after graduation.
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"So are we equal yet'" she asked. "Not exactly. Not yet."
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