[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 54 (Tuesday, March 28, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2044-S2046]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH

  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, today I wish to join the American people 
in celebrating Women's History Month. I would like to begin that 
celebration by paying homage to several women whose ingenuity and 
inventions have shaped modern society, but who, like innumerable women 
throughout history, have not received the credit or recognition they 
are due.
  Katherine Blodgett is a good place to start. In 1935, she invented 
the first transparent glass that eliminated distortion and glare. 
Before her, glass contained small bubbles and inclusions that was 
suitable for windows, but little else. Her method of producing and 
cutting glass revolutionized the material and is the reason we have 
camera lenses, microscopes, and eyeglasses today. Without her 
pioneering work, our ability to see and our ability to look into the 
universe would be degraded.
  In 1942, the actress Hedy Lamarr and a partner were granted a U.S. 
patent for a secret communication system that involved manipulating 
radio frequencies to form an unbreakable code to prevent classified 
messages from being intercepted. The significance of her invention was 
not fully realized until the 1960s, when it was used by naval ships 
during the Cuban Missile Crisis. We were able to navigate that perilous 
nuclear threat successfully in part because of her self-taught 
inventiveness and skill. Lamarr's coded communications system has been 
used by numerous military agencies since.
  Just 2 years later, in 1944, Grace Hopper made her own kind of 
history, becoming what many consider to be one of the world's first 
computer scientists. She invented the compiler that translated written 
language into computer code and coined the terms ``bug'' and 
``debugging.'' Fifteen years later, she led the team that developed 
COBOL, one of the very first programming languages.
  More recently, in 1965, Stephanie Kwolek invented Kevlar. We know 
Kevlar best as the material used to manufacture bulletproof vests, 
protecting our police officers and first responders in their greatest 
moments of crisis, but Kevlar is widely considered to be one of the 
strongest, most durable materials ever invented and has become a 
critical component in the manufacturing of airplanes, boats, cars, and 
bridge cables.
  I pause to honor these great inventors and scientists because their 
names should be familiar, but they aren't. As long as toxic, gender-
role stereotypes persist, these women serve as important examples that 
such stereotypes are hollow and wrong. Women have been serving on the 
frontlines of war, science, and invention since long before men 
``allowed'' them.

[[Page S2045]]

  These women and others are part of our untold history. You will 
rarely hear them discussed in American classrooms, and you will seldom 
find their stories printed in textbooks. Most people wouldn't even 
recognize their names; yet our lives and fortunes have been shaped by 
them. Every day, men go to work protected by Kevlar vests, live their 
daily lives with the benefit of eyeglasses, or boot up their laptop 
computer using the devices and tools women gave them. That is both the 
majesty and tragedy of women's history: it is inextricable and powerful 
and entirely undervalued.
  This Women's History Month should not pass without each and every one 
of us at the very least taking the time to acknowledge and appreciate 
the women of history who helped to invent modern society, who fought 
alongside men in every war, who gave us more complete rights and 
equality, who endured the habitual and everyday scorn of sexism--and 
who did so generation after generation without accolade or recognition.
  Perhaps the best way to honor the past is to secure the future. The 
denizens of women's history didn't endure systemic misogyny or work so 
hard to change our world so that we would peer backward and applaud. 
They did so with the hope we would look forward and make progress.
  We still have a long way to go, but we have made progress. Thanks to 
the Affordable Care Act, being a woman is no longer considered a 
``preexisting condition'' that warrants higher premiums and 
deductibles. Also thanks to the Affordable Care Act, preventative 
services for women--like mammograms, cervical cancer screenings, and 
prenatal care--are covered by insurance companies. Today more than 48 
million American women take advantage of that.
  Thanks to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, women have extended 
protection in cases of wage discrimination. The Lilly Ledbetter Act 
finally recognized that, when pay discrimination occurs, it is not a 
single event, but a chronic and repeated offense that inflicts ongoing 
damage with each and every substandard paycheck. This simple and 
commonsense recognition has allowed women to seek justice against the 
kind of economic disenfranchisement that has plagued generations.
  Progress, however, does not have its own autopilot button. We must be 
its stewards and its champions. We must be its agents. We must protect 
it actively, each and every day, or else we will be complicit in its 
loss.
  I am talking about women's reproductive rights. A woman's right to 
make her own decisions is under threat today. Her body is her body. It 
is not ours, and it certainly is not the government's. Roe v. Wade 
decided that in 1973, yet 44 years later, the Federal Government is run 
by a party that uses every tool at its disposal to chip away at 
reproductive rights. Whether it is State policies to limit the types of 
buildings abortions can be performed in or the threat to defund Planned 
Parenthood, women's rights are under attack.
  Let's be clear that Federal funding for abortion services is already 
banned under the Hyde Amendment. Today's witch hunt against Planned 
Parenthood is not substantive in nature; it is a thinly-veiled attempt 
to prolong a culture war with the hope of assuaging far-right voters. 
Women's reproductive rights deserve more than to be treated as a 
political punchline. Reproductive rights were hard-won by centuries of 
activism and pain, and we--all Members of this Chamber--must vow this 
month and every month to honor that with our votes and with our voices. 
We must vow not to let women's reproductive rights be diminished on our 
watch.
  It is 2017, and still, women are expected to be everything 
simultaneously, all while they are refused the tools and the freedom to 
balance such difficult demands. It is 2017, and still, families--
mothers most of all--are too often forced to choose between parenthood 
and economic security, between recovering from childbirth and their 
career. No woman, no matter what her line of work or Zip Code may be, 
should be forced to make such an impossible decision. It is our job to 
pass legislation to ensure no woman has to.
  Even with the Lilly Ledbetter legislation, women today are paid, on 
average, just 77 cents for every dollar men receive for performing the 
same work. That gap is even worse for women of color: African-American 
women only earn 64 cents to the dollar, while Latina women earn only 55 
cents. That is a problem begging to be solved by Congress. That is a 
problem for all of us. Women are powerful economic engines in this 
country, and if we continue to stand idly by while their work is 
underpaid and undervalued, we will all suffer. We will all have to 
explain to our daughters and granddaughters why we didn't fight harder 
for them.
  Critically, there is also the issue of violence against women. It is 
a moral outrage that women experience about 4.8 million intimate 
partner related physical and sexual assaults every single year. When 
women stand up and tell us the stories behind this number, we must sit 
down and listen. We must stop speaking over them with advice on how to 
protect themselves or avoid certain social situations. They shouldn't 
have to. It is insulting to presume they require lectures on personal 
safety, but that men don't require lectures on consent. This problem 
demands a cultural shift, and we must be its purveyors.
  There is the issue of college affordability. A related issue is 
access to and participation in science, technology, engineering, and 
mathematics, STEM, programs and--of equal importance--encouragement to 
join them. Women need to be better represented in positions of power.
  These and other issues are what is at stake. These and other issues 
are why we recognize Women's History Month: to remind ourselves and 
each other that women helped build this Nation and this world. We need 
to remind ourselves that women are therefore entitled to equal 
representation in it and equal access to its opportunities. We need to 
remind ourselves that women deserve equal respect and equal protection 
under the law and that women's rights are human rights. We all prosper 
when we fight to protect them.
  Toward these ends, I have led the charge in Congress to ratify the 
Equal Rights Amendment. Many Americans would be shocked to learn that 
the Constitution still lacks a provision ensuring gender equality. That 
is wrong, but it is fixable. I have introduced S.J. Res. 5, legislation 
to remove the deadline for States to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, 
which would pave the way for its formal adoption. Nevada recently 
passed the Equal Rights Amendment, leaving us just two States shy of 
success.
  The Equal Rights Amendment is only slightly longer than two tweets, 
but its ratification would finally give women full and equal protection 
under the Constitution. It reads as follows:

       Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be 
     denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on 
     account of sex.
       Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by 
     appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
       Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after 
     the date of ratification.

  It is that simple, and it is both necessary and past time to adopt 
it.
  When Congress passed the ERA in 1972, it provided that the measure 
had to be ratified by three-fourths of the States, 38 States, within 7 
years. The original deadline was later extended to 10 years by a joint 
resolution enacted by Congress. Ultimately, 35 States ratified the ERA 
by the time the revised deadline expired, leaving advocates a little 
short.
  Article V of the Constitution contains no time limits for 
ratification of constitutional amendments. In fact, in 1992, the 27th 
Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting immediate congressional pay 
raises was ratified after 203 years. The Senate could pass my 
legislation removing the 10-year deadline right now. I strongly 
encourage the majority leader to bring S.J. Res. 5 up for a vote as 
soon as possible. American women deserve to know that their most 
fundamental rights are explicitly protected by our nation's most 
venerated document.
  I have often said that how a nation treats its women is a good 
barometer of that nation's potential for success as a whole. I hold the 
United States of America to that standard. Every day, I weigh the 
successes and failures we have had along the path toward fair treatment 
and gender equality, and I assess ways Congress can facilitate more 
successes. Every day, I reevaluate how best to fight for the Equal 
Rights Amendment, how best to protect reproductive rights, how best to 
fight for

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paid family leave and affordable higher education and greater 
representation in this very Chamber.
  I invite every Senator to do the same, both because those are the 
right battles and because fighting them protects gender equality 
progress that has been so hard-won by the women of this Nation. We must 
not allow those victories to be reversed. We must keep progressing.
  This Women's History Month, I am reminded of what the poet G.D. 
Anderson once said: ``Feminism is not about making women strong. Women 
are already strong. It's about changing the way the world perceives 
that strength.'' Let us remember it is precisely that strength that has 
propelled our world forward. It is precisely that strength that serves 
as the foundation of so many of this country's successes, and it is 
precisely that strength we must remember and meet with our own, when 
women's rights are under siege.

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