Speaker Nancy Pelosi, The 19th Amendment, BTOP, and Reel Grrls!

By Timothy C. Wu on 27 August 2010 - 5:21pm

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and ZeroDivide President & CEO Tessie Guillermo:
Photo by Mona T. Brooks

What a difference a day makes. Especially a day 90 years ago. It was 90 years ago today that the 19th Amendment passed, and American women gained the right to vote. To commemorate that historic occasion, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi - the highest ranking woman to be elected to office in the United States - held a press conference in San Francisco to recognize women pioneers in the suffragette movement.

Speaking to a room full of women pioneers in their own right - activists, politicians, philanthropists, a fire chief, and Kamala Harris, San Francisco's first female District Attorney - Speaker Pelosi said, "Today, on Women's Equality Day, we honor the brave suffragettes who altered the course of history and ushered in a new age of progress for all Americans. These pioneers marched and organized, struggled and sacrificed, for the cause of equality - and in the name of a better life for generations of women and girls yet to come."

Speaker Pelosi, Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White, and District Attorney Kamala Harris

Speaker Pelosi continued, "On this day 90 years ago, their dream was realized. And it is up to us today to use the right to vote - the right so many fought to secure - for the advancement of all Americans, to ensure a better future for our families, and to guarantee that the voices of America's women echo from polling places to the chambers of government."

At the conclusion of the ceremony, ZeroDivide President and CEO Tessie Guillermo, who was in attendance at the invitation-only press conference, celebrated with Speaker Pelosi the news of ZeroDivide's recent awarding of Federal Stimulus Funding to foster broadband adoption in underserved communities in 6 Western Region states.

In keeping with today's theme of empowering women and girls, some of ZeroDivide's BTOP grants funding will be targeted specifically to support gender equity in technology adoption. Reel Grrls (and no, that is not a typo!) is ZeroDivide's BTOP partner in Seattle, Washington. It is the first all-girl (or grrl), year-round media training program in the USA. Reel Grrls participants don't just drop into a computer lab after school - they develop lasting relationships wtih filmmakers over time, and learn skills that propel them on to leadership roles in their communities.

90 years ago, those pioneering women suffragettes could not have imagined a woman Speaker of the House. They definitely could not have imagined women practitioners of a technology that was generations away from being invented. But it is because of their groundbreaking and brave activism that women's equality was born. So whether we celebrate today the right for women to vote, or the right for young women in underserved communities to be the technology practitioner peers of anyone in this country, we definitely want to take a moment to honor and thank those women of 1920.