On January 2, President Biden honored former NOW President Eleanor Smeal with the Presidential Citizens Medal–the nation’s second highest civilian honors—for “defining the movement for women’s rights.”
The official proclamation reads:
“From leading massive protests and galvanizing women’s votes in the 1970s to steering progress for equal pay and helping the Violence Against Women Act become law, Ellie Smeal forced the Nation to not only include women in political discourse but to value them as power brokers and equals. Her strategic vision over more than 40 years embodies the American pursuit to create a fairer, more just world.”
Eleanor Smeal helped to transform NOW during her leadership, earning national recognition for and showing the power of grassroots action—rooted at both the national and local levels—to achieve lasting, intersectional feminist change. She led the drive to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, and she’s still leading that fight as a women’s leader, political analyst, strategist and grassroots organizer.
In 1986, when many said it could not be done, she also led the first national abortion rights march in Washington, DC and was a core organizer for the 2004 march, which drew more than one million people. In 1987, she co-founded the Feminist Majority and has served as President since its inception, leading successful campaigns that included winning FDA approval for mifepristone and ending gender apartheid in Afghanistan.
In a statement following the award, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office called Eleanor Smeal “a hero to all of us,” and said “Ellie’s indomitable spirit is what has helped continue to move us through all of these fights.”
This article from Ms. Magazine highlights more of Eleanor Smeal’s career, including this account from Afghan women’s rights activists who saw her leadership opposing gender apartheid.
“Ellie advocated for Afghan women and girls at a time [when] people didn’t even know what was happening there, said Makhfi Azizi, an Afghan human rights advocate. “And she did it not because she knew a lot of Afghan women or had been to the country, but … she really took on that challenge and put every bit of her soul and time to advocate for Afghan women and girls and not allow the Taliban to be recognized when they were … in power in Afghanistan during the ’90s. … And because of her efforts, the State Department and the U.N. stopped recognizing the Taliban as the legitimate authority in Afghanistan, which means it stopped … the normalization of the treatment of Afghan women and girls by the Taliban.”
NOW members know how richly deserved and long overdue is this recognition of Eleanor Smeal, and we salute her leadership, her legacy, and her day-to-day relentless commitment to women’s rights.