With the enthusiastic support of Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and other key local and national leaders, Vision 2020 and the National Constitution Center recently announced that Philadelphia will host the nation’s celebration of the 100th anniversary of women’s voting rights in the year 2020.
Vision 2020 co-chairs Lynn Yeakel and Rosemarie Greco and the center’s Interim President & CEO Vince Stango made the announcement on April 14. Vision 2020 will collaborate with the center in planning the centennial celebration of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote.
Vision 2020, a project of the College of Medicine’s Institute for Women’s Health and Leadership, launched a 10-year campaign in 2010 to advance American women’s economic and social equality by the year 2020. Vision 2020 delegates from all 50 states collaborate with 60 national allied organizations that represent 20 million women and girls.
Civic, business and cultural leaders attended the announcement and pledged support for the 2020 celebration, which will include a mega-gathering of women leaders, a series of major events and coordinated activities, and a public report card on a century of women’s progress. The events will occur throughout April 2020 and during the week of Aug. 26, 2020 (the federal Women’s Equality Day).
“We plan to have the largest gathering of women leaders in U.S. history here in 2020,” said Yeakel. “Over the next seven years, we’ll be working hard to achieve our goals of women’s economic security and pay equity, more women in senior leadership positions, family-friendly workplace policies, civic engagement and increased women voting.”
Yeakel is Vision 2020 founder, director of the College of Medicine’s Institute for Women’s Health and Leadership, and holds the college’s Betty A. Cohen Chair in Women's Health. Greco, formerly the highest ranking woman in American banking, serves on several corporate boards and was a member of former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell’s cabinet.