Op-Eds
February 16, 2025
This article by RepresentWomen, Presidents’ Day and the Legacy of Exclusion: Why Women Still Struggle for the Oval Office, was published in Ms. magazine in February 2025. Read an excerpt below.
Presidents’ Day often conjures images of our founding fathers, men whose legacies in history books portray them as heroic figures. Yet, these white men confined themselves to rooms of power, shutting the doors behind them and leaving the majority of society—women, marginalized groups and nonconforming individuals—without a seat at the table, effectively denying them power and influence.
No man embodies the archetype of leadership in American history more than George Washington—an American hero whose resolve to uphold slavery was so staunch and morally corrupt that he exploited various legal mechanisms to perpetuate the enslavement of Black people. These included (but were not limited to) the frequent transportation of enslaved individuals between his properties to avoid emancipation laws, leveraging gradual emancipation statutes to delay freedom for enslaved people, and ensuring the generational inheritance of enslaved people.
Setting Washington, our nation’s first president, as the bar for heroism and leadership has perpetuated a legacy that normalizes overly masculine, cruel mindsets and glorifies his role while ignoring the exploitation and dehumanization that defined much of his leadership. Although it is obvious these actions are a product of that time, what is less clear is how these actions evolved to stand the test of time.
The injustices perpetrated by the founding fathers are still being felt in today’s social climate, government and policy.
Read the complete article on Ms. magazine.
