Mikel Bolden, Executive Director, MS Democratic Party
Mar 2, 2026
This is Women's History Month. And this year, it feels less like a celebration and more like a reckoning.
Sixty years ago, in much of America, a woman often could not open a bank account or obtain credit without her husband's signature. She was barred from serving on a jury in many states. If her employer paid her less than the man sitting next to her, she had little to no federal legal recourse. And if she tried to leave a dangerous marriage, the law often handed her back.
Then Democrats got to work.
The Equal Pay Act. The Civil Rights Act. Title IX. The Violence Against Women Act. The Family and Medical Leave Act. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. These were not accidents of history. They were the result of Democratic leadership, often signed into law by Democratic presidents, and a party that believed, and still believes, that women's lives are worth legislating for.
Democrats gave women the legal standing to sue for wage discrimination. They opened the doors of every university sports program and professional school. They created the first comprehensive federal protections for survivors of domestic violence. They restored pay equity protections when the courts stripped them away.
Women did not ask for too much. They asked for what they deserved. And Democrats answered.
Now, in March 2026, we are watching those hard won freedoms come under coordinated attack, and Mississippi women are standing directly in the crosshairs.
Start with the most fundamental right: the ballot itself. The House passed the so called SAVE America Act on largely partisan lines just weeks ago, legislation that would require documentary proof of citizenship to register for federal elections, including rules that voting rights advocates warn could make it significantly more difficult for married women who have changed their names to register. The numbers are staggering. Studies show roughly 70 percent of married women in the United States take their husband's last name, meaning tens of millions of women have a birth certificate that does not reflect their current legal name. Under this bill, that simple, common life choice, one nearly all of us were raised to see as normal, could create additional hurdles to casting a ballot.
Mississippi women should also pay attention to Louisiana v. Callais, a case now before the U.S. Supreme Court that could further reshape how federal voting rights laws are applied nationwide, including Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which has long served as a key protection against discriminatory voting practices.
Research from voting rights organizations has found that tens of millions of Americans lack ready access to documents such as passports or certified birth certificates, and roughly half of Americans do not have a valid passport. This is not an oversight. It is a design. A law that makes it harder for women to vote while claiming to protect elections is not protecting anything worth protecting. Senate Democrats are currently holding the line, and we are grateful. But the fight is not over, and Mississippi women need to know their voices are at stake.
Meanwhile, here at home, the threats are equally real. Mississippi women today face one of the most restricted healthcare environments in the nation. When a woman faces a medical crisis, a dangerous pregnancy, a life threatening complication, a decision that only she and her doctor can fully understand, she deserves access to every option medicine can offer. The Democratic Party stands for the physician's ability to act without fear of prosecution. We stand for the woman who must make an impossible choice in an impossible moment. We will not stop fighting to restore the full range of life saving healthcare options that Mississippi women have lost.
We also stand for the woman trying to leave. Mississippi consistently ranks among the states with the highest rates of domestic violence and intimate partner homicide in the nation. Yet too many survivors face a system where protective orders go unenforced, shelters are underfunded, and the legal path out requires resources most women in crisis simply do not have. During the 2026 legislative session, multiple bills aimed at strengthening domestic violence protection orders and enforcement policies were introduced in the Mississippi Legislature but died in committee after failing to advance.
Democrats are pushing for stronger protections, better enforcement mechanisms, expanded shelter funding, and legal aid for survivors navigating a system that too often fails them. Leaving a dangerous relationship should not require extraordinary bravery. It should require nothing more than the desire to be safe.
And we stand for the woman who simply wants to be paid what she is worth. Mississippi women earn significantly less than their male counterparts, a gap that widens further for Black women and Latinas. Equal pay is not a political talking point. It is a rent check. It is a retirement account. It is a daughter watching her mother's value get counted correctly for the first time. Democrats have fought for pay transparency, for closing loopholes that allow wage discrimination to hide in the shadows, and for workplace protections that let women advocate for themselves without fear of retaliation.
None of these fights are new. All of them are urgent.
Women's History Month exists to remind us of how far we have come. But history is not a trophy case. It is a foundation. Every right on that list was fought for by someone who refused to accept that things could not change. And every one of those rights can be taken away by people who are betting we have stopped paying attention.
And that includes Republican women. We may disagree, deeply, with their vote, and we will never understand the choice to support men like Donald Trump, who has spent his career treating women as objects and whose presidency critics argue weakened or rolled back several federal protections affecting women. But we fight for their freedom to make that choice for themselves. Because that is what it means to actually believe in women's autonomy. You do not get to claim you stand for women's freedom only when women choose the way you would like. The Democratic Party fights for the freedom itself, even when it is used against us.
We just wish more women on the other side of the aisle had the same commitment to protecting that freedom for everyone else.
Mississippi women are paying attention. And the Mississippi Democratic Party will keep showing up for equal pay, for healthcare freedom, for the safety of survivors, and for every woman's sacred, non negotiable right to cast her vote without jumping through hoops designed to stop her.
We have always shown up for women. That is not history. That is a promise.