The battle for the individual rights of women is one of long

Hear, O children of freedom, the steadfast words of Eleanor Roosevelt: “The battle for the individual rights of women is one of long standing and none of us should countenance anything which undermines it.” In this utterance, she calls all generations to vigilance. For the struggle for women’s rights is not a momentary campaign but an enduring war, fought through centuries of silence, dismissal, and denial. It is a battle that began long before her voice rose and one that must continue until justice is complete.

For Roosevelt, who walked among the broken of the Great Depression and spoke to the weary in times of war, saw with clarity that rights once gained are never safe unless guarded. The individual rights of women—to vote, to work, to speak, to live free of oppression—were won through sacrifice. Yet she warns that what is won can also be lost if people grow complacent, if they allow the creeping shadow of inequality to return.

History proves her wisdom. Recall the long fight for suffrage: women like Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, and countless unnamed stood in the streets, endured prison, hunger strikes, and scorn, until at last the right to vote was written into law. But Roosevelt reminds us: the passing of a law is not the end of the struggle. For even after suffrage, women were still denied equal pay, still silenced in boardrooms, still treated as less. The battle endured, and still endures.

Consider too the struggle for civil rights, where Black women bore a double burden—fighting both racism and sexism. Leaders like Fannie Lou Hamer showed that the fight for women’s rights is inseparable from the fight for human rights. Roosevelt’s words echo here: to undermine even one woman’s rights is to undermine the rights of all, for justice cannot be divided without being destroyed.

Therefore, O seekers of wisdom, let this be your teaching: never turn away when the rights of women are diminished, for silence in the face of injustice is betrayal. The battle for women’s rights is a torch passed from hand to hand through generations, and to let it fall is to dishonor all who carried it before. Roosevelt’s voice thunders through the ages: countenance no retreat, endure no undermining, for the freedom of women is the measure of the freedom of all.