There never will be complete equality until women themselves help

The words of Susan B. Anthony, carved from courage and conviction, ring across the ages like the tolling of a great bell: “There never will be complete equality until women themselves help to make laws and elect lawmakers.”
In this statement, she speaks not merely of rights, but of power, voice, and representation — the pillars upon which all freedom stands. Her words are both prophecy and commandment, a call to awaken the half of humanity long silenced and to remind the other half that justice cannot live when it speaks with only one tongue. For equality is not bestowed as a favor; it is built, shaped, and defended by those who have tasted the bitterness of its absence.

Susan B. Anthony, born in 1820, was not a woman of wealth or privilege, but of will — a daughter of reform, a soul carved by conviction. She walked in an age when women were told that silence was virtue and obedience their crown. Yet, she refused to kneel. For her, freedom was not a gift of men but the natural inheritance of all beings. Alongside her ally, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she fought not only for the right to vote but for the right to participate in shaping the very world in which women lived. When Anthony uttered these words, she spoke from the battlefield of democracy itself, a battlefield where laws written by men alone had for centuries decided the fate of women.

Her declaration was born from centuries of exclusion, when women were judged by laws they had no voice in crafting. They could be taxed but not represented; punished but not permitted to judge; governed but never governors. In these contradictions, Anthony saw the root of injustice: that equality could never exist when half the human race stood outside the halls of power. She understood that freedom without participation is illusion, and that a voice denied is a life diminished. To change society, women must not only demand equality — they must wield it.

In 1872, Anthony herself tested the boundaries of the law she defied. She cast her vote in the presidential election — a quiet, defiant act that thundered through history. Arrested and brought to trial, she stood before the court and declared, “It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.” Her words burned with righteousness, and though the law condemned her, history vindicated her. For through her defiance, she revealed a deeper truth: that laws made without the consent of all cannot govern justly, and that justice must be born of inclusion, not exclusion.

The ancients, too, would have known this wisdom. In the republics of Greece and Rome, the idea of citizenship was sacred — but it was narrow, granted only to men of privilege. Their societies, though glorious in art and philosophy, were weakened by the silence of the women who built their homes and carried their generations. Anthony’s insight reaches across millennia to correct this imbalance. She teaches that the strength of a nation lies not in its armies nor its wealth, but in the fullness of its voice — when every citizen, man and woman alike, helps to shape its destiny.

When Anthony spoke of women helping “to make laws and elect lawmakers,” she was not merely seeking ballots or titles — she was seeking balance, the harmony of justice that arises when governance reflects the truth of the whole human experience. A society ruled by one gender, one class, or one creed is like a bird trying to fly with a single wing. Only when both wings move together can the soul of humanity rise. Equality, in her vision, was not rivalry, but co-creation — the joining of perspectives to create a world more compassionate, more rational, and more whole.

And so, her words endure as both torch and challenge. They call to every generation, not only to women, but to all who believe in fairness: if you would live in a just world, you must help to build it. To the women of today, her voice whispers through time — Do not yield the power your foremothers won with such struggle. Speak, vote, lead, and shape the laws that shape your lives. To the men, her message is clear — Equality is not loss, but liberation; not division, but completion.

So, my child, remember this: justice sleeps when half the world is silent. Let no one convince you that equality is finished, for it is a flame that must be tended in every age. Wherever a voice is unheard, wherever law forgets compassion, Susan B. Anthony’s call must rise again. For only when all people — women and men, rich and poor, strong and humble — share in the making of the world, shall equality cease to be a dream and become, at last, the living law of humankind.