On Radcliffe Day 2021—Friday, May 28—we will honor Melinda Gates through a program that explores how best to achieve gender equity in the United States. It is a question at the forefront of Gates’s advocacy and philanthropy and one that countless scholars and notable practitioners have posed in recent—and not so recent—years.

In advance of our Radcliffe Day program, which will feature an expert panel grappling with this question, I have invited leading figures representing diverse fields to offer their perspectives on the long and ongoing journey toward gender equality in the United States.

Today, I am pleased to announce Achieving Gender Equity, a video series leading up to Radcliffe Day that will explore strategies to increase women’s power and influence. The first installment features Margaret H. Marshall, the 24th—and first woman—chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and the recipient of the 2012 Radcliffe Medal, among many other honors. Marshall has been a champion of justice and equality throughout her life, including early in her career when she organized student protests against apartheid in South Africa.

Noting her own surprise at her answer to the question of how best to achieve gender equity, Marshall implores us to “defend our right to vote with everything we have.” Calling democracy an insufficient but “absolutely necessary” condition for achieving gender equity, she calls on women to “stand up, disrupt, fight” and, indeed, shame those who work to make voting more difficult. Watch the full video below:

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The pursuit of gender equity is central to Harvard Radcliffe Institute, which was built on the foundation of its predecessor, Radcliffe College—a school created to ensure that the standard of education embodied in Harvard was accessible to women. Radcliffe’s unwavering commitment to women and the study of gender endures in the Institute’s programs and the world-class collections of its Schlesinger Library. Moreover, I recognize that the question of who has access to opportunity—or who is excluded—remains central to all efforts to achieve equity in the United States and beyond.

I hope that this discussion of the unfinished business of achieving gender equity is one that ignites your imagination and I invite you to join us virtually on Radcliffe Day 2021 for a deeper dive into these issues.

Tomiko Brown-Nagin
Dean, Harvard Radcliffe Institute
Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law, Harvard Law School
Professor of History, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Chair, Presidential Committee on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery