Women's Equality Day: programming for ERGs services for ERGs.
Women's Equality Day marks the 19th Amendment (1920). It's the right day to confront the gap between formal equality and actual workplace equity — pay, promotion, parental leave.
Thermo Fisher Scientific Women ERG Champions Women in STEM on Women's Equality Day
More than a calendar moment.
Women's Equality Day commemorates the August 26, 1920 certification of the 19th Amendment, with the formal day established by Congress in 1971 at the urging of Rep. Bella Abzug. The fuller historical record matters: the 19th Amendment removed sex as a barrier to voting on paper, but Black women across the Jim Crow South were effectively blocked from the franchise until the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and Native women weren't guaranteed citizenship until 1924. The Brennan Center, ACLU, and League of Women Voters all routinely surface that gap during August.
That gap — paper equality versus lived equity — is exactly the frame women's ERGs use to translate the day to the workplace. The Pew Research Center's most recent analysis puts the US gender pay gap at roughly 16 cents on the dollar unadjusted; the National Women's Law Center's annual breakdown shows the gap widens significantly for Black women (~64¢), Latina women (~52¢), and Native women. Posting one of those numbers without the others, or only the “adjusted” version, reads as marketing rather than accountability.
The WED pitfalls.
What sinks WED programming isn't usually a missing speaker — it's a misread of the moment. The three misses worth naming out loud.
Skipping the racial history.
Suffrage in 1920 was partial. Black, Indigenous, Asian, and Latina women were excluded for decades. Tell the full story.
Making the ERG carry the company message.
August 26 isn't the day to hand your women's ERG a corporate stat to read aloud. Let members talk about their own stories, mentors, and what community has meant to them.
One event and you're done.
A single panel in August won't build belonging. Use the day as a kickoff for the small, recurring things — coffee chats, mentor circles, member spotlights — that actually grow the community.
Curated for Women's Equality Day.
Speakers, facilitators, and vendors filtered for WED programming. Pulled live from ERGs.io — every profile is one click away from a full bio, rate, and inquiry form inside the platform.
Daphne Valcin
Discover Live
Gretchen DeKnikker
Julia Korn, Duke Instructor, Business Insider Most Innovative Career Coach & TEDx Speaker
Real WED programming ideas from ERGs.io.
A few of the most-favorited Women's Equality Day ideas ERG leaders are running this year. Open ERGs.io to browse the full library — filtered, saveable, and bookable with vendors.
Other observances in the calendar.
Every observance gets its own planning page — speakers, vendors, programming ideas, and a timeline.
Stop scrambling. Start planning the month that lands.
ERGs.io pulls every speaker, vendor, and programming format into one workspace — so planning WED takes one afternoon, not one month of late nights. Free to start.