Over the weekend, millions of women and men around the world participated in the Women's March. The main march took place in Washington, D.C., and sister marches took place in other cities like Los Angeles, London, St. Louis, Chicago and Paris. Participants marched to show their support for issues such as women’s reproductive rights, environmental safety and LGBTQ equality.
The Women’s March on Washington, D.C., included speeches from celebrities such as Madonna, America Ferrera, Scarlett Johansson and Van Jones.
Participants included a group of 54 women from the Cape Girardeau area who took a charter bus to get to Washington.
The trip was organized by Dr. Diana Rogers-Adkinson, dean of the College of Education at Southeast Missouri State University, and was attended by a number of Southeast faculty, staff and students.
Rogers-Adkinson said her background obligated her to be active. As the daughter of a teen mom, she was the first woman in her mother’s family to graduate from high school and eventually went on to obtain two Ph.D.’s.
“In my family, women weren’t educated to be educated, they were educated to be moms — my mother helped empower me for more than that,” Rogers-Adkinson said. “There’s been a lot of discussion as to what women should and shouldn’t be allowed to do or govern about themselves in our country right now. I highly value my ability to self-govern. If I was following the scripts others had given me, I wouldn’t be here right now.”
She added one of the main reasons she planned the trip was because of her personal relationship with Planned Parenthood, a women’s health clinic that receives partial funding from the federal government and has caused controversy for providing abortions. The organization also provides services such as sexually transmitted infection testing, cancer screenings and other women’s health services with the goal of providing services to any woman despite her income.
“It’s poised currently as an abortion issue, but most of the services that come out of Planned Parenthood are for low-income women who need their basic health care,” she said. “When I was 21, I went for my annual evaluation and got called back in. I was told I had cancer. If I had not had access to Planned Parenthood as a broke college student, I’d be dead right now.”
Critics took to social media to defend the pro-life movement opposing abortion and pro-choice. Many opposed the March saying it was non-inclusive and said they did not “stand with the feminist movement.”
Karma Alvey, a junior at Southeast, attended the march with help from a scholarship from the Cape Girardeau County Democrats.
Alvey, a Student Government Association senator for the College of Liberal Arts, said she attended the march because of her concern about the cost of contraceptives. As a woman suffering from polycystic ovarian syndrome — a disease that causes cysts to grow on a woman’s ovaries — Alvey said the use of birth control is essential for her daily life. Without, she said the pain would cause her to miss classes and other parts of her life.
“It causes a lot of pain, but the treatment for it is birth control,” Alvey said. “Through the Affordable Care Act, I’ve been getting my birth control free. Since the new congressional session has started they’ve been voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act, so I don’t know if I’m going to have affordable access to the treatment anymore.”
Alvey added she wanted to attend the march in order to help other women.
“I’m very career driven, so the wage gap — closing that is something that we need to tackle,” Alvey said. “I want to help other women have the chance to make as much as their male counterparts.”
Rogers-Adkinson said the Women’s March was more than a march for women's rights, but a march for a number of issues.
“My background brings me, compels me, to make sure that women become very visible at this point in time and to not lose a lot of the things that we have gained to be equal humans in our society, but the march is bigger than that,” she said. “The march is, you know, equal humans in terms of LGBTQ and those of poverty and minority women that we all need to be able to have access to the same abilities and success, educational opportunities, medical opportunities that keep you alive and well. If I hadn’t had those, I wouldn’t be sitting here as a very privileged woman and serving as a dean at this institution, and I want to make sure those don’t go away for those who come after me and those who we are mentoring at this campus and other campuses around the world.”
Rogers-Adkinson advised students who wanted to get involved but could not attend one of the women’s marches to investigate local women’s organizations and encouraged students to have conversations with students in different types of groups or of different religions and ethnicities.
“It’s important that students move past their stereotypes of each other on whichever side, you know, this is politics set aside,” she said. “People aren’t talking about being a Republican or a Democrat or Independent. They’re talking about being respected women, respected trans people, respected ‘Whoever I am,’ and being seen for their equal humanity. If our students can find that, that’s the best thing they can ever find.”
