Joan of Arc leads the charge through New York"s Riverside Park for our celebration of International Women"s Day. This year’s Women"s Day observance is particularly meaningful in the United States because 2020 marks 100 years since American women won the right to vote nationwide. That victory was the result of a long, difficult struggle by suffragists—women who faced ridicule, slander, imprisonment, and outright brutality for their efforts to claim the right to vote. These women often drew inspiration from Joan of Arc, who became a feminist symbol of the female warrior for universal rights. In their marches and demonstrations in the early 1900s, suffragists often dressed as Joan and invoked her heroism in defiance of a male-dominated culture.
© Chase Guttman/Alamy
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