Women’s suffrage has been on my mind lately with the hundredth anniversary of the 19th Amendment, as well as the recent ratification of the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment), in the 38th state in January.

I wanted to introduce these ideas to my children and let them know that the struggle for equality that some would say goes back to the Garden of Eden is still actively going on in spite of the fact that some women got the vote 100 years ago.

Suffragette: The Battle for Equality, by David Roberts, is the history of the Suffrage movement, fleshing out the cultural, political and social world into which the movement was born.While book focuses on the blow-by-blow account of what happened on the other side of the pond in Great Britain and the U.K., it also tells the parallel story of what was happening at the same time in the U.S.

The sections are 2-3 page spreads with big, beautiful illustrations that the author and artist fills with personality. We read 2-3 sections a day for school until we finished the book.The book details the actions women took over time, how they organized the movement, the different factions at play, and the reaction of other citizens and the government to the cause. We learned about women who chose to march, and women who chose to break windows and hijack public monuments to bring attention to the cause.The book doesn’t shy away from issues of class and race that plagued the cause: while in the U.S., technically all women of age received the right to vote in 1920, unjust laws and practices prevented many African American women from exercising their right to vote until the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964.

My kids gasped in indignation and fury at the injustice over and over again as we read Robert’s book. We often glorify the Founding Fathers while conveniently “forgetting” that they purposefully kept women and African Americans out of the picture when they designed the plan for the U.S. government.

As I did my own listening and reading, inspired by what we learned in Roberts’ book, I learned that Abigail Adams was an advocate for women’s rights, writing to her husband, “Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice or Representation.”Sometimes, it feels like so little has changed in the way women are viewed by society, yet the book reminded us that we’ve come a long way. I felt proud to be part of a history where women refused to give up fighting for a government that honored their dignity.