Women’s caucus lines up Abigail Adams honorees for Oct. reception

Printed from: https://newbostonpost.com/2016/08/25/womens-caucus-lines-up-abigail-adams-honorees-for-oct-reception/

STATE HOUSE — Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, Sen. Karen Spilka, and Rep. Elizabeth Malia will be among the honorees at this year’s Abigail Adams Awards, the Massachusetts Women’s Political Caucus announced Wednesday.

The women’s civic engagement group is preparing for its 29th annual tribute to Adams, a Weymouth native and the politically-minded wife of President John Adams. A dinner reception is set for Oct. 27 at the Fairmont Copley Plaza.

The MWPC says it will honor Polito for her work as lieutenant governor, co-chair of the Massachusetts STEM Advisory Council, and chair of the Governor’s Council on Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence. Polito and Gov. Charles Baker re-launched the sexual assault council in April 2015.

Spilka will be recognized for her “commitment to progressive politics and women’s issues,” with a focus on her contributions this year to the pay equity bill that Baker signed into law on Aug. 1. Spilka’s district includes Ashland, Framingham, Holliston, Hopkinton, Medway, and parts of Natick and Franklin.

Malia makes the list of honorees in connection with her work on women’s rights and gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues. She represents the 11th Suffolk district which includes parts of Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, Roslindale, and Dorchester.

The group will also present Adams Awards to Sylvia Ferrell-Jones, the president and CEO of YWCA Boston, in light of the YWCA’s work on women’s and race issues; National Grid of Massachusetts President Marcy Reed, the newly-seated chair of the Massachusetts Business Roundtable who has shown “commitment to gender equality in the corporate world”; and Dr. Myechia Minter-Jordan, president and CEO of The Dimock Center community health complex in Roxbury. The Dimock Center campus includes My Sister’s House, a residential community for women recovering from substance abuse.

The awards recognize “outstanding women leaders who have worked in their personal and professional lives to achieve gender parity for women.”

Abigail Adams has long been cited as a historical figure for women’s equality. She wrote to her husband John in early 1776, while he was a delegate to the Continental Congress, imploring that Congress “remember the ladies” in new laws of the soon-to-be-independent states.

“I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors,” she wrote. “Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could.”

— Written by Sam Doran

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