Dorothy always had the power to leave Oz. Why do American women refuse to escape injustice?

By James J. Devine

At the end of The Wizard of Oz, Glinda told Dorothy she always had the power to go home. The ruby slippers were never the answer—they were just the reminder that what she needed was already inside her.

But here’s the thing about power: knowing you have it is not the same as using it. And for the 51 percent of Americans who are women, the moment to act—not just to feel, but to show up—is now.

That moment is urgent because the evidence is everywhere. In our high school gyms, where girls are taught teamwork and fair play, they are also taught, quietly and constantly, that their effort counts for less. In the locker rooms, the comment sections, and the pay ledgers of professional sports, the old misogyny hasn’t disappeared—it has just learned to dress itself in jokes, algorithms, and shrugged shoulders.

A survey of female athletes found that nearly half of them have been subjected to insults like “you throw like a girl”—and 58 percent said it made them want to quit. Not because they are fragile, but because a thousand small cuts, each one dismissed as “just a joke,” eventually become a wound.

This isn’t just about sports. It’s about who gets to lead. In politics, as women rise, they are met with more hostility, more disinformation, and more threats—not despite their power, but because of it.

Yet today, women hold only 29 percent of the seats in Congress. Out of more than 2,300 governors in American history, just 53 have been women. Only one has been the House Speaker, and just one was Vice President.

These numbers are not accidents—they are reflections of a system that still treats women’s ambition as optional, and women’s presence as provisional.

And that absence has consequences.

Women still do the vast majority of unpaid care work—a modern form of servitude that leaves them poorer, more vulnerable, and more likely to live in poverty. They earn less, save less, and in too many places, they are simply erased from the decisions that shape their lives.

That is not just unfair—it is unwise. Because a democracy does not work when half its citizens are spectators. It works best when its citizens are voters, organizers, candidates, and leaders.

The good news is that progress is possible.

The Equal Pay for Team USA Act, the rise of women’s rugby, the medals won by female athletes—these are not small things. They are proof that change can happen. But better is not the same as good. We are not finished. We are not even close.

Because the real change will not come from laws alone. It will come from a shift in attitude—a recognition that misogyny is not just hatred, but habit. It is the casual contempt that tells a girl her jump shot matters less, her voice is less welcome, her ambition is less serious.

That habit must be broken. And it will only be broken when we demand it be broken—when women show up at the polls, in the boardrooms, on the fields, and at the podiums, not as petitioners, but as equals.

Frederick Douglass once said that power concedes nothing without a demand. He was right.

The power to change this country is already in your hands—just like Dorothy’s ruby slippers. But unlike Dorothy, you don’t get to click your heels and wish it done.

We have to organize. We have to vote. We have to run. We have to stay in the game, even when the game is rigged.

Because America will not change until women demand that it change. And that demand begins with showing up—not someday, but now. Not as a favor, but as a right. Not as half the population, but as the full force of what this country was always meant to be.

October 13 is the deadline to register to vote in New Jersey’s 2026 midterm election.