Ciao, Bella.

Today is Women's Equality Day, established by former Congresswoman Bella Savitsky Abzug, who was perhaps most known for saying: This woman's place is in the house -- The House of Representatives.

Unfortunatley, Abzug passed away in 1998, nine years before Nancy Pelosi would become the first female Speaker of the House. I bet she would have been thrilled at how far women have come.

But we have a long way to go. Check out the Center for American Women and Politics maps, illustrating how often women have served on the State Legislature, in Congress, or as Governor.

We may think that we are the model nation in terms of gender equality, but new research shows the following:

One important way to measure gender equality is to see the proportion of women in a country’s legislature or parliament, according to the authors. By that measure, as of 2005 the United States ranked 61st of 128 countries, with 15.2 percent women in Congress. Rwanda leads the world with 48.8 percent women in its parliament.

Overall, the International Women's Day site states that "Although women make up 51 percent of the world’s population, they hold only 16 percent of parliamentary and congressional seats worldwide."

Bella Savitsky Abzug challenges us with a legacy of female empowerment in regard to the political representation of women. But often, we find ourselves asking, "Where do we begin?"

I find it particularly interesting (and perhaps comforting) that Abzug's feminist journey began with a small local act of resistance. In fact, it took root when Abzug was only 12 years old in the questioning of patriarchal religious tradition. When her father died, she wanted to say Kaddish at his funeral, an honor only reserved for sons in her Orthodox Jewish community. She resisted, and continued to practice these daily mourning prayers. Later she said this:

No one could have stopped me from performing the duty traditionally reserved for a son, from honoring the man who had taught me to love peace, who had educated me in Jewish values. So it was lucky that no one ever tried.

On this Women's Equality Day, may we be open to creating moments of small resistance. Maybe one day, our struggles within our individual "house" of residence or worship might become, as Abzug's did, our struggles within the national "House."

Just in case you thought the media was entirely anti-feminist...

Check out Jezebel's list of the Top 20 Feminist TV Characters of All Time.

A little on their commonalities (that reflect mainstream American feminism's ongoing race and class biases):

In doing research for this, we noticed that a lot of these women had characteristics in common. Almost all of them are middle class. Many of them are educated and somewhat socially awkward. A lot of them are either nerdy, or have nerdy pasts, and can be annoying. But unfortunately, all of them — including the animated ones — are Caucasian. Worse still, only three of the females listed below are characters on shows currently on air. It's sad that in the past 30 years, feminism hasn't even managed to get two dozen recurring characters on television to admit to being part of the movement.

It's also important to note that their criteria for this list is that the characters "openly flew their feminist flags," i.e. they're not just looking for strong women here. They're looking for women who "spoke openly about being feminists or feminism."

Who do you think should or shouldn't have made the list? I'm a little shaky on the choice of Jessie from Saved by the Bell...