Today — Aug. 26 —  is Women’s Equality Day, commemorating the anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which finally gave American women the right to vote.

Life has changed substantially for women since 1920, when the amendment was ratified. Today, we make up nearly 50 percent of the American workforce, and the majority of recipients of post-secondary degrees. Three women have served as secretary of state, and three currently serve as Supreme Court justices. We have, indeed, come a long way.

Yet, even as women play a more varied role in our society and an increasingly important role as breadwinners, we have much work to do to reach true equality.

On average, a woman earns 77 cents for every dollar earned by her male counterpart, a disparity that persists at all levels of education and employment and translates to many thousands of dollars of lost wages over a lifetime of work. Those lost wages have consequences. Yet in June, a majority of U.S. senators declined to vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Women of all ages are more likely to be poor; according to the 2010 census, more than 4 million more women than men lived in poverty. Maine’s poverty level for people over 65 is above the national average, and two thirds of those are women. Women more often raise children on their own as single or custodial parents, and they make up the majority of low-wage workers in inflexible jobs without benefits. The result: 34.2 percent of women who were heads of household in 2010 lived in poverty; 17 percent in deep poverty.

These circumstances have dire impacts that reach far beyond women. Here in Maine, where our child poverty rate exceeds the national average, nearly one-in-four children under the age of 5 lives in poverty and two-thirds of those children are living in a household headed by a single woman. Emerging research indicates that living in poverty in one’s formative years may have lifelong negative impacts on one’s education, earning capacity and lifetime earnings. Poverty also places families under toxic stress.

These challenges may seem intractable, but the reality is that we know the solutions. A society in which each citizen can succeed and contribute requires some basic building blocks, including access to health care and quality education for all.

The first building block is access to health care, including reproductive health care. To succeed in the other aspects of her life, a woman must first have the ability to control whether she has children, as well as how many and how often. Children whose mothers receive prenatal care and who themselves receive health care have a better chance to learn, to grow, to be fully functioning adults. In addition to being a basic human right, then, health care is a wise investment.

Education is the next key building block, and that includes the critical early years when a child’s brain is developing. Quality early care and education serves multiple purposes: it builds the young brain, ensuring benefits that last a lifetime, including school readiness; equally important, it develops appropriate social skills.

Finally, it allows parents to work. No wonder the Maine State Chamber of Commerce and the Maine Development Foundation have called for increased investment in early childhood development. They are not alone. Business leaders, military leaders, law enforcement professionals and economists have all called for investment in early childhood education to head off problems later in life.

In light of all that we know about the value of health care and education, it is staggering to consider the choices made by Maine’s political leaders in the current state budget. Cuts to family planning services, health insurance coverage for about 28,000 working parents, child care subsidies and Head Start will undermine our state’s ability to recover from the current economic downturn and have a disproportionate impact on women.

Fortunately, there is something we can do about it — we can vote.

Nearly 78 percent of Maine women are registered to vote and we make up 53 percent of the state’s voters. Yet, only slightly more than 60 percent of Maine women exercised their right in the 2010 election. Since then we’ve seen over and over again, at both the state and federal levels, that elections matter, and that public policy choices affect our daily lives.

If we want different results, we must speak up about the issues important to us, ask the candidates where they stand, register and exercise our hard-earned right to vote.

Eliza Townsend is executive director of the Maine Women’s Policy Center and the Maine Women’s Lobby in Augusta.