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And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Axfiles, with your host David Axelrod.

Several years ago, I had a great conversation right here on the Axfiles with Cecille Richards, who was then the president of Planned Parenthood.

He spoke about her remarkable life and career as an activist and advocate in the leader.

Cecille stepped down after a decade at the helm of Planned Parenthood a year later, but she didn't step back from the battle for progressive causes and equal rights or from politics, where she continues to lead.

We sat down again recently to catch up and to take stock of where we as a country are today. Here's that conversation.

Cecille Richards, so good to see you. First of all, thank you for your stint this spring as a fellow at the Institute of Politics, the University of Chicago. You inspired a lot of young people and it was great to have you there.

I just thoroughly enjoyed it. I think there's anyone who's feeling a little bit discouraged about the world just needs to spend some time with young people, and particularly, you know, the students at Chicago obviously are, you know, like top of the top of the list, that they were fantastic.

So thanks for the opportunity.

This is the gift that they give. I told you I was telling a group of them that today, the gift of hope, which is sometimes hard to come by in these times.

So let us, let us consider these times and see if we end up hopeful at the end of the discussion.

But, you know, I was just thinking as I was thinking about you, I was thinking about the fact that I arrived in Chicago at the University of Chicago as a student in 1972 was the year the Equal Rights Amendment passed Congress.

And I became a journalist while I was a student and I started covering that battle in Illinois, which became sort of ground zero for the whole thing. In fact, I covered Phyllis Schlafly back in the day.

It must have been memorable.

It was memorable. It was memorable.

But, and I'm wondering, next year's the 50th anniversary of the ERA passing never got ratified. Tell me this is kind of a big question to start with.

But, like, how do you look at the social progress of the last 50 years? Where are we in the arc of history from that moment when that that Equal Rights Amendment was thwarted?

And of course, we'll get into where we are on reproductive rights, which is, you know, we're at a critical juncture there, obviously.

Right. Well, I so it's as with most big topics, I think like this, it's probably there's a duality. And that's what I would say that we have, you know, made enormous progress despite women not having equal rights in this country.

I mean, women, you know, before the pandemic were actually more than half the wage earners in the country.

They have now become part of almost every possible professional career we see women, you know, in sports larger because of title nine, we see a woman, you know, doing things.

No one ever thought we could. And I feel like that's all happened despite having to fit into systems that really were never built for women to participate.

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