I like thinking about the women in my family-past and present.
One grandmother swam across Long Island Sound when the spirit moved her, dabbled in real estate and traveled around the United States, Canada and Mexico in a trailer for more than a decade. A cousin who received a Ph.D. in chemistry from Columbia University in the early `50s became an international agronomist; one of her daughters is an Episcopal priest. Another cousin is a national skeet champion. And my mother became the sole support of her family at age 16.
Strong women, and wonderful company of the heart.
Wednesday is Women`s Equality Day-an important time for women everywhere to consider the connections in our lives-to women in our families and to women pioneers who give so much to this nation.
Since 1969 the National Women`s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, N.Y., has celebrated the excellence represented by many strong women whose
accomplishments, past and present, link women throughout the national
”family” of which we can be proud.
Jane Addams moved a nation to care about the plight of children and the poor. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton embodied their great rallying cry for women`s rights that echoes to the present: ”Men their rights and nothing more; women their rights and nothing less.”
Mary McLeod Bethune began the first school for African-American girls in 1904 in Daytona, Fla., with $1.50 of her own money-and became one of the nation`s most inspiring educators. And despite jokes and unrelenting hostility from male students, Elizabeth Blackwell in 1849 became the nation`s first woman to receive the M.D. degree.
And there are contemporary heroines honored, among them former U.S. Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, the first African-American woman elected to the Texas state senate and inspirational voice for so many women; and inspirational voice for so many women; Billie Jean King, tennis great and co- founder of the Women`s Sports Foundation, whose drive and energy paved the way for important professional sports opportunities for women; and Sally Ride, who became the first American woman astronaut in space. She carried Amelia Earhart`s scarf on that journey-a wonderful example of the connections in our lives. (The scarf is on display at the Hall of Fame.)
In science, 1988 Nobel laureate Gertrude Belle Elion`s research helped create drugs to combat leukemia, malaria, herpes and auto-immune disorders. She devised a system for designing drugs that led to the development of the AIDS drug, AZT.
These women are ”family” too. The history of American women`s achievements deserves to be known and valued because all of us can draw strength and energy from what our sisters have accomplished.
Women`s Equality Day is a perfect time to raise hard questions about the future, and what each of us can do to make that future brighter for women. We can and should do everything in our power to make sure our voices are heard and our needs met in government at every level, local, state and national. We hear that this is the ”year of the woman” in politics. It can be, if we make it so by our involvement and by voting in unprecedented numbers.
We can and should make a concerted effort to see to it that women`s historical accomplishments are included in school curricula. Most of us grew up learning almost nothing about what women have contributed to the development of our nation and the world. This is a great and damaging wrong-and it can be corrected if the women of this nation demand that it be changed, beginning at the local level. Each generation of women who reach maturity without knowing our history is a generation weakened-breeding lack of self-esteem and lack of a sense of connection.
We can and should support the nation`s great women`s organizations that celebrate women`s accomplishments and help us all to do more, struggle harder, fight on for a more equitable future.
And we can and should recommit ourselves to make the most of our own lives, by reaching for and realizing our own dreams and by offering a helping hand to our mothers, daughters, sisters, friends, and by making sure each generation in our families knows and values the accomplishments of those who have come before.
We are all strong women, and wonderful company of the heart.
