March is Women's History Month, and I'm being asked the same question -- a lot:
"Whatever happened to the women's movement? Where are the feminist freedom fighters today?"
I guess if people don't see women marching, they don't think they're moving. But they need to remember that the marching, the protesting, of the Sixties and Seventies opened the door for a generation that we hoped would come after us. And it has.
It's exciting to see three women on the Supreme Court. It's exciting to see three women Secretaries of State and even women leading other nations. It's exciting to see women anchor the nightly news, and it's exciting to know that the chief operating officer of Facebook -- the one who helps you connect with your hundreds of 'friends' -- is, in fact, a woman.
But what's most exciting is that this woman of power -- and a billionaire to boot -- is not satisfied with how far women have come.
"The world is still run by men," Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg said in a recent speech. "We're not teaching our girls and women to have professional ambition. We're not encouraging women to lean into their careers and aim for powerful jobs. With only 3% of Fortune 500 companies run by women, we have a real problem."
Hearing Sandberg's words, I couldn't help but flash back to when I was 23 years old, producing my own television show, and people would say, "You're so ambitious!" And I would cringe, feeling the sting of their contempt. What they were saying was that I was "aggressive" and "assertive" and needed to be "in control." It would take me years to feel these words as a compliment, not as the pejoratives they were meant to be.
"We don't teach our girls to have power," Sandberg told me a few months ago. "We teach them to 'get along.' And if they get too loud or forceful, we call them 'bossy.'"
That made me laugh. What spirited young girl hasn't heard that word? Even Tina Fey titled her memoir "Bossypants."
Sandberg puts it simply. "I want my daughter to have the choice not to just succeed," she says, "but to be liked for her accomplishments." Nobody said that to me in the Seventies. That's why I created Free to Be...You and Me. I wanted to tell girls and boys what I hadn't been told. I didn't want them to take half their lives to figure out that, whatever they wanted, they should go for it all the way -- and not worry about doing what everyone else does, just so they would be liked.
That's why I love the posters on the wall at the Facebook offices that read, "What would you do if you weren't afraid?" I'd like to hang those posters in the hallways of every school in the country, to remind kids -- and their teachers, too -- that the barriers we face are mostly internal, not external.
Women's History Month is not just a time to celebrate where we've come from, or how far we've opened the door. It's also a time for us to express our dissatisfaction that the doors aren't opened wide enough. As always, it's the agitation that creates the pearl.
So where is the women's movement today? It is in the powerful hands of leaders like Sandberg, who, having risen to the top of their careers, feel the responsibility to reach out and inspire those women who follow them -- the college graduates, the women who are struggling at the first rung of their careers, the women who are stalled and frightened.
"Fortunes favors the bold," Sandberg told Barnard's graduating class. "Think big. Dream big. We will never close the achievement gap until we close the ambition gap."
With leaders like Sandberg, we will.
So in honor of Women's History Month, we've assembled this special slide show of women who are leading the way -- in different fields -- all headed in the same direction, all part of the same march.
Follow Marlo Thomas on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MarloThomas
I'd hoped the word, 'equality' would be mentioned in your post.
Also no surprise that ambition to climb the ranks of the military is not found here. Who wants to be the first Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? Na-da.
Who wants to be the first woman to register for the Selective Service? Any takers? Didn't think so.
We're nearing the 100th anniversary of national women's suffrage, 2020. Don't forget many states and territories granted women suffrage in the 19th century. As more women vote, and with them as the majority since 1920, we've had more and more wars, to be fought by men men men men men. Though I personally can't wait until we have an all female combat service, complete with affirmative action to make up for past discrimination, I don't think any of the women mentioned throughout your post or responding bloggers care to serve in it, or even register for Selective Service. If women really want to stop unnecessary wars, women would be willing to do all of that.
A side bar: It was not exciting to have Condi Rice as FIRST National Security Adviser!!!
Her "advice" contributed to the strategy and tactics that gave us no defense in the many months, days, weeks and hours before Sept., 2001, and the Iraq War debacle. One can wonder how much she'd have rushed America into Iraq if it were mainly women on those front lines.
Women still have a long way to go to reach full equality.
What else do you want...a beard?
EXACTLY.
Just the like male CEO's of giant corporations are liked for their accomplishments.
If not, their is the problem of going back to the 14th Century Europe version of Women's Rights in the USA.
As an Emergency Services Worker and Women's Activist in my career field I have seen a lot of my friends in other agencies advance higher in rank.
Some of them include;
Deb Amesqua, Ret Fire Chief of Madison Wisconsin.
Tracy Jarman, Ret. Fire Chief of San Diego, California
Roxanne Bercik, Dep. Chief LAFD
Rosemary Cloud, Fire Chief East Point, Ga.
Joanne Hays-White, Fire Chief, San Francisco, Ca.
and many others, including those within the Post 9/11 Book "Women at Ground Zero" by Carouba and Hagan.
Within those individual agencies, the issues are, maintaining as well as increasing the number of women in their respective agencies.
It requires the Motivation to keep committed to moving foward and to accept everyone as individuals into what ever career fields Traditional or Non-Traditional a Woman may want to go in to.