International Women's Day Shout Out

Thursday, March 8 is International Women's Day. It got me to thinking about all of the strong women I know and all of the men who supported them.

Think of how much things have changed since we were young. How many professional women did you know growing up? How many women worked because they wanted to? I didn't know any female doctors, lawyers, or investment brokers. I did know female teachers, secretaries, tellers, and nurses, but that was it. Most of my friends' moms stayed home or had one of those "acceptable" professions. I think it speaks volumes about how far we've come that my children go to female pediatricians. My doctors are all women. One of my friends at church is the CFO of a major bank in town. Another is a high-powered attorney for a big law firm. Our first financial advisor was a woman.

When my daughter was in first grade, she came home with a worksheet on which she had gotten a problem wrong. I was checking it over to see what she had missed. They had had to put the first letter of the word that described a picture, and she had put "D" under a picture of a woman with a shot in her hand. I asked her to explain her answer, and she said, "That's a doctor, Mom. I don't know why I got it wrong." I sent her teacher a note explaining her confusion, but her teacher, being near retirement, still counted it wrong. "We're on Ns," she said. "That's a nurse." I thought then how cool it was that my thoughtful child would put a "D for doctor" under that picture and not automatically assume that a woman with a shot would be a nurse.

How the world has changed!

I think about my grandmother, whose potential was enormous but whose opportunities were limited. Her father, my great-grandpa Josep, was so forward thinking in 1908 that after he has sent her and her sister through secondary school in France, he sent them to every other possible schooling they could attend. THEN, he sent them to the Isle of Jersey to learn English. When they were adults, my aunt was supporting herself in Switzerland working as a designer in clothing manufacture, and my grandmother was a secretary at a champagne company in Reims. Once in America, my grandmother was able to get a job as a secretary at a tobacco company. She would take dictation from her English-speaking boss, translate it in her mind to French where she would write in in shorthand in French. Then she would translate it back into English and copy the dictated letter in English for him to sign and send on its way. Her father made sure that this brilliant mind did not go to waste! To think that Grandpa Joe was so open minded that he wanted everything for his daughters that they could possibly achieve boggles my brain. My heart swells with gratitude for his support of the women in his life.

Then I think of my Great-Grandma Jane, who left Ireland in 1886 to come to America to be a domestic servant. She took the only opportunity she had and ran with it. She and her sisters started a loan company so that the Irish immigrants could get money from somewhere because no bank would loan to the "papists." She became a wealthy woman. She purchased the apartment building in which she lived and had enough money that when my grandparents went to buy their house, she loaned them the money, not the bank.

These two women defied the odds that were stacked against them and were successful, but it would not have been so had they not had the support of their fathers and husbands. Grandma Jane's husband must have encouraged her, otherwise she would not have had the gumption to do what she did. When he had a stroke in his early 50s, she was able to keep the family afloat. Their son saw in his mother the value of a smart, powerful woman, so when he met my grandmother, his boss's secretary, he knew a good thing when he saw it.

Together, they raised five children and put both daughters through college when women during that time traditionally didn't attend school past 12th grade.

My father in turn raised three daughters to become whatever we wanted to be. It was never in doubt that had we wanted to be doctors or lawyers or financeers, we would have been encouraged and supported 100%. By choice, my sisters and I took the traditional routes. Two of us became teachers, and one became a nurse. But it was our choice to follow these calls. All of my dad's siblings were educators---two college professors, one librarian, and a high school teacher. My grandmother taught French in her home. My mother's grandmother was a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse in the Kentucky countryside. Education is in our blood, but had we wanted more, we would have been told to go for it.

I look at my daughters, and it is no longer impossible for them to become President of the United States if they so choose. Several very strong women have put that possibility within their reach. It is amazing when I watch movies set in the 1960s to see how far we've come within a couple of generations. I cannot imagine what we as a society have lost because so many brilliant minds have been stifled over the course of centuries, and I am thankful to those who have come before me, forging the path of choice for me, that I can choose to be a stay-at-home mom or I can choose to be a CFO of a major corporation.

We still have a LONG way to go. That we are still debating women's healthcare choices is crazy frustrating to me, but I know we will get past this and move on and be better for it. In the meantime, I send a shout out to Jane, Henriette, Anna, Josep, Maria, John, Joseph, John, Wanda and Kirk for their unwavering belief that women can do whatever they want.