International Women's Day, an appreciation

In honor of International Women’s Day, a few thoughts.

          Your Loyal Blogger has spent his life surrounded by amazing women. My mother, wife, sister and daughter are strong, intelligent and gifted people. It is an honor to know and love them all.

          That background developed the wisdom to understand a few things at an early age. To wit: Women are as strong as men but in different ways. Women are every bit as courageous as men. Women can be tough as nails.

          It says here that International Women’s Day should be a celebration of the pioneers of the cause of equality of the genders.

          This blogger’s favorite historic figure is Amelia Earhart, the famous pilot. The mystery surrounding her disappearance is fascinating but the story of her life is a study in tenacity. She broke barriers, set records and flew a lot of planes. She was the first woman to fly the Atlantic as a passenger, the first woman to solo the Atlantic and the first PILOT to solo from Hawaii to California.

          Without Earhart, we don’t have Sally Ride.

          And then there is drag racing champion Shirley Muldowney. Read this carefully: You have never (and you will never) met a more competitive human than Shirley Muldowney. She’s a three-time world champion. She came back from a catastrophic injury suffered in a racing accident and kept winning. Determined? Oh baby. Look at all the women racing and winning professionally in the National Hot Rod Association today and figure out for yourself where we might be without Muldowney.

          Janet Guthrie and Lyn St. James are best known for their careers in Indy car racing, but that’s the short story. Guthrie was the first woman to compete in the Indianapolis 500 and she raced at the highest levels of NASCAR as well. She was a successful sports car racer before that. St. James was the second woman to race at Indy and she is a 12-Hours of Sebring winner. St. James has continued to give back to the sport with her foundation. Without Guthrie and St. James, we don’t have Danica Patrick.

Heck, without Guthrie and St. James, we might not have Sarah Fisher. Fisher raced at Indy and now she’s a team owner in that form of racing.

A woman might well become our next President of the United States. Yours truly will not vote for her, our politics differ tremendously. In the post-election Hillarity, reporters will write millions of words about America’s first female President but the real political trailblazer will have been Jeannette Rankin of Montana, who became the first woman to be elected to Congress back in 1916. Interestingly, Rankin voted against the United States’ entry into the First World War and was the only member to vote against declaring War against Japan after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Since we’re talking politics, Nellie Tayloe Ross (spelling is correct) became the first woman to be elected governor of a state when she was elected Governor of Wyoming in 1924.

Unlike a current presidential candidate, Condoleezza Rice was a successful Secretary of State and would have had this blogger’s vote had she run for President this time around.

You want a champion of a cause? How about Rosa Parks. Enough said.

Admittedly, society still has some distance to cover in the drive for gender equality. But we needed pioneering women to get us as far as we have come and it is the pioneers that we should remember today.


Thanks for reading.