Where are we now?

Geraldine Ferraro, Jacqueline Kennedy, Elizabeth Dole, Elizabeth Edwards, and Hilary Clinton are women that I would tag as courageous. I know others in other fields could make this list endless as I stop to consider individuals who have been pioneers or taken new paths for the women of today to follow.
I found it interesting as I sat back and observed the month of March how little was done for the month that is to celebrate women’s history. Following the Black History month of February is difficult with luncheons and news stories and celebrations on all levels of school, but last month’s lack of celebration was abrasively quiet.
Every year I assign sophomores to read biographies of individuals who have made positive strides for society, this year’s students did very few women. Fighting the need for them to put all their efforts into convincing me that sport figures should automatically be included is normal. (Sad but true.) Fighting the need of some the students to do figures that they think would be abrasive to the teacher such as Hitler, Kurt Cobain, or this year Bill O’Reilly is normal. What wasn’t really normal is the total lack of women. I should add at this point I do have more boys than girls but this year’s lack of girls choosing women was unusual.
In the first semester of this year, I offered several themes for juniors to do investigation in American Literature. The only theme that lacked interest was Women’s Literature in American Literature. No names were listed under that theme. None. I would like each American Literature student to read Sex Wars by Marge Piercy. (Can you imagine me standing in front of the Board of Education explaining this title? If I even was invited to explain this title to the BOE?) It alarms me every time I think about what women had to go through to have the right to vote.
I wonder how many people including history teachers, stop to think when the fifteenth amendment was passed in 1870 half of the African Americans in this country still could not vote. It took until 1920 for the other half of the entire population in the United States to convince enough people that the right to vote should not be denied on the basis of sex.
Ladies, we still have our work cut out for us.