This is the month that we celebrate strong, independent women. It’s a special month because women are special. They are women of history, women of science, women of mathematics, suffragettes, feminists, and women who refused to ride at the back of the bus.
These women are you.
These women are me.
We are so fortunate to live in historical times where women are now being celebrated for their contributions to the arts, humanities, science, mathematics, the right to vote, the right to make decisions about our bodies, and even to run for president.
Look up at the stars. Because this is beyond where the glass ceiling crashed and the new limit has risen.
We are astronauts, all of us, flying high and breaking free of any past perceptions that women were limited to a small number of “appropriate” careers. When my mother grew up, her father told her she could become a teacher or a nurse. She chose a teaching career, but added activist to that role and picketed, marched, and raised holy hell until the NEA teacher’s union was formed in our state. I was given no boundaries and majored with a math-heavy logistics management degree and added an MBA–just like my father.
Anything is possible to those who work hard and seek their passions. We all have the potential to be happy, strong, independent women.
I recently wrote a story called Girls Who Write Code. Included in this story was one of the first women who wrote code, long before computers did this work. Her name is Katherine G. Johnson, a NASA mathematician who calculated flight trajectories for one of the first manned space flights at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia. This was during the Jim Crow era in the south when deep segregation existed. She could calculate flight trajectories, but she had to use the “colored girls” bathroom.
How far these women have brought us to where we are now.
My last thought for you is something that is very important to me. The first wave of feminism shamed women who stayed home to raise their children and did not seek a career outside of the home. Now, as we enter the third wave of feminism, these women are honored for their outstanding career of choosing to take care of our most important assets—our children.
So, Happy WOMEN’S HERSTORY MONTH to you…may the stars be the limit for everyone!
Photo Credit: simpleinsomnia Flickr via Compfight cc
Dori Owen
Dori Owen blogs on ArizonaGirlDiary.tumblr.com, is a columnist on FeminineCollective.com, a contributor/editor for The Lithium Chronicles, created the Facebook page Diary of an Arizona Girl, is an author on AskABipolar, was featured in the books FeminineCollective RAW&UNFILTERED VOL I and StigmaFighters Vol II, and is a zealous tweeter as @doriowen. She's a former LA wild child who settled into grownup life as a project manager, collecting an MBA and a few husbands along the way. Dori spent her adult years in Southern California, with a brief stay in Reno, and has now returned to where she ran away from in Arizona. She is a shown artist, writer, and her favorite pastime is upcycling old furniture she finds from thrift stores. She lives with her beloved rescued terrier, Olivia Twist, and the cat who came to visit but stayed. The love of her life is her grown son in Portland, Oregon who very much resents being introduced after her pets. But she she does love him the most.
