Copyright © 2002 Henrietta W. Hay

March is Women's History Month March 22, 2002

March is women's history month. We need a special month because, according to most of the history books, there was only one sex in the world until late in the 20th century. By some biological miracle it was self-perpetuating and needs to be celebrated.
But the women were there all the time. According to Vicki Léon's irreverent, funny stories of women through the ages, there were quite a few who were presumptions (uppity, in modern language) and damn proud of it.
Several of them were rulers of their lands--at least for a little while. One that we don't hear much about was Hatshepsut, Pharaoh of Egypt for a few years. When her dad, Tut I, died, she married her half brother, Tut II. When Tut II died she took over as regent for the infant Tut iii, but later had herself proclaimed Pharaoh. She lasted for several years.
When Irene of Athens was crowned sole ruler of the Byzantine Empire in 737 she became the first woman ever to hold the throne of the old Roman Empire. She ranks with Hatshepsut and Russian Empress Catherine the Great as a breaker of male-dominated dynasties.
Jumping a few millennia to American women , in 1848 women could not vote, own property or run for the School Board. Today, some seven generations of activist women later, we have two women on the Supreme Court, female Senators and Governors, a few C. E. O.'s of major corporations, women in every profession , and housewives running those essential volunteer organizations. They are making the news and the history books.
1948 was the year that Seneca Falls Declaration was adopted, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It stated in part, "We hold these truths to be self evident that all men and women are created equal" and started a revolution. Later Stanton teamed up with Susan B. Anthony to form the National Women Suffrage Association. Those two made quite a team. Stanton, mother of seven and prolific writer stayed home and wrote diatribes against female discrimination, and Anthony, aggressively single, spread her partner's words across America.
There have been so many American women on whose shoulders we are standing today that it is hard to pick just a few. Elizabeth Blackwell , who graduated in 1849, was the first woman in the United States with a "regular" medical degree. She worked in providing medical care to indigent women in New York, and later trained female doctors.
Another doctor was Rena Sabin, of Denver, a famous medical researcher. I even interviewed her once back in the dark ages when I had a two hour radio show, the title of which shall remain forever a secret.
Jacqueline Cochran directed the Women Airforce Service Pilots during World War II, and later was the first female pilot to fly faster than the speed of sound proving that women truly could fly. Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, was shut down and arrested, but eventually opened one in New York City. That caught their attention.
Babe Didrickson Zaharias was the probably the greatest female athlete of the 20th century. She excelled in every sport she tried, basketball, diving, golf, tennis, track and field. She was born the same year I was, so I followed her career closely.
Betty Friedan published "The Feminine Mystique" and launched a second wave of feminism in America -- a wave that for the first time included the legions of "conventional" women, married with children. As one of them, I'll bet I was one of the first ones who read it.
The bout of the century that I would love to see - but I am about 100 years too late, would be between Susan B. Anthony and Pat Robertson. Anthony had numerous affairs but refused to enter into what she called the slavery of marriage. Robertson said, "If you get married you have accepted the headship of a man... the husband is the head of wife and that's the way it is. Period." But wouldn't it be fun to watch those two square off against each other. I'm betting on Susan. Fortunately, American women are smart enough to make their own choices. Every month since the beginning of recorded history has been Women's History Month. The guys who wrote the books just didn't know it.