DO THEY LET GIRLS DO THAT?
Do they let girls do that?
More than a few decades ago, I asked that question as I sat in the back of my mother’s Buick listening to the CBS Radio Network News, as a man with that old-school Voice of G-d delivery declaimed the top-of-hour headlines.
And I decided that if they did, I would.
Years later, standing behind another deep-voiced anchor at KDKA Radio, listening to him read my words less well than I would have, I remembered those days in the Buick, and realized it was time to get out there and make it happen.
Which was how I ended up looking for and winning my first on-air job in Vermont, leading to work in Connecticut, and finally, New York City. For the last two decades, I like to tell myself, little girls riding in the back of their moms’ SUVs don’t have to ask the question I did.
This isn’t intended as a public service announcement for the Wonder of Me. Not even a little.
It’s just a personal story of how the world changes. And how we change it.
An awful lot of change comes just from asking “Why not?”
Back in the 1700s, Abigail Adams wondered why women weren’t allowed to vote and reminded her husband John to “remember the ladies.” In 1848, a lot more women and the men who supported them got together in Seneca Falls to formally call for the ballot. It took most of a century, but we got there.
During the World Wars, women asked why they couldn’t serve or directly work for victory, and those trailblazers stepped up and did their part. Sure, most of the WACS, WAVES, WASPS, and Rosie the Riveters ended up as 1950s housewives, but they’d opened the door, and even if it was later slammed on their fingers, it was still there.
By the 1970s, Second Wave feminism had most of society asking the question: Why can’t women do…just about anything? That’s how we got the first large numbers of women lawyers, police officers, soldiers – and ordinary middle managers in offices everywhere.
And now, despite the backlash, girlbosses, and the backlash to the backlash – not to mention Covid and everything after – there are almost no professions closed to women. More, there are almost no girls who don’t think of themselves as future workers as well as future homemakers. And very few boys who don’t understand that a father works inside the home as well as outside it.
We can, and should, have the arguments about how we manage work and family life, and who does the caregiving, but we’ve come an awfully long way toward settling the question of what girls – and boys – can do.
And it all starts with a question: Can I?
Thank you for your support of the weekly #ThrowbackThursday blog over the last five years. I’ll be posting intermittently from now on, when interesting and appropriate.
More than a few decades ago, I asked that question as I sat in the back of my mother’s Buick listening to the CBS Radio Network News, as a man with that old-school Voice of G-d delivery declaimed the top-of-hour headlines.
And I decided that if they did, I would.
Years later, standing behind another deep-voiced anchor at KDKA Radio, listening to him read my words less well than I would have, I remembered those days in the Buick, and realized it was time to get out there and make it happen.
Which was how I ended up looking for and winning my first on-air job in Vermont, leading to work in Connecticut, and finally, New York City. For the last two decades, I like to tell myself, little girls riding in the back of their moms’ SUVs don’t have to ask the question I did.
This isn’t intended as a public service announcement for the Wonder of Me. Not even a little.
It’s just a personal story of how the world changes. And how we change it.
An awful lot of change comes just from asking “Why not?”
Back in the 1700s, Abigail Adams wondered why women weren’t allowed to vote and reminded her husband John to “remember the ladies.” In 1848, a lot more women and the men who supported them got together in Seneca Falls to formally call for the ballot. It took most of a century, but we got there.
During the World Wars, women asked why they couldn’t serve or directly work for victory, and those trailblazers stepped up and did their part. Sure, most of the WACS, WAVES, WASPS, and Rosie the Riveters ended up as 1950s housewives, but they’d opened the door, and even if it was later slammed on their fingers, it was still there.
By the 1970s, Second Wave feminism had most of society asking the question: Why can’t women do…just about anything? That’s how we got the first large numbers of women lawyers, police officers, soldiers – and ordinary middle managers in offices everywhere.
And now, despite the backlash, girlbosses, and the backlash to the backlash – not to mention Covid and everything after – there are almost no professions closed to women. More, there are almost no girls who don’t think of themselves as future workers as well as future homemakers. And very few boys who don’t understand that a father works inside the home as well as outside it.
We can, and should, have the arguments about how we manage work and family life, and who does the caregiving, but we’ve come an awfully long way toward settling the question of what girls – and boys – can do.
And it all starts with a question: Can I?
Thank you for your support of the weekly #ThrowbackThursday blog over the last five years. I’ll be posting intermittently from now on, when interesting and appropriate.
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