The most important moment:

 Getting the vote, and when women were allowed to work outside the home, without getting permission from their husbands or employers.

Biggest setback:

When women allow themselves to be victimized without speaking up against; harassment, lower pay, insults, mental and physical abuse, whether it’s happening at home, or at work. The worst is when other woman don’t believe its happening, because its 2009.  It is very hard to stand up and say, NO!   

You will still lose your job and possibly a career when you take a stand.

In this country the ERA looms large as the greatest achievement of women. So does the inclusion of women in men’s jobs during World War II, and available for women as for men. The downside, the failure of the ERA, the ousting of women from those jobs to make way for returning veterans, andthe slight grasp too many young women today have about what women before them have done to make their lives comfortable and livable.  Without that awareness they lose the grit to do what they may need to do to keep equality in their lives. It comes with a price, among them giving up the comforts of the perceptions instilled in one’s upbringing, not taking situations for granted, freeing oneself from some of the ties that bind. A friend in Pennsylvania, for example,  with 13 years of Catholic education under her belt, some10 or 15 years ago talked her daughtger out of attending a formerly all-male Catholic college in the midwest by asking one questiion:  Would you be happy dear, hanging out day in and day out and taking instruction from people who prefer to live their lives without women in them? 

 I cringe too, when Oprah, to be grandly respected in most ways, not only wears, but touts the beauty of 5-inch heels.  Some 58 years ago I worked in the office of an orthopedic surgeon who showed me how they could lead to spiral fractures of the leg and other mishaps.  He also had pictures of x-rays of how feet in ultra-high heels look and how the bound feet of Chinese women looked.  There were huge similarities. It easily took me a decade to know, in my feet, that he was a hundred percent right. Maybe Dr. Oz will lecture Oprah on the subject as well. 

Liz shouldn’t feel bad about spending her time in the 1970s with her nose to the grindstone, taking little comfort in what women outside it were trying to achieve.  It is, was, and always will be useful to have people on the inside with connections, as she did then and does now. We do what we can as we see it.

Suffrage has advanced us, dears.  And unequal pay, with the financial burden that accompanies reduction of reproductive rights, has most held us back.

Voting and women. Brings to mind a very brave soul: Ms Septima Poinsette Clark. Born in 1898, spent her 89 years fighting for the voting rights of African Americans, who had long been left out of the voting process for lack of education. She led and worked in the literacy movement. For her own recollections of working with the poor and illiterate along with the Rev Martin Luther King Jr and other very well know civil rights leaders of the time, go to:

I don’t think there is any single advancement that can explain how different my life is from my own mother’s.  I made an informed choice, early on in life, not to have children.  My mother had five children by the time she was 30 because that is what Catholics of her generation were expected to do.

I always worked outside the home.  Her work was the home (with five kids, yes, I look back and don’t envy her one bit).  I never heard her argue with my father; he ran the family, his word was the last word on every topic.  My boyfriend of 14 years and I disagree occasionally and it makes us equals.  No way were my parents equal partners; that is laughable.

My parents died when I was very young, but I knew what they expected of the three girls and two boys in my family.  The boys had their futures planned out for them by my father.  With the girls a higher education was considered a waste of money because "girls just get married and pregnant."  I actually heard these words from my father’s mouth.  I always wondered what his parents had done to him to make him hate women so much.  I never dared ask him that.  One did not challenge him.

I am single, in a committed relationship, and happily worked my way through college.  If my father had lived, I would have been required to live at home until marriage, because that is what "nice girls" did.  My oldest sister had a great job opportunity she had to turn down because my father did not approve of her living with roommates in a large city.  She has regretted this her entire life.  

My freedom to pursue the life I genuinely want was paved by many women before me.  I am conscious of that fact and grateful.  Most of all, I am grateful for the right to control my reproductive freedom and the means to prevent being dependent on a man for my needs.  I learned that lesson by seeing my parents’ relationship for what it really was, not the romanticized view my brothers still see. 

The incredible fight our sisters put forth, internationally, to have the right to VOTE.

The worst set-back: women’s constant struggle to have control over their own bodies; fighting annually for the rights afforded all Americans, except women. Sara Weddington knew what was to come, and the intervening years have proved that it’s a private matter between a woman and her physicians; however, that is not yet totally afforded to women. Disgraceful. (IMHO, it has nothing to do with personal beliefs - if we realized what people do that we have no knowlege about, we’d all shut up.)