I am a woman who grew up in a household managed by a woman. After my father died my mother had to take charge of keeping our family safe, secure, nourished and loved. She did a remarkable job given the minuscule monthly income that she had. In a era when most women were content to be housewives cared for by husbands, she managed to earn a college degree, pay off the mortgage on our home, purchase a car that she kept running for years, and send me and my brothers to college. She was a progressive woman long before we even spoke of such a thing.

I have totally equal footing with my husband. We are a team and neither of us dominates the other. I have always been free to follow my dreams. We make important decisions together and he is open to my ideas and ways of thinking. When I wanted an advanced degree he eagerly helped me find a way to manage the cost and the time that it would take for me to complete the courses. 

We have two daughters and we both encouraged them to follow their dreams and always be capable of being independent if needed. We taught them to develop their own opinions and how to be strong. They have demonstrated their own values and abilities just as we had hoped they would.

I have a granddaughter who is brilliant. She hopes to be a lawyer one day and has plotted a course that will be demanding of her time and talents. She is reaching for the moon and I believe that she will get there because she never gives up, never rests until she has reached her goals. 

I have always been content in knowing that my country and its government encourage girls and women. At this moment in our history there are more women graduating from college than men. Women may be found in all levels of work and power. As a nation we have encouraged our girls to be and do whatever they wished. 

I loved the progress that I have witnessed during my lifetime. When I was a child most women stayed home and took care of the household and the children. I appreciate that some women still choose such a lifestyle. The important thing is the ability to be in command of whatever they want to do. I do not want a return to my youth when it was incredibly difficult for a woman to follow pathways that did not conform to the traditions of the man being the head of the family. 

I have known older women who quietly whispered to me how much they admired me and my mother. They had wanted to further their educations but had been afraid to suggest such a thing to their husbands. It made me sad to hear how much they had silently dreamed of using their talents for something other than keeping the home fires burning. 

I remember the many times that women would seek my mother’s advice. I would overhear them asking her what they should do to control the sizes of their families. They struggled with one pregnancy after another and were exhausted from seemingly having no way to keep from becoming pregnant over and over again. 

Perhaps the worst case of an unfulfilled woman was a neighbor who spent hours crying in the company of my mother because her husband was abusive and she believed that there was no way out of his domination. Her tragedy left a permanent mark on me when she was one night murdered by the man who had broken her spirit. She had seen no way to escape the nightmare of her life and so she became a victim of her husband’s controlling anger. 

I have been elated to see the progress that women have made. They are able to determine the number of children they will have. They pursue education and vie for top jobs. It has seemed that all the old fashioned norms were gone and women enjoyed freedoms that made them equal to their male counterparts. Nonetheless we have been unwilling to cast enough votes for a woman to head our nation as president. A national reticence to view women as capable enough to be the Commander in Chief remains. 

Now we have a male chauvinist in charge along with most of his party who seem to want to roll back the advances that women have made. There is open talk that women should be making babies and to that end the ways of controlling births seems to be under threat. In the military woman are one by one being stripped of their authority and status. Backward thinking is threatening the concept of equality among the sexes and this saddens me. 

I encourage my granddaughter to keep pushing forward even as her options are slowly narrowing simply because she is a woman. I want her to be able to reach the moon if that is what she wants. We the females have worked hard to give her the freedoms that she needs. We can’t back down now. We won’t back down now. We only make life great for the females among us if we keep moving forward and only look back to understand the kind of thinking that we do not need.