We all too often underestimate the strength and wisdom of women. When the men have gone to war, the women have kept the farms providing, the businesses running, the production of necessities continuing. For most of history women were thought to be inferior to men, better designed for bearing and raising children than participating in politics or having the skills to work outside of the home. In many cases women had few rights and were forced to stay in abusive marriages lest they lose their children and their property. With only a few exceptions it took humankind centuries to finally admit to the intelligence and wisdom of women even as people surely noted those characteristics in their mothers and sisters and wives.
It was not until nineteen twenty that women in the United States universally received the right to vote and yet they had already proven themselves time and again to be worthy of participating in our democratic republic. Abigail Adams was a well educated and intelligent woman who often provided sound advice to her husband. She wanted women to be included in the rights outlined by the men fashioning our Constitution, but old fashioned beliefs prevented such a thing from happening. For a very long time there was a belief that women were too emotional to have the wisdom needed to make proper choices in political matters.
Even after women were granted the right to vote they have continued to be underrated by large swaths of the population. Their competence is more likely to be judged by appearance or generalizations about their lack of toughness in difficult situations in spite of mountains of evidence throughout history of the incredible strength of women.
I find myself thinking of all of the women that I have ever known and of their remarkable resilience and dedication to often quietly keep the world around us moving forward. Even to this very day we all too often underestimate their contributions to the progression of history. We overlook the hurdles that they have had to encounter and overcome.
Both of my grandmothers were resigned to caring for others from a young age. Their brothers were sent to school while they were kept home to help with the household chores and their younger siblings. As a result they never learned to read or write and yet they both developed a kind of wisdom that was never measured and sometimes never even noticed but I witnessed their knowledge and their ability to nurture and develop the members of their families. They were the heart of wisdom in their homes and the reason that their children were confident and bright.
My mother lost her husband at the age of thirty. She was left with three children and little income but she managed to purchase and eventually own two houses and then earn a college degree all while providing her children with the love and confidence that they would need to emerge as strong and productive citizens of the world. Nothing was easy about her life. Not a single day was a piece of cake but with her intelligence and survival skills she dedicated herself to guiding us and improving herself at one and the same time. She was the angel who sat in the dark of night at our bedsides when we were sick and then tackled the business of running our home without ever complaining about how tired she must have been.
My mother-in-law was a brilliant only child who earned a place at Rice University when women were rarely given the opportunity to be there. A mathematics teacher flunked both her and the only other girl in the class with a kind of glee. My mother-in-law left the school feeling broken but not for long. When her father suddenly died she helped her mother run the business that he had built with his brothers. The two women became the heart and soul of the family corporation with my mother-in-law meticulously keeping the books and her mother fielding the growth of the company. They were literally the glue that held the family together and they fulfilled all of their obligations so smoothly that they made their contributions almost seem like nothing of real importance and yet it was the only reason that the business did not die.
My sister-in-law became an electrical engineer in an era when women were insulted and almost dared to continue with such majors. She pushed through one obstacle after another until she eventually became an often honored icon at NASA. Toward the end of her career she was traveling around the world as the representative of the International Space Station.
We have seen the excellence of woman after woman in careers and endeavors that take incredible skill to run and yet we still seem unwilling in the United States to vote for a woman to be our president. Twice now the American people have shunned two incredibly brilliant women in favor of a blustering huckster who again and again seems to be ill suited for the job. We blame one of his former opponents for wearing the wrong kind of pantsuits instead of noting her success in virtually every aspect of her life. We run from the other because she laughs too much even though she was a lawyer, a district attorney and the Vice President of the United States who quietly travelled across the globe diplomatically creating incredible relationships to our nation’s advantage.
As a woman who has followed in the role models of my grandmothers, my mother, my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law and I forged my own success in the world of education I look now to my granddaughter who is certain to have a positive impact on the world. Her aspirations are boundless, her confidence is heroic and her determination is unrelenting. I dream of a day when women like her and so many who have come before her will be recognized without any judgements based on superficial and silly ideas. It is time for the women to rise and not be sent back home to let the men take care of things. It’s time for us to admit just how tough and resilient woman are and have always been. It’s not about taking away from men, but about finally admitting that women are true equals who can be trusted to get the jobs done.
