Category: change
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Queen Charlotte?
It’s unlikely that it ever will happen, but it’s worth mentioning. For the first time in British history, the birth of a baby boy does not impact his big sister’s spot in line for the throne. Queen Elizabeth’s Succession to the Crown Act in 2013 makes Princess Charlotte the royal family’s first female who wasn’t…
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Courage calls to courage
A bronze statue of Milicent Fawcett now stands outside Britain’s Parliament. It’s the first statue of a woman to stand alongside the statues of 11 men, including Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill. Fawcett was president of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies and a leader in the movement that secured British women over 30…
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Vote!
We “can march in knit hats and go to town-hall meetings, but, if everyone voted, things would change,” Cecile Richards, outgoing Planned Parenthood president told Time magazine in its April 9, 2018, issue. Read Cecile Richards new book. I just did! Keep marching in the streets. And plan to vote. –Joy
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When birth control was illegal
I think I knew this, but I was astonished to be reminded by Cecile Richards in her new book that birth control was technically illegal in many states until 1965. That’s when the Supreme Court ruled in Griswold v. Connecticut that people have a constitutional right to “marital privacy.” That’s right. The date was 1965.…
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Chimpanzees in the wild
In 1900, there were one million chimpanzees in the wild. Today, according to the Jane Goodall Institute, there are “as few as 340,000.” But, Jane Goodall, age 84, still has hope for chimpanzees and for the world. “It’s never too late to turn things around by nurturing the seed of hope,” Goodall told students at…
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Jane Goodall at 84
Jane Goodall, age 84, spends 300 days a year traveling around the world speaking to people and encouraging them to help save chimpanzees and the environment. “I think how lucky I have been,” she writes in My Life with the Chimpanzees. “I spent years and years doing what I wanted to do most of all—being…
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A “man’s field”
Lou Hoover, whose husband was president from 1929-1933, was the first woman to graduate from Stanford with a degree in the “man’s field” of geology. “That we have the right to vote means nothing,” she once said. “That we use it in the right way means everything.” Hoover is one of the First Ladies featured…
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New beginnings
“Spring is here. Welcome all new beginnings!” I found that quote somewhere, and I can’t find who said it. Probably the author is “anonymous.” Whoever said it was a wise woman. –Joy
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A seat at the table
Women now make up a quarter of the state legislators in the United States. Today, 1,865 or 25.3 percent of the 7,383 state legislators are women. That compares to 344 or 4.5 percent in 1971, according to the spring 2018 issue of Ms. magazine. We’ve made progress, but we still have a long way to…
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Be humble
Todd Davis stresses the importance of being humble in his book Get Better—15 Proven Practices to Build Effective Relationships at Work. “Humility is the wisdom needed to accurately assess my strengths and weaknesses,” he writes. “Humility reminds me to be patient with myself and others—and to know that we are all in the process of…