The Resolute Woman

Category: resolute-women

  • Lady Bird’s beautification team

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    When Lady Bird Johnson launched her beautification campaign in 1965, people hadn’t yet realized the importance of conservation and protecting the environment. To educate the country, Lady Bird sent out Senate and cabinet wives and other women friends to give speeches throughout the country. “When Jane Freeman, wife of Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman, was introduced…

  • The marriage that made a president

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    Betty Boyd Carroli, in her book Lady Bird and Lyndon—The Hidden Story of a Marriage that Made a President, concludes that Lyndon never would have succeeded as a senator or made it to the White House without the help of Lady Bird. Lady Bird Johnson was “an invaluable asset who served as sounding board, financial…

  • The double bind

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    A double bind requires you to obey two mutually exclusive commands, explained Deborah Tannen, a linguistics professor at Georgetown University, in a recent article in The Washington Post. “Anything you do to fulfill one violates the other. Women running for office, as with all women in authority, are subject to these two demands: Be a…

  • Living with yourself

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    “Before I can live with other folks, I’ve got to live with myself,” Harper Lee once said. “The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.” Lee, who died recently, was the author of To Kill a Mockingbird.

  • Plodding along with books

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    In a letter to Oprah Winfrey in 2006, Harper Lee defended her love of books. “In an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. Instant information is not for me,” she wrote. Lee, who died recently, was the author of To Kill…

  • One life

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    “We all get one life,” says swimmer Diana Nyad, who swam 110.86 miles from Cuba to Florida in 2013. “You don’t get to do any day over again.” Now past 60, Nyad’s not going to spend any of her one life worrying about getting older. “I color my hair, for sure,” she told The Dallas…

  • No female brain?

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    Researchers at Tel Aviv looked at MRI scans of 1,400 brains and concluded that “the brain does not reflect a clear dichotomy based on gender difference,” reported the online Science magazine on November 30, 2015. The study found that human brains do not fit neatly into “male” and “female” categories. In fact, although researchers have…

  • Women still can’t win

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    “if you’re tough and take charge, you’re pushy, bossy, maybe even a bitch,” says Catherine Rampell in an article in the January 23, 2016, issue of The Dallas Morning News. “If you stand aside and let others give direction, you’re meek, weak, probably not leadership material.” In a new survey of women who work in…

  • Ruthless?

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    “I think of Jeremy telling me I had to be ruthless to be a writer,” says Lucy Barton in Elizabeth Strout’s new book My Name Is Lucy Barton. “But, really, the ruthlessness, I think, comes in grabbing onto myself, in saying: This is me, and I will not go where I can’t bear to go…and…

  • A long, hard haul

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    It has been five years since Gabby Giffords, a U.S. congresswoman, was wounded by a gunshot that nearly killed her. During those five years, Giffords has hiked the Grand Canyon, gone skydiving, raced in a 40-mile bike ride and become an advocate for gun control. “It’s been a long, hard haul, but I’m getting better,”…