Category: work
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Focus on the work
“One of the things she taught me: ‘Don’t focus on the title, focus on the work,’’’ Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said in his eulogy for Eddie Bernice Johnson. Eddie Bernice Johnson overcame many of the obstacles faced by women and by Black women to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to…
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Hard work
The people of Crete used a dye to create a royal purple cloth until the Roman emperors decreed that only they could wear that color. They made the purple dye from sea snails, writes Elizabeth Wayland Barber in her book Women’s Work—The First 20,000 Years. Making the dye was hard work, Barber stresses. “Each little…
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Egyptian women
Egyptian women were weavers and grinders of grain. However, a few women were listed as overseers and “sealers” of storehouses, writes Elizabeth Wayland Barber in her book Women’s Work—The First 20,000 Years. One woman was a gardener. Women also worked as housekeepers, nurses, hairdressers, cosmeticians and just plain servants. A few women were “priestesses of…
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Women’s work
Women have always worked—sometimes inside the home and sometimes outside the home. Sometimes with respect for what they were doing and sometimes without respect. But, women have always worked. That’s the conclusion of Elizabeth Wayland Barber in her book Women’s Work—The First 20,000 Years. In Europe during the Neolithic and Early Bronze ages, there was…
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Feminism?
Some students in Florida will be listening to PragerU videos this year. One of these videos describes feminism as “a mean-spirited, small-minded, oppressive philosophy.” Yikes! That was the outdated, sexist view of some people in Florida when I lived there in the early 1970s. –Joy
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Work to be done
“Juneteenth is freedom, but we are not free until all of us are free. There’s still work to be done,” says Opal Lee. I found this quote in the June 19, 2022 issue of The Dallas Morning News. Opal Lee is a retired teacher and counselor. She also was an activist in the movement to…
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Purple people?
I am helping with a Girl Scout summer book club—and being around a bunch of eager, smiling girls makes me feel a bit happier. Recently, we read the book The World Needs More Purple People by Kristen Bell and Benjamin Hart. According to these authors, we all need to be more purple, and they define…
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Be prepared
Before she was the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi was the mother of five. She had five children in the span of six years and one week. In her book Madam Speaker—Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of Power, Susan Page reports that Pelosi drilled into her children an unofficial family motto—“Proper preparation prevents poor…
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Women belong
“Women belong in all the places where decisions are being made,” Ruth Bader Ginsberg once said.
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Kindness and more kindness
“There are three ways to ultimate success,” Mr. Rogers once said. “The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. The third is to be kind.”