W-O-M-A-N

I am woman, hear me roar
In numbers too big to ignore…..
Oh yes I am wise
But it’s wisdom born of pain…
If I have to, I can do anything
I am strong
I am invincible. Helen Reddy and Ray Burton, 1972

Powerful words, but soon these words were used as a putdown; as in a man deriding a woman who was trying to stand up for herself “Oh look, I am woman hear me roar, ha ha.” I believe that women have not made much progress since the bra burning and the non-ratification of the ERA in the mid 1970’s. “ You’ve come a long way baby…”—not so much. For example “baby”, can you imagine a man as “baby”? Babies need to be taken care of and are dependent, men are definitely not these things. Why was the woman who brought home the bacon always the one who fried it in a pan? And still a WOMAN? I don’t like bacon, unless it has chocolate on it!

Fast forward to 2017…. Half of Congress are women and half of all CEOs are women, right? Nope! Recently, 13 Senators sat in a room to hammer out a thrice failed “better” health plan and not one was a female, now that’s representation! No health care without representation, we could all have a huge tea party in Congress.

I had coffee with a friend today, we were talking about health issues during her pregnancy and she told me she had an incompetent cervix. I said “Whaaaat? Incompetent cervix?” Without minimizing the seriousness of this condition, we had a big laugh at the thought of a man—sometime, somewhere, labeling a woman’s cervix as incompetent! Do men have incompetent body parts? Have you heard of an incompetent prostrate, or incompetent testicles?

Paul Ehrlich, the author of The Population Bomb” and a researcher on climate change and sustainability at Stanford, came to CSU several years ago and was asked how to save our imperiled planet. His response surprised me and the audience, he said we need to give the women of the world the same advantages as men and women will save the planet.