Women’s History Month reminds us of significant progress, work to be done. | Opinion
My friend Wanda recently announced that she has passed the 1,750 mark with her Pure Barre classes. If that doesn’t remind us that March is Women’s History Month, I don’t know what will.
When I think of my younger days, I am astonished at the changes that have occurred in my lifetime. One of the sections in the reader published by a local university, among the selections intended to be read by undergraduate students, are excerpts from the Mercer Women’s Student Handbook of the 1950s. The policies required the students to adhere to “lady-like” behavior. Male students could not sit within 12 inches of female students. Women wearing shorts or gym clothes needed to cover themselves with a raincoat. These rules and dozens like them assumed that women were frail and needed protection.
Similar rules prevailed at the institution that I attended. In those days, when most women were tied to the clothesline and ironing board, few women even drove. Automatic transmissions and power steering were rare, wash-and-wear fabric was a thing of the future, as were plastics. College faculties were mostly male. Unlike today, female students were a distinct minority. The only sports worth talking about were male-dominated.
Suddenly, the world changed: the sports bra, the birth control pill and the tampon arrived on the scene. Close on their heels, women’s roles expanded exponentially. When I was in the U.S. Army, I often remarked that a petite woman could fit in the gunner’s seat of a main battle tank much more readily than most of the males in a tank battalion. Today, of course, women serve in every branch of the armed services as well as other realms where they once were unwelcome.
In most areas of human endeavor, a woman who recalls her limited freedoms and opportunities from the 1950s and 1960s will be astonished at her life today. All four of our children have been athletes at some level. The eldest daughter served as co-captain of the tennis team at a Division I university and after graduation has run in over a dozen marathons and half-marathons. When the organization Shatterproof held a fundraiser at her workplace in support of recovery, she rappelled down the side of one of Pittsburgh’s skyscrapers.
Yes, women have made tremendous strides not only in the universities, hospitals, courtrooms and military services of this nation, and while there is much ground to be made up, it is laid out in vivid detail in Danielle Friedman’s book “Let’s Get Physical,” the wonderful subtitle of which is “How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World.”
Having lived through the era chronicled by this book, I was not surprised by the impediments that have been placed in women’s paths over the years. I had heard of the judges forbidding women to enter a courtroom wearing pants, but I was even more astonished to learn of the race official who ran onto the course and tackled a woman who was an running in the 1967 Boston Marathon.
By 1984, women had demanded their own Olympic Marathon, and to the amazement of the world, the woman who won posted a time that would have beaten the 1952 men’s Olympic Champion. Since that time, not just women’s sports but women’s fitness has exploded. As Friedman points out, women’s fitness is no longer about appearance: It’s about body diversity, inclusion and self-acceptance.
But plenty of old attitudes are still around. In spite of enormous progress, I know that the male-dominated state legislature is hard at work making decisions that few women will applaud. Is there still much work to be done? Yes, that is the profound lesson of Women’s History Month.
Larry Fennelly is an opinion columnist for The Telegraph and can be reached at larney_f@hotmail.com
