It's International Women's Day!

@Lochcarron we're both in the picture, you must have missed us! Slightly to the right in the 2nd row from the front.



Salary equality is a big part of gender equality. Have you any good insights to share or link about this issue?

As a child, I had a card set called Great Women: A Biographical Card Game. From what I can tell searching online now, it was created for the first time in 1979. The cards featured 30 or so great American women who had done incredible things. While I don't remember all the women who were featured, I do remember that Harriet Tubman, Gertrude Stein, and Nellie Bly were all featured. I became particularly interested in Nellie Bly and her work as an undercover journalist. I loved learning about great women throughout US history who overcome big obstacles to do work they cared about.



Amelia Earhart was another great woman who I became fascinated by as a child. Her disappearance was likely part of my fascination, but her bravery was what amazed me most. I was very scared of flying as a kid. So the idea that a woman was brave enough to fly a tiny plane all around the world was thrilling.



As a teenager, I learned about Jane Addams, considered 'the mother of social work' and she became someone I greatly admired. She was a pacifist, co-founder of the ACLU, and founder of the Hull House. This is an excerpt from her Wikipedia page (which cites this article: Jane Addams, pragmatism and cultural policy): "The settlement house as Addams discovered was a space within which unexpected cultural connections could be made and where the narrow boundaries of culture, class, and education could be expanded. They doubled up as community arts centers and social service facilities. They laid the foundations for American civil society, a neutral space within which different communities and ideologies could learn from each other and seek common grounds for collective action ... The unending effort was the story of her own life, a struggle to reinvigorate her own culture by reconnecting with diversity and conflict of the immigrant communities in America's cities and with the necessities of social reform."



Other great women who have inspired me as an adult include Audre Lorde, Jane Goodall, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Wangari Maathai, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Audre Lorde in particular has made some profoundly powerful statements. Some of her best known quotes include:



“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change."



"My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you."



"There is no hierarchy of oppression. I cannot afford the luxury of fighting one form of oppression only. I cannot afford to believe that freedom from intolerance is the right of only one particular group."



Here's to inspirational women everywhere!