By Alex Berger
March is marching in and with it, Women's History Month. This celebration has been observed every year since Congress designated it in 1987. The event marks the achievement of the fair sex who have made remarkable upward leaps during the past two centuries.I like a woman with a head on her shoulders. I hate necks!Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the National Women's Council of the United States in March 1888.These 19th century pioneers knew the arduous life most women of their time were experiencing. Their sisters were responsible for “home and family,” producing the food and services necessary for family survival. Until I was 9, I thought girls were just soft boys!Typically, March had been a time for annual housecleaning. Every surface of the house, covered by soot and ashes from heating and lighting during the long winter nights, had to be cleaned. Bleaching linen was also one of the March tasks. Many men wish Adam had kept his ribs to himself!Over the following years, women led in developing the technology required to save labor and time. More than 140 cooking devices were patented by women in the 19th century alone. Food processing devices patented by women ranged from apple peelers and ice cream freezers to mechanical mixers. Women were indeed on the march, but met glitches along the way.Women are supposed to be smarter than men. But will they ever solve life's mystery of how a two-pound box of candy would cause a woman to gain five pounds?As late as March, 1908, the mayor of Cincinnati told the city council that no woman was physically fit to operate an automobile. He never could have envisioned that the first popularly elected mayor of Cincinnati would be a female or that March would be celebrated as Women's History Month. Woman is the last thing God worked on. It shows that he must have been a little tired! The number of working women has grown from 5.3 million in 1900 to more than 65 million today Ð 48 percent of the country's work force. Despite that statistic, many women want equal rights with men. If that is all the ladies want, they simply have no ambition.Today, it is not unusual to see your sisters, daughters, granddaughters, nieces, mothers, grandmothers and wives working side by side with (and higher than) men in politics, the military, creative arts, education, medicine, sports, and in fields such as mining, men's room attendants, and even president of these Yoo-nited States, all previously considered male areas.If you want to know why women are called the opposite sex, just voice an opinion.This advancement for women would never have been accomplished, however, without the trailblazers who shattered the steel curtains surrounding the strictly male bastions.I am happy that Gloria joined the Women's Movement. Now she complains about ALL men and not just ME!Bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers and laser printers were all invented by women. The trouble with many women is that they get excited about nothing (and then marry him).There were, and are, many heroic women. Did you know that Julia Child, the famous French chef, worked in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II and was awarded the Emblem of Meritorious Civilian Service for leadership in helping win the war? The way to fight a woman is with your hat- grab it and run.Bessie Coleman was not allowed to enter U.S. flight schools. She had to train in France and was the first African-American pilot in the 1920s.Women put on wigs, fake eyelashes, fingernails, falsies, ten pounds of makeup, and then complain they can't find a real man.Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper developed the world's first electronic computer in the 1940s. She wrote the first automatic computer program and invented several computer languages still in use today. She also coined the term “computer bug” after she found a moth had shorted out two vacuum tubes.If men dressed like women, women would turn around also!Deborah Sampson was determined to fight in the American Revolution. She dressed in men's clothing and enlisted in the Continental forces. Her true identity was ultimately discovered when she was wounded. She was personally discharged by George Washington, and honored for her bravery.God created women second because he didn't want any advice.Elizabeth Blackwell, rejected by 17 U.S. medical schools because she was a woman, was accepted at Geneva Medical College in the belief her application was just a spoof perpetrated by a rival school. Very determined, she overcame the hostility of her professors to become the first woman to earn a degree in medicine at an American college in 1849, graduating at the top of her class. Her name was not mentioned in the commencement program. Women are better than men in math. Only a woman will divide her age by two, double the price of her dress, triple her salary, and add five years to the age of her best friend! Beautiful Hedy Lamarr, the Hollywood actress of the 1930s and '40s, was a brilliant scientist who developed a variable-frequency transmitting device that helped prevent Germany from jamming Naval communications in World War II. The cellular communications industry was built on the technology she developed.
