By DeeDee Strum
Joining Trailblazers Impact as co-host with Nan McKay, my friend and collaborator of more than four decades, provides the platform to celebrate women much like ourselves.
Women who entered this world 50+ years ago as ordinary girls blessed with access to a "whole new world of opportunities made possible by the sheer fortitude of the suffragists of the prior century, determined to secure the Same promises and Dreams made possible through birth, pilgrimage, or involuntary enslavement, to a bold "new world".
America: a new country with a constitution declaring all men were created equal with the God-given right to the pursuit of happiness.
Even in the 1800s women were aware that they were "holding up half the sky", working alongside men in harsh conditions. While they walked behind these men, they knew even then that only they could make way for future generations of girls to achieve that which they could only dream about: the right to vote, to own property in their name, to attain a quality education, to have a job with decent wages.
Yes, there were women "here and there" who entered college or a profession.
But it was only the women of the generation that Nan and I represent, the girls labeled baby-boomers, who breathed life into the dreams of our great-grandmothers, grandmothers, and mothers.
And we hit the ground running in the 1960s riding the coattails of those labeled feminists, the foot-soldiers of the Women's Rights and Civil Rights movements.
Women started with entry-level jobs that led to executive positions, executive positions that gave way to the C-suite, government appointments, and elected office.
In large numbers women entered colleges and the "professions" becoming scientists, journalists, lawyers, judges, college and hospital presidents, professors, and business owners. Our contemporaries, and now the young trailblazers that followed, have kept the faith of our foremothers, and the pact to make way for others. Each with a journey and story worth sharing! These women, these trailblazers have made an Impact!; and we remain committed to capturing and sharing these stories.
This week, the world witnessed the first woman to become vice-president of the United States of America. A position with the subtitle "one heartbeat away" from becoming the most powerful person on the national and international stage. And, not just any woman, but a woman of color, a woman who is only one generation away from the immigration of both parents to the USA in pursuit of the American dreams for themselves and for their children.
Vice-President Kamala Harris always ends the sharing of her story in the same manner we close each episode of Trailblazers Impact: with acknowledgement of the women who went before and the desire to inspire every girl, every woman, to never doubt her own abilities.