They Called Us Girls by Kathleen Courtenay Stone

 "At the end of World War II, more American women worked outside the home than ever before.  Yet the culture, from politicians to corporations to television shows, portrayed the ideal woman as a housewife.  Many women happily assumed that role, but a small segment bucked the tide---women who wanted to use their talents differently, especially in jobs that had always been reserved for men." Cynren Press

After my most recent night of binge watching interesting films of my choice, I was captivated with  "On the Basis of Sex", a fascinating look at the early years of Ruth Bader Ginsberg.  She was driven to pursue a "man's career" as an attorney at Harvard in 1955, where she did in fact encounter a very male dominated hostile environment with only eight females in her class of 500.  Ginsberg personally faced gender equality setbacks in countless job searches, which motivated her to eventually argue six landmark cases on gender equality before the Supreme Court for the ACLU.  

Having just finished "They Called Us Girls", I was struck by the resemblances in Ginsberg's life to the seven remarkable women that Stone featured in her book:  all born before 1935, all chose professional careers, all attended respected universities in America, all faced discrimination - sometimes due to gender, sometimes due to race.  The author was interested in discovering why some women willingly took on the opposition in their attainment of a career that, for many others was not worth the agony of pursuit.  She questions, " How did they find the ambition, confidence, sense of self--whatever it was -- to have a professional career when the culture said not to, and most of their contemporaries agreed?  To find out, I would need to talk to women themselves."

And so, she did.  A Lithuanian-Jewish free spirited artist named Dahlov Ipcar who lived on a Maine farm and created heartwarming children's books.  She was asked to host her first exhibition at the Portland Museum of Art when she was 84.  A Trinidadian physician named Muriel Petioni refused to let the color line defeat her even though hospitals were segregated when she began her internship in 1937.  A violin playing Eastern European physicist named Mildred Dresselhaus was invited to the White House multiple times, meeting presidential families from the Roosevelts to the Obamas.  Born in the Dominican Republic, Frieda Garcia fought to have her dual US citizenship re-instated (for voting in a Dominican election on a family trip back to the island); and then chased her dream to become a non-profit leader and activist here. German born Rya Zobel finished law school only to discover that she could not land a job with a law firm.  "Law firms were not hiring girls", she said.  "And we were not women.  We were 'girls'." Zobel became a federal judge!   

These inspiring stories reminded me of my homemaker mother who was born in 1923.  She had none of the similarities that Stone discovered among her seven characters, but I believe she omitted one: Grit.  My mother's grit propelled her into the Navy Waves in 1943 when the program was just beginning, playing on the first Wave softball team at Cecil Field, FL.  For 70 years she believed that she had not contributed much to the war effort because she served stateside. However, at the age of 90 while conversing with young military women at the World War II exhibit in Washington DC, she was repeatedly thanked for her historic contribution to servicewomen...because she "paved  the way" for their careers.

Kudos to the women who have gone before us and paved the way!  March is Women's History Month and Stone's book is an excellent reading choice to strengthen our understanding of how the past can greatly impact the future for our daughters and grand-daughters.