Too optimistic? Guilty as charged

I didn't think we would have to fight the same women's rights battles again

FDA Approves First commercially Produced Birth Control Pill (1960): The pill that causes headaches, blood clots, nausea, strokes, sore breasts, bloating, hormonal imbalances, depression and bleeding in some women is hailed as a huge triumph. — From “History of the Women’s Rights Movement,” The Onion, March-April 2026

I laughed out loud at that truism/satire, because mine was the first generation of women to benefit from those bubble packs of freedom, aka birth control pills. What we desired wasn’t just long-haired, bell-bottomed boys, but also freedom. Education. Careers. Kids when we were ready for them.

We knew we were living in revolutionary times. We had more options than our moms, whose lives had been much like their mothers’, but with Maytags instead of wringer washers. My own artistic mom dreamed of being a fashion designer but could only pour her talents into outfitting her nine children. I wanted to be a writer and no one suggested I couldn’t do it.

I was first hired by Idaho’s largest newspaper to work in what had been, until recently, the Women’s Department. By the mid-’70s, it was called the Family Living Department. Eventually, it was just the generic features department.

One of my early assignments was to profile the area’s first licensed female electrician. I rolled my eyes. Weren’t we past the point of making a big deal about women doing “men’s jobs”?

Oh, the innocence of youth. I just looked up how many electricians are women now. It’s a whopping 2.4%.

I was learning that a journalist’s best defense against lame story assignments is to come up with your own. I successfully pitched this idea to my editor: I would test the premise of the new Equal Credit Opportunity Act and see if a woman actually can get consumer credit in her own name.

Boise had several downtown department stores in those days of yore. I strolled into each and applied for a line of credit on the basis of my $150 weekly salary. All went smoothly until, at J.C. Penney, the young clerk handed the application form back, saying I had filled out the “spouse” line incorrectly. I was puzzled. I had clearly printed my husband’s name.

“You’re the spouse,” she explained, as if I were a foreign-language speaker who had misinterpreted the word.

I don’t recall how we resolved the spousal verbiage standoff, but Penney’s did extend me credit.

These days, women have 25% more credit cards than men. But men are far more confident that they can pay the balance. Maybe that’s because we earn, on average, 85% of what men make.

The gender pay gap has dramatically narrowed over the last 50 years. That’s one reason that I’ve been optimistic about women’s steady march toward equality. I never considered the possibility that a presidential administration would declare all-out war on women (actually, on all non-white-males). That it would fire distinguished military officers for no obvious reason other than their gender. That it would search-and-delete research applications that mention the very words “women” or “gender.”

I should have known there were still big forces working against women’s progress. After all, there’s a reason the Equal Rights Amendment has never been added to the Constitution. It was first introduced in Congress in 1923. Talk about a long road.

When I was a rookie reporter, men had already walked on the moon. The Artemis II mission gives me hope that a woman’s footprints will be among the next ones kicking up lunar dust. Or is this administration already overriding NASA’s recent egalitarian approach to selection of the next space crew?

When the Artemis capsule splashed down last week, NASA associate administrator Amit Kshatriya celebrated the successful mission but added “the work ahead is greater than the work behind us. It always is.” Maybe we women’s libbers should take that for our motto.