I am 51 years old.
When I graduated from college, I could count the number of my fellow female graduates at the academically challenging college from which we were graduating and who were going on to law school on one hand.
The college we attended had a history of sending its graduates to any graduate school they wished to attend, but, as I remember it, only one or two women from my class went from college directly to law school.
At that time, (1978) the law school I would eventually attend some seven years later was composed of perhaps 80 percent men. Even when I went (class of ‘88), men made up more than 60 percent of the class. And though I know that this sentiment was less universal then, I was told (by more than one of my male classmates) that I had no business being at the law school, because I was taking up a "seat" that rightfully belonged to someone who would be "supporting a family" -- that is, a male student.
I am sure that Hillary Clinton heard worse when she attended Yale Law School more than a decade earlier. And she was at the top of her class.
I will never, ever forget one class in Constitutional Law, when my Professor made a "joke" about a case then pending that was to be decided by a female judge (something of a rarity then). The case was a discrimination case based on sex and he thought it was "funny" that it was to be decided by a female judge. "Oh, well," he said (or something like that), "I guess they are out of luck."
I questioned out loud whether he would have made the same statement had the plaintiffs been African-American or some other group other than "female." He had no response. That stuck with me.
Back when I was a newspaper reporter, in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, editors told me to my face that I could not cover certain stories I wanted to cover because I was a "girl" and it would be dangerous or otherwise disadvantageous (to the newspaper) to have me covering them. Oddly, this prejudice was far more pronounced at the New York newspaper at which I started my career than it was as the Texas newspaper at which I concluded it. My Texas editors let me go and cover what I wanted to go and cover; they had no qualms about my gender.
Still, having grown up when I did, I understand what it is like to be denied opportunities simply because of being female; I have always been mad about that. I have always been at the top of my class at all the schools I have attended as a result of hard work; I have always done well at the workplaces at which I have worked as a result of hard work; I have always resented the fact that I have been denied (at some of them) the chance to do more simply because "I am a girl."
I have never been a fan of Hillary Clinton, but these are some things I have to say:
(1) She is very smart and very capable and works harder than almost anyone I have ever met.
(2) She is, in person, very warm and engaging. I was lucky enough to meet and speak with her twice, and I liked her very much when I did.
(3) She held a fundraiser for Jim Webb (D-VA), for women, when Jim was (unfairly and wrongly) being accused of being a sexist (a Republican talking point, but one based on an article he had authored in the late 1970’s) -- and I am sure that the event helped him win the race in Virginia in 2006. I was there, and she made a good speech and as a Virginian who is so proud to have Jim Webb as my Senator, I was grateful.
I support Barack Obama for President. I am so convinced that he will be a great President (not just a good one) and that he will bring my country back from the shards in which the Bush Administration has left it. I know that bringing it back will take some time; I hope he will serve two terms and that we will reclaim our country in the interim.
I hope very much that Sen. Clinton will recognize, very soon, that the Democratic voters in this country want Barack Obama as their nominee this time. I hope that she will decide to bow out and support him, so that we all can move forward to an historic election this November.
And I hope, too, that she knows that, whatever the decision, there are a lot of women of the Baby Boom generation, who, regardless of what they felt about the specifics of her candidacy, were glad to see her run. But running is one thing, and being the best candidate is another.
There were many things about her candidacy I did not like; there were many things she said and did that made me angry. But she was the first woman with a real chance of winning the Presidency of the United States. And for that, alone, I feel empowered and am grateful.