58: The Self-Empowered Woman: Statistics

Dear Followers,



For a change of pace, today there will be no "profile" of a woman worth getting to know. Instead, I'm going to share a few thought-provoking statistics (thanks to Betsy Towner)....

• From 1479 till 1458 B.C. a female Pharaoh (Hatshepsut) reigned in Egypt


• The first woman to earn a medical degree, in 1849, was Elizabeth Blackwell


• Over 10 million women own businesses in the U.S.


• Women outrank men when it comes to earned college degrees by 58% to 42%


• In the 1900 Census, over one million women listed their occupation as "servant"


• In 2008, the highest paid woman in America was Safra Catz, the president of Oracle, who earned $42.5 million


• The different average weekly pay scale for a woman with only a high school diploma and one with a bachelor's degree or higher is $335.00


• In 1879, Belva Ann Lockwood was the first woman to practice law before the Supreme Court


• Almost 2 million women have served in the U.S. Military


• Women today earn 8o cents for every dollar earned by men for the same work


• In 2008, Ann Dunwoody was named the first four-star general

In closing, here's a quote from Greg Mortenson (more about him in blog # 38) the author of "Three Cups of Tea" and "Stones Into Schools": "We can drop bombs, surge troops, put in roads, computers or electricity, but unless the girls are educated, a society will never change."

Looking forward to your comments...

11. Title IX

Lisa Ling
(Photo: Amshelleys 20's)









Dear Followers,

Did you know what U.S. Army General Ann Dunwoody, jockey Julie Krone, TV journalist Lisa Ling, and writer Anna Quindlen have in common? These amazing women, like the others in Chapter 11, were comfortable (rather than frightened by) taking risks.


The major news story of the week is the death of Senator Ted Kennedy, and whether Republican or Democrat, today's women all owe him a big Thank You for his work as a key supporter of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. This bill helped balance the amount of money spent on men's and women's sports.

Mary Jo Kane, director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sports at the University of Minnesota said "...he always argued for ...making sure that young girls and women had equal opportunities on the sports field...He understood that the world of sports is not just about who wins and loses, but the kinds of experiences that young girls had been denied for centuries."

Female stars like Sue Bird, Crystal Bustos, Mary Decker, Lisa Leslie, Michelle McGann, Dara Torras and Venus and Serena Williams could not have enjoyed the success they did 50 years ago.

Exciting news! Today I received the first bound copy of The Self-Empowered Woman. Finally, both Tony and I can exhale - hope you'll think it's as impressive as we do...