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I consider myself a feminist. I believe in equal rights, equal pay, and equal opportunities for both men and women, and I feel fortunate to live in a time, when those ideals are often realized.
I recognize that the women who came before me paved the way for the equality I now take for granted - many of them becoming the first women in history to accomplish what only men had accomplished before them.
But women have been breaking down barriers for decades. Edith Wharton was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Amelia Earhart was the first to fly solo across the Atlantic, and Sally Ride was the first American woman to be sent into space - a Russian, Valentina Tereshkova actually beat her to it.
So why, when we already have such a rich history of bright, capable, and determined female role-models, are we still surprised by their accomplishments?
Politics alone is peppered with the names of important women who were the first to hold their positions: Janet Reno, Attorney General, Madeline Albright, Secretary of State, and Sandra Day O'Conner US Supreme court justice.
2007 already has its share of firsts - Nancy Pelosi became the first woman speaker of the house, and after 371 years, Harvard named Drew Gilpin Faust its first woman president. And Hilary Clinton announced her bid for the presidency this year - if she wins, she will be our country's first female president.
American women are lagging behind other countries when it comes to female leaders - more than a dozen countries, including Latvia, Bangladesh, and Liberia are all led by women.
But if the US has yet to elect a female president, it's not for lack of trying. Victoria Claflin Woodhull became the first female presidential candidate back in 1872. Since women couldn't even vote until 1919, it's not all that surprising she didn't win.
All these women deserve to be celebrated for their accomplishments; some you might never even have heard about - like Sara Caldwell, the first woman to conduct at New York's Metropolitan Opera House, or Wilma Mankiller - now there's a name!- the first woman chief of the Cherokee nation of Oklahoma. Or how about Diane Crump, the first female Jockey to ride in the Kentucky Derby.
Given all they have achieved, it seems to me that we should no longer be surprised that women are gaining notoriety and positions of power en a par with men, and attempts by the media to point them out just because they are women almost diminishes their accomplishments.
Sure, there still hasn't been a female pope, and the NFL doesn't have any female football players, but women have founded religions, fortune-500 companies and sports leagues. These days, you'd be hard-pressed to think of something a woman somewhere in the world hasn't already done. So is there any reason that accomplishments should still be making news- just because they were done by women? Doesn't pointing them out demonstrate a certain collective lack of self-esteem?
I'm not sure who is writing all these first women stories - perhaps they're all men. And maybe lot's of people - lot's of women even -like to read them. But maybe the stories are popular because nobody has ever pointed out just how silly this line of thinking really is. In which case, let ME be the first woman to do that.