Today I saw this meme that referenced Kamala Harris as the United States Vice President-elect. It was followed by the statement “All it takes is one woman to crack open the door, and the crowd behind her can come barging through.” (Nancy Armour, USA Today) Of course, other countries have had women heads of state for many years, but the United States is still largely a patriarchy.

My daughters and their peers might not realize how far women have come in the past 50-60 years, but I’ve seen a lot of change in attitudes toward women in my lifetime.

My elementary school had three classrooms and three teachers–one man and two women. Of course, the man was the principal. Good for our school board, though. When the man retired, they hired another woman and selected the senior woman teacher to be the principal. When the single woman teacher got married, she was allowed to keep teaching, but when she became pregnant, she had to resign. It was considered inappropriate for young children to have a pregnant teacher, even though we saw our pregnant moms at home.

When I was in high school, the “obvious” career choices for women were secretary, airline stewardess, or teacher. Of course, when you got married, you would probably quit your job to raise your family. I didn’t want to be a secretary and I wasn’t pretty enough to be an airline stewardess. At that time, you had to be a single female, look like Barbie, and not wear glasses. Very sexist by today’s standards. I’ve always loved school, so I probably would have chosen an educational path anyway, no matter how many choices I had, but my college roommate was one of a very few women in the School of Business at UW-Madison.

When I was in college, women were allowed to wear pants to classes. After all, it was a huge campus with 15-minute walks between classes, and it was Wisconsin in the winter before global warming was noticeable. For dinner, however, we were required to wear skirts. I’m proud to say I was part of the protest movement in my dorm to allow pants for dinner attire. We won. Another college memory of mine is avoiding construction sites (there was always a new building going up on campus) because it was uncomfortable for me to have to walk by and ignore the comments and wolf whistles from construction workers. It wasn’t flattering then, and it’s sexual harassment now.

When I got married, I was not allowed to get a credit card in my name. Ted and I still use the VISA card we took out when we got married because it has no annual fees. One card has my name on it, but the account is in Ted’s name and the card number is the same on both cards. I now have an additional credit card in my own name–something I qualified for many years later.

When Ted and I bought a house, the utilities had to be in Ted’s name because a woman could not be the head of the household and only the head of the household (i.e., the man) could be counted on to be financially responsible. We haven’t moved in 41 years, so our utilities are still in Ted’s name but it’s not worth changing. I simply pay the bills out of our joint checking account.

Like millions of women around the world, I’m still waiting to be judged first for qualities other than my gender. I think Joe Biden’s selection of Kamala Harris as his running mate and the vote to elect Joe and Kamala as President and Vice President has been a big step toward equality for women in the United States. Let’s see how far it goes.