A Woman's Place

"A woman's place is in the house ... and in the Senate, " the T-shirts and buttons proclaim at women's political events.  "A Woman's Place Is in Uniform," trumpets a book about women in the military.  "A woman's place is at the typewriter," declared Fortune magazine back in 1935.  That was convenient for the economy and so it was decreed. A few years later a woman's place was in the factory or in the nursing corps because that was essential for the war effort.  Then a woman's place was in the home.  And now?  A woman's place is anywhere she wants to be. So what is a woman's place?  For most women, it's many places, different places at different times.  For almost all women, it's the place of nurture, whether for the planet or one small creature on it. We learned from our mothers, both in word and in deed, we teach it to our daughters in the knowledge that they must carry on the culture and care for it.  Even as they go forward into the next millennium, knowing things we never knew, they will be connected back to those women in Marathon, Greece.  From that continuity they will derive the strength to make their place wherever they think it should be.   Author Cokie Roberts