SENECA FALLS - Inspired by Alan Shepard, the first American to journey into space, a 14-year-old from suburban Chicago wrote a letter to NASA in 1961 asking what she needed to do to become an astronaut.
Back came a curt reply: Girls are not being recruited by the nation's space program.
”It had never crossed my mind up until that point that there might be doors closed to me simply because I was a girl,“ recalled the letter writer, better known today as former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The rejection stung her to the core, opening up the teenager's eyes to sexual stereotypes, career barriers and discriminatory practices that soon came under assault from landmark laws beginning with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
”We have made so many advances in the last 40 years that are really unprecedented in the history of the world,“ said Clinton, one of 10 women inducted Saturday in the National Women's Hall of Fame.
”I don't think there has ever been a better time to be a woman than in the United States of America in the 21st century,“ she said in an interview. ”We have a broad scope of choices ... that really are defined by who we are and what we want as individuals and not constricted by the gender we were born into.“
Clinton, 57, the only first lady elected to the Senate, was enshrined along with Maya Lin, who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.; Dr. Rita Rossi Colwell, who became the first female director of the National Science Foundation in 1998, and Betty Bumpers, a crusader for childhood immunizations who was Clinton's predecessor as Arkansas' first lady.
The first known women's rights convention was held in 1848 in this upstate New York village. The hall, which opened in 1969, acclaims women who have made valuable contributions to society and to the progress and freedom of women.
In all, 217 women have been chosen by a national committee of judges, from women's rights pioneer Susan B. Anthony to sports icon Mildred ”Babe“ Didrikson Zaharias.
The six honored posthumously this year included pilot Blanche Stuart Scott, a barnstormer in the early days of aviation; Ruth Fulton Benedict, an anthropologist whose 1934 book, ”Patterns of Culture,“ became an American classic; and Florence Ellinwood Allen, who in 1934 became the first female judge appointed by a president to a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Lin gained fame at age 21 as creator of the V-shaped black granite memorial bearing the names of the 58,229 Americans killed in the Vietnam War. Her best-known works include the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Ala., and The Wave Field at the University of Michigan.
Clinton said that while women have made dramatic strides - ”now we have women astronauts, women serving at all levels of our armed services and in corporate leadership positions as well as in government“ - one sticking point has been wage inequity.
”Women earn about 76 cents for every dollar that a man earns,“ and that applies ”not just among the lower-paid workers who are often taken advantage of,“ the Democrat said.
And while attitudes have come a long way, they haven't changed nearly enough in some arenas, she said, citing her efforts through the Senate Armed Services Committee to combat sexual harassment and assaults on women in the military.
”That's really a reflection of attitudes that are changing but haven't yet been eliminated,“ she said.
”It had never crossed my mind up until that point that there might be doors closed to me simply because I was a girl,“ recalled the letter writer, better known today as former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The rejection stung her to the core, opening up the teenager's eyes to sexual stereotypes, career barriers and discriminatory practices that soon came under assault from landmark laws beginning with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
”We have made so many advances in the last 40 years that are really unprecedented in the history of the world,“ said Clinton, one of 10 women inducted Saturday in the National Women's Hall of Fame.
”I don't think there has ever been a better time to be a woman than in the United States of America in the 21st century,“ she said in an interview. ”We have a broad scope of choices ... that really are defined by who we are and what we want as individuals and not constricted by the gender we were born into.“
Clinton, 57, the only first lady elected to the Senate, was enshrined along with Maya Lin, who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.; Dr. Rita Rossi Colwell, who became the first female director of the National Science Foundation in 1998, and Betty Bumpers, a crusader for childhood immunizations who was Clinton's predecessor as Arkansas' first lady.
The first known women's rights convention was held in 1848 in this upstate New York village. The hall, which opened in 1969, acclaims women who have made valuable contributions to society and to the progress and freedom of women.
In all, 217 women have been chosen by a national committee of judges, from women's rights pioneer Susan B. Anthony to sports icon Mildred ”Babe“ Didrikson Zaharias.
The six honored posthumously this year included pilot Blanche Stuart Scott, a barnstormer in the early days of aviation; Ruth Fulton Benedict, an anthropologist whose 1934 book, ”Patterns of Culture,“ became an American classic; and Florence Ellinwood Allen, who in 1934 became the first female judge appointed by a president to a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Lin gained fame at age 21 as creator of the V-shaped black granite memorial bearing the names of the 58,229 Americans killed in the Vietnam War. Her best-known works include the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Ala., and The Wave Field at the University of Michigan.
Clinton said that while women have made dramatic strides - ”now we have women astronauts, women serving at all levels of our armed services and in corporate leadership positions as well as in government“ - one sticking point has been wage inequity.
”Women earn about 76 cents for every dollar that a man earns,“ and that applies ”not just among the lower-paid workers who are often taken advantage of,“ the Democrat said.
And while attitudes have come a long way, they haven't changed nearly enough in some arenas, she said, citing her efforts through the Senate Armed Services Committee to combat sexual harassment and assaults on women in the military.
”That's really a reflection of attitudes that are changing but haven't yet been eliminated,“ she said.
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