We lost three valuable women this week!

One of the best known and most important political slogans of the early Women's Liberation Movement claimed that "the personal is political." That phrase was honed in reaction to struggles within the 1960s social movements out of which the Women's Liberation Movement first emerged. It captured the insight that many of what were thought to be personal problems possessed social and political causes, were widely shared among women , and could only be resolved by social and political change. However, it took women themselves to fight for these rights that now a days -surprinsingly, we take for granted !!!

Three women I admired through the years symbolized that hard work and groundbreaking, in short, they paved the way for us, and sadly, all three died this week. To share with you why I've admired them through the years, I'm posting excerpts that appeared last friday and saturday on the Union Tribune pages, and I'm quotting their articles.

"Estelle R. Ramey, The Georgetown University endocrinologist who never hesitated to craft a funny and pointed line to overturn assumptions about the physiological differences and similarities between women and men, died Friday at her home in Bethesda, Md. She was 89.

Dubbed the "Mort Sahl of the women's movement" and "George Burns with and X chromosome," Dr. Ramey burst into the headlines in 1970 when she challenged the assertion of a Democratic National Commitee official that women -with "ranging storms of monthly hormonal imbalances" - were unfit for the presidency or for handling emergencies such as the Cuban Missile Crisis. As a credentialed expert in the field, she said: "I was startled to learn that ovarian hormones are toxic to brain cells." She pointed out that President Kennedy, who had dealt with the missile crisis, had Addison's disease, a chronic, severe hormonal imbalance, and that medications to treat Addison's could result in dramatic mood swings.

"If it's testosterone the public wants in a president, as an endocrinologist I can't recommend a 70-year-old man in the White House. They should get a 16-year-old boy instead." "It seems the only thing the public doesn't want to see in a president is estrogen." U.T. J8, 09/17/06

Wasn't she lovely:)

"Ann Richards, 73: The witty and flamboyant former Democratic governor of Texas, who went from homemaker to national political celebrity and advocate for women, died Wednesday.

Gov. Richards grabbed the national spotlight with her keynote address at the 1988 Democratic National convention when she was the Texas state treasurer. She reminded them that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astair did, "only backwards and in high heels." In four years as governor, she championed what she called the "New Texas," appointing more women and more minorities to state posts than any of her predecessors. She said she entered politics to help others-especially women and minorities, who were often ignored by Texas' male-dominanted establishment. "I did not want my tombstone to read, 'She kept a really clean house.' I thind I'd like them to remember me by saying, 'She opened government to everyone.'" U.T. J-7, 09/17/06

And she did, indeed:)

Thirdly, being Mexican-Italian, I grew up reading and admiring Journalist

Oriana Fallaci. "Oriana Fallaci, a journalist whose merciless questioning succeded in making some of the world's most powerful and inaccessible people lower their guard, from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to Henry Kissinger, has died. She was 77.

Virtually all of the literary energy and passion of her final years were consumed in vehement attacks on a Muslim world she judged to be the enemy of Western civilization. Fallaci burst into the spotlight after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks with a series of blistering essays in which she argued that Muslims were carrying out a crusade against the Christian West.

The daughter of an anti-fascist Resistance fighter, she joined the movement as a teenager and started her career in journalism at 16. She spent eight years covering the Vietnam War, and at the age of 61, reported on the Persian Gulf War.

In 1968, while she was covering the Mexican army's killing of young protesters in Mexico City, two bullets pierced her body, one stopping just short of her spinal cord.

Fallaci disarmed her subjects with bald questions about death, God and pity, and displayed a sinuous crafty intelligence. Among those who submitted to her grilling was Khomeini, "That's enough. I'm tired. That's enough," the Iranian leader said at the end of the session. Fallaci's interview with Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in a tent in the desert lasted five days.

Kissinger said of his interview with Fallaci: "Why I agreed to it, I'll never know."

Fallaci died of breast cancer in her native Florence.

By the way, I always thought that if I ever had a daughter her name was going to be Oriana. But that's another story.

See how "The Personal is Political?" :)