GOOD TIME TO BE A YOUNG WOMAN

I would think that this is a good time to be a young woman.  For one thing, opportunities abound and the "glass ceiling" is being broken all the time.  Yes, there is the problem of getting equal pay with men, but women are on the way.  Though not up to 50%, there are lots of women in both the House and the Senate.  Some of the biggest companies now have CEOs as women in Fortune 500 companies e.g. GM, Hewlett Packard and IBM plus a whole host of other companies like the techies Oracle, Xerox and Advanced Micro devices.*

What about science and technology?  A women is president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Shirley Ann Jackson, 1999 - ?, Black woman physicist, ),** and Director of the U.S. Geological Survey (Marcia McNutt, 2009 - ? and former Griswold Professor of Geophysics at MIT),*** Geological Society of America (4 women Presidents), American Geophysical Union (4), and American Association Of Petroleum Geologists (3) in the Earth sciences, for example.  Women have won all the major prizes in the large Earth sciences societies such as the Geological Society of America (2014: Susan Kiefer, Penrose Medal; Lisa Tauxe, Day Medal for research) and the American Geophysical Union (Inge Lehman discovered the inner core of the Earth and has a Medal named after her. 2014: Jessica Tierney, Macelwane Award for young scientist; Mioara Mandea, International Award for foreign researchers).  In Earth science, women have a particularly strong contingent in seismology research.

I grew up in an environment somewhat similar to what women are in right now.  I got my Ph.D. in geology from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and there seemed to be unfair competition with the Ivy League.  It was sort of we non-Ivy Leaguers had to show we could do the job whereas Ivy Leaguers had to show they couldn't do the job.  It was a thrilling time and slowly the situation changed over a period of years.  I fully expect that the situation for women will also continue to improve over time.

Note added April 10, 2015: This morning on Morning Joe I saw an interview with the CEO of AFLAC (The Duck remember?) .  She is an impressive middle-aged (?) Black lady who said that 63% of their workforce are women.  They also have a department to help employees develop skills to get ahead.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_women_CEOs_of_Fortune_500_companies
** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Ann_Jackson
*** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcia_McNutt