Equality among men and women is a touchy subject, and whether women are making enough progress is debatable. But if Roberta Cooper Ramo exemplifies her gender, women have, indeed, come a long way.
Ramo, who at one time could not find work as a lawyer because of her gender, has been elected the first female president of the American Bar Association. Her election is another highlight for women in the law profession, but it's not the only recent one.In 1970 women accounted for only 41 percent of college students in the United States and fewer than 10 percent of degrees in law and medicine. Today, women comprise 55 percent of all undergraduates, 59 percent of all master's degree candidates and nearly 50 percent of the total enrollment in U.S. law schools and medical schools.
In Utah, women are doing even better. Last spring marked the first year that women outnumbered men among graduates of the University of Utah College of Law. Sixty women and 53 men received diplomas.
Other universities with law school enrollments of 50 percent or more women are Stanford and the universities of Washington, New Mexico and Colorado.
In fact, women now constitute a majority of all graduate and professional students in the American higher education.
Perhaps even more significant, female U. law school graduates from 1993 started out in jobs at higher salaries than the male graduates - $37,007 on average for women compared with $34,686 for the men.
These figures are reason for celebration among female lawyers and also reason to thank the pioneering women who laid the foundation for this success.
Two female attorneys - Denise Dragoo and Debra Moore - were elected to three-year terms as Utah State Bar commissioners this year.
Ramo points to Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg as women who have "opened minds to the simple fact that the essential qualities of greatness for a life at the law - knowledge, a razor-sharp intellect, humor and a compassionate heart - know no gender."
How true. Further, the qualities needed for success and even greatness in nearly all careers and professions are not gender-related.
It will be a great day for both sexes when women don't continually have to prove that fact - and when a woman attaining an influential leadership role is no longer news.