Why do we have to keep dredging up women’s history? Why do we need all of March to talk about it? I mean, that was then, this is now. Can’t we just move on? After all, we’ve got Hillary. We’ve got Nancy. We win Olympic medals. Women make history all the time.

Yes, but we still have a couple of thousand years of male-dominated history to balance.

Thirty years ago a group of women in Sonoma County (Ca.) started doing the research on “where were the women?” and strove to do no less than rewrite, edit and fill in the blanks in history books. The Sonoma County Women’s History Project blossomed into the national women’s history project and March became women’s history month, recognized in all states.

One founder of the Women’s History Project was the late Mary Ruthsdotter of Sebastopol. Mary died this winter and her memorial was fittingly postponed until March. Mary sure knew her history. She would talk about the gutsy women of the past like old friends she’d just had over for coffee.

One she described as “totally cool” was Jeannette Rankin from Montana, the first woman elected to Congress and who dared to vote against America entering World War I. “You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake,” said Rankin – suffragist, peace activist and Republican.

Bay Area filmmaker Louise Vance claims Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the women’s right philosopher and organizer, for her favorite. She tells the story of Stanton growing up and hearing her father, a judge, tell women that they couldn’t leave abusive husbands. Even if they were beaten and ran away, the law said they should be recaptured and returned to the husband. And so, said Vance, “She vowed to tear out all the pages in her father’s law books that made women cry.”
(Stanton also edited out the “obey” part in her own wedding vows in 1840.)

Vance has made a film called “Seneca Falls” that will launch on PBS television stations across the country in March. It’s about America’s first women’s rights convention in 1848, a huge public protest by Stanton and other radicals demanding that women be freed from their social, political and legal slavery. It’s barely mentioned in history books.

When Vance field-tested the film last year she showed it to junior high and high school girls in Ohio. They were angered by it, said Vance. “They said they had never spent one minute on women’s history.” Same thing happened when she showed it to a group of high school girls in San Francisco.

It’s because what women were doing then wasn’t valued enough to be written down. Getting the vote was a huge story but there was a lot more going on in terms of women’s rights. “How about the fact that it was once legal in some states to whip your wife,” said Vance.

What about women not being able to inherit property? And not being allowed to go to college?
Mary Ruthsdotter’s grandmother told her, “Some men used to think women belonged to them like their cows and pigs.”

So, yeah we have to keep acknowledging our history. And writing it down.

Vance has another idea. She wants to find a legislator who will push for a national bill mandating that women’s history be taught in all public schools. Imagine the squeals and growls over that idea from those who still haven’t learned how to share.

Photo of Jeannette Rankin

It was no surprise that a San Francisco audience for the play “A Round Heeled Woman” appeared to be mostly women of a certain age. Women old enough to remember when women didn’t talk about their sex lives. Old enough to remember when women were thought to give it up after oh, age 50 or so. And old enough to appreciate the difference between then and now.

We were also old enough to remember Sharon Gless as the clever, smart-talking, sometimes grumpy cop Christine Cagney in Cagney and Lacey. And now here she was on stage playing Jane Juska, the 66-year-old English teacher from Berkeley who went looking for sex in a personal ad in the New York Review of Books. It read: “Before I turn 67 –next March – I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me.” Anthony Trollope being her favorite writer.

Juska wrote a best-seller sharing her results - she got over 60 replies from men as young as her son and older than her ex-husband and hooked up with a few. Some were cads, some near-creepy, some quite interesting who did, indeed, want to talk first.

The play, which premiered at Z Space theater in San Francisco in January, was adapted from her book of the same name. Early reviews of the play were not real positive and it closed in early February. But it had sell-out crowds and I hope it tours because there is definitely an audience ripe for the message that not only can the earth move at any age. But, more important, if you’re missing something in your life, stop waiting for it to knock on your door. Go get it.

I met Juska several years ago when she did an author reading at the Sonoma County Book Festival. There, too, her audience was Boomer women and beyond, who roundly cheered Juska’s bravado. One woman told Juska she as much envied her lively conversations with men as she did her orgasms.

Her book came out in 2003, before the cougar phenom. Before online dating became a routine way of meeting a life partner. And before nightly Viagra ads showed older couples chasing each other down the beach.

About that same time “Something’s Gotta Give” put Diane Keaton under the covers with Jack Nicholson and Hollywood started warming up to mature sex. Last year “It’s Complicated,” touted as a middle aged sex comedy, provided 60-year-old Meryl Streep with two lovers.

Ads for “The Last Station,” a movie based on the last year of Leo Tolstoy’s life show Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren romping in bed. More evidence that sex is not just for the young and nubile.

Sharon Gless was plenty nubile in her role as a passionate, vulnerable, complex woman and the audience gave her a standing ovation. As to what’s happened since then to the real Jane Juska, the woman sitting next to me had an answer. Juska, she’d read, had settled down happily with one man. But he’s married.

That was a surprise because in the play she vows to never go out with a married man or a Republican. Well, at least we can assume he knows his Trollope.

Photo of Sharon Gless in “A Round-Heeled Woman.”

My granddaughter and I followed a small parade of three-year-old girls into the community center. A man walking past asked, “What’s with all the pink tights?”
Basketball practice, I said with a grin.

Nope, it was a class called play ballet, more about jumping around than grand jete. Will there be boys, my granddaughter had asked. Hopefully, I said, though I anticipated the all girly-girl crowd. It did, however, give me an opportunity to advance my feminist agenda and talk about how both men and women make wonderful ballet dancers.

Lately the granddaughter has been dividing her world into what boys do and what girls do. Boys play dinosaur, girls play dress-up, she recently explained. I could have gotten into a big philosophical discussion on that one because I happen to know that little boys do play dress up. Did she not recall that one of her best friends, a three-year-old boy, dressed up as a dancing construction worker for Halloween, wearing both a tutu and a tool belt?

But I didn’t want to burst her pink bubble on this day. She kept saying, “this is so exciting,” as she pushed her feet into magic slippers the color of seashells and joined the others in a gallop around the room.

For the last few weeks the granddaughter’s go-to-color has been pink.

I know the thrill. When I was a little girl I took ballet class. I dropped out because I was afraid of the teacher who carried a big ruler, but I was in it long enough to twirl and bow on a stage in something pink covered with sequins.

Many mothers of my generation, in an attempt to eradicate restrictive gender stereotypes, continued to offer our little girls ballet but also added soccer. We dressed them in overalls and gave them tool kits and said it was fine to get messy. It’s surprising to now be a grandmother and see how some stereotypes defy eradication.

For the last few weeks the granddaughter’s go-to-color has been pink. When she was born her mother encouraged a rainbow of fashion choices and asked well-wishers to please cool it on the pink. The three-year-old has a varied wardrobe, but now that she’s dressing herself she often looks like a cupcake in sneakers.

Still and all, she knows how to throw a ball, not like a girl or a boy, but like a kid from a family of ball-throwers. She pounds nails and makes things at a kids workshop put on by the neighborhood building supply store. She plays with dolls and she knows what to do with a soccer ball and a wiffle ball. She has a play kitchen for creating play menus. And a softball glove — a pink one. She also has a new baby brother whom I’m thinking might be a great addition to the play ballet troupe in another three years.

Parents and grandparents were asked to wait outside until the last five minutes of dance class. We got to watch the teacher invite each girl to choose a long, billowy scarf for the final fling around the room.

The first little girl said pink. The second little girl said pink. My ballerina thought for a moment and said orange. I gave her a private power salute.