Tales From Pantsuit Nation: Standing on Their Shoulders

When I go into the voting booth to vote for our first woman president, I’ll be bringing my great-grandmother Charlotte, a widow who, against the advice of a male advisor, spent every last penny she had to make sure her daughters were educated – one became a doctor, and the other, my grandmother, a social worker.

I’ll be bringing my grandmother Catherine, who, during the Depression when dispensing birth control information was illegal, quietly provided the phone number to the precursor of Planned Parenthood to women who were desperate not to have more children they could not feed.

Here’s Grandma, ready for work, rocking an outfit that was as close as she could get to a pantsuit in that era! And yes, I’ll be wearing a pantsuit, together with Charlotte’s necklace and Catherine’s pin. I stand on their shoulders.