I'm a Gen Xer, so I'm lucky to have some of the big, heavy lifting of the women's movement done for me. There wasn't any question whether I would go to college. No one assumed I was going to be a nurse or teacher, as I've heard Baby Boomer women sometimes complain. In fact, my path was wide open when I went to college. Too open! I dabbled in political science and then course corrected.

We've come a long way, baby.

Big milestones have already happened: We gained the right to vote. We passed Equal Pay legislation. We're protected from harassment, we can't lose our jobs because we're having a baby, and more. All of this happened before me because of brave women like these.

I was lucky enough to grow up and see smart, capable women all around me get ahead. My stepmom, for example, went from being an administrative assistant to the programming director at a major television station is St. Louis. She made the leap because she was smart and hard working. Just recently she retired from being an executive director at a nonprofit.

I've had smart female supervisors most of my career, too. Many of them helped me through career and life changes. In fact, my first supervisor after I moved to Portland was a woman -- a very smart one who liked helping other smart women. She enabled me to move from being a writer to a manager of writers and web resources. We still keep in touch to this day.  

We've got a long way to go.

We have some big hurdles ahead of us. We don't have as many women sitting on boards or as in the corner office as CEOs. And I take solace in the fact that there are many good men I know who also aren't on the board or are CEOs. 

I have a daughter, now seven, who asks questions like, "Why aren't there any girls on the Trail Blazers?" (We live in Portland, that's our home basketball team.) She wanted to know why we didn't have women in football, other than cheerleaders. When shown President Obama (I'm mean and made her watch the State of the Union address), she asked if we've ever had a female president. Bottom line: She wants to know why women aren't everywhere we have celebrations.

My daughter is asking good questions for which we don't have good answers. She also doesn't know that women, on average, still make about .77 on the dollar compared to what men make. Because we live in the United States, she doesn't know the uphill struggles some women have to do things like drive or vote.

So on this International Women's Day, let's take a step back, relish the progress we've made, and promise each other we'll keep moving forward for our daughters and the generations behind them.

You
What changes will you introduce? Which women in your life have made a difference?