A Wonderful Week for Wonder Women

This article previously appeared in the Chicago Daily Observer on October 15, 2013

By Don Rose

Let’s momentarily forget shutdowns and debt ceilings to note a remarkable seven days, Oct.3-10, when a fascinating, diverse group of women achieved high honors.

Leading the parade is Janet Yellen, nominated for chair of the Federal Reserve Board. She will be the first woman ever to hold the position, but more significantly she is the most qualified person of any gender ever nominated because of her combined experience and intellect. (Happily, her progressive supporters knocked Barack Obama’s first choice, Larry Summers, out of contention.)

Tributes are still pouring in, citing her great supporting role as vice chair to Ben Bernanke, work as head of a regional reserve bank, service as a presidential economic advisor and general brilliance as an economist—exemplified by economic and labor forecasts more accurate than any of her peers. Every so often the best people win, but the nation is the biggest winner of all. (I’m proud to have joined the chorus of writers who supported her.)


Then there was the surprising matter of the Nobel Prize for Literature going to the exceptionally sensitive story writer Alice Munro, who, with simple clarity and poetic precision gave us decades of tales taking us directly into the workings of the human heart and personal relationships. Munro is the first Canadian woman and only the 13th woman to win the prize since its inception in 1901. She is the 27th laureate who writes in English, but the only one primarily writing short stories.

Taking nothing away from Munro’s exceptional oeuvre, many of us saw Philip Roth as the most deserving American, along with supporters of Joyce Carol Oates, Cynthia Ozick and Thomas Pynchon. Toni Morrison, the last American laureate won 20 years ago. If we wait that long again Roth may no longer be among us, joining some of the century’s greatest writers who never won, including Henry James, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, F.Scott Fitzgerald, D.H. Lawrence and Graham Greene.De gustibus est non disputandum???

The Nobel Peace Prize went to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons—a deserving group—but it clearly should have gone to 16-year-old Malala Yousafzai, the Pakastani girl who stood up to the Taliban in 2008 and fought for the right to education for all young women. She took a bullet to the head for her courage but still came back fighting. Last week the European Parliament, awarded her the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought (named for the courageous Soviet scientist/dissenter). The Taliban is still trying to terrorize Malala’s followers. If there were an international prize for Bravest Person on Earth she would win hands down.

Finally, progressives everywhere can root for Wendy Davis, the Texas state senator whose successful filibuster briefly sidetracked a set of draconian anti-choice laws. Since Davis declared for governor Oct.3, just imagine what will be hurled at this woman who was a teenage single mom. As a Democrat she has an uphill run, but still has an outside chance to become Texas’s first Wonder Woman governor since Ann Richards in 1991.

You go, Wonder Women!