It’s Time for All Real Women to Be Warriors

May 2023

I don’t know about you, but when I heard Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson state that she was unable to define the word woman during her confirmation hearing because “I’m not a biologist,” I couldn’t believe my ears. How could someone qualify to serve as a supreme court judge if they can’t even address what a woman is?

Every new mother, regardless of her age, immediately knows the gender of her new baby the moment it is born—if not months before, thanks to the science of ultra-sound. Most every high school student knows that gender is defined by our chromosomes—the 23rd pair of which is the sex chromosome.  Females have two copies of the X chromosome. Males have one X and one Y chromosome. It’s not rocket-science, nor does it require one to be a biologist to “get it.”

Susan B. Anthony must have rolled over in her grave when the judge’s response went out over the airwaves. Although Ms. Anthony was born over 200 years ago and may have never learned about chromosomes in school, she clearly understood what a woman was when she fought for American women’s right to vote.

There was no confusion back then about which segment of society she and her friend Elizabeth Cady Stanton were advocating for when they founded the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in 1890, or when they wrote their 5,700 page, six-volume book titled the History of Woman Suffrage which ultimately led to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, giving women the right to vote in 1920. Both Susan B. and Elizabeth were warriors for women’s rights.

When Carrie Chapman Catt—born in 1859—became one of just six women in her freshman class at Iowa Agricultural College (now Iowa State University), she joined a student organization called the Crescent Literary Society where only men were allowed to speak extemporaneously in meetings. Rather than demurely acquiesce, she demanded the same speaking rights as the men, and ultimately gained all women students the right to speak in such meetings. She subsequently went on to become Susan B. Anthony’s hand-picked successor as President of NAWSA in 1900, and in 1920 she founded the League of Women Voters. Carrie Chapman Catt was a warrior for women’s rights.

Born in 1897, as a girl Amelia Earhart kept a scrapbook about successful women in predominantly male-oriented fields. She took her first flying lesson in 1921 and within six months had saved enough money to buy her first plane. She set the first women’s flying record in that plane by rising to an altitude of 14,000 feet. When a man asked her in April 1928, “How would you like to be the first woman to fly the Atlantic?” she immediately replied YES and just two months later—after three other women pilots had died trying—she set that record. Among her many other groundbreaking achievements, in 1935 she became the first person ever to fly solo across the Pacific (from Honolulu to Oakland, CA). Amelia Earhart was a warrior for women rights.

In the fall of 1976, Debra M. Lewis—who I highlighted in my first two books, The WOW Factor Workplace: How to Create a Best Place to Work Culture and Heartfelt Leadership: How to Capture the Top Spot and Keep on Soaring—entered the first freshman class to include women at the United States Military Academy at West Point. She went on to become the first female captain of West Point's highly successful intercollegiate equestrian team, and in 1980 she was the first female to be named Academy Equestrian of the Year. Later in her career, she became the first female soldier to command a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers District in Iraq. 

As Col. Deb recalls her Iraq experience, “Despite IED, mortar attacks, and snipers everywhere…it was an exciting time to be an engineer…. My years of blazing new ground at West Point and throughout my career shaped me to be mentally tough and caring…. It takes courage to be in the line of fire, where people are going at each other and then may start attacking you.” The now-retired Colonel Debra M. Lewis is still a warrior for women’s rights.

I spent my own career in the male-dominated Fortune 150 world of technology. I have also been a warrior for women’s rights, although I never saw it that way until 14 years ago when I left the corporate world to dedicate myself to accelerating the advancement of women to senior leadership in business and beyond.

At no point in my career was I ever intimidated by men, nor did any man attempt to cancel me just to get ahead or set me back. Virtually everyone I’ve ever worked with appreciated and respected each other for their God-given attributes, talents, abilities, and accomplishments. We all cheered each other on to be the best we could be, individually and collectively. Everyone was comfortable in their own skin—the color of which was just as irrelevant as the color of their eyes. Sexual preferences were private matters. There was never any confusion about pronouns. Men dressed like men and women dressed like women, even after women switched from wearing dresses or skirted suits to pants at work.   

Never in my wildest dreams did I anticipate that any man or woman would deem it acceptable to lie or cheat to get ahead or steal an award away from someone by pretending to be the opposite sex. Doing so is nothing short of shameful or deranged. It’s a leader’s responsibility to manage such people out of the organization—and as act of kindness, recommend they get a mental health assessment. All leaders, and women at every level, must be warriors for women’s rights if we are to save civil society from this absurdity. 

It’s sad to see how far and how quickly society has devolved in terms of demonstrating common sense and appropriate behavior. Who would have ever anticipated that state legislatures would find it necessary to statutorily define terms like boy, girl, man, and woman, or legislate the appropriate assignment of males and females to gender-specific sports teams, restrooms, locker rooms, prison facilities, domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, pregnancy centers, and so on. But here we are. Thank goodness at least some state legislatures have recently stepped up to serve as warriors for women rights.

If the legislature in your own state is not taking such actions, then it’s up to real women to stand up and be those warriors for women’s rights. It’s up to real women, individually and as a collective, to boldly say NO MORE to the nonsense of men pretending to be women just so they can get ahead at women’s expense. 

When I originally founded Business Women Rising in 2009, my leadership team and I lived by this motto:   Go Bold or Go Home!  Our fledgling business would have never gone on to become as successful as it was if my team and our clients had not all stepped up—both individually and as a collective—to take bold actions at every step along the way.  

So now I encourage you and every real woman to do the same: Go Bold or Go Home! Never let any male who pretends to be a female diminish you, or cancel you, or cheat you out of anything you rightfully deserve. Go bold and stand your ground. Tell every delusional pretender that they are not welcome in women’s private spaces or on women’s teams. Resist the abuse and be a warrior for REAL women’s rights. 

If the pretender still insists on cancelling you or abusing you, then together with your sisters simply walk away. Leave the pretenders to operate alone.  They will likely give up when the thrill of abusing you is no longer an option. 

Stand strong and be a warrior for the rights of REAL women.

Go bold or go home. Either way, in the end, you will come out the winner with your dignity intact.