WOMEN ARE NOT EQUAL TO MEN... They are superior and I have proof!

*If you know who this is, raise your hand..

As the argument goes, they can birth babies. But that is just the beginning. We were created as equal... one could not sustain life without the other. But, societally, we don't live like that. All life-long, women have had to 'dance backward" in more ways than one.

Every woman in every society--except where Wonder Woman comes from--has had to fight this uphill battle to be seen (by men) as mans equal in intelligence and reasoning with the natural benefit of a complimentary perspective that completes the picture of everything real. And wow, do we need that.

Women are history's classic underdogs, and as sports, politics and things that are "99 percent certain" have shown time and again, NEVER UNDERESTIMATE AN UNDERDOG.

*Oh, the photo is of Geraldyn Cobb who recently died at 88, our first female astronaut in space... except for the fact that she was a woman denied passage through that glass ceiling of the time, despite after having all the credentials and testing in the top 2 percent of all who applied for the role. It was astronaut and senator John Glenn who 'shot her down' in congress in 1962:

"The men go off and fight the wars and fly the airplanes and come back and help design and build and test them... " he testified in the hearing that denied Cobb her place in space, "The fact that women are not in this field is a fact of our social order."

You presumably didn't know any better at the time, John, but you should have... as should we all. It was 21 years later when Sally Ride became the first American woman in space. Cobb's 2005 book, 'Right Stuff, Wrong Sex'" told about the dozen other highly qualified women pilots who passed the tests but were also barred from space at the time.

Geraldyn Cobb began flying at age 12  in her father's Waco aircraft and had logged more than 7000 hours as a pilot when she was asked to take a space stress test to qualify as an astronaut. Denied of her chance she went on to a flight career that earned her a Nobel Peace Prize for her distinguished role in the air... an award not shared by any American astronaut.

Her award was for her work flying humanitarian missions in the Amazon jungle flying alone across the Andes Mountains in her Aero Commander, delivering medicine, food and clothing to indigenous tribes and others in need. She was honored by the governments of Ecuador, Brazil, Columbia and Peru. She is, as you may guess, one of those drservedly in the National Aviation Hall of Fame.

She flew the world for a number of war years delivering B-17 bombers and the like wherever they were needed, despite being turned down by airlines who would not hire women as pilots at that time.

She also holds world flying records for speed, altitude and distance, but never made it to space. A few years back she was the subject of an off Broadway play, "They Promised Her the Moon."

There are a multitude of women of historical importance and more in big and little roles---that have shown what women can accomplish, despite "having to dance backwards." Geraldyn Cobb is just one of that immortal female crowd of "can do."

Her unfulfilled love of being a space pioneer never dulled her spirit for the adventure of it, and alone, in the Amazon on July 20, 1969, she danced on the wings of her plane in her moonlight celebration of "man"s" (another bias historically used incorrectly, intended to refer to all humanity says an etymologist--look it up--for the Oxford English Dictionary) first landing on the moon.

Women ARE superior to men because all of their lives, they have had to fight just to be seen for who they are... equal, no less, maybe more. And capable in ways yet to be seen.

"Gender equality is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenge of reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building good governance." Kofi Annan