There certainly are a lot of scared, angry men these days. Scared of women. And angry about what women have and still can accomplish. Those scared and angry people (sadly, all are probably not men) are so concerned they've concocted myriad efforts across this great United States to limit what women can do - from carry or not carry children, to voting and even to working by seeming to fight funding for child care.
But none of it will work.
Women will not be kept down, and there is no better time to talk about it than during March - Women's History Month.
We prefer to think of Women's History Month as Women's Accomplishments and Future Month.
Just this past week, Chattanooga gained its first female police chief when former Atlanta Deputy Police Chief Celeste Murphy was confirmed here by the Chattanooga City Council.
Even now, our nation has its first female vice president in Kamala Harris, and we soon will have a first black woman on the U.S. Supreme Court.
But there are lesser know successes everywhere. At the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, manufacturing scientist Amy Elliott is among 120 women featured in a new Smithsonian exhibit titled "IfThenSheCan."
The exhibit - on display through March 27 at the Smithsonian Castle in Washington, D.C. - features life-size 3D printed statues of those 120 women - all of whom have excelled in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM as it has come to be known.
Elliot, a native of Fayetteville, Tennessee, leads ORNL's robotics and intelligent systems group and specializes in the inkjet-based 3D printing of metals and ceramics, according to ORNL spokeswoman Sara Shoemaker.
Contributed photo from Smithsonian and ORNL / Amy Elliott poses with her statue for the IfThenSheCan exhibit at the Smithsonian Institute.That 3D printing of metal and ceramics is a technology designed to enhance and transform advanced manufacturing. Elliot's inventions have been licensed by industry and have won prestigious awards including two R&D 100 Awards. She also holds several patents and licenses including a method for 3D metal printing and additive manufacturing of aluminum boron carbide metal composites.
"As a 3D printing researcher, it was so cool to get 3D scanned for the statue and printed while expecting my first child," Elliott said in statement. "I love being a STEM mom and feel so honored to be part of history and the IFThenSheCan exhibit."
Did you get that "mom" part? She was pregnant when she modeled for the statue. It shows. How fantastic is that?
There are other Southern women in the Smithsonian exhibit, as well: Alabama's Adrienne Starks, a biologist and founder/CEO of STREAM Innovations, which helps students develop and explore their passion in Science, Technology, Reading, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics, as well as Georgia's Megan Prescott, who is studying vaccines for tuberculosis, which continues to be a leading cause of infection to a third of the world's population.
These women are bucking a trend - that, metaphorically speaking only, women have always been last.
Perhaps that began with Eve - created last and all. Then there was Abraham, who so craved a son that his wife gave him her handmaiden.
In America, men freed from slavery gained the right to vote in 1870, but it would be 50 more years until - in 1920 - our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers could finally cast a ballot.
Incredibly, it wasn't until 1973 that women were allowed to serve on juries in all 50 states. Can you imagine being a woman charged with striking or killing a domestic abuser and being tried by an all-male jury?
Hillary Clinton was the first woman to become the presidential nominee of a major party. And she was the first woman to win America's popular vote to be president. Still she came in last by the Electoral College vote.
Even today, our county's population is 50.8% women, yet women make up only 27% of Congress.
Women are 57.8% of the workforce, but still are paid 82 cents for every dollar a man makes.
And never forget this wonderful observation from the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, only the second woman confirmed to the high court and one who helped in the fight for equal pay and marriage equality. In a 2015 interview with PBS, Ginsburg said:
"When I'm sometimes asked, 'When will there be enough (women on the Supreme Court)?' and my answer is: 'When there are nine.' People are shocked. But there'd been nine men, and nobody's ever raised a question about that."
We've come a long way. But in a country coming up on its 246th birthday still paying lip service to "equality," it's not nearly far enough. Yet.