I would like to start off with a historical point of view. I would like to go back almost to the hunters and gathers period where men were the gathers because they were stronger and the gathers were the women because we were not quite as strong. I would like to go on to why each gender was placed in their categories, such as, women staying at home and not having an education and cleaning and having babies while the men were out working and "bringing home the bacon." Then I would like to go onto how women have "evolved" or broken into the manly dominated workforce. How we did it, why we did it, and what is preventing us from equality? The I would like to conclude with where we see women going in the next say...10-20 years. My belief is that we will have our first female president of the US within the next 20 years. My instructor (who happens to be a male) feels that I am proabaly right. He seems pretty excited about this topic that we were assigned to present and I hope not to let him down, the classroom down, or myself. If you can help me with any of these topics, it would be greatly appreciated. I enjoyed reading the Q & A to Gloria and some of the other articles on this web page. Please respond if possible. With many thanks!!! Regards, Rebecca :)

(By the way, my instructor thinks this is a great way to get info.)

Thanks for your note to Feminist.com--and I'm probably too late for your report. If not, I think everything you are saying is right on target. Two organizatios you might want to reach out to for the research questions: 9to5, The National Association Of Working Women and Catalyst. The latter deals with "executive women" and has lots of information on breaking the glass ceiling, whereas the former is more about the sticky floor of the pink collar ghetto. So they should help with the past and present.

As for the future, I think that where we need to place emphasis is changing the value of work. For instance--many people wrongly assume that feminism is about inserting women into men's roles and vice versa. However, when you think of the reality of that, you realize that that couldn't possibly be feminism's goals. Instead, we need to reach equality by changing the value system--for instance, valuing work done in the home and not over inflating any profession that is 70% male and underinflating any profession that is 70% female.

I hope you can follow me and I hope this helps. Good luck with your presentation. From what I can tell, you will do a great job.

—Amy