Know any brave women?

When Gabby Giffords took on the NRA she challenged her former colleagues in Congress to do the same, saying, “Be bold. Be courageous.” Only Giffords and those closest to her know how much guts it takes for someone whose body, speech and career were forever altered by a bullet to the brain to throw herself into the  bitter debate on gun control and dare her old political pals to be brave like her.  
We do not lack for examples of courageous women and March is a good time to remember a few of them, it being National Women’s History Month.
Writer philosopher phenomenal woman Maya Angelou holds that, “Courage is the most important of all the virtues. Because without courage,” she said, “you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.”
I think of brave women as those who don’t just go along, who take the tougher, maybe more unpleasant and unpopular route when the easy way is so well-paved. We need courageous women as much now as ever, because there is forever a faction who want their women to sit down and be quiet.
I keep a Be Brave file of real women reminders to give me the nudge I need. Here are some:
Eve Ensler – I want to give more kudos to Eve Ensler, the playwright and activist, not just for getting us up and dancing around the world on Valentine’s Day to protest gender violence. But because so much of her hard work has been done while she’s been dealing with stage four cervical cancer. In the middle of chemo and exhaustion and all the dread that goes with cancer she keeps bravely taking on the bullies of the world.
Marie Colvin – Called the “uncrowned queen of intrepid journalists,” Colvin was an American reporter who wrote for the Sunday Times in London and was killed a year ago while covering the conflict in Syria. Colvin wore a black eye patch, the result of a grenade injury in Sri Lanka, and usually a string of pearls.
Her death and that of other journalists covering the Arab Spring uprisings has sparked an online campaign, A Day Without News, to educate the public on how reporters are becoming more and more targets of war.
Then there are the topless women in Italy – To protest the unrepentant misogynist ways of Sylvio Berlesconi, a group of women took off their shirts and scrawled “basta”… enough… on their bare skin. The same group, called Femen, based in the Ukraine, bared their breasts in Kiev to protest the sex tourism industry, explaining that if they wave banners and march no one notices. But people always pay attention when a bunch of women rip off their tops.
There was some of that bra-shedding nostalgia in Makers, the three hour PBS special about women’s historic changes the last 50 years and a terrific reminder of what women can do when they find their courage.
Back to today’s bold ones, there should be a special combat award for the military women who are finally calling rape on the officers who routinely sexually abused and humiliated them with impunity. The women’s courage in speaking up, at risk to their career and reputation, may finally force changes in an unfair military justice system which will one day be read as a nasty part of history that took some fearless  women to fix.
Susan Swartz is an author and local journalist. You can also read her at www.juicytomatoes.com and hear her Another Voice commentary on KRCB-FM radio on Fridays. Email is

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