PBS film honors women who led the march for equal rights

Courtesy of PBS.org.

Yep. I met several of "the Makers" in person on Mother's Day, 1980, when I marched in Chicago in support of the Equal Rights Amendment, which, by the way, still has not been passed. Leading the march that day in Grant Park were Marlo Thomas, Gloria Steinem, Jean Stapleton, and several other major contributors to the "second wave of the women's movement."

So for sure I'll be following Marlo's advice to watch the PBS film this evening (7 p.m.- 10 p.m.) "Makers: Women who make America."

Here's Marlo:

Billie Jean King. Condoleezza Rice. Ellen DeGeneres. Hillary Clinton. Barbara Walters. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. 

We see their names and instantly picture their faces. We know their achievements and have grown to admire them. We think of them as "doers."

But they're more than that, actually. They are "Makers" -- those who, early in their careers, had the determination and intuition to survey the cultural landscape and recognize not only what was there, but what wasn't. And then they helped provide that missing piece.

This evening (7:00 to 10:00 PM), PBS will premiere "MAKERS: Women Who Make America," a television special that tells the compelling saga of the American women who led the march to equality over the past half-century. It is inspiring to watch their stories on the special -- and on the Makers website -- and discover how their wildly different trajectories would eventually converge in the crucible of the women's movement -- whether they were reporting from a battlefield overseas, like Christiane Amanpour, or waging a different kind of war here on the home front, like Gloria Steinem.

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