In 1995 I moved to a community that fit the profile of smalltown rural America. While businesses defined the town's Main Street corridor, the core economy was based within a collective of farm families who had been working the land for generations.
Having spent youthful summers on my family's dairy and produce farms, I had witnessed and understood the hierarchy of the agricultural world.
Men worked the land, harvested the crops, cared for the livestock and maintained the barns and fences.
Although women partnered in the farm chores, their primary responsibilities were to balance the books, feed and clothe the family and keep the home fires burning.
That's why, upon moving to this rural town, I became fascinated by a young woman who seemed to be pushing against those boundaries.
As I drove by the fields I would see her, before dawn and after dusk, shoulder-to-shoulder with the men, running the tractors, seeders, and bailers and fixing them when they broke down. I witnessed her planting and harvesting, and then selling her produce in her family's market store--- which she was also helping to operate.
From my perspective, this young woman was redefining the role of women in agriculture.
One day as I drove by her family's market store, she was out front arranging produce. I pulled into the parking lot with purpose. For some time I'd been thinking about interviewing her for an article in the local newspaper. She was breaking ground, in more ways than one. I found her story appealing and throught readers would as well.
After a few moments of social pleasantries, I pitched my interview idea using the "new breed" of farm woman angle. Her reaction caught me completely off guard.
She said she was doing what she enjoyed and didn't think she should be highlighted for it because she was a woman.
I was momentarily taken aback by her direct reply. She was clearly frustrated and a bit insulted by my interview request, which was the last thing I intended. An apology started to form in my mind, but became something quite different by the time the words exited my mouth.
I told her that while she may have seen her farming role as the norm, most people defined farmers as men. For young women growing up with an interest in agriculture, never witnessing a woman driving the tractor, plowing the fields or taking care of the livestock, lessened their chances of seeing themselves doing that work. Because of that, she was a role model and it mattered.
Ultimately we agreed to disagree and the interview never happened. However, the memory of that moment has stayed with me over the last 25 years, as I have continued to witness careers and jobs in our nation where young women have no role models. Where they don't see someone who looks like them or sounds like them doing work they find appealing, and so it seems unattainable because there has never been a woman on that path before them.
Yesterday, in one more career role, that changed.
Yesterday a woman stepped forward and showed all women that any one of us can be a leader in this nation. A woman stepped forward and proved that men are not the only ones capable and qualified to be elected to one of the highest offices of public service in the world.
Yesterday, for the first time in 244 years, women and girls everywhere saw someone who looks like them and whose voice sounds like them, speaking from the podium of the Vice President of the United States...
...and it mattered.