I was never, ever told I couldn’t do something because I was a girl.
Consider the Possibilities
The secure family was one of women only, a matriarchy if you will, likely enough since all the men had gone off to fight their war – and living in a matriarchy had certain advantages. “I was never, ever told I couldn’t do something because I was a girl,” Jane Goodall commented many years later. The first matriarch was Danny, a strict but loving woman of competence and certitude: a powerful presence with curly white hair. She was, in the memory of her daughter Vanne, “indomitable. Fun-loving. Clever. Charming. And brave as a lion.” Danny had struggled and endured, and as the widow of a minister of the Congregational persuasion, she knew her place in the universe.
by Jane Goodall
(born 3 April 1934)
From Jane Goodall: The Woman Who Redefined Man
By Dale Peterson
