Babe Z: Leading the Way for Today’s Women

Growing up in rural Missouri and going to school at Archie High School, sports were a big part of my life. I loved basketball — spending countless hours shooting hoops behind the house, dreaming of shooting a big game-winning basket. I enjoyed practicing for track and field events — getting in shape and running on country roads along corn fields near our family farm.

There was one person in sports I looked to as an example and inspiration — a woman who had made history years before and changed the course of athletics as we know it through talent and hard work: Babe Didrikson Zaharias.

Among her many accomplishments, Babe was named woman of the year by the Associated Press five times; in 1950 she was AP’s “Woman Athlete of the Half Century;” in 1999 “Woman Athlete of the 20th Century;” she pitched an inning of professional baseball; and she broke four world records as an Olympic Track and Field athlete.

She beat records left and right, she beat her fellow competitors-both women and men, she beat cancer, she beat stereotypes, and she beat expectations. Most importantly, however, she beat a path for aspiring young women and men to follow.

It is fitting to recognize her accomplishments as we celebrate March as National Women’s History Month. It is also fitting to recognize her success came not only from her unbelievable talent, but her tremendous dedication to becoming better, relentless practice, and hard work. Those same attributes are paying great dividends for women today.

Women are doing great things here in the United States and around the world, making history even today. Women are running countries, managing multinational corporations, heading up massive non-governmental organizations, and winning Nobel prizes. They are attending college in record numbers and leading efforts to grow and start new businesses. In fact, the education pattern of young workers makes it clear that women will soon be the majority of college-educated workers.

We must allow women to continue to achieve. The key is to remove government roadblocks that make it harder to succeed. That’s why in the House we are working on those priorities that will restore a confidence in America-one where women and men alike feel secure in their futures. One in which the paths beaten by the Babes of the world lead to the same levels of excellence.

We are working to make sure our nation is secure and ready to address the threats of today; to create an economic atmosphere that welcomes investment in our local communities and workforce, creating jobs and providing stability; to advance policies that promote upward mobility and lessen the dependence on government; to reform our broken health care system to ensure affordable access that you want, not what bureaucrats mandate; and to restore the Constitutional balance of power that asserts you, not the federal government, are in charge of your life.

Like Babe Zaharias, the women of today should be free to pursue their dreams. They should be rewarded for the same hard work and determination exhibited by Babe. They should be able to make history — and they can as Washington gets out of the way.