Women like us

Women like us."

That's how Anna Quindlen, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, described women of a certain age at a luncheon I attended today.

"We all shop at the same places and we all wear black pants," she said.

She always feels certain that if she forgets her glasses -- and she forgets a lot these days -- that someone else will have a pair she can borrow.

When she and I were growing up, girls weren't supposed to be athletic, so there were few chances for us to play team sports of any kind.

We had no role models in government (except Sen. Margaret Chase Smith), no women on the Supreme Court, and very, very few in corporate board rooms or as partners in law firms. Women were nurses, not doctors.

We went out to work, the women of my generation, and we struggled to overcome the perception that we couldn't do the same work men did. We didn't have flex time or options to work a day or two each week from home.

Now, our daughters and granddaughters assume they can choose whatever career they wish. It isn't even a part of their reality that women couldn't do that.

I got to meet Anna before the lunch, and we talked about being 56-year-old newspaper reporters. She has gone on to write novels and nonfiction books, but I love her New York Times opinion columns best.

Recently, she announced she would stop writing news and opinion to allow room for younger people to move up.

We talked about that, which got us to talking about the low pay that we newspaper reporters get and the obsession most of us have with our work.

"You have to marry somebody in the business," I said. "They understand."

"No," she said. "You have to marry a news junkie who has a decent income."

We recalled the newsrooms of the 1970s -- smoke-filled, obscenity-laced and much less politically correct that today. And we talked about whether those really were the good old days.

"Go back and read papers from 30, 40 years ago," she said. "They weren't better."