To the women of the University of Denver,

Welcome to 2010. Aside from the occasional misogynistic article in the Clarion and a few pennies difference in salary on average, we think that we live in a pretty gender-equal society. We think that feminism has won. I am here to tell you that we are wrong.

Today’s buzzword of feminism is “choice.” Where our grandmothers were homemakers, we the liberated generation of 2010, get to choose whether we want to work or marry and have a family. That choice, society tells us, means that we are free. We grew up with this choice. Yet, we grew up knowing that we couldn’t really do both and do both well.

Now the time has come for us to make the “choice.” At DU we have been groomed to take our places as leaders in society. We have been educated to become lawyers and teachers and CEOs. And we want to do those things. We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t.  But many of us also want to get married and have children. So now, we get to make the impossible choice that none of our male colleagues will ever have to make. That is equality in 2010.

So maybe the time has come to change the definition of equality.

I urge my fellow women at DU to reflect on the “choice,” the unfair and impossible “choice,” that is supposed to mark our equality in modern society. And then, I urge you to politely tell whoever told you that you have to make a choice between the love of a husband, the fulfillment of a family and realizing your own career potential, to go to hell. Our education, which so many women in the world would have given anything for, gives us with not only a right, but a responsibility to become active, professional leaders in the world.

So to those of you who are thinking of giving in to old traditions shame on you.  Shame on you for denying the world your talents and your contributions, both as a professional and as a parent. And shame on you for denying yourself a future where you could have it all- the professional success and the personal. No man would ever deny himself that. He would assume he could have everything and anything he wanted for himself. He would insist on having everything. It’s time that we do too.