Four cheers (and four stars) for Ann Dunwoody

We've come a long way as a nation this year. With Hillary Clinton's candidacy for president, the U.S. took its first serious look at a female presidency while demonstrating only minor squeamishness. But while Clinton still ultimately walked away from that campaign with a host of bruises from banging her head on a glass ceiling that refused to budge, Ann Dunwoody managed to obliterate the military's "brass ceiling.: Today, Dunwoody was officially promoted to four-star general, the first female in U.S. military history to achieve that rank. What's even more amazing to me is that Dunwoody has achieved this first as the culmination to a 33 year career in which she herself has never been in a unit commanded by a female. Not many women get to blaze trails like that in a lifetime.

Just to put this all in perspective, let's consider the meteoric rise of women in the military over the last fifty years or so. Following World War II, women's only access to the armed services was as a WAC, or member of the Women's Army Corps. The highest rank attainable as a WAC was that of lieutenant colonel. No woman could be promoted any higher. And choosing a career in the military meant choosing not to have children since no WAC was allowed to remain on active duty on becoming pregnant and as long as she had a child under the age of 18.