When our own Linda Powers Bilanchone served on a committee that worked to get more women hired by the city of Spartanburg as fire fighters, policemen, and public works employees in the 1980s, the…

When our own Linda Powers Bilanchone served on a committee that worked to get more women hired by the city of Spartanburg as fire fighters, policemen, and public works employees in the 1980s, the police chief thanked her. As Linda later said in an oral history interview, he said ‘Thank you for

forcing us into hiring women. We did not understand the role that women could play

in the police force. Where you have rape, where you go into a home in the middle of

the night, where you have scared children or where you have women who are traumatized.

Those are all situations where women officers can bring order and peace to

the situation much faster than men can. It just makes sense.’”

In that vein, see this article in today's NY Times entitled "Letting Women Reach Women in Afghan War"

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/world/asia/07women.html?emc=eta1