In the spring of 2006, as Katie Couric was ascending to the CBS Evening News as the first woman solo anchor, Jill Abramson — who just happened to be the first woman managing editor of The New York Times — wondered aloud in a Times essay when the qualifier "first woman" would no longer be worth mentioning.
We have women Supreme Court justices and women heads of corporations, and we pretty nearly had a woman president. But when Ms. Abramson was elevated early this month to the executive editorship of The New York Times, all the headlines proclaimed that she was the first woman to hold the most hallowed job in American journalism.
I guess "the first woman to …" is not yet an irrelevancy. And, though women are the top editors at other newspapers, including this one, it isn't official in our business until the Times does it.
"I know I didn't get this job because I'm a woman," Ms. Abramson said in an interview with the British newspaper the Guardian. "I got it because I'm the best qualified person."
Ms. Abramson gave thanks to the women who had come before her — but she was not simply talking about famous female bylines.
In 1974, seven women sued the Times on behalf of 550 other female employees for discrimination in hiring, pay and promotion. At the time, the highest-ranking women in the newsroom covered only society news.
Four years later, the suit was settled when the Times committed to hiring and mentoring more women and to provide back pay for those who had been overlooked.
"I'm extremely conscious that I stand on the shoulders of women — some of whom, because I didn't come to the Times until 1997 — I have never met," Ms. Abramson told NPR's David Folkenflik.
Ms. Abramson wasn't promoted because the vapors of that rancorous lawsuit still hung in the newsroom, but because of what has happened in the 30-plus years since. The example of the Times lawsuit created possibilities for many of us. (Like I said, it isn't official until the Times does it.)
It has not been a revolution for women in journalism, but a slow climb up the ladder. Indeed, Ms. Abramson went to high school with the son of one of the plaintiffs in that suit.
But the new editor of the Times said something else during the celebration of her promotion. She said she made it to the top, and "I have two kids and a dog."
There is a world of meaning in that statement. Ms. Abramson was saying that not only could a woman ascend to the highest chair in journalism, but that she could have a family and a family life as well.
But her words hit me like a slap. Do men ever qualify their promotions with testimony that they cut their own grass?
Her good friend from high school, Jane Mayer, who writes for The New Yorker, said that Ms. Abramson can both "kick ass" and make a great salad dressing. "That's the ultimate liberation," Ms. Mayer added.
No, I thought. The liberation will be official when women no longer feel compelled to take the edge off their professional toughness with some kind of silly domestic reference.
When they no longer have to reassure the women watching that both career and family are possible. When a friend like Ms. Mayer no longer feels that she has to qualify comments about Ms. Abramson's toughness and her high standards by saying what an "incredibly generous and warm friend" she is.
Ms. Abramson concluded her essay on Katie Couric and "the first woman to …" by saying: "There will now be a female solo anchor. But there are still few women successfully leading the cornerstone institutions of our society. Maybe Katie Couric will become one of them."
We know how that story ended. Ms. Couric has left the anchor desk to do a talk show. Almost at the same moment, Meredith Vieira left the Today show to spend more time with her husband and improve the quality of her hectic life.
Maybe the real liberation is when both women and men not only move up, but are also free to step back or change course. And when nobody notices — or cares — whether it is a woman or a man doing it.
Susan Reimer's column appears Mondays. Her email is susan.reimer@baltsun.com.