It’s 6 o’clock Sunday morning and I’m writing questions to ask First Lady Laura Bush…

when I interview her for a Good Morning Texas segment later this week.

I glanced at my iPhone and realized it’s International Women’s Day.

Which got me thinking…

How fortunate are we to live in a country where I, a female, have a pretty great platform, Good Morning Texas, to reach people with ideas and inspiring interviews? How blessed are we to live in a country where I am preparing to interview First Lady Laura Bush, on her ideas…about everything from how to empower other women around the world, to how she likes being a grandmother! First Lady Laura Bush and I are blessed with freedom and opportunity.

I gave a presentation to the Women’s Initiative at the Bush Center last year about this time and was taken aback by what one young woman from Tunisia said. I had suggested that a good way to get your story in the media was to invite a reporter to have coffee with you at the local “Starbucks”, or whatever their version of that was.

She responded, “Oh we would never call a reporter and ask to meet somewhere. Women don’t do that in our country”.

My surprise was not about the rules of etiquette in a country different from ours, it was that “women don’t do that”…fortunately that idea had never occurred to me. Women don’t do lots of things in other countries that men do.

I consider myself lucky that in growing up my family treated me like another “person”, not a “girl”. I just never thought that my professional life might be any different from my younger brother’s; if I chose to work outside the home (I’ve done both and inside the home is much harder!).

My parents were “gender blind” when it came to what I might do professionally. I don’t think much about being a “woman in journalism”, I think of myself as a “person in journalism”.

And on this International Women’s Day, I wish that for other women, around the world.

Have a beautiful Sunday,