I spent last week fretting about the global financial meltdown, and what it really means. I kept thinking about Zimbabwe, and what it must be like to be living there, where the system really has melted down, and people haven’t got any food. For some reason, everywhere I went, I fell into conversations with older people with circles under their eyes, whose retirement funds had just evaporated. At some point I sat down and calculated my savings.

By dint of a natural aversion to luxury (as well as angst about the future and an inherited fear of poverty), and no dependents, I stashed away quite a lot while I was working in a corprate job. As I added up numbers on the back of an envelope, I realised I had a small nest egg (not huge, but it could hatch a sparrow, or a quail, so long as I don’t splash out and make an omelet), and I felt some pride about this–Self-Made Woman.

Then I switched on the radio, where a woman was talking about the use of women’s issues in war propaganda. (Remember how all of a sudden we were liberating the burkha-clad sisters in Afrganistan? This after years of women’s organisations fruitlessly raising the issue. But then once oil was at stake, the tune changed, and suddenly the long-ignored plight of the women oppressed by the Taliban was all over the news, being used to encourage us to swallow the war.)

The woman’s speech reminded me that even a hundred years ago, none of us women could have worked in a profession. None of us could have voted. Basically the choice back then was be a servant, get married, or sell your body. British women accepted proxy marriages with farmers in Australia, said adieu to everyone and everything they knew, and sailed out there to some rough chap they had never met. Because there was no other way, bar becoming a prostitute.

But we don’t have to do any of that anymore.

It’s so easy to forget the basics. I rehearse a little litany to myself sometimes: I’m safe, I’m fed, I’m warm, I’m dry, I’m not sick, I’m OK. It’s more than most people on the planet can say. It’s worth remembering what we have, and how far we’ve come.

As I reflected on all of this, a solid kind of a feeling crept over me. Women really can make a life for ourselves now (at least in our culture). We can work and we can live and no-one can say boo. It’s not necessarily the life we thought we were going to have, much less the life we hoped for. But we rally round each other and I’m proud of the support we give each other.

Look what happened when the Gramin Bank gave women in Bangladesh the means to work their way out of poverty. Amazing. Look at Wangari Mathai, a million trees later. Women are impressive.