A Female President!
Women Can Make It Happen

Controversy doesn't frighten psychologist Ann Ruben.

Nearly 70 years ago, while playing a game called Business that her cousin had made up, Ruben, then 8, demanded her turn as president of the company. Her cousin refused. When Ruben quit in protest, he punched her in the stomach.
``Are you crazy? Girls can't be president, and guys will never be secretaries,'' her cousin yelled at her.

``That stayed with me all of my life,'' said Ruben, who lives in Weston.

The former Barry University professor transformed that memory into a mission to promote the idea of a woman for president of the United States. Ten years ago, she surveyed 1,500 boys and girls at five different Miami schools, asking them if they believed a woman could be president. More girls than boys said yes. Afterward, she published a booklet titled How I Grew Up Feeling Some Day I Could Be President.

Around that time, her husband, Gershon Ruben, stumbled across a Dennis the Menace comic strip with the Margaret character demanding admittance to Dennis' club. Her argument for inclusion was women were astronauts and firefighters, and ``Someday a woman will be president!''

Margaret's declaration evolved into Ruben's slogan. The soft-spoken and genial Ruben got permission from Dennis the Menace creator Hank Ketchum and began making Margaret T-shirts and dolls.

In the early '90s, a Miramar Wal-Mart purchased her T-shirts, but corporate executives yanked the shirts from the shelves because of their political nature, a 1995 Herald story reported. Women's groups protested outside Wal-Marts all over the country, and Ruben became a media spectacle. Wal-Mart later purchased 50,000 shirts, but soon stopped selling them, Ruben said. No one was buying them, they said.

``They really bought them just to shut me up,'' she said.

Recently, ACE Educational Supplies, 5595 S. University Dr., Davie, began selling the shirts, Margaret dolls and tote bags with the slogan. Teachers are buying the tote bags and T-shirts, said Ashlie Bobbing, buyer for ACE.

``I liked the saying because it helps the children at a young age know that anything's possible for a girl or a boy,'' Bobbing said. ``In my school, everyone you looked at in history and all the presidents were male.''

Ruben sells her Margaret items online at her website - www.womenarewonder

ful.com - and to women's groups, who sell them at fundraisers.

Ruben hopes a woman will be president in her lifetime.

``I think we are somewhat better than we were, but we have a long way to go,'' she said.

ROBYN MEADOWS/FOR THE HERALD AIMING FOR EQUALITY: Psychologist Ann Ruben, of Weston, shows off her `Someday a Woman Will Be President' doll.