Dr. Gershon Ruben This is Me

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   Published on: 9/9/2001   Last Visited: 1/23/2003

   Recognizing the lack of character education and leadership skills in girls, Dr. Ruben self-published an illustrated booklet called How I Grew Up Feeling Some Day I Could Be President that features a unisex child who successfully becomes President of the United States of America because of encouragement received from parents, teachers and friends. First-grade teachers and school counselors use this booklet to change boys' misperception of girls, to enhance female self-esteem and to build leadership skills in both genders.
   
   Four months after Dr. Ruben completed her study, her husband showed her the "Dennis the Menace" Sunday cartoon in which the red-haired, bespectacled, feisty icon, Margaret, makes it clear to Dennis that she believes "Someday a Woman Will Be President!" After she shared the results of her study with the late Hank Ketcham, the cartoonist who produced this comic strip for over fifty years, he agreed to permit her to put Margaret's image and message on a T-shirt.
   
   The Margaret T-shirt gained national notoriety in 1994 after one Wal-Mart store in Miramar, Florida carried it and when the national office of the company discovered that fact, they banned the Margaret T-shirt saying the message promoting female leadership went against their philosophy of family values.
   ...
   Dr. Ruben bought three shares of Wal-Mart stock and complained of this practice as a stockholder in a letter to the president of the company. She gave him three weeks to lift the ban and during that time she got a call from a senior vice-president of Wal-Mart offering her a bribe to shut up. She refused the bribe and instead after four weeks gave the story to Associated Press. Women from California to Connecticut marched in front of Wal-Mart stores. They threatened to boycott, tear up their Mr. Sam's cards and sell their Wal-Mart stock. Within 24 hours, the company changed its position and ended up buying 50,000 T-shirts in 1995. WOMEN ARE WONDERFUL.
   
   Since 1994, Women Are Wonderful Foundation, Inc. has had the late Hank Ketcham's permission to produce the Margaret T-shirt and in 1998 approved the license to manufacture the Margaret Doll.