The female soldier in the Beetle Bailey comic strip in the morning newspaper had been treated in a condescending manner by Gen. Halftrack and was complaining about it to the general’s shapely secretary.

“I don’t think equality of the sexes is a reality yet,” the disgruntled woman says as the general shuffles into his office. “Yeah, but who cares?” the secretary replies. “Just let them go on thinking they’re equal.”

The comic strip was a reminder that the equality-of-the-sexes concept is still difficult for many an old geezer such as the doddering Gen. Halftrack to grasp, and you shouldn’t bet the farm on the possibility that they will get it before they are called to their heavenly reward.

To most rational people, though, the reality of the gender-equity thing seems obvious: Women long ago showed that, given the opportunity, they can perform as well as men in most jobs, and even better in some, except maybe those requiring the brute strength for heavy lifting on a regular basis. Or those that involve getting from Point A to Point B without once asking for directions, no matter how hopelessly lost.

When it comes to gender equality in the newspaper business, we’ve come a long way, baby. The newsroom is no longer the bastion of male reporters and editors it once was, and newspapers are generally the better for it. Gone are the smarmily patronizing feature stories about the first woman on her block to become a firefighter or cop, dentist, mule skinner, astronaut, boxer, backhoe operator or bank robber. Like hot lead and metal type, glue pots and flatbed presses, those literary clunkers are extinct. If our luck holds, they shall never inhabit our news columns again, and civilization mourns not their passing.

A good example of what young women could accomplish when the shackles were removed occurred years ago on the high school sports scene when females were allowed to play basketball under the same rules as the male of the species.

Prior to that, high school girls’ basketball was Three Dribbles And A Screech – a ho-hum yawner of epic proportions. If memory serves (hey, it’s been a long time), a team’s offensive players were confined to one half of the court, its defenders

to the other. Each group was prohibited from crossing over the mid-court stripe in pursuit of victory, excessive exertion apparently being considered unhealthy for proper ladies.

When finally set free to play real basketball, offenses and defenses swirling in one big happy scrum from baseline to baseline, no restrictions on dribbling or passing the ball and such, the young women quickly showed their athleticism and grasp of the game. Before long you had the likes of University of Maine legend Cindy Blodgett of Clinton – who played the game as well as most any guy could ever hope to – putting fannies in the seats at a packed Alfond Arena on her way to national recognition, and her young high school emulators drawing record crowds to their Eastern Maine Basketball Tournament games at the Bangor Auditorium.

Granted, sports may be a comparatively insignificant venue in the overall scheme of things when contemplating strides women have made toward true gender equity in this country. Accomplishments in the fields of business, law, government, politics and the like would seem to outshine progress in sports.

Still, a reliable measure of how gender-equality has progressed can be found in sports. In the little things at the grass-roots level. For starters, most female athletes and their coaches can insert “ya know” and “I mean” into their conversations every bit as often as their male peers, who not so long ago held the exclusive franchise on the abominations. As well, in news interviews the gals can readily offer up the obligatory banalities about overcoming adversity, taking things one game at a time, and giving it their best shot – often the ever-popular, and impossible, “110 percent.”

The clincher, though, can be found in outdoor sports. There, the ladies are beginning to perfect another mannerism, formerly a strictly guy thing, that indicates they have arrived at that even playing field so long coveted. A television film clip of a high school softball playoff game between a couple of girls teams in the Bangor area showed one player

spitting as profusely as any major leaguer you’d care to cite. She definitely had arrived, that one.

Fear not, though, mamas and papas – the bulge in her cheek was most likely bubble gum. My guess is that it will probably be another couple of years before she starts chewing and spitting tobacco.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net.