me: At the same time, it seemed there was enough… slack… in the system that these things didn’t really matter. I mean, since the 1930s, Amelia Earhart, we’ve known women *could* be pilots, but still they *didn’t*, still they *don’t*, she didn’t change anything. Even if she survived her circumnavigation I don’t see how…

also me: She circles the globe, lands, big celebrity. American interventionists looking for “their own” Charles Lindbergh seize on her, she campaigns for military buildup.

also me: When war comes she’s put in charge of WASP. It’s mostly ceremonial but due to her starpower it’s higher profile in this universe, not in a way that makes a war-winning difference but it’s woven closer into the war narrative.

also me: Like, she inspires more women flight instructors, and there’s a famous escort carrier with an all-woman flight crew (that never sees action) and there’s a yay-Soviets movie made about the Night Witches.

also me: Then she’s given an also-ceremonial representative role in the demobilization but she unexpectedly speaks out against the re-marginalization of women in war industries, not enough to stop it but enough that the military-corporate-labor nexus that rules the postwar is more female and feminist than it would be otherwise.

also me: She helps make the Equal Rights Amendment a thing decades earlier (it definitely fails… that time) and endorses Adlai Stevenson

me: …

also me: THAT’S how

also me: most of her allies get purged in the Second Red Scare as comsymps or lesbians, though