March is Women's History Month!!!!

[The_Lady_Snow]

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Take advantage of the month of March to investigate strong girls and women in books!


Who are the women you admire??

[The_Lady_Snow]

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“Women should be tough, tender, laugh as much as possible and live long lives.”

~ Maya Angelou

[Novelafemme]

Oh this list could get really long:

Anna Nieto Gomez, activist/scholar
Anna Nieto Gomez was one of the most articulate and outspoken Chicana feministas since the early days of the movimiento chicano. Nieto Gomez launched an early and enduring critique of the Chicano movement for ignoring women's issues. She founded an early feminist journal, Encuentro Femenil, in which she and other Chicanas spelled out an inclusive Chicana/o agenda, including issues around childcare, reproductive rights, and the feminization of poverty.

Dr. Nieto Gomez was just here last week lecturing to my MAS365 class. She is incredibly warm and caring and took time to meet with each of us individually. I was on cloud nine the whole time.

Cherrie Moraga, writer/poet/activist/playwright
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Cherrie Moraga is a prolific, award-winning Chicana writer/activist/poet/ playwright. Her many published works include Loving in the War Years/Lo Que Nunca Paso Por Los Labios, Cuentos: Stories by Latinas, and The Last Generation. Three of her plays are published in Heroes and Saints and Other Plays by West End Press. She is also co-editor of the pivotal Chicana feminist text, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, both the English and Spanish versions (co-authored separately with Gloria Anzaldua and Ana Castillo). Cherrie has taught drama and writing courses at various universities across the nation, and is currently a faculty member at Stanford University. Her newest play, Watsonville, enjoyed a successful run in San Francisco last year.

Yolanda Broyles-Gonzalez, Professor of Chicana/o Studies
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Dr. Broyles-Gonzalez was invited to a White House ceremony by President Bill Clinton and the First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton on the 35th anniversary of the signing of the Equal Pay Act: June 10, 1998. The White House ceremony highlighted Professor Broyles-Gonzalez' historic 1996 lawsuit which challenged the unequal pay of women professors at the University of California, and was settled in October of 1997. Her victory places UC discriminatory actions within permanent court scrutiny and custody, and is an enduring marker in the struggle for womens rights. Professor Broyles-Gonzlez is a Yaqui-Chicana native of the Arizona-Sonora borderlands with a doctorate in German Studies from Stanford University. In 1985 she became the first woman of color to receive tenure at the University of California in Santa Barbara; she advanced to full Professor in 1991. In 1996 she received the lifetime Distinguished Scholar Award from the National Association for Chicana/o Studies. Her most recent book El Teatro Campesino: Theater in the Chicano Movement has received broad critical acclaim. (submitted by Dr. Antonia Castaneda, St. Mary's University)

This woman has moved me in ways I can't quite articulate because I will start crying. She is by far the most insirational professer I have ever had the pleasure of studying under. Together we are collaborating in bringing Pululaw Khus to the UofA to lecture about maintaining her Chumash indigenous heritage during a time of slavery in California.

Gloria Anzaldua, writer/activist/scholar (d. 2004)
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Gloria Anzaldua was a Chicana tejana lesbian-feminist poet, writer, and scholar who played a fundamental role in the development of Chicana feminist theory in the 1970s and beyond. She was co-editor of three of the most influential publications in the emergence of Chicana feminisms: This Bridge Called My Back:Writings by Radical Women of Color, Haciendo Caras/Making Face, Making Soul: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Feminists of Color, and Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Gloria's work theorized a "borderlands" that was historically and geographically situated in the U.S. Southwest, as well as a metaphorical borderlands that encompassed the lives and desires of those marginalized by the power structures of U.S. society.

[Novelafemme]

Professor Sandra Soto
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Sandra K. Soto is Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson. She holds a PhD in English, with a focus in Ethnic and Third World Literature, from the University of Texas at Austin. Her book Reading Chican@ Like a Queer: The De-Mastery of Desire (2010), replaces the race-based oppositional paradigm of Chicano literary studies with a less didactic, more flexible, framework geared for a queer analysis of the discursive relationship between racialization and sexuality. Her interdisciplinary research and teaching interests are in Chicana/o and Latina/o literary and cultural studies, feminist theory, gender studies, and queer theory. She is currently working on a book tentatively titled Feeling Greater Mexico, which mobilizes queer theories of affect to pursue unlikely connections between critical transnational studies and U.S. ethnic studies. In 2010 she and Miranda Joseph received the National Education Association Excellence in the Academy Award in Democracy in Higher Education for their essay “Neoliberalism and the Battle over Ethnic Studies in Arizona.” At the University of Arizona, she is an Executive Committee Member of the Institute of LGBT Studies and an affiliate of English, the Center for Latin American Studies, and the Mexican American Studies and Research Center.

Sandy is my inspiration and th reason I am pursing a daul graduate degree in Mexican American Studies. She is incredible!

[Glenn]

I would like to pay deep respect and homage in his thread to Native American women. Without them I would never have learned about the powerful female force in all of creation that has been lost and neglected for thousands and thousands of years. Also, without them as guides, interpreters scouts and negotiators for peace and unity, I sincerely believe this country would have never been settled.

[genghisfawn]

I remember the brunches and beer nights we'd throw when I was co-leading the Women's and Gender Studies students union at my university. :) Some of the guests we attracted at the local level were astounding - you don't have to look further than your own city, sometimes, to find women who ought to make history!

Happy Women's History Month! Enjoy it. :) Be proud.

[girl_dee]

two women come to mind for me personally

Margie and Pino, aka Mamma and Pops to all of their *children*

Two dear lesbians who were inseparable as first a couple, then friends. They shared a house for over 30 years. Lovers came and went but the rules were clear, Margie and Pino were going to live under the same roof.

They owned the first gay bar in our Parish in LA.

They owned many more after that and only employed gay women. They took in the dykes who were thrown out by family, the addicted and homeless dykes... with a couple of rules,, get clean and work and you are family. For the rest of their lives those same dykes took care of them as they got older and needed help. This was their only real family.

Margie, "Pops", the butch of the two, was the security and Pino was the cute little femme firecracker who people say i remind them of. Pino loaned out money and kept journals of the comings and goings of everyone, who came in, who was courting who, who took a loan, who paid a loan, all the goings on from the neighborhood bar. Women danced together, they were raided, they were arrested.. they still kept on. They also started the first all women parades in their area for Mardi Gras... their Mardi Gras Balls were butch femme style, complete with tux and ball gowns.. the photos were magnificent!

They retired at about 55 and enjoyed a ranch for a while, then a house in the suburbs where all their *family* lived... by now they were content sitting out on the back deck as people stopped by... a quiet life after all those crazy years in the 60 -70's. Happy knowing most all the young dykes they helped back in the day were now full functioning adults who still loved them.

They were older when i met them and i fell in love with them both. Pino was become frail and need help. Margie's health was failing too and she could not take care of Pino as much as she wanted to, so their *children* took turns going to the house to help, i went every weekend to do housework and help bathe Pino. Pino loved to swim and while in the tub loved to show off her moves.. in her day she was a swimming instructor.. she taught kids in wheelchairs how to swim..after a bath you would end up as soaked as she was and afterwards she liked to powder herself in Jean Nate... the woman had a smile on her face constantly, even in her dementia she was happy as a clam. She loved seafood so i would bring her some, peeling it as fast as she could wolf it down. When not well we would bring her to the facility for a short stay, and then anxiously awaiting her return to their home. We brought all of her bedding from home so she would not be too afraid, and we took turns going to feed her as she would just forget to.

Their home consisted of all of the signs and decor from the gay bars, shelves full of the journals that Pino kept. FORTY years of memories and wonderful times. How awesome it was to sit down and read a journal and the good times that were had. All in Pino's penmanship.

Then we heard there was a storm coming, as a group we decided that we had to evacuate and this time we could not bring Pino, she was incontinent and the last time we evacuated with her, it was very hard and ended up having to find somewhere for her to stay because sitting on the interstate was too much for her. We chose the place that she always stayed at when she had an illness. They promised to take good care of her, and we expected to pick her up in a few days. Kat brought her there, i went to New England. The last thing Kat said Pino said was *why are you leaving me here and when are you coming back?*

Kat took Margie and the rest of the clan to Texas.. little did we all know what would happen.

Katrina came with all her might and the levees broke, Pino and Margies house was completely underwater, only the tip of the roof was not under.
Everything, every momento was gone. The journals, the photos, everything.

Pino's caretakers decided to evacuate themselves from the hospital, they placed all of the patients, all 11 of them on the 3rd floor, gave them all the meds they had come there with and left them there. The water went to the 5th floor. We did not know Pino was murdered until 2 weeks later. She was euthanized and all i can think of is praying that she was unconscious when the water came. If free, she would have swam out of there i am sure of that. It tooks months to get her body from the morgue for burial, it was horrible. Her funeral was anything but deserving and i didn't make it back for it. i hid as far as i could so i didn't have to think about it.

Margie had to be told that she had lost her lifemate to the storm and the people we trusted with her. Margie lasted a couple of years but was never the same and of course Kat, the one who left Pino there suffered major depression and till this day blames herself, although we made a decision as a group. Life will never be the same. Margie was also buried without much fanfare, and by now only a few people knew of how wonderful these two women were.

Pino's legacy was one of a brave woman who didn't care what would happen to her if she helped out people who needed help. She started a movement that allowed other gay women to own and operate businesses.

Many people owe their life to this 5 foot nothing 100 pound powerhouse and it really, really bothers me that she died that way. She and the other people that were there with her, deserved better.

The caretakers were charged with murder but they beat the charges.

Pino still lives in the people she helped and in me, i will never, ever forget her smiling face.

Sorry for the ramble but i felt i had to share this.

[girl_dee]

What a legend she was :)


Rosemary "Mama" Pino |

Rosemary Pino ""Mama'' tragically departed this world to meet her Heavenly Father on Monday, August 29, 2005 during Hurricane Katrina. Throughout her life, Mama was a pioneer for rights of the gay and lesbian community. In addition, she worked diligently for human rights and AIDS. With her beloved business partner and devoted partner of 56 years, Margie Norman, they owned and operated numerous gay bars including, The Grog, De Ja Vu', Pino's, The Blue Odyssey, and Club 621. Prior to the bar business, Pino worked for Hibernia Bank and Camp Leroy Johnston. Mama was heavily involved with the gay carnival organizations. A member of A.G.G.I., honorary mom for the Krewe of Polythemus and the Krewe of Armenius, she also served as a board member for the Krewe of Ishtar (an all women's gay club). Standing only five feet high, Mama's distinctive laugh and bubbly personality made her appear to be six feet tall. She volunteered for The Lighthouse for the Blind and taught blind children to swim. She loved to swim and played softball until she was forty years old. Mama fought for the underdog and often adopted gay kids whose parents had disowned them. She supported her friends and everyone who ever met her adored her and her fun loving spirit. Mama enriched other's lives and will be sadly missed by her partner, Margie Norman; close personal friends, Bonnie, Kathy, Dee, Sis, Cindy, Sue, Judy, Rusty, Mark, Keith, Linda, Beverly, and Anisha; and countless other friends.

[UofMfan]

And as part of the celebration, tomorrow is Internatinal Women´s Day.

[Rook]

Off the top of my head...

My Mother, My grandmother, Tia Damaris...
I'll have to think on the Notable Women besides them...

[Melissa]

Susan B Anthony
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Sojourner Truth
Virginia Woolf
The Bronte Sisters
Jane Austen
Hillary Clinton
Janet Reno

[The_Lady_Snow]

Alice Paul

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[The_Lady_Snow]

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[The_Lady_Snow]

The beauty of a woman
Is not in the clothes she wears,
The figure that she carries,
Or the way she combs her hair.

The beauty of a woman must be seen from in her eyes,
Because that is the doorway to her heart,
The place where love resides.
The beauty of a woman is not in a facial mole
But true beauty in a woman is reflected in her soul.

It is the caring that she lovingly gives,
The passion that she shows,
And the beauty of a woman
With passing years only grows!

[Cin]

When I was a kid I was fascinated by Isabella Bird, Amelia Earhart, Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Rachel Carson. There weren’t as many women pushing against stereotypical gender roles when I was growing up as there are today. Born twenty years too soon I guess.

Barbara Smith

Urvashi Vaid

Andy Marra

Barbara Jordan

[weatherboi]

Billie Jean King

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[Melissa]

Florence Nightingale - a fascinating woman!

Lena Horne - one of my favorite singers.

[The_Lady_Snow]

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[Cin]

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Anna Rüling
First Known Lesbian Activist

[Cin]

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Lesbian rights pioneers Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon formed the Daughters of Bilitis in 1955. Together for 51 years, they became the first same-sex couple to obtain a marriage license and marry in the United States Feb 12, 2004.

[The_Lady_Snow]

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[The_Lady_Snow]

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[weatherboi]

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About Saffire - The Uppity Blues Women

It's not often that dreams come true. In the case of the acoustic blues trio, Saffire--The Uppity Blues Women, that's just what happened. Over the course of nine recordings and thousands of gigs, the group has gone from virtual obscurity to one of the most popular, witty, and just plain satisfying acoustic blues groups on the scene today. These women tear into their material with passion, dedication, and originality. Every song they cover becomes theirs, and their originals blend seamlessly with their interpretations. They are indeed the torchbearers for the original classic uppity blues women like Bessie Smith, Sippie Wallace and Victoria Spivey.

The members of Saffire--The Uppity Blues Women are: Gaye Adegbalola, Andra Faye, and Ann Rabson.

[weatherboi]

Founder and 1st president of The American Red Cross

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[girl_dee]

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According to the gospels Mark and John, Mary Magdalene was the first person to see Jesus after he rose from the dead. All four canonical Gospels attest that she witnessed Jesus' crucifixion and burial. The 21st century has seen a restoration of Mary Magdalene as a patron of women's ministry. This is in direct opposition to other notions that she was a repentant prostitute.

[Scuba]

mmifO2sKT7g

[Scuba]

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In this day and age and women STILL need to fight to keep the patriarch from taking away their right to choose....

...I would like to introduce a bill that states all men who are suspected of rape must undergo a mandatory castration?

Shame on the state of Virginia for allowing such archaic behavior in government.

[Daktari]

On this day in 1967 Josef Stalin's only daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, defected to the West. She requested political asylum at the United States Embassy in India.

Success has many faces; it need not be circumscribed by a title, a job, a cause. Success is not always "getting." It is more often "giving." It does not consist of what we do, but rather of what we are. Success is not always an accomplishment. It can be a state of mind. The quiet dignity of a home, the relationship of the individuals in that home. The continuing expression of an inquiring mind can mean more in terms of success than all the surface symbols of status.
Lady Bird Johnson

[pinkgeek]

The most influential woman in my life. My LauraMom.

For adopting all of us strays.
For driving a purple car.
For marrying her best friend; the most amazing butch ever.
For being the most fierce femme I know.
For teaching me to make bagels.
For teaching her cooking class about safe sex while stuffing sausage.
For packing me a picnic lunch for the airplane every time I leave back to school.

For teaching me kindness - something every great woman should learn.

For being famous in our lives.

[pinkgeek]

Germaine Greer (born 29 January 1939) is an Australian writer, academic, journalist and scholar of early modern English literature, and a significant feminist voice of the later 20th century.
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Greer's ideas have created controversy ever since her book The Female Eunuch became an international best-seller in 1970, turning her into a household name and bringing her both adulation and opposition. She is also the author of many other books including, Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility (1984); The Change: Women, Ageing and the Menopause (1991), Shakespeare's Wife (2007) and "The Whole Woman" (1999). She is Professor Emerita of English Literature and Comparative Studies at the University of Warwick.

Greer has defined her goal as 'women's liberation' as distinct from 'equality with men', She asserts that women's liberation meant embracing gender differences in a positive fashion, a struggle for the freedom for women to define their own values, order their own priorities and determine their own fates. In contrast, Greer sees equality as mere assimilation and "settling" to live the lives of "unfree men".

[Tommi]

Idrc-dKzy6Q

[girl_dee]

GLADYS AYLWARD (1902 - 1970)

Missionary to China
Gladys Aylward stands out as an example of how God can use someone of meager means and abilities when they give themselves over to the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Born into a working class family in Edmonton, London on February 24, 1902. Daughter of a mailman and oldest of two sisters and 1 brother. Unlike many famous Christians in history, she didn't excel scholastically or set her self apart based on her exhaustive knowledge of the Bible and the classic languages, rather her early life was marked with a propensity for play acting and a willingness to serve. God prepares those He calls for the roles they are to play and these propensities would come to be contributing factors in her success as God put them to good use.

Though raised in the Angelican Church, she was not a particularly religious person in her early years and her "adequate" education and working class social position left her with few options. She became a parlor maid at the age of only 14. Her call to missions came about when she attended a revival at when she was 18 in which the preacher expounded on giving ones life over to the service of the Lord. The message struck a cord in her heart and an awakening desire to serve on the missionary field began to blossom. Having spent the last four years serving others surely gave her a unique insight to a servant's heart. She gave her life to Christ willing to be used in whatever way He sought fit. Some sources indicate that her decision to pursue a missionary assignment to China may have come about from having read a magazine article about China, a nation where millions of people had never heard the Gospel.

She continued her work as a parlor maid with little chance to realize her calling. In her mid-twenties, she applied and was given a probationary position with the China Inland Mission Center in London but this endeavor didn't bear fruit. At the age of 26 her probation ended in failure. She had fallen short of their expectations and was rejected for service as a missionary to China. However, no one can frustrate the will of God or reject for service those who are called of God "For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. (Rom 11:29)

Determined to follow God by whatever means available, she continued to work and to save her money and after four years, at the age of 30, her opportunity came in the person of an aging missionary, Mrs. Jeannie Lawson,1 who was looking for a young assistant to carry on her work. Gladys was accepted but Mrs. Lawson didn't have the means to assist her with the passage to China. Adding to the difficulties, save as she might, Gladys lacked the funds to travel by ship, the preferred method of travel to distant lands. So she put her affairs in order and with only her passport, her Bible, her tickets, and two pounds ninepence, set off for a perilous, overland journey to the inland city of Yangchen, in the mountainous province of Shansi, a little south of Peking. An area where few Europeans visited and the people didn't trust foreigners.

The two women set about planing the best way to attract an audience to hear the message of Jesus. Knowing that the city in which they lived was an overnight stop for mule caravans and that the building in which they lived has once been an Inn, they determined to do some repairs and restore its original purpose offering food and care for the mules along with hospitality, food and a warm bed for the drivers at a fair price. It is reported that Gladys would run out and grab the halter of the lead mule and lead it into their courtyard. The other mules followed and the drivers went along for the ride.

In the evenings after serving a meal and before bed, the women would gather their guests and tell them stories about a man named Jesus. In this fashion, the Gospel message began to be proclaimed, not only at their Inn but by the drivers who carried the stories with them to other stops along their journey. It also served to open Gladys' mind to the new challenge of learning the language as she sat and listened to these stories, participating as she was able. She spent many hours each day learning to communicate in the vernacular of the locals until she finally was competent, something the China Inland Mission Center thought beyond her ability.

Shortly after this, her mentor, Mrs. Lawson fell and was seriously injured leading to her death a few days later. Gladys, along with the Chinese cook, who was a Christian, determined to continue the work. Fluent in the language, she began to share the Gospel in surrounding villages and through circumstance, became aware of the many unwanted children. Her missionary work turned in a different direction, care for these unwanted little ones. But her care wasn't limited to children only. During those years China was under attack by Japan and many Chinese soldiers were wounded. So she added their numbers to those for whom she provided succor. Her Inn became a refuge for 20 orphans and as many as 30 to 40 injured soldiers at a time.

The war intensified and her children charges now numbered around 100. She had become a citizen of China in 1936 and her activities in support of the local populace, including a bit of spying on the Japanese made it unsafe to remain in Yangchen. Being warned of a bounty for her capture, dead or alive, by Colonel Linnan a member of the local Chinese resistance, she gathered up the children and narrowly escaped the city.

Unable to use roads or transportation, she was forced to lead her children, on foot, over the mountains to the safer province of Sian some 100 miles distant. The trek took twenty seven days in which they had to endure the elements and many hardships. She herself had become ill en route and when they finally arrived safely, she collapsed. The doctors were amazed by the feat as she was suffering from typhus, pneumonia, a relapsing fever, malnutrition, and supreme exhaustion.

She regained some strength but never recovered totally from her illness yet this didn't stop her from continuing her ministry, now located in Sian. She started a church and once more she was sharing the Gospel in the villages, prisons and among the sick and helpless. Her ministry continued until 1947 when the new Communist regime told control. Gladys and other missionaries had to leave China and her choice of destination was decided because she had a burden for the spiritual condition of her native England.

She wrote, "England, seemingly so prosperous while other countries passed through terrible suffering at the hands of Communist domination, had forgotten what was all important - the realization that God mattered in the life of a nation no less than in that of an individual."

In 1958, after ten years in England, she left for Taiwan and started another orphanage. She remained here for the rest of her life serving God by serving His children. She died January 3rd, 1970.

She was known as 'Ai-weh-deh', (Virtuous One) by the Chinese who grew to love this foreigner they initially distrusted. She lived her life before God and for God and is an example of what He can accomplish using the least of us.

[Tommi]

http://www.hothotsale.com/images/oil-paintings/12813457830.jpg

on Lesbos

[girl_dee]

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When Hitler and his Nazis built the Warsaw Ghetto and herded 500,000 Polish Jews behind its walls to await liquidation, many Polish gentiles turned their backs or applauded. Not Irena Sendler. An unfamiliar name to most people, but this remarkable woman defied the Nazis and saved 2,500 Jewish children by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto. As a health worker, she sneaked the children out between 1942 and 1943 to safe hiding places and found non-Jewish families to adopt them.

Today the old woman, gentle and courageous, is living a modest existence in her Warsaw apartment - an unsung heroine.

Her achievement went largely unnoticed for many years. Then the story was uncovered by four young students at Uniontown High School, in Kansas, who were the winners of the 2000 Kansas state National History Day competition by writing a play Life in a Jar about the heroic actions of Irena Sendler. The girls - Elizabeth Cambers, Megan Stewart, Sabrina Coons and Janice Underwood - have since gained international recognition, along with their teacher, Norman Conard. The presentation, seen in many venues in the United States and popularized by National Public Radio, C-SPAN and CBS, has brought Irena Sendler's story to a wider public.

The students continue their prize-winning dramatic presentation Life in a Jar. They have established an e-mail address isendler@hotmail.com.

Irena Sendler was born in 1910 in Otwock, a town some 15 miles southeast of Warsaw. She was greatly influenced by her father who was one of the first Polish Socialists. As a doctor his patients were mostly poor Jews.

In 1939, Germany invaded Poland, and the brutality of the Nazis accelerated with murder, violence and terror.

At the time, Irena was a Senior Administrator in the Warsaw Social Welfare Department, which operated the canteens in every district of the city. Previously, the canteens provided meals, financial aid, and other services for orphans, the elderly, the poor and the destitute. Now, through Irena, the canteens also provided clothing, medicine and money for the Jews. They were registered under fictitious Christian names, and to prevent inspections, the Jewish families were reported as being afflicted with such highly infectious diseases as typhus and tuberculosis.

But in 1942, the Nazis herded hundreds of thousands of Jews into a 16-block area that came to be known as the Warsaw Ghetto. The Ghetto was sealed and the Jewish families ended up behind its walls, only to await certain death.

Irena Sendler was so appalled by the conditions that she joined Zegota, the Council for Aid to Jews, organized by the Polish underground resistance movement, as one of its first recruits and directed the efforts to rescue Jewish children.

To be able to enter the Ghetto legally, Irena managed to be issued a pass from Warsaws Epidemic Control Department and she visited the Ghetto daily, reestablished contacts and brought food, medicines and clothing. But 5,000 people were dying a month from starvation and disease in the Ghetto, and she decided to help the Jewish children to get out.

For Irena Sendler, a young mother herself, persuading parents to part with their children was in itself a horrendous task. Finding families willing to shelter the children, and thereby willing to risk their life if the Nazis ever found out, was also not easy.

Irena Sendler, who wore a star armband as a sign of her solidarity to Jews, began smuggling children out in an ambulance. She recruited at least one person from each of the ten centers of the Social Welfare Department.

With their help, she issued hundreds of false documents with forged signatures. Irena Sendler successfully smuggled almost 2,500 Jewish children to safety and gave them temporary new identities.

Some children were taken out in gunnysacks or body bags. Some were buried inside loads of goods. A mechanic took a baby out in his toolbox. Some kids were carried out in potato sacks, others were placed in coffins, some entered a church in the Ghetto which had two entrances. One entrance opened into the Ghetto, the other opened into the Aryan side of Warsaw. They entered the church as Jews and exited as Christians. "Can you guarantee they will live?" Irena later recalled the distraught parents asking. But she could only guarantee they would die if they stayed. "In my dreams," she said, "I still hear the cries when they left their parents."

Irena Sendler accomplished her incredible deeds with the active assistance of the church. "I sent most of the children to religious establishments," she recalled. "I knew I could count on the Sisters." Irena also had a remarkable record of cooperation when placing the youngsters: "No one ever refused to take a child from me," she said.

The children were given false identities and placed in homes, orphanages and convents. Irena Sendler carefully noted, in coded form, the children's original names and their new identities. She kept the only record of their true identities in jars buried beneath an apple tree in a neighbor's back yard, across the street from German barracks, hoping she could someday dig up the jars, locate the children and inform them of their past.

In all, the jars contained the names of 2,500 children ...

But the Nazis became aware of Irena's activities, and on October 20, 1943 she was arrested, imprisoned and tortured by the Gestapo, who broke her feet and legs. She ended up in the Pawiak Prison, but no one could break her spirit. Though she was the only one who knew the names and addresses of the families sheltering the Jewish children, she withstood the torture, refusing to betray either her associates or any of the Jewish children in hiding.

Sentenced to death, Irena was saved at the last minute when Zegota members bribed one of the Germans to halt the execution. She escaped from prison but for the rest of the war she was pursued by the Gestapo.

After the war she dug up the jars and used the notes to track down the 2,500 children she placed with adoptive families and to reunite them with relatives scattered across Europe. But most lost their families during the Holocaust in Nazi death camps.

The children had known her only by her code name Jolanta. But years later, after she was honored for her wartime work, her picture appeared in a newspaper. "A man, a painter, telephoned me," said Sendler, "`I remember your face,' he said. `It was you who took me out of the ghetto.' I had many calls like that!"

Irena Sendler did not think of herself as a hero. She claimed no credit for her actions. "I could have done more," she said. "This regret will follow me to my death."

She has been honored by international Jewish organizations - in 1965 she accorded the title of Righteous Among the Nations by the Yad Vashem organization in Jerusalem and in 1991 she was made an honorary citizen of Israel.

Irena Sendler was awarded Poland's highest distinction, the Order of White Eagle in Warsaw Monday Nov. 10, 2003.

This lovely, courageous woman was one of the most dedicated and active workers in aiding Jews during the Nazi occupation of Poland. Her courage enabled not only the survival of 2,500 Jewish children but also of the generations of their descendants.

She passed away on May 12, 2008, at the age of 98.

[girl_dee]

Ella Baker. Septima Poinsette Clark. Fannie Lou Hamer.
They and others risked their lives and worked tirelessly, demanding a social revolution — but history has often overlooked them. They were the women of the civil rights movement.
Though historians now acknowledge that women, particularly African-Americans, were pivotal in the critical battles for racial equality, Rosa Parks’ death highlights the fact that she was one of the very few female civil rights figures who are widely known. Most women in the movement played background roles, either by choice or due to bias, since being a women of color meant facing both racism and sexism.
“In some ways it reflects the realities of the 1950s: There were relatively few women in public leadership roles,” said Julian Bond, a civil rights historian at the University of Virginia and chair of the NAACP. “So that small subset that becomes prominent in civil rights would tend to be men. But that doesn’t excuse the way some women have just been written out of history.”
For many, the wives of the movement’s prominent male leaders, including Coretta Scott King, Betty Shabazz and Myrlie Evers Williams, were among the most visible women in the struggle.

[UofMfan]

Policarpa Salavarrieta (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policarpa_Salavarrieta)

http://www.biografiasyvidas.com/biografia/s/fotos/salavarrieta_1.jpg

[Melissa]

Margaret Thatcher...even though I don't agree with her politics she was a powerhouse.

When I was a kid in school in England, Margaret Thatcher cut the free milk program to schools. She was called Margaret Thatcher the child milk snatcher. From my point of view, I was relieved not to be forced to drink milk everyday at school. Urgh.

Melissa

[Melissa]

Jeanette Winterson. Her book Oranges are not the only Fruit made me laugh and cry. I think it is still one of the funniest, strange, and memorable books I have ever read.

[Cin]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/Tawakkul_Karman_Leymah_Gbowee_Ellen_Johnson_Sirlea f_Nobel_Peace_Prize_2011_Harry_Wad.jpg/350px-Tawakkul_Karman_Leymah_Gbowee_Ellen_Johnson_Sirlea f_Nobel_Peace_Prize_2011_Harry_Wad.jpg

Tawakkul Karman is a Yemeni journalist and human rights activist and the co founder of Women Journalists Without Chains

Leymah Gbowee is a Liberian peace activist whose women's peace movement brought an end to the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the president of Liberia is the first female president of any African nation.

[Daktari]

Margaret Thatcher...even though I don't agree with her politics she was a powerhouse.

When I was a kid in school in England, Margaret Thatcher cut the free milk program to schools. She was called Margaret Thatcher the child milk snatcher. From my point of view, I was relieved not to be forced to drink milk everyday at school. Urgh.

Melissa

Margaret Thatcher set the Women's Movement back a decade or more when she was in power. I and many I know would never had called her 'sister' back in the day. There are also many of us who will rejoice and dance on her grave when the biatch finally carks it. :|

Jeanette Winterson. Her book Oranges are not the only Fruit made me laugh and cry. I think it is still one of the funniest, strange, and memorable books I have ever read.

I loved the book and the wonderful tv series. RIP Charlotte Coleman :(

[The_Lady_Snow]

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_vh_WigNPy-k/TBqInUwd_OI/AAAAAAAAAFY/geZtBf1S8-k/s1600/GloriaSteinem.jpg

[The_Lady_Snow]

http://www.miller-mccune.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/mmw_BenazirBhutto_120110.jpg

[Rook]

http://0.tqn.com/d/womenshistory/1/0/g/K/sappho-pompeii.jpg

Sappho

http://www.historicalstockphotos.com/images/xsmall/2437_anne_sullivan_seated_with_helen_keller.jpg

Helen Keller & Annie Sullivan.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/09/23/books/roip450.jpg

Gertrude Stein & Alice Toklas

http://i265.photobucket.com/albums/ii214/amor_en_silencio_77/MatlinMarlee.jpg

Marlee Matlin

http://www.dharmafriendship.org/art/teacher_VenChodron.jpg

Ven. Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron


http://www.latintrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/ruthfernandez.jpg

Ruth Fernández


http://images.virtualology.com/images/4834.jpg

Susan B. Anthony

[Melissa]

Golda Meir. I hadn't thought about her in ages. She is a political figure and many may not agree with her role in Israel. But I'm including women who have had a significant impact in politics and the world and she is one.

[girl_dee]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/96/Harriet_Tubman_by_Squyer%2C_NPG%2C_c1885.jpg/200px-Harriet_Tubman_by_Squyer%2C_NPG%2C_c1885.jpg



Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Harriet Ross; 1820 – March 10, 1913) was an African-American abolitionist, humanitarian, and Union spy during the American Civil War. After escaping from slavery, into which she was born, she made thirteen missions to rescue more than 70 slaves[1] using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. She later helped John Brown recruit men for his raid on Harpers Ferry, and in the post-war era struggled for women's suffrage.
As a child in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was beaten by masters to whom she was hired out. Early in her life, she suffered a head wound when hit by a heavy metal weight. The injury caused disabling seizures, narcoleptic attacks, headaches, and powerful visionary and dream activity, which occurred throughout her life. A devout Christian, Tubman ascribed the visions and vivid dreams to revelations from God.
In 1849, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia, then immediately returned to Maryland to rescue her family. Slowly, one group at a time, she brought relatives out of the state, and eventually guided dozens of other slaves to freedom. Traveling by night, Tubman (or "Moses", as she was called) "never lost a passenger".[2] Large rewards were offered for the return of many of the fugitive slaves, but no one then knew that Tubman was the one helping them. When the Southern-dominated Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, requiring law officials in free states to aid efforts to recapture slaves, she helped guide fugitives farther north into Canada, where slavery was prohibited.
When the American Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the Combahee River Raid, which liberated more than 700 slaves in South Carolina. After the war, she retired to the family home in Auburn, New York, where she cared for her aging parents. She became active in the women's suffrage movement in New York until illness overtook her. Near the end of her life, she lived in a home for elderly African-Americans that she had helped found years earlier.

[Rook]

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/s320x320/431765_346590318716505_337796209595916_972831_1225 812757_n.jpg

[Rook]

http://i265.photobucket.com/albums/ii214/amor_en_silencio_77/DFela.gif

Felisa Rincón Vda. de Gautier
b. January 9, 1897
d. September 16, 1994



She was born in Ceiba, Puerto Rico. The oldest of 9 siblings, she was politically influenced by her father, Enrique Rincón Plumey, nephew of an earlier Mayor of San Juan. Her mother, Rita Marrero Rivera, died when she was only 11 years old. However, despite this her father was determined to give her the best education possible. She went to school in Fajardo, Humacao and Santurce where she graduated from high school; after this she studied pharmacy and became a pharmacist. Rincón de Gautier later moved to New York City where she learned the art of high fashion design. When she returned to Puerto Rico, she opened a store called Felisa's Style Shop and a flower shop in San Juan.

Rincón de Gautier was a staunch believer that women should have the right to vote and was an active participant in the Suffragist movement and motivated many women to register. When the law allowing women to vote was passed, Rincón de Gautier was the 5th woman to officially register. In 1932, she joined the "Liberal Party of Puerto Rico", which believed in Puerto Rico's independence, and was named representative by the party's president Antonio R. Barceló. Motivated by the political ideas of Luis Muñoz Marín, she left the Liberal Party and in 1938 helped organize the Popular Democratic Party of Puerto Rico.

In 1946, she ran for and was elected mayor of San Juan - the first woman to have been elected mayor of a capital city in the Americas. Under her leadership, San Juan was transformed into a great Latin-American urban center. Rincón de Gautier designed innovative public services and established the first pre-school centers called "Las Escuelas Maternales", which would eventually become the model for the Head Start programs in the United States. She also renovated the public health system and was responsible for the establishment of the school of medicine in San Juan. She worked together with Ricardo Alegría to restore and conserve the historical structures of "Old San Juan" and provided housing and basic services to thousands of people. In 1951, during the Cold War era, she ordered the establishment of the island's first Civil Defense system which was under the directorship of Colonel Gilberto José Marxuach, a relative of hers. She often opened City Hall to the public and personally listened to concerns of the residents in the city. In 1959, San Juan was awarded the All American City Award.

Rincón de Gautier started a Christmas tradition, which would be continued every year by the governors of Puerto Rico. On the Día de los Reyes (Three Kings Day), celebrated on January 6, she would give gifts and treats to the poor and needy children. On 1952, 1953 and 1954, she even had plane loads of snow delivered to San Juan so that the children who had never seen or played in snow, would be able to do so.
She was mayor of San Juan for 22 years, from 1946 to 1968. Upon retiring, Rincón de Gautier served as the American Goodwill Ambassador for four United States Presidents. She served in Latin America, Asia and Europe promoting friendship between those continents and the United States. When Felisa Rincón de Gautier died in San Juan, aged 97, on September 16, 1994, she was given the burial honors of a head of state. Dignitaries from all over the world attended her funeral service.

[Kobi]

Virgie Ammons was an inventor and woman of color who invented the fireplace damper actuating tool.

Mary Anderson invented the windshield wiper.

Dr Virginia Apgarinvented the Newborn Scoring System, also called the Apgar Score, in 1949 that assessed the health of newborns.

Dr Patricia Bath, an ophthalmologist was the first African American female doctor to patent a medical invention. She developed the Cataract Laserphaco Probe, a method for removing cataract lenses that transformed eye surgery by using a laser device making the procedure more accurate.

Patricia Billings received a patent in 1997 for a fire resistant building material called Geobond.

Katherine Blodgett invented nonreflective glass. Her patented film and process (1938) has been used for many purposes including limiting distortion in eyeglasses, microscopes, telescopes, camera and projector lenses.

Rachel Fuller Brown and Elizabeth Lee Hazen invented the worlds first useful antifungal antibiotic - nystatin.

In 1886, Josephine Cochran proclaims in disgust, "If nobody else is going to invent a dishwashing machine, I'll do it myself." And she did.

Martha Coston invented a system of maritime signal flares based on color and pattern. Using various color combinations, these flares made ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore communication possible. In February 1859, C.S. McCauley, Captain and Senior Officer of the United States Navy, recommended the signals to the Secretary of the Navy, Isaac Toucey. Coston sold her system to the U.S. Navy for $5,000, and later sold the U.S. patent rights to the Navy for $20,000. Her system was also adopted by the governments of France, Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Haiti.

Actar 911, the CPR mannequin was invented by Dianne Croteau and partners, Richard Brault and Jonathan Vinden in 1989. Actar 911 is a mannequin used to teach CPR or Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation.

Marion Donovan created the first convenient disposable diaper. (Cloth diapers were first mass produced by Maria Allen in 1887.

Dr Gertrude Elion patented the leukemia-fighting drug 6-mercaptopurine in 1954 and has made a number of significant contributions to the medical field. Dr. Gertrude Elion’s research led to the development of Imuran, a drug that aids the body in accepting transplanted organs, and Zovirax, a drug used to fight herpes.

The ultimate convenience invention must certainly be inventor Frances Gabe’s self-cleaning house. The house, a combination of some 68 time, labor and space saving mechanisms, makes the concept of housework obsolete.

Each of the rooms in the termite-proof, cinder block constructed, self-cleaning house is fitted with a 10-inch, ceiling-mounted cleaning/drying/heating/cooling device. The walls, ceilings and floors of the house are covered with resin, a liquid that becomes water-proof when hardened. The furniture is made of a water-proof composition, and there are no dust-collecting carpets anywhere in the house. At the push of a sequence of buttons, jets of soapy water wash the entire room. Then, after a rinse, the blower dries up any remaining water that hasn’t run down the sloping floors into a waiting drain.

The sink, shower, toilet and bathtub all clean themselves. The bookshelves dust themselves while a drain in the fireplace carries away ashes. The clothes closet is also a washer/drier combination. The kitchen cabinet is also a dishwasher; simply pile in soiled dishes, and don’t bother taking them out until they are needed again. Not only is the house of practical appeal to overworked homeowners, but also to physically handicapped people and the elderly.

Frances Gabe (or Frances G. Bateson) was born in 1915 and now resides comfortably in Newberg, Oregon in the prototype of her self-cleaning house. Gabe gained experience in housing design and construction at an early age from working with her architect father. She entered the Girl’s Polytechnic College in Portland, Oregon at age 14 finishing a four-year program in just two years. After World War II, Gabe with her electrical engineer husband started a building repairs business that she ran for more than 45 years.

Lillian Moller Gilbreth was an inventor, author, industrial engineer, industrial psychologist, and mother of twelve children. A pioneer in ergonomics, Gilbreth patented many kitchen appliances including an electric food mixer, shelves inside refrigerator doors, and the famous trash can with a foot-pedal lid-opener. Lillian Gilbreth is best known for her work to help workers in industry with her classic Time & Motion Studies, which supported work simplification and industrial efficiency. Lillian Gilbreth was one of the first scientists to recognized the effects of stress and lack of sleep on the worker.

Sarah Goode was the first African American women to receive a U.S. patent issued on July 14, 1885 for a cabinet bed. She was the owner of a Chicago furniture store.

In 1956, Bette Nesmith Graham started the Mistake Out Company (later renamed Liquid Paper) from her North Dallas home. She turned her kitchen into a laboratory, mixing up an improved product with her electric mixer. Graham’s son, Michael Nesmith (later of The Monkees fame), and his friends filled bottles for her customers.

Bette Nesmith Graham believed money to be a tool, not a solution to a problem. She set up two foundations to help women find new ways to earn a living. Graham died in 1980, six months after selling her corporation for $47.5 million.

Dr Temple Grandin invented improvements to the animal handling systems found in meat plants that decreased or eliminated the fear and pain animals experienced.

Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper (December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist and United States Navy officer. A pioneer in the field, she was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, and developed the first compiler for a computer programming language. She conceptualized the idea of machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL, one of the first modern programming languages. She is credited with popularizing the term "debugging" for fixing computer glitches (motivated by an actual moth removed from the computer). Because of the breadth of her accomplishments and her naval rank, she is sometimes referred to as "Amazing Grace." The U.S. Navy destroyer USS Hopper (DDG-70) was named for her, as was the Cray XE6 "Hopper" supercomputer at NERSC.

Mary Phelps Jacob was the first to patent an undergarment named 'Brassiere' derived from the old French word for 'upper arm'. Her patent was for a device that was lightweight, soft and separated the breasts naturally. (In 1928, a Russian immigrant named Ida Rosenthal founded Maidenform. Ida was responsible for grouping women into bust-size categories (cup sizes).

Amanda Jones (1835 - 1914)was awarded two patents for methods preserving food, one patent for a vacuum method of canning called the Jones Process.

Margaret Knight was an employee in a paper bag factory when she invented a new machine part that would automatically fold and glue paper bags to create square bottoms for paper bags. Workmen reportedly refused her advice when first installing the equipment because they mistakenly thought, "what does a woman know about machines?" Margaret Knight can be considered the mother of the grocery bag, she founded the Eastern Paper Bag Company in 1870.

Stephanie Kwolek’s research with high performance chemical compounds for the DuPont Company led to the development of a synthetic material called Kevlar which is five times stronger than the same weight of steel.

Silver Screen superstar Hedy Lamarr (born Hedwig Kiesler Markey) with the help of composer George Antheil invented a secret communication system in an effort to help the allies defeat the Germans in World War II. The invention, patented in 1941, manipulated radio frequencies between transmission and reception to develop an unbreakable code so that top-secret messages could not be intercepted. The technology called spread spectrum, now takes on many forms. However, all the spread spectrum that we use today directly or indirectly, flows from the invention created by
Hedy Lamarr.

Ada Lovelace wrote a scientific paper in 1843 that anticipated the development of computer software, artificial intelligence and computer music. Daughter of the poet Lord Byron, devised a method of using punchcards to calculate Bernoulli numbers, becoming the first computer programmer. In her honor the U.S. Department of Defense named its computer language "Ada" in 1980.

American colonist and inventor, Sybilla Masters invented a way for cleaning and curing the Indian corn crops that the colonist in early America received as a gift from the native peoples. Sybilla Masters's innovation allowed the corn to be processed into many different food and cloth products. The patent was issued in her husband Thomas’ name by the British courts in 1715. That was the unfair law at the time, women and minorities had no rights to own patents. Thomas Masters was issued patents for "Cleansing Curing and Refining of Indian Corn Growing in the Plantations". A second patent was issued to Sybilla's husband for another of her inventions entitled "Working and Weaving in a New Method, Palmetta Chip and Straw for Hats and Bonnets and other Improvements of that Ware."

Ann Moore invented the snugli baby carrier.

“Growing up with cerebral palsy made me a stronger person and very determined to succeed. Inventing has given me confidence and a way to help myself as well as others.” - Krysta Morlan

Krysta Morlan's first invention was a device that relieves the irritation caused by wearing a cast called the cast cooler. The portable cast cooler works by pumping air into a cast through a plastic tube. Krysta Morlan was in grade 10 when she invented the cast cooler. Still in high school, Krysta Morlan then invented the Waterbike, a semi-submersible, fin-propelled pedaled vehicle.

African American, Lyda Newman of New York, New York patented a new and improved hair brush on November 15, 1898. Lydia Newman designed a brush that was easy to keep clean, very durable and easy to make, and provided ventilation during brushing by having recessed air chambers.

Julie Newmar, Hollywood film and television legend, patented ultra-sheer, ultra-snug pantyhose.

Ellen Ochoa invented optical analysis systems and was also the first Hispanic female astronaut.

Betty Rozier and Lisa Vallino, a mother and daughter team, invented an intravenous catheter shield to make the use of IVs in hospitals safer and easier. The computer-mouse shaped, polyethylene shield covers the site on a patient where an intravenous needle has been inserted. The "IV House" prevents the needle from being accidentally dislodged and minimizes its exposure to patient tampering.

Harriet Tubman was a runaway slave from Maryland who became known as the "Moses of her people." Over the course of 10 years, and at great personal risk, she led hundreds of slaves to freedom along the Underground Railroad, a secret network of safe houses where runaway slaves could stay on their journey north to freedom. She later became a leader in the abolitionist movement, and during the Civil War she was a spy with for the federal forces in South Carolina as well as a nurse.

Sarah Breedlove McWilliams Walker, better known as Madame CJ Walker or Madame Walker, together with Marjorie Joyner revolutionized the hair care and cosmetics industry for African American women early in the 20th century.

Carol Wior invented the Slimsuit, a women's swimsuit that was guaranteed to take an inch or more off the waist or tummy and look natural.

[charlie1]

for her work with the Human Rights Campaign Fund and the fight for equality for all people.

www.fionadawson.com

Fiona Dawson at HRC Chicago - YouTube

[The_Lady_Snow]

http://www.takepart.com/sites/default/files/styles/tp_content_wide/public/women%20for%20women.jpg

[girl_dee]

http://www.danaroc.com/images/bessiecoleman.jpg


Bessie Coleman

Bessie Coleman, the daughter of a poor, southern, African American family, became one of the most famous women and African Americans in aviation history. "Brave Bessie" or "Queen Bess," as she became known, faced the double difficulties of racial and gender discrimination in early 20th-century America but overcame such challenges to become the first African American woman to earn a pilot's license. Coleman became a role model for women and African Americans. Her very presence in the air threatened prevailing contemporary stereotypes. She also fought segregation when she could by using her influence as a celebrity to effect change, no matter how small.

Coleman was born on January 26, 1892, in Atlanta, Texas, where she grew up picking cotton and doing laundry for customers with her mother.

The Coleman family, faced many disadvantages and difficulties. Bessie's family dealt with segregation, disenfranchisement, and racial violence. Bessie was a highly motivated individual. Despite working long hours, she still found time to educate herself by borrowing books from a traveling library.

By 1915, Bessie moved to Chicago. There, she began living with two of her brothers. She attended beauty school and then started working as a manicurist in a local barbershop.

Bessie first considered becoming a pilot after reading about aviation and watching newsreels about flight. But the real impetus behind her decision to become an aviator was her brother John's incessant teasing. John had served overseas during World War I and returned home talking about, according to historian Doris Rich, "the superiority of French women over those of Chicago's South Side." He even told Bessie that French women flew airplanes and declared that flying was something Bessie would never be able to do. John's jostling was the final push that Bessie needed to start pursuing her pilot's license. She immediately began applying to flight schools throughout the country, but because she was both female and an African American, no U.S. flight school would take her.

Soon after being turned down by American flight schools, Coleman met Robert Abbott, publisher of the well-known African American newspaper, the Chicago Defender. He recommended that Coleman save some money and move to France, which he believed was the world's most racially progressive nation, and obtain her pilot's license there. Coleman quickly heeded Abbott's advice. Bessie took her savings and sailed for France. She also received some additional funds from Abbott and one of his friends.

Coleman attended the well-known Caudron Brothers' School of Aviation in Le Crotoy, France. On June 15, 1921, Coleman obtained her pilot's license from Federation Aeronautique Internationale after only seven months. She was the first black woman in the world to earn an aviator's license. After some additional training in Paris, Coleman returned to the United States in September 1921.

Coleman's main goals when she returned to America were to make a living flying and to establish the first African American flight school. Because of her color and gender, however, she was somewhat limited in her first goal. Barnstorming seemed to be the only way for her to make money, but to become an aerial daredevil, Coleman needed more training. Once again, Bessie applied to American flight schools, and once again they rejected her. So in February 1922, she returned to Europe. After learning most of the standard barnstorming tricks, Coleman returned to the United States.

Bessie flew in her first air show on September 3, 1922, at Glenn Curtiss Field in Garden City, New York. Bessie became a celebrity. She subsequently began touring the country giving exhibitions, flight lessons, and lectures. During her travels, she strongly encouraged African Americans and women to learn to fly.

Even though Coleman realized that she had to work within the general confines of southern segregation, she did try to use her fame to challenge racial barriers. Bessie returned to her old hometown of Waxahachie to give an exhibition. As in Houston, both whites and African Americans wanted to attend the event and plans called for segregated facilities. Officials even wanted whites and African Americans to enter the venue through separate "white" and "Negro" admission gates, but Coleman refused to perform under such conditions. She demanded only one admission gate. Coleman got her way and Texans of both races entered the air field through the same gate.

Coleman's aviation career ended tragically in 1926. On April 30, she died while preparing for a show in Jacksonville, Florida. Coleman was riding in the passenger seat of her "Jenny" airplane while her mechanic William Wills was piloting the aircraft. Bessie was not wearing her seat belt at the time so that she could lean over the edge of the cockpit and scout potential parachute landing. But while Bessie was scouting from the back seat, the plane suddenly dropped into a steep nose dive and then flipped over and catapulted her to her death.

Despite her relatively short career, Bessie Coleman strongly challenged early 20th century stereotypes about white supremacy and the inabilities of women. By becoming the first licensed African American female pilot, and performing throughout the country, Coleman proved that people did not have to be shackled by their gender or the color of their skin to succeed and realize their dreams.

--David H. Onkst

[Melissa]

Jeanette Rankin (not sure if she has been posted before). Our local paper runs a short column everyday on notable women for women's history month and today's was Jeanette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress.

Some other politcal figures include

Barbara Boxer - senator from CA.

Kay Bailey Hutchinson - Senator from Texas

Ann Richards - Governor of Texas

[Melissa]

Barbara Jordan - Congressperson from Texas. First African American woman to be elected to Congress, 1974. Rufusboi spent 10 minutes wracking his brain and pulled this nugget out. I had not heard of her until today. I think I need to pick his brain more about famous Texas women.


Melissa

[Kobi]

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott wrote the Declaration of Sentiments for the Seneca Falls Women's Rights Convention (1848) in upstate New York, deliberately modeling it on the Declaration of Independence.

Seneca Falls Declaration, 1848

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they were accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled.

The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.

He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.

He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men--both natives and foreigners.

Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.

He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.

He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.

He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming to all intents and purposes, her master--the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement.

He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes, and in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given, as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women--the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands.

After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single, and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.

He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration. He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known.

He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her.

He allows her in Church, as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and, with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church.

He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated, but deemed of little account in man.

He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and to her God.

He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.

Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation--in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States.

In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and National legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions embracing every part of the country.

[Kobi]

AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. (AP) — Maj. Gen. Michelle Johnson has been chosen to be the next superintendent of the Air Force Academy, the first woman to hold the job.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced Johnson’s appointment Friday. Academy officials said the Senate must first approve her promotion to a three-star lieutenant general, the rank required to become superintendent.

It wasn’t immediately clear when the Senate would take up her promotion and when she would assume command.

Johnson would replace Lt. Gen. Michael Gould, who has been superintendent since June 2009. An academy spokesman said Gould’s plans haven’t been announced.

Johnson is currently NATO’s deputy chief of staff for operations and intelligence.

She is a 1981 graduate of the academy, where she became the school’s first female cadet wing commander and first female Rhodes scholar.

As a Rhodes scholar, she earned a master’s degree in politics and economics from Oxford University. She also holds a master’s degree in national security strategy from the National War College at Fort Lesley J. McNair in Washington.

Johnson played varsity basketball all four years at the academy and is the women’s team’s second-highest all-time scorer with 1,706 points. She was named the academy’s most outstanding scholar-athlete in 1991.

Johnson was an assistant professor of political science and instructor pilot at the academy from July 1989 to May 1992.

She is a command pilot with more than 3,600 flight hours in large cargo planes and aerial refueling tankers.
-------------------------------


Nice to kick off womens history month by being a part of history.

[The_Lady_Snow]

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[Greyson]

Daisy Bates (civil rights activist)
Daisy Lee Gatson Bates

Born (1914-11-11)November 11, 1914
Huttig, Union County
Arkansas, USA
Died November 4, 1999(1999-11-04) (aged 84)
Little Rock, Arkansas
Occupation Newspaper owner


Community organizer
Known for Little Rock Integration Crisis of 1957

Daisy Lee Gatson Bates (November 11, 1914 – November 4, 1999) was an American civil rights activist, publisher, and writer who played a leading role in the Little Rock Integration Crisis of 1957.

Bates was raised by Orle and Susie Smith, whom she believed to be her birth parents for many years. In "The Death of my Mother," Bates recounted learning as a child that her birth mother had been sexually assaulted and murdered by three local white men. Her father left the family shortly after her mother's death and left her in the care of his closest friend, L.C. Bates, an insurance salesman who had also worked on newspapers in the South and West. L. C. dated her for several years, and they married in 1942, living in Little Rock. The Bateses decided to act on a dream of theirs, the ownership of a newspaper. They leased a printing plant that belonged to a church publication and inaugurated the Arkansas State Press. The first issue appeared on May 9, 1941. The paper became an avid voice for civil rights even before a nationally recognized movement had emerged.

In 1952, Daisy Bates was elected president of the Arkansas Conference of NAACP branches.


http://newsreel.org/newsletters/images/DaisyBates.jpg

[Greyson]

Barbara Jordan

Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Texas's 18th district
In office
January 3, 1973 – January 3, 1979

Texas State Senator from District 11
In office
1967–1973
P
Personal details
Born Barbara Charline Jordan
(1936-02-21)February 21, 1936
Houston, Texas
Died January 17, 1996(1996-01-17) (aged 59)
Austin, Texas
Resting place Texas State Cemetery
Austin, Texas

Political party Democratic
Profession Attorney
Religion Baptist

Barbara Charline Jordan (February 21, 1936 – January 17, 1996) was an American politician and a leader of the Civil Rights movement. She was the first African American elected to the Texas Senate after Reconstruction and the first southern black female elected to the United States House of Representatives. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous other honors. On her death she became the first African-American woman to be buried in the Texas State Cemetery.

In 1976, Jordan, mentioned as a possible running mate to Jimmy Carter of Georgia,[4] became instead the first African-American woman to deliver the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention.[4] Her speech in New York that summer was ranked 5th in "Top 100 American Speeches of the 20th century" list and was considered by some historians[who?] to have been among the best convention keynote speeches in modern history.[citation needed] Despite not being a candidate, Jordan received one delegate vote (0.03%) for President at the convention.[citation needed]

Jordan retired from politics in 1979 and became an adjunct professor teaching ethics at the University of Texas at Austin Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. She again was a keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention in 1992.

In 1973, Jordan began to suffer from multiple sclerosis. She had difficulty climbing stairs and she started using a cane and eventually a wheelchair. She kept the state of her health out of the press so well that in the KUT radio documentary Rediscovering Barbara Jordan, President Bill Clinton stated that he wanted to nominate Jordan for the United States Supreme Court, but by the time he could do so, Jordan's health problems prevented him from nominating her.[9] Jordan later also suffered from leukemia.[2]

Jordan's partner of close to 30 years was Nancy Earl. Jordan met Earl, an educational psychologist who would become an occasional speech writer in addition to Jordan's partner, on a camping trip in the late 1960s.[2][4] Jordan never publicly acknowledged her sexual orientation, but in her obituary, the Houston Chronicle mentioned her long relationship with Earl.[10][11] However, one of Jordan's biographers, Mary Beth Rogers, neither confirmed nor denied that the former congresswoman was a lesbian, commenting that there were many reasons to explain why Jordan was so intensely private about her personal life.[12] After Jordan's initial unsuccessful statewide races, advisers warned her to become more discreet and not bring any female partners on the campaign trail.[4][13]



http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/32/Barbara_Jordan_1976-04-07.jpg/800px-

[The_Lady_Snow]

Makers: Women who make America


>LINKYLOO< (http://video.pbs.org/video/2336932877)

[The_Lady_Snow]

Inez Haynes Irwin ~ feminist, author and journalist who published under the name Inez Haynes Gillmore, suffragist, member of the National Women's Party, president of the Author's Guild, founder of the National College Equal Suffrage League while a student at Radcliffe, WWI war correspondent, feminist leader and political activist who was a member of the National Advisory Council of the National Women's Party. Inez wrote over 40 books, both fiction and non-fiction, including the biography of the National Women's Party entitled "The Story of the Women's Party in 1921"


https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/c0.0.252.252/p403x403/544640_432291406846812_1503098498_n.jpg

[weatherboi]

http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/549976_10151322270569677_205043903_n.jpg

At age 15, on March 2, 1955 in Montgomery, Claudette Colvin refused to give up her bus seat to a white woman. This was nine months before Rosa Parks took the same action. "…as a teenager, I kept thinking, Why don’t the adults around here just say something? Say it so that they know we don’t accept segregation? I knew then and I know now that, when it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it. You can’t sugarcoat it. You have to take a stand and say, 'This is not right.' And I did." Portrait by Robert Shetterly, image and bio on Americans Who Tell the Truth: http://bit.ly/yPnhh8 Read more in the upper elem/ms book, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice: http://bit.ly/13wmSuK Biographical sketches of other women arrested the same year as Rosa Parks who became part of the same legal case: http://bit.ly/15YnIzv

[Kobi]

1. Wyoming Territory is first to grant women the vote, 1869

In 1869, Wyoming’s territorial legislature declared that “every woman of the age of twenty-one years, residing in this territory, may at every election…cast her vote.” Though Congress lobbied hard against it, Wyoming’s women kept their right to vote when the territory became a state in 1890. In 1924, the state’s voters elected the nation’s first female governor, Nellie Tayloe Ross.

2. Californian Julia Morgan is first woman admitted to the Ecole de Beaux-Arts in Paris, 1898

The 26-year-old Morgan had already earned a degree in civil engineering from Berkeley, where she was one of just 100 female students in the entire university (and the only female engineer). After she received her certification in architecture from the Ecole de Beaux-Arts, the best architecture school in the world, Morgan returned to California. There, she became the first woman licensed to practice architecture in the state and an influential champion of the Arts and Crafts movement. Though she is most famous for building the “Hearst Castle,” a massive compound for the publisher William Randolph Hearst in San Simeon, California, Morgan designed more than 700 buildings in her long career. She died in 1957.

3. Margaret Sanger opens first birth-control clinic in the United States, 1916

In October 1916, the nurse and women’s-rights activist Margaret Sanger opened the first American birth-control clinic in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Since state “Comstock Laws” banned contraceptives and the dissemination of information about them, Sanger’s clinic was illegal; as a result, on October 26, the city vice squad raided the clinic, arresting its staff and seizing its stock of diaphragms and condoms. Sanger tried to reopen the clinic twice more, but police forced her landlord to evict her the next month, closing it for good. In 1921, Sanger formed the American Birth Control League, the organization that eventually became Planned Parenthood.

4. Edith Wharton is the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize, 1921

Wharton won the prize for her 1920 novel The Age of Innocence. Like many of Wharton’s books, The Age of Innocence was a critique of the insularity and hypocrisy of the upper class in turn-of-the-century New York. The book has inspired several stage and screen adaptations, and the writer Cecily Von Ziegesar has said that it was the model for her popular Gossip Girl series of books.

5. Activist Alice Paul proposes the Equal Rights Amendment for the first time, 1923

For almost 50 years, women’s-rights advocates like Alice Paul tried to get Congress to approve the amendment; finally, in 1972, they succeeded. In March of that year, Congress sent the proposed amendment--“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex”--to the states for ratification. Twenty-two of the required 38 states ratified it right away, but then conservative activists mobilized against it. (The ERA’s straightforward language hid all kinds of sinister threats, they claimed: It would force wives to support their husbands, send women into combat and validate gay marriages.) This anti-ratification campaign was a success: In 1977, Indiana became the 35th and last state to ratify the ERA. In June 1982, the ratification deadline expired. The amendment has never been passed.

6. Frances Perkins becomes the first female member of a Presidential cabinet, 1933

Perkins, a sociologist and Progressive reformer in New York, served as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor. She kept her job until 1945.

7. Janet Guthrie is the first woman to drive in the Indy 500, 1977

Guthrie was an aerospace engineer, training to be an astronaut, when she was cut from the space program because she didn’t have her PhD. She turned to car racing instead and became the first woman to qualify for the Daytona 500 and the Indianapolis 500. Mechanical difficulties forced her out of the 1977 Indy race, but the next year she finished in ninth place (with a broken wrist!). The helmet and suit that Guthrie wore in her first Indy race are on display in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C.

8. President Ronald Reagan nominates Sandra Day O'Connor to be the first woman on the Supreme Court, 1981

O’Connor was confirmed that September. She did not have much judicial experience when she began her Supreme Court term—she had only been a judge for a few years and had never served on a federal court—but she soon made a name for herself as one of the Court’s most thoughtful centrists. O’Connor retired in 2006.

9. Joan Benoit wins the first women's Olympic Marathon, 1984

At the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles, Joan Benoit (today known as Joan Benoit Samuelson) finished the first-ever women’s marathon in 2:24.52. She finished 400 meters ahead of the silver medalist, Norway’s Grete Waitz.

10. Manon Rheaume is the first woman to play in an NHL game, 1992

Manon Rheaume, a goalie from Quebec City, Canada, was no stranger to firsts: She was well-known for being the first female player to take the ice in a major boys’ junior hockey game. In 1992, Rheaume was the starting goalie for the National Hockey League’s Tampa Bay Lighting in a preseason exhibition game, making her the first woman to play in any of the major men’s sports leagues in the U.S. In that game, she deflected seven of nine shots; however, she was taken out of the game early and never played in a regular-season game. Rheaume led the Canadian women’s national team to victory in the 1992 and 1994 World Hockey Championships. The team also won silver at the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, Japan.

11. Madeleine Albright becomes the first female Secretary of State, 1997

In January 1997, the international-relations expert Madeleine K. Albright was sworn in as the United States’ 64th Secretary of State. She was the first woman to hold that job, which made her the highest-ranking woman in the federal government’s history. Before President Bill Clinton asked her to be part of his Cabinet, Albright had served as the country’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations. In 2004, Condoleezza Rice became the second woman--and first African-American woman to hold the job. Five years later, in January 2009, the former Senator (and First Lady) Hillary Rodham Clinton became the third female Secretary of State.

12. Kathryn Bigelow becomes the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Director, 2010

The American film director Kathryn Bigelow’s 2008 film "The Hurt Locker" garnered six Oscars on March 7, 2010, including the Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture. Written by Mark Boal, a former journalist who covered the war in Iraq, the movie follows an Army bomb squad unit as they conduct dangerous missions and battle personal demons in war-torn Baghdad. Bigelow, whose previous films include "Strange Days" and "Point Break," was the first woman to take home the Best Director distinction. She triumphed over her former husband, James Cameron, whose science fiction epic "Avatar" was another presumed front-runner.

[The_Lady_Snow]

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/482827_603630962995787_867301717_n.jpg

[StrongButch]

Wilma Mankiller-Was the first woman elected principal chief of Cherokee Nation she worked to improve the lives of Native Americans by helping them recieve better education and health care and urged them to preserve and take pride in their traditions.

[pinkgeek]

25 April 1981 -
ANZAC Day. Women arrested while marching to remember women raped in war. In the early '80s, a number of Australian women attempted to join official ANZAC Day marches because they wanted to commemorate all women who had been raped in wars.

In 1980, fourteen women who tried to do this in Canberra were arrested. The following year, again in Canberra, around 250 women attempted to join the tail of the official ANZAC Day march but were stopped by police and directed not to march. The police were acting under a Section 23A of the Traffic Ordinance, a section that had only been gazetted the day before the march. As a result about 64 people, mainly women, were arrrested and charged with failing to obey the police directive.

The special legislation, march and arrests that took place aroundthat Anzac Day in 1981 gave rise to a great deal of debate in the Canberra Times.

[pinkgeek]

http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/20/8320-004-580DECCC.jpg

I, Lili'uokalani, by the Grace of God and under the constitution of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Queen, do hereby solemnly protest against any and all acts done against myself and the constitutional government of the Hawaiian Kingdom by certain persons claiming to have established a Provisional Government of and for this Kingdom. That I yield to the superior force of the United States of America, whose Minister Plenipotentiary, His Excellency John L Stevens, has caused United States troops to be landed at Honolulu and declared that he would support the said Provisional Government. Now, to avoid any collision of armed forces and perhaps loss of life, I do, under this protest, and impelled by said forces, yield my authority until such time as the Government of the United States shall, upon the facts being presented to it, undo the action of its representative and reinstate me in the authority which I claim as the constitutional sovereign of the Hawaiian Islands.
— Queen Liliʻuokalani, Jan 17, 1893

[Soon]

The Famous Five or The Valiant Five were five Canadian women who asked the Supreme Court of Canada to answer the question, "Does the word 'Persons' in Section 24 of the British North America Act, 1867, include female persons?" in the case Edwards v. Canada (Attorney General).[1] The five women created a petition to ask this question. They sought to have women legally considered persons so that women could be appointed to the Senate.

The petition was filed on August 27, 1927,[2] and on 24 April 1928, Canada's Supreme Court summarized its unanimous decision that women are not such "persons".[1] The last line of the judgement reads, "Understood to mean 'Are women eligible for appointment to the Senate of Canada,' the question is answered in the negative." This judgement was overturned by the British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. This case, which came to be known as the Persons Case, had important ramifications not just for women's rights but also because in overturning the case, the Privy Council engendered a radical change in the Canadian judicial approach to the Canadian constitution, an approach that has come to be known as the "living tree doctrine".

The five women were:

Emily Murphy (1868-1933) (the British Empire's first female judge);

Irene Marryat Parlby (1868-1965) (farm women's leader, activist and first female Cabinet minister in Alberta);

Nellie Mooney McClung (1873-1951) (a suffragist and member of the Alberta legislature);

Louise Crummy McKinney (1868-1931) (the first woman elected to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, or any legislature in Canada or the rest of the British Empire);

Henrietta Muir Edwards (1849-1931) (an advocate for working women and a founding member of the Victorian Order of Nurses).

[The_Lady_Snow]

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[Zimmeh]

I have to say:

My Mom
Maya Angelou and
The lady who was at the Reunion two years ago! That woman brought me to tears.

Zimmeh

[The_Lady_Snow]

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/75543_10151261618615667_1093981815_n.jpg


first female to participate in an NFL-sponsored tryout

[The_Lady_Snow]

I have to say:

My Mom
Maya Angelou and
The lady who was at the Reunion two years ago! That woman brought me to tears.

Zimmeh


https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQL8PHXmbQ0_Z6QajgGUzgl9jyRSYFcv _OrV65uwoHg7Su6T3z_4w

[alexri]

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m11kxdHRbX1qz8j06o1_500.jpg

Kathrine Switzer was the first woman to run the Boston Marathon in 1967 as a numbered entry. She registered under the gender-neutral "K. V. Switzer."

Race official Jock Semple attempted to remove her from the race, and according to Switzer said, "Get the hell out of my race and give me those numbers." However, Switzer's boyfriend Tom Miller, who was running with her, shoved Semple aside and sent him flying. The photographs taken of the incident made world headlines.

[MarquisdeShey]

Maria Luzinete Santos - Midwife/Healer - My grandmother.


Dilma Rousseff - First Brasilian Female President

http://ts2.mm.bing.net/th?id=H.4565701485265629&pid=1.7&w=108&h=154&c=7&rs=1

Rigoberta Menchu - Nobel Peace Prize Winner

http://ts2.mm.bing.net/th?id=H.4536165005852893&pid=1.7&w=109&h=155&c=7&rs=1

Pat Mora - Latina Literature Writer

http://ts2.mm.bing.net/th?id=H.4620165957812649&pid=1.7&w=98&h=148&c=7&rs=1

[The_Lady_Snow]

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTKYWl8cxS6jBgy0oDCHHd5IxiAiXHXV TyU4mKf1pEFTME8Z9bA


Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican, became the first Hispanic woman and first Cuban American to be elected to Congress. She was elected in August 1989 in a special election and continues to serve.

[Soon]

Fazlalizadeh is an oil painter / illustrator whose work focuses on portraiture and social/political themes and her street harassment art. Her art has been making appearances in the Bed-Sty neighborhood of Brooklyn. The website, Stop Harassment recently interviewed Fazlalizadeh about her work:

Stop Street Harassment (SSH): What inspired your art project about street harassment?

Tatyana Fazlalizadeh (TF): The project was inspired by my daily experiences with street harassment. Being harassed on the street is exasperating. I’ve wanted to do some art work on the issue for a while now, but I couldn’t figure out how to properly communicate what I wanted to say in my primary artistic medium – oil paint on canvas. Over the past year or so I’ve started working in public art as a muralist. Thinking about creating art in a public space led me to this idea of wheat pasting posters. Because what better medium to create art about street harassment than street art.

SSH: Some of the prints are up on walls around Philadelphia, right? How many did you put up and how did you select where to post them?

TF: Philly, yes. As well as other places that I’m often in, mostly Brooklyn and other parts of NYC. This project is still very new and I plan to continue it and expand it, that includes venturing to different cities. I’ve placed them in areas that receive foot traffic, areas that I’ve personally been harassed, and spots that work well for wheat paste.

SSH: What reactions have you received from people who’ve seen them in person and from people who saw them on your Tumblr page?

TF: I’ve received a lot of positive reactions from women who relate to the captions on the posters. I’ve been having a lot of conversations, and a few debates, about street harassment as a result of this. I wasn’t sure what to expect because the state of this medium is very temporary; it’s likely to put up a piece and for it to be gone a few days later. So to have the pieces captured and widely shared online was surprising but, I’m also very happy about that.

To learn more about Fazlailizadeh, visit her websites:

http://tlynnfaz.com/Stop-Telling-Women-to-Smile & http://fazstreetart.tumblr.com/

http://www.xojane.com/files/stwts_5.jpeg

http://www.xojane.com/files/tumblr_mf91lnZV5P1rhseqwo1_1280.jpeg

[Zimmeh]

Gracias!!!! Loving me some Dorothy Allison!

Zimmeh

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[Kobi]

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Women in the Balkans are leading a political revolution.

Historically given little say in the politics of the conservative region, they are increasingly taking top leadership posts, signaling that the traditional rules are changing as Balkan countries shake off their war pasts and move toward membership in the European Union.

During the bloody 1990s, many in the Balkans turned to warrior leaders, mostly male nationalists they thought would protect them from the ethnic conflicts that flattened cities and left over a hundred thousand dead. The new millennium has brought crisis in a different form: economic doldrums, naggingly high unemployment and glaring political corruption.

Encouraged by the EU and influenced by closer ties with the West, more and more it is women who are stepping in to change the old ways of doing business in the macho Balkans. Some see women as less nationalistic and more attuned to the needs of a new era — diplomacy, consensus, and compromise.

"Women have always been more successful than men, with all due respect," said Duska Latinovic, a nurse from the Serb-controlled part of Bosnia. "Women are ... more sensitive, stronger, emotional, and in these rough times people need more of a heart."

Although overall gender equality standards are still far from those in Western democracies, strongly patriarchal Kosovo and the post-war Serb mini-state in Bosnia have both installed women in their top positions. Male-dominated Serbia and Montenegro have passed laws to increase the numbers of women in leadership positions, part of a slate of efforts to convince the EU they belong in the bloc.

"The power of women in the politics is a soft power," Atifete Jahjaga, the female president of Kosovo told the AP. "It is a positive change that our country and other countries in the region ... are making by giving a chance to women."

The latest political newcomer is the charismatic 43-year-old financial expert Alenka Bratusek, Slovenia's first ever female prime minister. While Slovenia has traditionally been more socially liberal than the rest of the Balkans, Bratusek's election last week was significant because it came at a moment of deep financial and political turmoil in the small Alpine state.

A rising star among veteran Slovenian politicians, Bratusek has been entrusted with consolidating the nation's economy and restoring confidence in state institutions, which have been badly shaken by the EU's broader financial crisis.

"It is important that this happened at a sensitive moment, a period of crisis," sociologist Milica Gaber Antic said. "It's a strong message to other women: 'We women can do it!'"

Many women leaders are already being lauded for steering their countries through the storms.

Croatia's former Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor, took over the premiership in turmoil after her predecessor Ivo Sanader was forced to resign in 2009 in a whirl of corruption scandals, and then wrapped up her country's accession talks with the EU.

In 2011 in Kosovo — where Parliament members were recently issued notebooks with an assortment of sayings including one saying that "silence is the only treasure a woman possesses" — the little-known Jahjaga was elected the first ever female president, part of a U.S.-brokered compromise that put to a rest the bickering between political groups dominated by formal rebel fighters and murky business leaders.

Last week in the ethnically Serb mini-state in Bosnia another little-known female politician, Zeljka Cvijanovic, was proposed as the new head of government after the previous Cabinet resigned. That would make her the first ever woman to lead the government in any of the country's many levels of power-sharing, where no ministry in the central government is headed by a woman.

"As a woman, I hope to add a new flair and a new dimension to the institutions of Republika Srpska," she said in an interview.

Women accounted for only 1.6 percent of Serbia's Parliament in 1990, the lowest rate in Europe. But with strongman Slobodan Milosevic ouster in 2000 and the country's efforts to join the EU, the proportion of women has soared to 20 percent. Serbian law now calls for every third candidate on an election list to be a woman — a rule requested as part of EU reforms.

It isn't always the same story across the region. During the communist rule that followed World War II, authorities promoted women's inclusion in politics as part of the communist agenda of gender equality. At the time women served at top positions in the governments and were granted equal rights, jobs, salaries and education.

Bulgaria, for example, had the highest percentage of working women in the world in the 1970s, and women in top offices include the vice president, the parliament speaker, four ministers, and the mayor of the capital city, Sofia.

But, old habits die hard. Kosovo's Minister for European Integration Vlora Citaku acknowledged that "it is almost impossible to forget even for a moment that I am a woman — I've been reminded of that every day since I became a minister."

She said that being a woman in the male-dominated politics is "a tough life."

"First of all they ask you are you married? What your dad think of you traveling alone surrounded by all men?," she scoffed. "I mean, it's all these stereotypes ... There are certain duties that a woman must do in order to be 'complete.'"

And in Slovenia, shortly after Bratusek won Parliament's approval, political opponents tweeted that "her mandate will be as long as her skirt."

Bratusek responded simply: "I wish we women were no longer judged only by the length of our skirts."

http://news.yahoo.com/women-emerge-crisis-leaders-macho-balkans-073239728.html

[Kobi]

KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) — It's the world's highest glass ceiling. Of the 3,755 climbers who have scaled Mount Everest, more than half are Nepalese but only 21 of those locals are women.

Aiming to change the all-male image of mountaineering in their country, a group of Nepalese women have embarked on a mission to shatter that barrier by climbing the tallest mountain on each of the seven continents.

The women, aged between 21 and 32, have already climbed Everest in Asia, Kosciuszko in Australia and Elbrus in Europe. They are preparing to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa to mark International Women's Day this week.

"The main goal of our mission is to encourage women in education, empowerment and environment," Shailee Basnet, the 29-year-old team leader, said before leaving for Africa.

Women in this Himalayan nation rarely got the chance to climb because they were confined to their homes while their husbands led expeditions or carried equipment for Western climbers, Basnet said.

It was only in 1993 that a Nepalese woman — Pasang Lhamu — first reached the 8,850-meter (29,035-foot) summit of Everest. She died on the descent.

According to Ang Tshering of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, Nepalese women had traditionally expressed little attraction to mountaineering.

"It is only recently that women have shown interest," Tshering said.

Since they climbed Everest in 2008, the women have spoken in more than 100 schools across Nepal to tell students about their mission.

"We are hoping to attract more women to mountaineering, both as a profession and as a hobby," said Pema Dikki, 25, another member of the team.

Basnet said the response to the Everest climb encouraged them to push ahead.

"After Everest, we felt that we needed to go beyond the borders, so we decided to travel to all seven continents to climb the highest mountains there," Basnet said.

Basnet said the team members have spent their savings, taken out loans and sought sponsorships to finance their expensive gear, climbing permits and plane tickets.

The team plans to speak to students while in Africa to spread their theme, "You can climb your own Everest," to encourage girls to stay in school.

The team will be joined by two women from Tanzania and one from South Africa during the Kilimanjaro climb.

Nepal has eight of the 14 mountains that are more than 8,000 meters (26,240 feet) in height.
..

[Daktari]

For Women's History Month our lovely Blackpool Tower is clothed in pink lights
http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q8/scoobs63/url_zpsa840c4f5.jpeg
(yeah there's issues about associating pink with women but what the heck, they don't know any better...the heart is a permanent feature)

Last month for Gay History Month she was a rainbow.
http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q8/scoobs63/imgres-2_zps65df17b7.jpeg

[The_Lady_Snow]

http://www.essence.com/sites/default/files/images/2012/09/07/robing-roberts-anchoring-gma_240x340_52.jpg

[StrongButch]

Ada Deer-First member of Monominee Tribe to graduate from University of Wisconsin 1957-Recieve a Masters Degree 1961-First woman to serve as a chair of Monominee Restoration Committee 1974-Pollitzer award,Ethical Cultural Society,NY 1975-First Native American woman to head Bureau of Indian Affairs 1993-1997-A delegate to United Nations Human Rights Committee-National Womens History honoree-2000

[The_Lady_Snow]

http://jrooke.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/.pond/arleneviolet.jpg.w180h314.jpg


Arlene Violet (R-RI), a former nun, became the first woman elected as a state's attorney general, serving from 1985-87.

[The_Lady_Snow]

http://www.jpost.com/HttpHandlers/ShowImage.ashx?ID=140271


Representative Nita Lowey (D-NY) became the first woman to chair the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. She also served as House Minority Whip-at-Large.

[femmeInterrupted]

https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/602899_482319211817009_1536578955_n.jpg

[The_Lady_Snow]

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9OOQ4Ptfijw/UTeMT7_q_ZI/AAAAAAAAC8A/8i4UHdQJ53A/s1600/deering.jpg

Destruction of Personal Property


The Ms. Foundation for Women is celebrating Women’s History Month with a blog carnival featuring the voices and profiles of women across the country. This Month of Action is generously supported by our friends in Seattle.

By Valerie Deering

I am a survivor of domestic violence.

It started with my family of origin and culminated in one brave act to call law enforcement after I had been thrown down stairs by a man who “loved” me.

During my month-long stay with him, while I was being treated for breast cancer, he said and did many disturbing things to me. Luckily, once the police were called, the situation became a state matter.

Like many women, I began to feel guilty about calling the police because the man became even more abusive and threatened to throw me out if I didn’t recant my story. So I did, on paper.

The man became even more violent. It was as if the paper were a permission slip to treat me as an object, his property.

Finally, I escaped – but only after he made more threats to my safety, causing me to experience an enormous moment of clarity.

Despite the evidence of cuts and bruises and the police testimony, this man was exonerated from domestic violence. However, he had broken a piece of my furniture in his rage.

The final verdict?

Guilty of destruction of personal property.

I’m glad to hear that he was handed some sort of consequence for his violent behavior. But how telling is it that his consequence was for destroying a piece of furniture rather than tossing a woman down the stairs?

Surviving domestic violence taught me that I have power. I just gave it away for so long. Now I use it for good in the world, helping others realize their own power. A year ago, I started a women's foundation for the education, empowerment and rehabilitation of women and girls who have been touched by domestic violence – which is way too many, as you know.

Valerie Deering lives in Overland Park, KS.

[Soon]

Tomorrow is International Women's Day! (http://www.internationalwomensday.com/default.asp#.UTlOVzCG1nE)

http://www.internationalwomensday.com/images/home-image.jpg

http://www.internationalwomensday.com/images/graph/countrybg.asp

[femmeInterrupted]

March 8th, 2013

http://gladstonegigguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/womens-day-art-700x450.jpg

[The_Lady_Snow]

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQJAlvFaWZRSrX2xFekuBrd_Bq5SD31g goOkVfjWT01yxw3BGzNfA

[The_Lady_Snow]

http://media1.policymic.com/site/articles/20433/photo.jpg

Educational Activist, Global movement influence, Unstoppable,Survivor.

[Kobi]

http://ts1.mm.bing.net/th?id=H.4530422624225280&pid=15.1

[Kobi]

This fascinated the crap out of me. There are 9 periods. this is the first:


Antiquity: 10,000 BC to AD 500
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

10,000 to 5,000 BCE
In several regions, women, who are the traditional gatherers of foodstuffs, initiate the profound cultural phenomenon of agriculture.

c. 3500 BC
Egyptian women begin brewing beer.

c. 3000 BC
According to legend, the Chinese empress Leizu (original name Xilingshi) invents sericulture (the production of raw silk by using domesticated silkworms).

c. 2300 BC
The Akkadian theologian and writer Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon, is made chief priestess of the gods at Ur and Erech.

c. 1850 BC
Egyptian texts describe contraceptive suppositories made from a mixture of honey and crocodile dung. This is the first known reference to contraceptives.

c. 1750 BC
The Code of Hammurabi, the Babylonian law code, protects a woman's right to hold and inherit property.

c. 1500 BC
Female students attend the Egyptian medical school at Heliopolis. 1472 BC
Hatshepsut begins her rule over Egypt, first as a regent for Thutmose III and later in her own right, with the full titles and regalia of a pharaoh. During her reign she expands commerce on the Red Sea and undertakes an extensive building program.

c. 1450 BC
By law and by custom, Mesopotamian women are controlled first by their fathers, then by their husbands and fathers-in-law, and finally by their sons.

843 BC
Athaliah becomes queen of Judah. Her seven-year reign is bloody, as she tries to murder everyone who might oppose her.

776 BC
Women are barred as both competitors and spectators at the first recorded Olympic Games.

c. 600 BC

On the island of Lesbos, Sappho writes poetry and teaches young women poetry, music, and the social graces.

c. 600 BC
In Sparta, girls are trained in athletics, including running, javelin, and discus, so that they will become strong and healthy mothers.

c. 600 BC
Ambapali, a wealthy Indian courtesan, gives her mango groves to the Buddha. She becomes his disciple and reaches the status of arhat (a perfected person).

480 BC
Artemisia I commands five ships in the Battle of Salamis.

c. 450 BC
In Athens, Aspasia opens a salon for upper-class women. There she teaches rhetoric and philosophy.

380 BC
Greek women have no independent status in society; although they may own slaves, they may not make transactions worth more than one medimnos of barley.

c. 351 BC
Artemisia II completes construction of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, a great tomb for her husband, Mausolus. It becomes one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

c. 300 BC
Athenian philosopher Hipparchia studies with the Cynic Crates of Thebes. She forces her parents to let her marry him and boasts of spending her life on education rather than weaving.

c. 195 BC
Gaohou seizes power from her son to become the first woman ruler of China.

195 BC
Roman women successfully insist on the repeal of the Oppian law, a sumptuary tax passed in 215 that forbids them to wear multicoloured garments or more than half an ounce of gold.

51 BC
Cleopatra becomes queen of Egypt.

47 BC
In Sri Lanka, Queen Anula takes the throne. Her reign ends in 42 BC with her resignation.

AD 39
Two sisters, Trung Trac and Trung Nhi, lead the first Vietnamese revolt against Chinese rule. Despite early successes, the revolt eventually fails.

53
In the Korean kingdom of Koguryo, the queen mother serves as successful regent for her son King T'aejo.

60
Queen Boudicca of the Iceni rallies British tribes in an unsuccessful but hard-fought and bloody revolt against Roman annexation.

c. 65
Ethiopian women and men fight in Rome as gladiators. Under the emperors Nero and Domitian, women captives—especially German ones—frequently fight in the arena.

107
Dowager empress Deng holds the real power in China behind the boy-emperor An'di.

c. 115
Chinese poet and historian Ban Zhao dies after a long and renowned career. 239
Queen Himiko of Yamatai, the first known ruler of Japan, establishes diplomatic relations with China.

248
Vietnamese patriot Trieu Au, with an army of 1,000, leads a revolt against the Chinese. She commits suicide after the revolt fails.

269
Zenobia of Palmyra challenges Roman rule by conquering Egypt and much of Asia Minor. She and her son are captured three years later by the Roman emperor Aurelian.

326
According to legend, Helena, mother of Roman Emperor Constantine I, claims to have found the sites of the Ascension and the Holy Sepulchre and establishes churches on those sites. Later legend says she also found the Holy Cross.

350
Chinese calligrapher Wei Shuo dies. She was the teacher of Wang Xizhi, the most celebrated of Chinese calligraphers.

c. 385
Roman St. Paula founds monasteries for men and women in Bethlehem. Her daughter Eustochium becomes head of the women's community upon Paula's death in 404.

c. 399
St. Fabiola, founder of the first public hospital in the Latin West in Rome, dies.

415
Egyptian scholar and teacher Hypatia, the most prominent Alexandrian pagan, is murdered by a fanatical mob of Christians.

431
The Council of Ephesus recognizes Mary as the “Mother of God,” resulting in the spread westward from Byzantium of the cult of the Virgin.

493
Princess Clotilda of Burgundy marries Clovis I, king of the Franks. She converts him to Christianity.

http://www.britannica.com/women/timeline?tocId=9404138&section=249211

Tomorrow....medieval times 501-1500

[little_ms_sunshyne]

I have a story to share because dammit I want to tell someone...

Every day I allow my 5th grade class to run a "news show". It includes a weather report, local news report, world news, and natural disaster updates (I am a science teacher after all). For Women's history month I gave my reporters the task of reporting on Women in history. They reported on Maya Angelou, Jane Austin, Sally Ride, Rosa Parks, etc. My students enjoyed hearing the daily reports. Yesterday, the last day of school before Spring Break, we are just about ready to start the news when I get an email that I have no choice but to respond to right away. I tell them to begin the news while I send the email and that I would be listening. I am completely caught up in this email when I here the voice of one of my reporters say "Ms. Copeland is my Science teacher and she is an influential women of today." My jaw drops and I can feel myself get choked up. I held it together, but sat there and listened as my student read a report she wrote on my life. You really never know who you are influencing. My heart was happy all day.

[Kobi]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/89/Johanna_sigurdardottir_official_portrait.jpg/220px-Johanna_sigurdardottir_official_portrait.jpg

Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir became Iceland's first female Prime Minister and the world's first openly lesbian head of government on 1 February 2009.

Jóhanna is a social democrat and Iceland's longest-serving member of Parliament. In the 1990s, when she lost a bid to head the Social Democratic Party, she raised her fist and declared "Minn tími mun koma!" ("My time will come!"), a phrase that became a popular Icelandic expression. In 2009, Forbes listed her among the 100 Most Powerful Women in the world. In September 2012, Jóhanna announced she would not seek re-election and would instead retire from politics.

In 2010, after her government banned strip clubs, paying for nudity in restaurants, and other means of employers profiting from employees' nudity, Jóhanna said "The Nordic countries are leading the way on women's equality, recognizing women as equal citizens rather than commodities for sale." After the decision was made she was hailed by her fellow feminists with Julie Bindel claiming Iceland has become the most feminist country in the world.

[Kobi]

c. 594
Japanese Empress Suiko encourages the spread of Buddhism and orders the construction of Buddhist temples.

600
Women in England may be publicly punished as “scolds,” a practice that will continue for 1,000 years.

632
Queen Sondok becomes the ruler of the Korean kingdom of Silla. During her reign, she fights the kingdom of Paekche, sends students to China for education, and constructs Buddhist temples.

656
'A'ishah, widow of Muhammad, rebels against the caliph 'Ali in the Battle of the Camel at Basra.

c. 659
Indian Queen Vidya writes Sanskrit poetry.

721
According to legend, Princess Libuše and her husband, Premysl, found the city of Prague.

787
The second Council of Nicaea is convened by Byzantine ruler Irene to settle the question of worshipping icons. The bishops rule in favour of icon worship.

801
Charlemagne outlaws prostitution.

c. 900
The practice of binding the feet of aristocratic women becomes popular in the Chinese court.

c. 950
An anonymous Norwegian woman writes Wise Women's Prophesy, a history of the world, including prophecies for the future.

988
Vladimir I of Russia converts Russia to Christianity and marries Anne, sister of Byzantine Emperor Basil II. With this act, Byzantine culture is introduced to Russia and the Crimea.

c. 1010
Japanese author Murasaki Shikibu finishes the Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji), a masterpiece of Japanese literature.

c. 1070
Englishwomen embroider the Bayeux Tapestry, using wool thread on linen to record the events of the Norman Conquest.

c. 1118
In France, Héloïse begins her doomed romance with Peter Abelard. The relationship outrages her family, and Héloïse flees to a convent in Argenteuil, where she is later made prioress.

1147
Eleanor of Aquitaine accompanies her husband, French King Louis VII, on the Second Crusade. After their marriage collapses in 1152, she marries the future King Henry II of England.

1152
Abbess Hildegard of Bingen completes Scivias, a recollection of her visions that had been confirmed as authentic by a committee of theologians.

c. 1160
Frau Ava of Melk is one of Germany's first female poets.

1220
At the University of Paris, women are banned from practicing medicine.

1319
Chinese calligrapher and painter Guan Daosheng dies after a career that included a number of commissions for Emperor Renzong.

1350
The presence of more than 3,000 nuns in England reflects the flourishing of convents and religious orders for women in the Middle Ages.

1351
England's Treason Act considers any murder that subverts the usual hierarchies, such as a servant killing his master or a wife killing her husband, to be petty treason.

1384
Jadwiga is crowned “king” of Poland. Two years later she marries Grand Duke Jogaila of Lithuania, thus uniting the kingdoms.

1390
London licensing law for doctors requires a university education, thus barring women from the profession.

1390
At the University of Bologna, Dorotea Bocchi takes the chair of medicine, formerly held by her father.

1397
Under the Kalmar Union, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway are united under Queen Margaret I as their sole monarch.

1405
Italian-born French scholar Christine de Pisan writes The Book of the City of Ladies, in praise of women and in defense of their virtues.

1406
In Korea plans are made for training women doctors to serve female patients who refuse to be treated by male doctors.

1429
Joan of Arc, supported by Queen Yolande, begins her military and religious campaign against the English. At the Battle of Orléans she leads the French army to victory.

c. 1436
The mystic Margery Kempe finishes dictating her autobiography, The Boke of Margery Kempe, to two clerks. The book is one of the earliest English autobiographies.

1448
Margaret of Anjou, the wife of Henry VI of England, establishes Queens' College, Cambridge.

1455
Female English silk manufacturers petition the crown to stop competition from Lombard silk manufacturers.

c. 1486
Johann Sprenger and Heinrich Kraemer publish Malleus maleficarum (“Hammer of Witches”), arguing that women, as the weaker sex, are more likely to be witches.

1492
Queen Isabella I of Spain finances Christopher Columbus's voyage of exploration to the East Indies. Columbus instead finds the West Indies.
-------------------------------------
Next up: Early modern period: 1501 to 1800

[Dude]

http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRnJM3dFvWmGngyQ9S2gWP4kGl0e6BVX a-V-W0p7o6Gd2biQE8w pride parade picture <3
Barbara Roberts I delivered packages to this woman after her term as governor. Always sweet as could be , she sent me off with coffee and a muffin, more times than I could count. She answered the door in her robe and slippers,
I had no idea she was writing a book about grief at the time, which is apparently a must read. She is still doing a lot of good things , 20 years later.

A descendant of Oregon Trail pioneers and a fourth generation Oregonian, former Gov. Barbara K. Roberts has carried forth the tradition of trailblazing and innovation. Roberts began her years of public service as an advocate for disabled children as she fought for the educational rights of her autistic son. While Roberts was governor (1991-1995), Oregon was recognized by Financial World Magazine as the seventh best-managed state in the nation. Roberts was recognized as a strong advocate for environmental management, a national leader for human and civil rights, and among the nation's foremost reinventors of effective government during her governorship.

While Roberts was governor, Oregon won the prestigious "Innovations in Government Award" from the Ford Foundation and the Kennedy School of Government in recognition of the nationally acclaimed Oregon Benchmarks Program. Roberts used the Benchmarks measurable goals as an integral part of her budgeting and planning efforts while governor.

Before being elected governor, Roberts was elected Oregon's Secretary of State (1985-1991) as well as serving as an elected member of the Oregon House of Representatives (1981-1985). Roberts also has served as a county commissioner, an elected school board member, and an elected community college board member.

Roberts taught for several years at Portland State University’s Hatfield School of Government as an associate director of leadership development, retiring from that position in 2004. Before that, she had a five-year association with the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She served as director of the Harvard Program for Senior Executives in State and Local Government, and later as senior fellow to the Women and Public Policy Program. In 2001, The Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University honored Roberts with "The Alumni Public Service Achievement Award."

An active and dynamic public speaker, Roberts focuses on issues of leadership, women in politics, environmental stewardship, and death and grieving. She is a member of the board of trustees of Population Action International in Washington, D.C., and Innovation Partnerships in Portland. Roberts is also a member of the Advisory Councils for the Oregon League of Conservation Voters, Oregon Compassion in Dying, and the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Celebration. Roberts also serves as the co-chairwoman for the Oregon Public Affairs Network and on the advisory committee for the Robert Straub Library at Western Oregon University. Roberts is a past board member for the Oregon Hospice Association, the Women of the West Museum in Boulder, Colo., and the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, D.C.

One of Roberts’ main focuses since 2001 has been establishing and fundraising for Portland Relief Nursery, a child abuse prevention agency that will serve at-risk, low-income families in Portland’s St. John’s area. As finance chairwoman for the past two years, Roberts helped spearhead fundraising totaling more than $3 million. The center opened in October 2002 and plans to serve more than 100 families annually.

Roberts’ book, Death Without Denial, Grief Without Apology: A Guide for Facing Death and Loss was published in 2002. Her book has received numerous accolades from readers and reviewers alike. The book editor for the Salem Statesman Journal, Dan Hayes, selected Roberts’ book as one of the "Top 10 Oregon Books of 2002." Hayes noted, "This book offers the gifts of comfort, compassion, wisdom, and hope. No mater what your beliefs, this book has comfort and wisdom for you."

In 2002, Roberts received the "Children’s Cancer Association Award" for her book. Death Without Denial, Grief Without Apology has become a favorite among hospices, often offered to hospice families, and is now used by university classes on death and dying. Her book is now in its third printing. In 2004 Death Without Denial, Grief Without Apology was published in Japanese by President Sha Publishers of Tokyo.

Presently, Roberts is working on her autobiography, which focuses on her years as governor and her unique trailblazing role as the first woman elected Governor of Oregon.

Roberts was married to Oregon State Sen. Frank Roberts, who died in 1993. She has two adult sons, Mike and Mark Sanders.

[The_Lady_Snow]

https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTBL3eFXynWf2oJIV7y9bZFXb6C5Lu7c Zr9jnOaHk1c6SoCTAwp8w

Congresswoman, recipient of Profile in Courage Award, Gun Control Advocate, Survivor.

[Laidbackgrly]

Amelia Earhart
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
For other uses, see Amelia Earhart (disambiguation).
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Amelia Earhart

Amelia Earhart, c. 1935
Born July 24, 1897
Atchison, Kansas, U.S.
Disappeared July 2, 1937 (aged 39)
Pacific Ocean, en route to Howland Island
Status Declared dead in absentia
January 5, 1939 (aged 41)
Nationality American
Known for First woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean and setting many aviation records.
Spouse(s) George P. Putnam
Signature

Amelia Mary Earhart (/ˈɛərhɑrt/ AIR-hart; July 24, 1897 – disappeared July 2, 1937) was an American aviation pioneer and author.[1][N 1] Earhart was the first female pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.[3][N 2] She received the U.S. Distinguished Flying Cross for this record.[5] She set many other records,[2] wrote best-selling books about her flying experiences and was instrumental in the formation of The Ninety-Nines, an organization for female pilots.[6] Earhart joined the faculty of the Purdue University aviation department in 1935 as a visiting faculty member to counsel women on careers and help inspire others with her love for aviation.""" She was also a member of the National Woman's Party, and an early supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment.[7][8]"""

During an attempt to make a circumnavigational flight of the globe in 1937 in a Purdue-funded Lockheed Model 10 Electra, Earhart disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean near Howland Island. Fascination with her life, career and disappearance continues to this day.[N 3]
Contents

1 Early life
2 Aviation career and marriage
3 1932 transatlantic solo flight
4 Move to California
5 1937 world flight
6 Theories on Earhart's disappearance
7 Legacy
8 Popular culture
9 Records and achievements
10 Books by Earhart
11 See also
12 References
13 External links

Early life
Childhood
Amelia Earhart as a child

Amelia Mary Earhart, daughter of German American Samuel "Edwin" Stanton Earhart (born March 28, 1867) and Amelia "Amy" Otis Earhart (1869–1962),[10] was born in Atchison, Kansas, in the home of her maternal grandfather, Alfred Gideon Otis (1827–1912), a former federal judge, president of the Atchison Savings Bank and a leading citizen in the town. Amelia was the second child of the marriage, after an infant stillborn in August 1896.[11] Alfred Otis had not initially favored the marriage and was not satisfied with Edwin's progress as a lawyer.[12]

Earhart was named, according to family custom, after her two grandmothers (Amelia Josephine Harres and Mary Wells Patton).[11] From an early age Earhart, nicknamed "Meeley" (sometimes "Millie") was the ringleader while younger sister (two years her junior), Grace Muriel Earhart (1899–1998), nicknamed "Pidge," acted the dutiful follower.[13] Both girls continued to answer to their childhood nicknames well into adulthood.[11] Their upbringing was unconventional since Amy Earhart did not believe in molding her children into "nice little girls."[14] Meanwhile their maternal grandmother disapproved of the "bloomers" worn by Amy's children and although Earhart liked the freedom they provided, she was aware other girls in the neighborhood did not wear them.
Early influence

A spirit of adventure seemed to abide in the Earhart children with the pair setting off daily to explore their neighborhood.[N 4] As a child, Earhart spent long hours playing with Pidge, climbing trees, hunting rats with a rifle and "belly-slamming" her sled downhill. Although this love of the outdoors and "rough-and-tumble" play was common to many youngsters, some biographers have characterized the young Earhart as a tomboy.[16] The girls kept "worms, moths, katydids and a tree toad"[17] in a growing collection gathered in their outings. In 1904, with the help of her uncle, she cobbled together a home-made ramp fashioned after a roller coaster she had seen on a trip to St. Louis and secured the ramp to the roof of the family toolshed. Earhart's well-documented first flight ended dramatically. She emerged from the broken wooden box that had served as a sled with a bruised lip, torn dress and a "sensation of exhilaration." She exclaimed, "Oh, Pidge, it's just like flying!"[12]

Although there had been some missteps in his career up to that point, in 1907 Edwin Earhart's job as a claims officer for the Rock Island Railroad led to a transfer to Des Moines, Iowa. The next year, at the age of 10,[18] Earhart saw her first aircraft at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines.[19][20] Her father tried to interest her and her sister in taking a flight. One look at the rickety old "flivver" was enough for Earhart, who promptly asked if they could go back to the merry-go-round.[21] She later described the biplane as "a thing of rusty wire and wood and not at all interesting."[22]
Education

The two sisters, Amelia and Muriel (she went by her middle name from her teens on), remained with their grandparents in Atchison, while their parents moved into new, smaller quarters in Des Moines. During this period, Earhart received a form of home-schooling together with her sister, from her mother and a governess. She later recounted that she was "exceedingly fond of reading"[23] and spent countless hours in the large family library. In 1909, when the family was finally reunited in Des Moines, the Earhart children were enrolled in public school for the first time with Amelia Earhart entering the seventh grade at the age of 12 years.
Family fortunes

While the family's finances seemingly improved with the acquisition of a new house and even the hiring of two servants, it soon became apparent Edwin was an alcoholic. Five years later (in 1914), he was forced to retire and although he attempted to rehabilitate himself through treatment, he was never reinstated at the Rock Island Railroad. At about this time, Earhart's grandmother Amelia Otis died suddenly, leaving a substantial estate that placed her daughter's share in trust, fearing that Edwin's drinking would drain the funds. The Otis house, and all of its contents, was auctioned; Earhart was heartbroken and later described it as the end of her childhood.[24]

In 1915, after a long search, Earhart's father found work as a clerk at the Great Northern Railway in St. Paul, Minnesota, where Earhart entered Central High School as a junior. Edwin applied for a transfer to Springfield, Missouri, in 1915 but the current claims officer reconsidered his retirement and demanded his job back, leaving the elder Earhart with nowhere to go. Facing another calamitous move, Amy Earhart took her children to Chicago where they lived with friends. Earhart made an unusual condition in the choice of her next schooling; she canvassed nearby high schools in Chicago to find the best science program. She rejected the high school nearest her home when she complained that the chemistry lab was "just like a kitchen sink."[25] She eventually was enrolled in Hyde Park High School but spent a miserable semester where a yearbook caption captured the essence of her unhappiness, "A.E. – the girl in brown who walks alone."[26]

Earhart graduated from Hyde Park High School in 1916.[27] Throughout her troubled childhood, she had continued to aspire to a future career; she kept a scrapbook of newspaper clippings about successful women in predominantly male-oriented fields, including film direction and production, law, advertising, management and mechanical engineering.[18] She began junior college at Ogontz School in Rydal, Pennsylvania but did not complete her program.[28][N 5]

During Christmas vacation in 1917, Earhart visited her sister in Toronto. World War I had been raging and Earhart saw the returning wounded soldiers. After receiving training as a nurse's aide from the Red Cross, she began work with the Volunteer Aid Detachment at Spadina Military Hospital. Her duties included preparing food in the kitchen for patients with special diets and handing out prescribed medication in the hospital's dispensary.[29]
1918 Spanish flu pandemic

When the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic reached Toronto, Earhart was engaged in arduous nursing duties including night shifts at the Spadina Military Hospital.[30][31] She became a patient herself, suffering from pneumonia and maxillary sinusitis.[30] She was hospitalized in early November 1918 owing to pneumonia and discharged in December 1918, about two months after the illness had started.[30] Her sinus-related symptoms were pain and pressure around one eye and copious mucus drainage via the nostrils and throat.[32] In the hospital, in the pre-antibiotic era, she had painful minor operations to wash out the affected maxillary sinus,[30][31][32] but these procedures were not successful and Earhart subsequently suffered from worsening headache attacks. Her convalescence lasted nearly a year, which she spent at her sister's home in Northampton, Massachusetts.[31] She passed the time by reading poetry, learning to play the banjo and studying mechanics.[30] Chronic sinusitis was to significantly affect Earhart's flying and activities in later life,[32] and sometimes even on the airfield she was forced to wear a bandage on her cheek to cover a small drainage tube.[33]
Early flying experiences

At about that time, with a young woman friend, Earhart visited an air fair held in conjunction with the Canadian National Exposition in Toronto. One of the highlights of the day was a flying exhibition put on by a World War I "ace."[34] The pilot overhead spotted Earhart and her friend, who were watching from an isolated clearing and dived at them. "I am sure he said to himself, 'Watch me make them scamper,'" she said. Earhart stood her ground as the aircraft came close. "I did not understand it at the time," she said, "but I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it swished by."[35]

By 1919 Earhart prepared to enter Smith College but changed her mind and enrolled at Columbia University signing up for a course in medical studies among other programs.[36] She quit a year later to be with her parents who had reunited in California.
L–R: Neta Snook and Amelia Earhart in front of Earhart's Kinner Airster, c. 1921

In Long Beach, on December 28, 1920, Earhart and her father visited an airfield where Frank Hawks (who later gained fame as an air racer) gave her a ride that would forever change Earhart's life. "By the time I had got two or three hundred feet off the ground," she said, "I knew I had to fly."[37] After that 10-minute flight (that cost her father $10), she immediately became determined to learn to fly. Working at a variety of jobs, including photographer, truck driver, and stenographer at the local telephone company, she managed to save $1,000 for flying lessons. Earhart had her first lessons, beginning on January 3, 1921, at Kinner Field near Long Beach, but to reach the airfield Earhart took a bus to the end of the line, then walked four miles (6 km). Earhart's mother also provided part of the $1,000 "stake" against her "better judgement."[38] Her teacher was Anita "Neta" Snook, a pioneer female aviator who used a surplus Curtiss JN-4 "Canuck" for training. Earhart arrived with her father and a singular request, "I want to fly. Will you teach me?"[39]

Earhart's commitment to flying required her to accept the frequently hard work and rudimentary conditions that accompanied early aviation training. She chose a leather jacket, but aware that other aviators would be judging her, she slept in it for three nights to give the jacket a "worn" look. To complete her image transformation, she also cropped her hair short in the style of other female flyers.[40] Six months later, Earhart purchased a secondhand bright yellow Kinner Airster biplane which she nicknamed "The Canary." On October 22, 1922, Earhart flew the Airster to an altitude of 14,000 feet (4,300 m), setting a world record for female pilots. On May 15, 1923, Earhart became the 16th woman to be issued a pilot's license (#6017)[41] by t

[CherylNYC]

https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTBL3eFXynWf2oJIV7y9bZFXb6C5Lu7c Zr9jnOaHk1c6SoCTAwp8w

Congresswoman, recipient of Profile in Courage Award, Gun Control Advocate, Survivor.

Giffords was also an avid motorcyclist before she survived her assassination attempt.

[Zimmeh]

I am watching a movie calked, "Beyond Belief". It is based on the true story of Susan Retik and Patricia Quigley, who both lost their husbands on September 11th, 2001.

Zimmeh

[Soon]

http://www.quotaproject.org/

Women still constitute only 20.4% of the members of parliaments around the world. In what way can quotas contribute to the political empowerment of women?

[The_Lady_Snow]

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/675_10151273625345667_1708254519_n.jpg

[Kobi]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/42/Aung_San_Suu_Kyi_17_November_2011.jpg/220px-Aung_San_Suu_Kyi_17_November_2011.jpg

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Aung San Suu Kyi was selected Sunday to continue as head of Myanmar’s main opposition party, keeping her leadership post even as the party undergoes a makeover to adjust to the country’s new democratic framework.

Aung San Suu Kyi is a Burmese opposition politician and chairperson of the National League for Democracy (NLD) in Burma. In the 1990 general election, the NLD won 59% of the national votes and 81% (392 of 485) of the seats in Parliament. She had, however, already been detained under house arrest before the elections. She remained under house arrest in Burma for almost 15 of the 21 years from 20 July 1989 until her most recent release on 13 November 2010, becoming one of the world's most prominent political prisoners.

Suu Kyi received the Rafto Prize and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1990 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.

In 1992 she was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding by the government of India and the International Simón Bolívar Prize from the government of Venezuela.

In 2007, the Government of Canada made her an honorary citizen of that country, the fourth person ever to receive the honour.

In 2011, she was awarded the Wallenberg Medal.

On 19 September 2012, Aung San Suu Kyi was also presented with the Congressional Gold Medal, which is, along with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour in the United States.

http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/2013/03/10/suu-kyi-selected-remain-myanmar-opposition-head/pnFqySzsFUgrgxXqMLghLM/story.html

[meridiantoo]

Joan of Arc

Every housewife who gave up the pursuit of her individual life for the life with her spouse and children. They are forgotten in the annals of great women.

:balloon:

[Kobi]

1519
Mexican Indian princess and slave Doña Marina becomes translator and mistress of Hernán Cortés as he conquers New Spain.

1528
In the Gulf of Mexico, 10 Spanish women accompany their husbands on a voyage of discovery. After the men are lost, the women search for them for a year, then settle in Veracruz.

1553
Mary Tudor becomes queen of England and has Lady Jane Grey, who had been queen for nine days, beheaded the following year. Mary's persecution of Protestants earns her the name Bloody Mary.

1558
Elizabeth I, half-sister of Mary Tudor, becomes queen of England. She brings religious tolerance for Protestants and ushers in an era of exploration.

1587
Mary, Queen of Scots, is beheaded by order of Queen Elizabeth I.

1603
Okuni, a Japanese dancer of the Izumo shrine, invents Kabuki.

1607
Pocahontas saves Jamestown colonist Captain John Smith from execution by Algonquian Chief Powhatan.

1629
Tokugawa shogun Iemitsu bans women from Kabuki theatre because it is considered immoral for women to dance in public.

1638
Anne Hutchinson is expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for “traducing the ministers” of that Puritan colony. She and other religious dissenters found Rhode Island.

1642
Brilliana, Lady Harley, defends Brampton Bryan Castle from the Royalist army in her husband's absence during the English Civil Wars.

1643
Blanche, Lady Arundel, holds off the English Parliamentarian troops who attack Wardour Castle while her husband is away.

1644
On her 18th birthday, Queen Christina ascends the throne of Sweden.

1648
Margaret Brent, one of the largest landowners in Maryland, asks the Maryland Assembly for two votes, one for herself and another as Leonard Calvert's administrator and Lord Baltimore's attorney. Her request is denied.

1650
Anne Bradstreet's first volume of poems, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, is published in London.

1660
Mary Barrett Dyer is executed in Boston for her Quaker proselytizing.

1669
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz enters the convent of Santa Paula in Mexico City. Her religious life allows her to dedicate herself to scholarship and lyric poetry.

1681
La Fontaine makes her debut at the Paris Opéra as the first female professional ballet dancer.

1682
Mary Rowlandson publishes A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, describing her capture by Narragansett warriors and three months of captivity.

1682
Sophia becomes regent of Russia for her brother Ivan after she leads a palace coup against their half-brother Peter, who becomes coruler.

1692
The Salem witch trials condemn 19 to die; most of the accused and the accusers are women.

1702
Queen Anne ascends the throne of England.

1704
Twenty-five Frenchwomen, called “Cassette girls,” journey to Mobile on the Gulf Coast of North America to find husbands. Initially they refuse to marry any of the colonists, because of the crude conditions they find.

1711
Queen Anne founds the Ascot races.

1715
Elizabeth Elstob publishes The Rudiments of Grammar, the first Anglo-Saxon grammar.

1718
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu advocates smallpox inoculation, which she has seen in Constantinople.

1725
Catherine I becomes ruler of Russia on the death of her husband, Peter the Great.

1741
Elizabeth Lucas Pinckney introduces indigo cultivation in South Carolina; by 1742 she has a successful crop.

1748
Italian mathematician Maria Gaetana Agnesi publishes Instituzioni analitiche ad uso della gioventù italiana (“Analytical Institutions for the Use of Italian Youth”).

1750
Hannah Snell publishes The Female Soldier, an account of her exploits in the British army fighting against the supporters of Bonnie Prince Charlie as well as her years as a marine in India.

1762
Sophie Friederike Auguste, princess von Anhalt-Zerbst, ascends the Russian throne as Catherine II several months after forcing her husband, Peter III, to abdicate. She rules as an “enlightened despot” until 1796.

1770
Phillis Wheatley, the first African American woman poet of note in the United States, publishes her first poem, An Elegiac Poem, on the Death of the Celebrated Divine…George Whitefield.

1774
Joining many other colonial women boycotting British goods, 51 women in Edenton, North Carolina, sign a petition endorsing the Nonimportation Association resolves.

1776
Ann Lee founds the parent Shaker settlement in America in the woods of Niskeyuna, New York.

1778
On June 28, Mary McCauly (“Molly Pitcher”), wife of an American gunner, brings water to the troops at the Battle of Monmouth Court House. Legend claims that she takes her husband's place after he collapses.

1778
Laura Bassi, author of De problemate quodam mechanico and De problemate quodam hydrometrico and the first woman professor of physics (at the University of Bologna), dies.

1782
Deborah Sampson, disguised as a man, enlists in the 4th Massachusetts Regiment as Robert Shurtleff. She is one of many women who fight in the American Revolution.

1783
German-born British astronomer Caroline Herschel discovers three nebulae.

1783
Catherine II (the Great) of Russia makes Yekaterina Dashkova the first president of the newly founded Russian Academy, which promotes the study and use of the Russian language.

1789
More than 8,000 Parisian market women march to Versailles and present their demands, which include more affordable bread, to the National Assembly and the king.

c. 1790
In the United States, the Second Great Awakening begins; significantly more women than men participate in this wave of religious revival.

1791
French activist Olympia de Gouges publishes Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne (“Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the [Female] Citizen”), in which she argues that women are citizens as much as are men. She goes to the guillotine in 1793.

1792
Englishwoman Mary Wollstonecraft publishes A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

1793
Four years after the start of the French Revolution, queen consort Marie-Antoinette is guillotined.

1793
Hannah Slater receives the first U.S. patent granted to a woman, for a type of cotton thread. Her invention helps her husband build a successful textile business.

1795
Anne Parrish founds the House of Industry, which provides employment to poor women. It is the first American charitable organization operated by women for women.

1800
The United States logs the highest birth rate in the world, 7.04 children per woman.

[Kobi]

http://media-cache-ec4.pinterest.com/192x/b7/3f/58/b73f587d2f1ecd9ac9ebe1d343449b7a.jpg

Victoria Claflin Woodhull, later Victoria Woodhull Martin, (Sept 23,1838–June 9,1927)was an American leader of the woman's suffrage movement. Woodhull was an advocate of free love, by which she meant the freedom to marry, divorce, and bear children without government interference. She was the first woman to start a weekly newspaper; an activist for women's rights and labor reforms. She was the first woman candidate for President of the United States, the newly formed Equal Rights Party on May 10,1872.

[femmeInterrupted]

http://media-cache-ec5.pinterest.com/550x/e8/0a/8e/e80a8e7bfca225252a4b5247644ad087.jpg

Frances Power Cobbe -Frances Power Cobbe (4 December 1822 – 5 April 1904) was an Irish writer, social reformer, anti-vivisection activist, and leading suffragette. She founded a number of animal advocacy groups, including the National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS) in 1875, and the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) in 1898, and was a member of the executive council of the London National Society for Women's Suffrage (Irish Feminism)

[Kobi]

1803
Parliament passes the first British abortion law, prohibiting abortion after quickening.

1804
The Napoleonic Code of France considers women—like criminals, children, and the insane—to be legal minors. A woman's husband controls her property and, in the case of divorce, gets the children.

1804
Native American Sacagawea, whose husband is a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, serves as a guide and interpreter for the group.

1805
Mercy Otis Warren publishes her influential History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, drawing in part on personal knowledge of the prominent figures of the time.

1807
New Jersey revokes the right of women to vote, a right they had been granted since the adoption of the constitution of New Jersey in 1776.

1813
In England, Elizabeth Fry advocates reform of Newgate Prison, in which 300 women and children are housed under appalling conditions.

1816
Nanny Grigg, a slave in Barbados, plays a significant role in the island's only serious slave rebellion.

1817
The South African warrior queen Mmanthatisi becomes the leader of the Tlokwa (a southern Sotho group). She plans military strategy and leads the nation to a new homeland in Lesotho.

1821
Colombian women gain the right to attend university.

1821
Emma Willard opens the Troy Female Seminary in New York and begins teaching a rigorous curriculum to girls.

1825
Frances Wright founds a utopian community at Nashoba, Tennessee, trying to put into practice her ideas for gradual emancipation of slaves. The plantation fails but attracts wide publicity.

1833
Lydia Maria Child publishes An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans, arguing for the abolition of slavery.

1833
Lord Byron's daughter, Augusta Ada King, countess of Lovelace, begins studying Charles Babbage's “difference engine.” She becomes, arguably, the world's first computer programmer. More than a century later the computer language Ada is named for her.

1833
Oberlin Collegiate Institute (later Oberlin College) is founded in Ohio as the first American college to admit men and women on an equal basis.

1834
In Lowell, Massachusetts, women mill workers stage a successful strike to reverse a 25 percent cut in their pay.

1835
Marie Tussaud establishes her collection of wax figures in a permanent location on Baker Street in London.

1837
The first Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women is held in New York City.

1837
Victoria ascends the throne of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

1840
Female delegates are refused admittance to the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London. This event leads Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to call the first women's rights convention.

1841
Australian philanthropist Caroline Chisholm founds the Female Immigrants' Home in Sydney to assist poor women in finding work.

1843
The reports of American Dorothea Dix to the Massachusetts legislature about the conditions in prisons for the insane lead to reform.

1844
The English Factory Act establishes the 12-hour workday for female factory workers.

1845
Swedish women win equal rights of inheritance.

1848
The Seneca Falls Convention is held and launches the woman suffrage movement in the United States. The document produced is the Declaration of Sentiments, patterned after the Declaration of Independence.

1849
Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery in Maryland to Philadelphia. By the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, Tubman will have returned to the South some 19 times and rescued upward of 300 other slaves.

1849
Elizabeth Blackwell becomes the first modern-day woman doctor of medicine in the United States.

1851
African American evangelist and reformer Sojourner Truth gives her famous speech in defense of the rights of black women, “Ain't I a Woman?”

1851
The new Guatemalan constitution grants full citizenship to financially independent women.

1852
Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes Uncle Tom's Cabin, one of the most important antislavery novels in America; it sells 300,000 copies in the first year.

1853
Antoinette Brown Blackwell becomes a Congregational minister and is the first woman ordained by a recognized denomination in the United States.

1853
Queen Victoria is administered chloroform during the delivery of her eighth child. Her approval and recommendation of it popularizes use of the anesthetic.

1854
Florence Nightingale begins nursing casualties during the Crimean War and effectively establishes nursing as a profession for women. Her efforts help reduce the death rate from combat injuries from 42 percent to 2.2 percent.

1860
Elizabeth Palmer Peabody founds the first English-language kindergarten in the United States.

[Kobi]

http://media-cache-ec5.pinterest.com/192x/f8/18/e6/f818e6b157be2471c2a96c9a3f1d2f3a.jpg

Elizabeth "Bessie" Coleman (Jan 26, 1892–April 30, 1926) an American civil aviator, was the first female pilot of African American descent and the first person of African American descent to hold an international pilot license.

http://media-cache-ec5.pinterest.com/192x/1c/f2/ac/1cf2ac75126863ce6f18561da3aaed5b.jpg

Stagecoach” Mary Fields (c. 1832-1914) was born a slave in Tennessee and following the Civil War, she moved to the pioneer community of Cascade, Montana. In 1895, when she was around 60 years old, Fields became the second woman and first African American carrier for the US Postal Service. Despite her age, she never missed a day of work in the ten years she carried the mail and earned the nickname “Stagecoach” for her reliability.

[Kobi]

1862
In Sweden, single women who pay taxes win the right to vote in municipal elections.

1863
Mary Edwards Walker becomes a surgeon for the Union army in the American Civil War. In 1865 she receives a Congressional Medal of Honor. It is revoked shortly before her death and then reawarded posthumously.

c. 1863
More than 2,000 warriors form the Dahomey women's army, all of them technically wives of the king. Using bows, guns, and knives, they fight to capture prisoners.

1865
Sarah Edmonds publishes her autobiography, Nurse and Spy in the Union Army, describing her undercover work disguised as a man named Frank Thompson.

1865
The University of Zürich becomes the first European university to admit women.

1867
In Britain, the first petition for woman suffrage is presented to Parliament.

1867
In St. Andrews, Scotland, the Ladies' Golf Club is founded. 1868
In Thailand, Amdang Munan refuses to marry the man her parents picked for her. She prevails upon the king to rule that women may choose their own husbands.

1869
Married women in Britain gain the right to own property. 1869
Iowan Arabella Mansfield is the first woman admitted to the bar in the United States.

1869
Americans Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony found the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA).

1869
Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell help found the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA).

1872
Charlotte E. Ray, the first African American woman lawyer, becomes the first woman admitted to the bar in the District of Columbia.

1872
In Japan, primary education for girls as well as boys is required by law. 1872
Susan B. Anthony leads 15 women to vote in Rochester, New York. She is arrested two weeks later.

1874
The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is founded.

1876
Tokyo Women's Normal School trains women as elementary teachers.

1877
Eudora Clark Atkinson is the first woman superintendent of the first women's state reformatory in the United States.

1877
Chilean women are allowed to attend university.

1877
Mother Jones helps lead the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, railroad strike.

1879
American Mary Baker Eddy heads the newly created First Church of Christ, Scientist.

c. 1880
Paiute Indian leader Sarah Winnemucca protests conditions on Indian reservations.

1881
In the United States the Indian Treaty-Keeping and Protective Association (later Women's National Indian Association) is founded by Mary Lucinda Bonney and Amelia Stone Quinton.

1881
Clara Barton establishes the American branch of the Red Cross and becomes its first president.

1881
Sofya Perovskaya helps to plan the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. She is arrested, tried, found guilty, and executed.

1881
Helen Hunt Jackson publishes A Century of Dishonor, a profound condemnation of the treatment of Native Americans by the United States.

1884
Wimbledon holds its first women's singles championship; Maud Watson wins.

1886
Women in Palestine agitate for the right to vote.

1886
Anandibai Joshee is the first Indian woman to earn a medical degree.

1889
Journalist Nellie Bly sets off around the world to beat the fictional record of Phileas Fogg.

1889
Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr found Hull House in Chicago. It is one of the first settlement houses in the United States and the most famous.

1889
Wyoming, a U.S. territory, approves a constitution that is the first in the world to grant full voting rights to women.

1890
The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) is founded.

1890
Alice Stone Blackwell and others oversee the merger of two older organizations to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).

1891
Liliuokalani becomes queen of Hawaii.

1892
Belgian activist Marie Popelin helps found the Belgian League of Women's Rights.

1892
Journalist Ida Wells-Barnett begins her campaign against lynching. Her newspaper offices are burned, and she is driven out of Memphis, Tennessee.

1892
The Royal Geographical Society admits Isabella Bird Bishop, its first female member.

1892
In Massachusetts, Senda Berenson introduces basketball at Smith College for women. 1

893
Largely through the efforts of suffragist Kate Sheppard, New Zealand becomes the first country to grant women the right to vote.

1893
In New York, Lillian D. Wald and Mary M. Brewster found the Henry Street Settlement on Manhattan's Lower East Side. It will become the home of the first visiting nurse organization.

1893
The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine opens in Baltimore, Maryland. The women's committee that funds the school insists that men and women be admitted equally. \

1896
In Zimbabwe, legends hold, the ancestral spirit Ambuya Nehanda enters the body of a woman, who then starts a revolt against the British.

1896
The U.S. Geological Survey hires its first woman, geologist Florence Bascom.

1897
Queen Victoria celebrates her Diamond Jubilee, commemorating 60 years as Great Britain's monarch.

1897
Americans Alice McLellan Birney and Phoebe Apperson Hearst found the National Congress of Mothers, later called the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA). 1

898
Charlotte Perkins Gilman writes Women and Economics. She argues that the lost talent of women hampers the entire economy.

1898
The Chinese dowager empress Cixi regains power from the emperor. In 1900 she supports the Boxer Rebellion against the foreign powers.

1899
Kansan Carry Nation begins her campaign to close saloons, physically attacking bars with her hatchet.

1899
Korean women organize Yo-u-hoe, the Association of Women Friends, to fight against concubinage.

1899
Florence Kelley and the National Consumers League campaign against child labour and sweatshops and in favour of minimum wage legislation, shorter hours, improved conditions, and safety laws.

1900
Efficiency expert and industrial psychologist Lillian Moller (later Gilbreth) becomes the first female commencement speaker at the University of California at Berkeley.

1900
British tennis player Charlotte Cooper wins the first women's gold medal at the Olympics.

1900
Doctor Yoshioka Yayoi founds Japan's first medical school for women.

1901
Japan's Women's College is founded in Tokyo. Many of the women who graduate help to establish feminism in Japan.

1902
Ida M. Tarbell begins publishing The History of the Standard Oil Company in McClure's Magazine. Her exposé will contribute to the breakup of the company by a U.S. Supreme Court order in 1911.

1902
With the passage of the Midwives Act, the British Parliament requires midwives to be licensed.

1903
Mary Morton Kimball Kehew, Mary Kenney O'Sullivan, Jane Addams, and other middle-class reformers found the Women's Trade Union League (WTUL) in order to help working women organize.

1904
In French law, women are no longer permanent minors.

1904
Lillian D. Wald, Florence Kelley, and other reformers establish the National Child Labor Committee to work for legislation prohibiting child labour in the United States.

1904
Helen Keller, who is deaf and blind, graduates cum laude from Radcliffe College.

1905
English socialist economist Beatrice Webb becomes a member of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws.

1905
Mohtaram Eskandari starts the Union of Patriotic Women, Iran's first organization for women. Religious leaders break up the first meeting and burn some of the women alive.

1906
Women in Finland win the right to vote.

1906
Russian revolutionary Mariya Spiridonova assassinates General Luzhenovsky.

1906
Anarchist Emma Goldman begins publishing Mother Earth magazine.

1907
Miina Sillanpää is elected to the Finnish Parliament.

1907
Margaret Slocum Sage donates $10 million to endow the Russell Sage Foundation to sponsor research to improve social conditions in the United States.

1908
Hannah Kent Schoff organizes the International Conference on Child Welfare in Washington, D.C.

1908
A group of women storm the British Parliament demanding suffrage. Twenty-four of them are arrested.

1908
In Muller v. State of Oregon the U.S. Supreme Court sustains a state law limiting the workday for Oregon's women workers to 10 hours.

1908
The government of Iran institutes a plan to improve women's literacy.

[Kobi]

http://media-cache-ec5.pinterest.com/192x/12/0d/b8/120db8e259c9500d12218eb830ff6b93.jpg

Loretta Perfectus Walsh (April 22, 1896 – August 6, 1925) became the first American active-duty Navy woman, and the first woman allowed to serve as a woman, in any of the United States armed forces other than as a nurse, when she enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve on March 17, 1917. Walsh subsequently became the first woman Navy petty officer when she was sworn in as Chief Yeoman on March 21, 1917.

http://media-cache-is0.pinimg.com/192x/3a/12/a2/3a12a2b0eb47a6ced5d40e78b17f5b00.jpg

Marie Bottineau Baldwin (1863-1952) was a Chippewa attorney. Marie was the first Native American student and first woman of color to graduate from the Washington College of Law. Today the Women’s Law Association at her alma mater funds a scholarship in her name. Following law school, Marie worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and was treasurer the Society of American Indians.

http://media-cache-ec2.pinterest.com/192x/82/b2/bb/82b2bb4e890519b4c935d4d86ac673f6.jpg

Rebecca Latimer Felton (June 10, 1835 – January 24, 1930) was an American writer, lecturer, reformer, and politician who became the first woman to serve in the United States Senate. She was the most prominent woman in Georgia in the Progressive Era, and was honored by appointment to the Senate; she was sworn in on November 21, 1922, and served one day, the shortest serving Senator in U.S. history. At 87 years old, 9 months and 22 days, she was also the oldest freshman senator to enter the Senate

[The_Lady_Snow]

http://www.warscapes.com/sites/default/files/Gloria-Anzaldua-small_0.jpg

Gloria Anzaldua was a groundbreaking poet and cultural theorist, self-described Chicana/Tejana/lesbian/feminist/poet/writer.

[Kobi]

1909
The Sri Lanka Tamil Women's Union is created.

1909
Aleksandra Kollontay publishes The Social Foundations of the Women's Question while in exile from Russia.

1909
Mary White Ovington and Ida B. Wells-Barnett help found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

1909
In New York, shirtwaist workers go on strike. The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) and the Women's Trade Union League (WTUL) work together in support of the strike.

1911
Imprisoned British suffragists stage hunger strikes.

1911
Marie Curie is awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the isolation of pure radium.

1911
Journalist and publisher Kalliroe Parren establishes the Lyceum of Greek Women.

1911
The Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in New York City kills 146 workers, most of them young immigrant women. They were unable to escape because the exit doors had been locked to prevent theft.

1912
Juliette Gordon Low founds the Girl Guides (later Girl Scouts) in the United States. By 1927 there will be a troop in every state.

1913
Norwegian women win the right to vote.

1913
English suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst is arrested for conspiracy to blow up David Lloyd George's home. While in jail, she goes on a hunger strike.

1913
In Washington, D.C., Alice Paul and the National American Woman Suffrage Association organize a huge march on the Capitol the day before President Woodrow Wilson's inauguration.

1914
In Russia, Princess Eugenie Shakhovskaya is the first female military pilot. She flies reconnaissance missions.

1914
American activist Margaret Sanger is indicted under the Comstock Act for distributing a birth control pamphlet titled Family Limitation.

1915
Danish women win the right to vote.

1915
Carrie Chapman Catt and Jane Addams combine several American pacifist organizations to create the Women's Peace Party.

1915
The International Congress of Women meets at The Hague to consider ways to end World War I.

1916
The British government recruits 400,000 women to work in agriculture while men are at war.

1916
Jeannette Rankin is elected to Congress from Montana; she is the first female member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

1916
María Jesús Alvarado Rivera establishes Evolución Femenina, Peru's first women's organization.

1917
Soon after coming to power in Russia, the Bolsheviks reform marriage laws, create maternity leave, and establish equal employment and wages.

1917
Laws passed in Cuba protect women's custody of children, divorce rights, and property rights.

1917
The U.S. Navy hires 12,000 women as clerks in the same job classifications and for the same pay as men so that it can send men overseas.

1917
Feminist Kimura Komako organizes the first Japanese woman suffrage meeting.

1917
On March 8, Russian women strike for “bread and peace,” helping spark the revolution that overthrows the imperial government. The date is later chosen to mark International Women's Day.

1918
Canadian and British women are granted the right to vote, although in Great Britain a woman must be over age 30.

1918
The Indian National Congress endorses giving women the right to vote.

1918
Peruvians pass a law granting working women two hours a day to nurse their infants.

1918
The U.S. government reports that 1.4 million women work in war industries. After World War I these women are forced out of industrial work.

1918
British birth-control activist Marie Stopes publishes the controversial and best-selling books Married Love and Wise Parenthood.

1919
Lady Astor becomes the first female member of the British House of Commons.

1919
The Treaty of Versailles includes a requirement that women receive equal pay. The clause is universally ignored.

1920
In Chile the National Council of Women is created to agitate for women's rights.

1920
In Japan, Hiratsuka Raicho, Oku Mumeo, and Ichikawa Fusae found the Shin Fujin Kyokai (“Association of New Women”) to work for women's unions and equal rights.

1920
The Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is signed into law, giving women the right to vote.

1920
Despite death threats from the Ku Klux Klan, Mary McLeod Bethune begins a voter registration drive for African American women.

1920
Edith Eder from Hungary, Rebecca Sieff from Britain, and Vera Weizmann from Russia found the Women's International Zionist Organization (WIZO).

1920
The University of Oxford admits its first full-degree female students.

1920
Joan of Arc is canonized.

1921
Agnes McPhail becomes the first female Canadian member of Parliament.

1921
Grace Abbott becomes head of the United States Children's Bureau. She works for better health care for children and mothers as well as laws against child labour.

1921
The German Nazi Party excludes women from membership.

1921
Margaret Sanger founds the American Birth Control League, which later becomes the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

1922
Bertha Lutz founds the Brazilian Federation for the Advancement of Women.

1922
Rebecca Ann Latimer Felton becomes the first woman to serve in the U.S. Senate. She serves only two days.

1923
Egyptian feminist Huda Shaarawi publicly unveils and inspires many other women to do the same.

1924
Chinese women demonstrate when Sun Yat-sen's National Congress denies them suffrage.

1925
The first women's college in Korea, Ewha Womans College (founded 1886), is accredited.

1926
New Argentine legislation gives women equality under the civil code.

1927
Norwegian-born figure skater Sonja Henie wins her first world amateur championship. She goes on to win the next nine world championships and gold medals at the Olympics in 1928, 1932, and 1936.

1929
Margaret Grace Bondfield is named minister of labour and becomes the first British female cabinet minister.

1929
Virginia Woolf publishes A Room of One's Own.

[Kobi]

http://media-cache-lt0.pinterest.com/192x/e9/05/e1/e905e159797c6fc17ce0a8de28b9e23a.jpg

Poker Alice (Alice Ivers Duffield Tubbs Huckert) (February 17, 1851 - February 27, 1930), was the best known female poker player in the American West. When she was twenty, the petite, attractive Alice married the mining engineer and avid gambler Frank Duffield. Alice joined her husband on his gambling excursions and quickly learned to master both poker and faro. When Frank was killed in an explosion, Alice began to earn her livelihood as a professional gambler. Alice died at the age of 79.

http://media-cache-ec6.pinterest.com/192x/e6/fe/1f/e6fe1fea84476eeb3bb3a583d9690814.jpg

Virne Beatrice "Jackie" Mitchell Gilbert (Aug 29,1912,13or14–Jan 7,1987) was one of the first female pitchers in professional baseball history.Pitching for the Chattanooga Lookouts Class AA minor league baseball team in an exhibition game against the New York Yankees, she struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. A few days after Mitchell struck out Ruth and Gehrig, baseball commissioner Kenesaw Landis voided her contract and declared women unfit to play baseball as the game was "too strenuous".

[Kobi]

1930
White South African women get the right to vote.

1930
Ellen Church becomes the first airline stewardess.

1931
Jane Addams receives the Nobel Prize for Peace.

1932
Women of Brazil and Thailand are granted the right to vote.

1932
Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.

1933
Franklin D. Roosevelt appoints Frances Perkins secretary of labor, and she becomes the first American female cabinet member.

1933
Portugal's new constitution specifically denies women's equal rights.

1933
In Nazi Germany, girls are inducted into the Jungmädel (“Young Maidens”) and Bund Deutscher Mädel (“League of German Girls”). The organizations stress the importance of virtue and motherhood.

1933
American author Gertrude Stein publishes The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.

1933
In Italy, Mussolini rewards women who have more than 14 children.

1934
African American author Zora Neale Hurston publishes her first book, Jonah's Gourd Vine.

1934
Cuban law requires equal pay for equal work.

1935
Anthropologist Margaret Mead publishes Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies, challenging Western assumptions about gender relations.

1936
British pilot Beryl Markham becomes the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west.

1937
Women in the Philippines get the right to vote.

1937
The American Medical Association recognizes birth control as a legitimate topic for medical school classes.

1938
In France, women are admitted into unarmed military divisions.

1939
Marian Anderson gives a concert to an audience of 75,000 at the Lincoln Memorial after the Daughters of the American Revolution prevent her from singing at Constitution Hall because of her race.

1940
Margaret Chase Smith is elected to fill her late husband's seat in the U.S. Congress; she becomes the first woman to serve in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

1940
The U.S. Republican Party comes out in support of the Equal Rights Amendment.

1941
The Soviet Union creates three all-female pilot regiments. The most highly decorated is the 586th Women's Fighter Regiment.

1941
Pacifist Jeannette Rankin places the only congressional vote against U.S. entry into World War II.

1942
American women enlist in two newly created military bodies, the Women's Army Corps (WAC) and Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES).

1942
Elise Richter, the first female professor in Austria and a noted linguist, is deported to the Nazi concentration camp at Theresienstadt, where she later dies.

1943
The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League is founded by Chicago Cubs owner Philip Wrigley.

1943
More than 310,000 women take jobs in the U.S. aircraft industry. Wartime propaganda urges women to join the labour force for the duration of World War II.

1943
Physicist Elda Emma Anderson is recruited to work at Los Alamos on the development of the atomic bomb.

1944
Indian Muslim Noor un Nissa, the first British secret agent in the Nazi Party, is shot by the Gestapo.

1945
Diarist Anne Frank dies in the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. Two years later her father publishes her diary of their years spent in hiding.

1945
Eleanor Roosevelt becomes a delegate to the newly created United Nations.

1945
More than six million American women who entered the workforce during World War II are pushed out of their traditionally male jobs at war's end.

[Kobi]

http://media-cache-is0.pinimg.com/192x/cd/bf/63/cdbf63fe0c1922d07b0e205debcc4c29.jpg

Mary McLeod Bethune (1873-1955) was... a graduate of Moody Bible Institute, she opened a school for black girls.... From 1935-1944 she was a special advisor on minority affairs" to FDR. "She was the first black woman to head a federal agency." She also worked as a "consultant on interracial affairs" for the United Nations. Mary founded the "National Council Youth Administration of Negro Women and was director of Negro Affairs for the National Youth Administration."

http://media-cache-ec5.pinterest.com/192x/fa/d5/a1/fad5a1432f28ecfc07acd6ef2e5d90d9.jpg

Susanna "Dora" Salter, born on 3/2/1860. In 1887, at age 27, she was elected Mayor of Argonia, Kansas, becoming the 1st woman mayor and the 1st woman elected to political office in the United States.

[femmeInterrupted]

https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/541444_493661580671451_1391272389_n.jpg

Remember this lady? I didn't either.

Irena Sendler

Died: May 12, 2008 (aged 98)
Warsaw, Poland

During WWII, Irena, got permission to work in the Warsaw ghetto, as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist. She had an ulterior motive.

Irena smuggled Jewish infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried. She also carried a burlap sack in the back of her truck, for larger kids.

Irena kept a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto.

The soldiers, of course, wanted nothing to do with the dog and the barking covered the kids/infants noises.

During her time of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants.

Ultimately, she was caught, however, and the Nazi's broke both of her legs and arms and beat her severely.

Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she had smuggled out, In a glass jar that she buried under a tree in her back yard. After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived and tried to reunite the family. Most had been gassed. Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes or adopted.

In 2007 Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize.
She was not selected.
Al Gore won, for a slide show on Global Warming.

Please share this to honor the sacrifice and courage of this fine human being who gave so much and saved so many.


http://www.irenasendler.org/

[Kobi]

1946
Sudan's first modern women's organization, the Sudanese Women's League, is founded.

1947
The new Japanese constitution guarantees women's equality.

1947
The U.S. Congress passes the Army-Navy Nurse Act, creating permanent commissions for military nurses. The first officer commissioned is Florence Blanchfield.

1948
In the newly created countries of Israel and South Korea, women win the right to vote.

1949
Argentinian Eva Perón founds the Peronista Feminist Party.

1949
French feminist Simone de Beauvoir publishes the controversial and influential Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex).

1950
Harvard Law School admits women.

1950
The U.S. Census Bureau recognizes a woman's right to continue to use her maiden name after marriage.

1951
The Women's Equal Rights Act, which prohibits gender discrimination, is passed in Israel.

1952
Chilean Ana Figueroa becomes the first woman on the United Nations Security Council.

1953
In Westminster Abbey, Elizabeth II is crowned queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

1954
Colombian women are granted the right to vote.

1955
Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. Her arrest for this act sparks the Montgomery bus boycott.

1956
Golda Meir becomes the only woman in the Israeli cabinet when she is made minister of foreign affairs.

1958
The British House of Lords admits its first female members.

1961
Eleanor Roosevelt chairs U.S. President John F. Kennedy's Commission on the Status of Women.

1961
Paraguay is the last republic in the Americas to give women the right to vote.

1961
Wilma Rudolph runs the 100-metre dash in 11.2 seconds, thereby setting a a new world record for the event.

1961
American women organized by Women Strike for Peace stage a one-day strike asking the government to “End the Arms Race, Not the Human Race.”

1962
American biologist Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring.

1963
Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space.

1963
American feminist Betty Friedan publishes her highly influential The Feminine Mystique.

1963
Ellen Ash Peters becomes the first woman to be granted tenure at Yale Law School.

1964
The U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination in employment on the basis of race, creed, national origin, or sex.

1965
The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Griswold v. State of Connecticut that laws prohibiting the use of birth control are unconstitutional.

1966
Betty Friedan and other delegates to the Third National Conference of the Commission on the Status of Women establish the National Organization for Women (NOW).

1966
Indira Gandhi wins leadership of the Congress Party and becomes the first female prime minister of India.

1967
Muriel Siebert becomes the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.

1968
Nguyen Thi Binh, a member of the Central Committee of the National Liberation Front, leads the Vietnamese delegation to the Paris Peace Conference.

1968
Japanese writer Ishimure Michiko starts a movement against pollution by publishing Kukai jodo (“Sea of Suffering”), documenting the damage done by dumping mercury into Minamata Bay.

1969
In Ecuador a “malaria control” program is used as a cover to sterilize peasant women.

1969
Golda Meir becomes the first female prime minister of Israel.

1970
Marie Cox founds the North American Indian Women's Association, the first national Native American women's group.

1970
The Boston Women's Health Book Collective publishes Our Bodies, Ourselves.

1971
The National Commission on the Status of Women in India is created.

1971
Helga Pederson of Denmark becomes the first female judge on the European Court of Human Rights.

1971
Women in Switzerland win the right to vote.

1972
The U.S. Senate approves the Equal Rights Amendment and sends it to the states for ratification.

1972
The National Conference of Puerto Rican Women is founded.

1973
American tennis champion Billie Jean King defeats champion player Bobby Riggs in a “Battle of the Sexes” match.

1973
Jordanian women are granted the right to vote.

1973
Mothers of Nicaraguan political prisoners go on a hunger strike.

1973
The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Roe v. Wade that a woman has a constitutional right to abortion.

1974
The U.S. Merchant Marine Academy becomes the first U.S. service academy to enroll women.

[Kobi]

http://media-cache-is0.pinimg.com/192x/b4/8c/c1/b48cc1bf011984f0a058de9f253d688f.jpg

A graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Lt. Col. Nicole Malachowski has flown the F-15E as a member of five different fighter squadrons since 1999. Here, she shares her experience as the first female Thunderbird pilot, serving as a White House Fellow and being the commander of the largest fighter training unit in the Air Force.


http://media-cache-ec5.pinterest.com/192x/a8/76/05/a87605f4e756cb27c7ad31094f00e79e.jpg

Katrina Hodge: Corporal in the British Army & Miss England '09. She enlisted in the army on a dare from her brother & was nicknamed Combat Barbie after showing up to her unit wearing fake eyelashes, heels, & carrying a pink suitcase. While serving in Iraq, she saved the lives of her comrades by wresting not 1 but 2 rifles from a prisoner, then knocking him out w/ her bare hands. After winning the Miss England contest in 2009, she handed over the crown & returned to military service.

[Kobi]

1975
The U.S. Supreme Court rules that women cannot be excluded from juries because of their sex.

1975
The World Congress for International Women's Year opens in Berlin.

1976
Barbara Jordan, the first African American woman elected to Congress from the Deep South, becomes the first African American and the first woman to give the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention.

1976
Labour minister Tina Anselmi becomes the first woman in the Italian cabinet.

1976
Betty Williams and Mairéad Corrigan-Maguire, founders of the Northern Ireland Peace Movement (later Community of Peace People), are awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. The joint Catholic-Protestant group is formed after three children are killed during fighting between British soldiers and the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

1977
Canadian law prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex or marital status.

1977
Nigerian women are granted the right to vote.

1977
In Saudi Arabia, Princess Misha'al is accused of adultery and executed.

1977
Salvadoran women establish the Committee of Mothers of Political Prisoners and Frente Femenino (“Women's Front”).

1977
Roman women demonstrate against rape, beginning a campaign to change rape laws.

1977
The mothers of Argentine “disappeared” political prisoners begin a series of vigils.

1978
Kuwaiti women successfully demonstrate against a proposed law prohibiting women from working in offices.

1978
Mary Douglas Leakey discovers footprints of early hominids at Laetoli, Tanzania. Her find causes a revision of the date at which humans became bipedal.

1979
Margaret Thatcher becomes the first female prime minister of Great Britain.

1979
The First Congress of São Paolo Women starts the Brazilian day-care movement.

1980
New guidelines from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission prohibit sexual harassment.

1980
Three thousand women in Gdansk, Poland, defy tanks to pass out flowers and Solidarity literature.

1981
Sandra Day O'Connor becomes the first woman justice to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.

1982
Twenty thousand British women protest the placement of cruise and Pershing missiles at Greenham Common.

1983
Iranian women are required to wear the chador; the penalty for appearing unveiled is a prison sentence of 1 to 12 months.

1985
Chilean women demonstrate in Santiago against the repression of General Augusto Pinochet.

1986
The U.S. Supreme Court upholds affirmative action on the basis of race or gender.

1988
Benazir Bhutto becomes prime minister of Pakistan. She is the first woman leader of a Muslim country in modern history.

1989
American Barbara Clementine Harris becomes the first female Episcopal bishop.

1989
Canadian women gain access to all combat posts in the military (except submarine duty) because of a lawsuit filed in 1981.

1990
A group of Saudi Arabian women drive cars in Riyadh to protest laws preventing them from operating motor vehicles. They are briefly imprisoned and suspended from their jobs.

1990
Violeta Barrios de Chamorro is elected president of Nicaragua. She is Central America's first female president.

1991
The Nobel Prize for Peace is awarded to Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

1992
The Irish vote to allow free access to abortion information and affirm a woman's right to go abroad to obtain an abortion.

1993
Janet Reno becomes the first female U.S. attorney general.

1993
Tansu Ciller becomes Turkey's first female prime minister.

1993
Kim Campbell becomes Canada's first female prime minister.

1994
Takahashi Hisako becomes the first woman justice on Japan's Supreme Court.

1995
The United Nations' Fourth World Conference on Women meets in Beijing.

1996
In Afghanistan the ruling Taliban government places strict restrictions on women, forbidding them from receiving an education and working outside the home.

1996
A report on female genital mutilation urges international action to end the ancient rite of passage that has already been performed on roughly 100 million girls worldwide.

1998
Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born widow of former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, is unanimously elected to lead India's Congress Party.

1999
Mireya Moscoso becomes Panama's first female president and in December oversees the U.S. handover of the Panama Canal.

2000
Beverley McLachlin becomes Canada's first female chief justice of the Supreme Court. Some 70 years earlier the same court had ruled that women were not “persons.”

2000
Tarja Halonen becomes Finland's first woman president.

2000
At the Sydney Olympics, American athlete Marion Jones becomes the first woman to win five medals in track-and-field events at a single Games. She is stripped of her medals in 2007 after she acknowledges her use of banned substances.

2000
Sirimavo R.D. Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka, the world's first female prime minister, retires.

2001
Hillary Rodham Clinton is sworn in as a U.S. senator from New York, becoming the first former first lady to win elected office.

2001
Katharine Graham, former publisher of The Washington Post, dies. She was the first woman to head a Fortune 500 company and at one time was considered the most powerful woman in the United States.

2001
Voters in Bahrain approve a referendum that includes the right of women to stand for office.

2002
Britain's Queen Elizabeth II celebrates her Golden Jubilee, marking 50 years on the throne.

2003
A Nigerian appeals court overturns a sentence of death by stoning in the adultery case of Amina Lawal.

2004
Kenyan environmental activist Wangari Maathai is awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, becoming the first black African woman to win a Nobel Prize.

2005
In Ireland the McCartney sisters make a public issue of their brother's murder, spurring international criticism of the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

2005
Kuwaiti women are granted the right to vote (effective 2007).

2006
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is inaugurated as Liberia's first woman president.

2007
California congresswoman Nancy Pelosi becomes the first woman to serve as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

2007
Pratibha Patil becomes the first woman president of India.

2007
Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto is assassinated shortly after her return to Pakistan following eight years of self-imposed exile.

2007
For the first time in UN peacekeeping history, an all-female unit is deployed. Comprising more than 100 Indian policewomen, the force is sent to Liberia to train police and assist with local elections and prison security.

2008
Gen. Ann Dunwoody becomes the first woman to serve as a four-star general in the United States.

2009
Michelle Obama becomes the first African American first lady when her husband, Barack Obama, is sworn in as the 44th president of the United States.

2009
Sonia Sotomayor is sworn in as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court; she is the first Hispanic and the third woman to serve on the court.

2009
A U.S. government panel announces that women who are not at an increased risk of breast cancer should begin receiving regular mammograms at age 50, rather than 40 as had been previously recommended.

2010
Elena Kagan becomes an associate justice of the Supreme Court.

2010
The University of Connecticut's women's basketball team wins 90 games in a row—the longest winning streak in college basketball history—before falling to the Stanford Cardinal.

2011
Television talk-show host Oprah Winfrey launches the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), “a multi-platform media company designed to entertain, inform, and inspire people to live their best lives.”

[Kobi]

http://media-cache-ec3.pinterest.com/192x/18/20/1a/18201a6e831cea8fb3d45f7f92e5d46d.jpg

Thank You Mary: Mary Walker, a woman who sought equality for women. She was a surgeon, and she wore pants– when it was illegal to do so. She was proud of her arrest for this; she wanted the right for women to wear pants. She won the congressional medal of Honor when she never even had the right to vote!


http://media-cache-is0.pinimg.com/192x/87/99/ca/8799cac2b81409dc658d537ede5f5ab1.jpg

Many write: 1st. female Vice Presidential candidate, Geraldine Ferraro....this is an incorrect historical statement. Geraldine Ferraro was the 25th woman to run for U.S. Vice President. She was the 1st. woman representing the Democratic party, but the first woman that became the first United States Vice Presidential Candidate was indeed Marietta Stow in 1884.

[girl_dee]

https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/541444_493661580671451_1391272389_n.jpg

Remember this lady? I didn't either.

Irena Sendler

Died: May 12, 2008 (aged 98)
Warsaw, Poland

During WWII, Irena, got permission to work in the Warsaw ghetto, as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist. She had an ulterior motive.

Irena smuggled Jewish infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried. She also carried a burlap sack in the back of her truck, for larger kids.

Irena kept a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto.

The soldiers, of course, wanted nothing to do with the dog and the barking covered the kids/infants noises.

During her time of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants.

Ultimately, she was caught, however, and the Nazi's broke both of her legs and arms and beat her severely.

Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she had smuggled out, In a glass jar that she buried under a tree in her back yard. After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived and tried to reunite the family. Most had been gassed. Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes or adopted.

In 2007 Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize.
She was not selected.
Al Gore won, for a slide show on Global Warming.

Please share this to honor the sacrifice and courage of this fine human being who gave so much and saved so many.


http://www.irenasendler.org/


i did ! Check out post #34. She is a SHE-ro for sure! i saw an interview of her and she is a wonderful, humble and shy lady.

[The_Lady_Snow]

https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/156075_10151496899678540_933090234_n.jpg

Mia Hamm, Olympic Medalist, Soccer bad ass and role model for women athletes!

[girl_dee]

http://c.shld.net/rpx/i/s/pi/mp/19089/6388512107p?src=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.doba.com%2Fpro ducts%2F474%2F9781603201032.jpg&d=f60745926f7da7e78a2bdc10b8b118ce488c0365

[Kobi]

http://media-cache-ec5.pinterest.com/192x/a8/29/e5/a829e5ea39145c37d2ea8c7851e3bbb3.jpg

Fannie Lou Hamer was a Mississippi sharecropper in 1962 when she volunteered to register to vote, even though putting her life in danger. She endured harassment, eviction, arrest, & beatings to become a key organizer in Mississippi Freedom Summer 1964."I guess if I'd had any sense, I'd have been a little scared - but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they could do was kill me, and it kinda seemed like they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time since I could remember."

http://media-cache-ec2.pinterest.com/192x/4c/95/95/4c95956cac373c17f488f619f9c2af01.jpg

Nellie Bly (real name Elizabeth Jane Cochran, above) was a 23-year-old journalist without a job when she walked into the offices of Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World in 1887 and was given the daunting assignment of exposing the horrors of the Blackwell’s Island Insane Asylum. She rehearsed feverishly. She played mad. “Undoubtedly demented… a hopeless case,” said one of the doctors who admitted her. But inside the asylum she chronicled the awful food and awful conditions that spurred reform.

[girl_dee]

Kobi, thank you for posting about "Nelly Bly"

HEre is here ordeal :

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/bly/madhouse/madhouse.html

[Kobi]

http://media-cache-ec4.pinterest.com/192x/76/fb/f8/76fbf832114916265d3e43360862d13f.jpg

Mary Louise Guinan—better known as "Texas" Guinan (1884-1933). Getting her big start in Vaudeville in 1909, Mary drifted into film by 1917. First cast as a vamp, she quickly found her niche as a Western heroine and movie star, cranking out westerns for 6 years. In 1922, tiring of the movies, she made her way to New York where she became an icon of the night club scene, intimate with movie stars, partnering with gangsters, she became so notorious as to be barred from entering England or France.


http://media-cache-ec6.pinterest.com/192x/3f/94/50/3f945036da968b474ce804832cd3cd88.jpg

1935 - Only black lawyer in the "twenty against the underworld team," Eunice Hunton Carter led the way for prostitution reform in New York. The underworld took in $12 million a year on prostitution alone during the Depression years, with Charles "Lucky" Luciano, New York's Mafia leader, in charge. The subsequent trial brought Luciano's conviction.It also brought Eunice Hunton Carter an appointment as chief of Dewey's Special Sessions Bureau, supervising more than 14,000 criminal cases each year.

[girl_dee]

i ran across this ad from the 1800's:


WHY ARE
THE MADAME MORA'S CORSETS

A MARVEL OF COMFORT AND ELEGANCE!



http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/bly/madhouse/corsett.gif

Try them and you will Find

WHY they need no breaking in, but feel easy at once.
WHY they are liked by Ladies of full figure.
WHY they do not break down over the hips, and
WHY the celebrated French curved band prevents any wrinkling or stretching at the sides.
WHY dressmakers delight in fitting dresses over them.
WHY merchants say they give better satisfaction than any others.
WHY they take pains to recommend them.

Their popularity has induced many imitations, which are frauds, high at any price. Buy only the genuine, stamped Madame Mora's. Sold by all leading dealers with this
GUARANTEE:
that if not perfectly satisfactory upon trial the money will be refunded.
L. KRAUS & CO., Manufacturers, Birmingham, Conn.

[The_Lady_Snow]

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[Kobi]

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Jewel S. LaFontant-MANkarious (1922-1997), A.B. Oberlin 1943, '79 hon., trustee 1981-86. She was the first African American woman to serve as assistant U.S. attorney and the first African American woman to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.



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From October 1943 onward, Marianne Cohen, (a member of the French Resistance), smuggled groups of children to Switzerland until she was arrested with a group of 28 of them in May 1944. The Jewish members of the underground planned to rescue her, but she refused, fearing her escape would endanger the children. The children were rescued, but Marianne was kidnapped by members of the special services from Lyon on July 3, 1944, severely tortured and murdered in Ville la Grand, near Annemasse.

[weatherboi]

In response to the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, Harriet Beecher Stowe, writer, teacher and abolitionist, wrote the novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly", an anti-slavery novel which was the best selling novel of the 19th century, helping lay the groundwork for the Civil War and which was published on this day in 1852. While people today tend to criticize the book for it's negative stereotypes, it was a very important part of our anti-slavery and American history with even Abraham Lincoln, upon meeting Stowe, saying "So this is the little lady who started this great war".




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[Kobi]

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Martha Carey Thomas (January 2, 1857 - December 2, 1935) was an American educator, suffragist, linguist, and second President of Bryn Mawr College.

In 1885 Thomas, together with Mary Elizabeth Garrett, Mamie Gwinn, Elizabeth King, and Julia Rogers, founded The Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore Maryland. The school would produce well-educated young women who met the very high entrance standards of Bryn Mawr College.

In 1894, she became president of Bryn Mawr college. During her tenure as president, Thomas' primary concern was upholding the highest standards of admissions and academic rigor. The entrance examinations for the college were made as difficult as those at Harvard University, and pupils could not gain admission by certificate. For the academic curriculum, Thomas emulated the "group system" of Johns Hopkins, in which students were required to take parallel courses in a logical sequence. Students could not freely choose electives. There were also other requirements, including a foreign language requirement that culminated in a sight translation examination proctored by Thomas herself. Overall, the academic curriculum at Bryn Mawr under Thomas shunned liberal arts education, preferring more traditional topics such as Greek, Latin, and mathematics.[2] Thomas was also instrumental in bringing several new buildings to the College, which introduced collegiate Gothic architecture to the United States.

In 1908, she became the first president of the National College Women's Equal Suffrage League. She was also a leading member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. After 1920 she advocated the policies of the National Woman's Party. She was one of the early promoters of an equal rights amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Thomas lived for many years in a relationship with Mamie Gwinn. After Gwinn left Thomas in 1904 to marry (a love triangle fictionalized in Gertrude Stein's Fernhurst), Thomas started another relationship with Mary Garrett; they shared the campus home, living together until Garrett's death.

M. Carey Thomas had firm views on marriage, and in a letter to her mother she described it as a "Loss of freedom, poverty, and a personal subjection for which I see absolutely no compensation"

[Kobi]

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In Kenya in 1993, 14 year old Kakenya underwent female circumcision. But, she had a plan. She negotiated a deal with her father, threatening to run away unless he promised she could finish high school after the ceremony.

"I really liked going to school," she said. "I knew that once I went through the cutting, I was going to be married off. And my dream of becoming a teacher was going to end."

Dreams like Ntaiya's weren't the norm in Enoosaen, a small village in western Kenya. Engaged at age 5, Ntaiya spent her childhood learning the skills she would need to be a good Maasai wife. But her mother encouraged her children to strive for a better life, and Ntaiya heeded her advice, postponing the coming-of-age ritual as long as she could. When her father finally insisted, she took her stand.

Ntaiya's bold move paid off. She excelled in high school and earned a college scholarship in the United States. Her community held a fundraiser to raise money for her airfare, and in exchange, she promised to return and help the village.

Over the next decade, Ntaiya would earn her degree, a job at the United Nations and eventually a doctorate in education. But she never forgot the vow she made to village elders.

In 2009, she opened the first primary school for girls in her village, the Kakenya Center for Excellence. Today, Ntaiya is helping more than 150 girls receive the education and opportunities that she had to sacrifice so much to attain.

The Kakenya Center for Excellence started as a traditional day school, but now the students, who range from fourth to eighth grade, live at the school. This spares the girls from having to walk miles back and forth, which puts them at risk of being sexually assaulted, a common problem in rural African communities. It also ensures the girls don't spend all their free time doing household chores.

"Now, they can focus on their studies -- and on being kids," Ntaiya said. "It's the only way you can give a girl child a chance to excel."
Students receive three meals a day as well as uniforms, books and tutoring. There are also extracurricular activities such as student council, debate and soccer. Class sizes are small -- many schools in Kenya are extremely overcrowded -- and the girls have more chances to participate. With these opportunities and the individual attention they receive, the girls are inspired to start dreaming big.

"They want to become doctors, pilots, lawyers," Ntaiya said. "It's exciting to see that."

Just 4 years old, the school already ranks among the top in its district.

"Fathers are now saying, 'My daughter could do better than my son,' " Ntaiya said.

As a public school, the Kakenya Center for Excellence receives some financial support from the Kenyan government. But the majority of the school's expenses are paid for by Ntaiya's U.S.-based nonprofit. While families are asked to contribute to cover the cost of the girls' meals, an expense that can be paid in maize or beans, Ntaiya covers the costs of any students who cannot pay.

Each year, more than 100 girls apply for approximately 30 spots available in each new class. Parents who enroll their daughters must agree that they will not be subjected to genital mutilation or early marriage.

Many families are willing to accept Ntaiya's terms, and that's the kind of change she was hoping to inspire. It took her years to drum up support for the project, but eventually she persuaded the village elders to donate land for the school.

"It's still quite challenging to push for change. Men are in charge of everything," she said. "But nothing good comes on a silver plate. You have to fight hard."

Chief John Naleke, a village elder, can testify firsthand to Ntaiya's powers of persuasion. As recently as 2006, he claimed there was no need for girls to be educated. But she managed to win him over; he's now an important partner in her efforts.

Naleke said Ntaiya's accomplishments and spirit have made her a role model, noting that villagers also respect the fact that she didn't forget her promise.

"We have several sons who have gone to the United States for school. Kakenya is the only one that I can think of that has come back to help us," Naleke said. "What she tells us, it touches us. ... She brought a school and a light and is trying to change old customs to help girls get a new, better life."

In 2011, Ntaiya moved to Nairobi, Kenya's capital, with her husband and two young sons. She spends about half her time in Enoosaen, where she loves to visit with the girls and see them evolve.

"When they start, they are so timid," she said. "(Now) the confidence they have, it's just beyond words. It's the most beautiful thing."

Her nonprofit also runs health and leadership camps that are open to all sixth-grade girls in the village and teach them about female circumcision, child marriage, teen pregnancy and HIV/AIDS.

"We tell them about every right that they have, and we teach them how to speak up," Ntaiya said. "It's about empowering the girls."

In the coming years, Ntaiya plans to expand her school to include lower grades. She also wants to provide tutoring for the students from her first class when they head to high school next year, and she wants to eventually open a career center for them. She hopes that one day the school will serve as a model for girls' education throughout Africa.

Ultimately, Ntaiya wants girls to have the opportunity to go as far as their abilities will take them.

"I came back so girls don't have to negotiate like I did to achieve their dreams," she said. "That's why I wake up every morning."

Want to get involved? Check out the Kakenya Center for Excellence website at www.kakenyasdream.org and see how to help.

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While female circumcision and child marriage are now illegal in Kenya -- new laws banning genital mutilation have contributed to a decline in the practice -- officials acknowledge that they still go on, especially in rural tribal areas. Despite free primary education being mandated 10 years ago by the Kenyan government, educating girls is still not a priority for the Maasai culture. According to the Kenyan government, only 11% of Maasai girls in Kenya finish primary school.

[The_Lady_Snow]

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Born in New Spain (now Mexico) in 1651, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was a nun who wrote what is considered the first feminist manifesto. She was revered as a prodigy during her lifetime, and was one of the most widely published writers of the period.

The illegitimate child of a creole woman and a Spanish captain, Juana came from a poor family. She was raised in the country in the home of her mother’s father. At the age of three, Juana followed her sister to a girls’ school and begged to be taught to read. She soon began devouring the books of the grandfather’s library, reading everything she could get her hands on.

Juana had an insatiable appetite for knowledge, and all the books in her grandfather’s hacienda were not enough. She asked her mother to be allowed to go to the university in Mexico City disguised as a boy, but her mother unsurprisingly didn’t think that was a good idea. However, she did consent to send Juana to Mexico City to study under a scholarly priest.

In Mexico City, Juana became fluent in Latin after only 20 lessons, and began to write poetry in Latin, Spanish, and some in Nahuatl (an Aztec language). She punished herself for not learning fast enough by cutting her hair short if she didn’t meet her own deadlines.

Juana became known in court as a child prodigy. The viceroy of New Spain, the Marquis de Mancera, was impressed by her knowledge, and tested her with a barrage of learned men, theologians, philosophers, mathematicians, historians, poets, and other specialists. During this time at court she continued writing poems and sonnets. The Marquis’ wife, impressed by Juana’s intellect, chose Juana to serve as her handmaiden.

At the age of 20, Juana entered the Convent of the Order of St. Jerome and took her vows as a nun. In the convent, she had her own study and library, and the freedom to meet with men of learning from the Court and University. She wrote many poems and plays, was skilled at music and music theory, and studied all branches of knowledge including philosophy and natural science.

Thought she doubtless had suitors during her time at court, Juana had no interest in marriage: “I took the veil because [...] it would, given my absolute unwillingness to enter into marriage, be the least unfitting and the most decent state I could choose.”

Juana had the freedom to study and write in the convent because of the protection of benefactors such as the Viceroy and his wife. Always under a barrage of attacks against her “unfeminine” thirst for knowledge, Juana considered her own intellect a mixed blessing:

“I thought I was fleeing myself, but — woe is me! — I brought myself with me, and brought my greatest enemy in my inclination to study, which I know not whether to take as a Heaven-sent favor or as a punishment.”

In 1688, her current benefactors, the Marquis and Marquise de la Laguna, departed for Spain, leaving Sor Juana to face her criticizers alone. Chief among them is the Archbishop of Mexico, who was fiercely misogynistic and strongly opposed to secular drama such as Juana wrote.

The famous “manifesto” Sor Juana wrote was a response to criticisms from a supposed friend. In 1690, Juana had, in confidence, given a written critique of a famous sermon to a Bishop, who then turned around and published it without her permission. Along with Juana’s critique, the Bishop included a pseudonymous letter of his own admonishing her for her intellectual pursuits. (“Letters engendering pride in women are not pleasing to God.” “You have wasted much time in the study of philosophers and poets.”)

Sor Juana responded with her famous letter simply named “Respuesta” (meaning “reply” or “response”), which passionately and cleverly defended her thirst for learning. In the letter, she recounts her intellectual history, and defends her own and all women’s right to education.


“Who has forbidden women to engage in private and individual studies? Have they not a rational soul as men do?…I have this inclination to study and if it is evil I am not the one who formed me thus – I was born with it and with it I shall die.”

Towards the end of Sor Juana’s life (as it happens with so many women in history), the details are scarce. What we do know is that in 1692-93, Mexico City saw flooding, disease, and food riots which weakened the power of the court. In 1693 there was an ecclesiastical investigation that involved Juana. In 1694, the same year of her 25th anniversary as a nun, Juana signed affirmations stating that she planned to donate of all her books, maps and instruments to be sold to help the poor. It’s unknown whether she did so of her own volition or under duress, but even if it was her own choice, it was an understandable capitulation to the pressures and criticisms she had endured her entire life. Only a year later, Sor Juana succumbed to a plague after caring for her sick sisters.

“I went on with my studious task of reading and still more reading, study and still more study, with no teacher besides my books themselves. What a hardship it is to learn from these lifeless letters, deprived of the sound of a teacher’s voice and explanations; yet I suffered all these trials most gladly for the love of learning.”

Anarda, you command me to observe
your eyes without tears forming in my own;
clearly your ignorance of why they flow
makes you demand a conquest so absurb.

Forbidding my resistance, lady, Love
undoes this fervent heart in steady flames,
and what flies out as vapor in my gaze
was set to boiling in my own breast’s blood.

Then my eyes seek your presence, which they deem
to be the alluring center of your charms,
and my attention worships at your shrine

but all the while, the radiant visual beams
meet with resistance from your snowy scorn
and what escaped as vapor turns to tears.

[Kobi]

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Kate Warne. (1833- January 28, 1868) was the first female detective in the United States.

Described by Allan Pinkerton as a slender, brown haired woman, there is not much else known about Kate Warne prior to when she walked into the Pinkerton Detective Agency in 1856. Born in New York, Warne became a widow shortly after she married. Kate Warne was left as a young childless widow in search of work. In answer to an ad in a local newspaper, Kate Warne walked into Allan Pinkerton’s Chicago office in search of a job. There is still debate whether or not she walked in with intentions to become a detective or just a secretary. Women were not detectives until well after the Civil War. Allan Pinkerton himself claimed that Kate Warne came into his agency and demanded to become a detective. According to Pinkerton's records, he

"was surprised to learn Kate was not looking for clerical work, but was actually answering an advertisement for detectives he had placed in a Chicago newspaper. At the time, such a concept was almost unheard of. Pinkerton said " It is not the custom to employ women detectives!" Kate argued her point of view eloquently - pointing out that women could be "most useful in worming out secrets in many places which would be impossible for a male detective." A Woman would be able to befriend the wives and girlfriends of suspected criminals and gain their confidence. Men become braggarts when they are around women who encourage them to boast. Kate also noted, Women have an eye for detail and are excellent observers."

She helped save President-Elect Abraham Lincoln by uncovering a plot to assassinate him on the way to Washington D.C. to take office.

Allan Pinkerton named Kate Warne one of the five best detectives that he had. Her convincing Pinkerton to employ her was a significant moment in woman's history. Women were not allowed to be a part of the police force until 1891 and could not be detectives until 1903.

[Licious]

This is a great thread. Really enjoying learning about these women. How little women have been noted and celebrated, a month is not enough! Thanks for all the great posts, everyone.

[Kobi]

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Mercedes de Acosta (March 1, 1893 – May 9, 1968) was an American poet, playwright, and novelist. Four of de Acosta's plays were produced, and she published a novel and three volumes of poetry. She was professionally unsuccessful but is known for her many lesbian affairs with famous Broadway and Hollywood personalities and numerous friendships with prominent artists of the period.

She has been linked to the likes of actress Alla Nazimova, dancer Isadora Duncan, with actress Eva Le Gallienne, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Ona Munson, and Russian ballerina Tamara Platonovna Karsavina. Additional unsubstantiated rumors include Pola Negri, Eleonora Duse, Katherine Cornell, and Alice B. Toklas.

An ardent liberal, de Acosta was committed to several political causes. Concerned about the Spanish Civil War, which began in 1936, for example, she supported the loyalist Republican government that opposed the fascist Franco regime. A tireless advocate for women's rights, she wrote in her memoir, "I believed...in every form of independence for women and I was...an enrolled worker for women's suffrage."

Mercedes de Acosta was not hugely famous. Her contributions to the theater were minimal. Yet her story reveals a woman who stood up courageously for her beliefs and values. She seldom stumbled, even when her friends and peers turned against her. She lived her desire and paid the price. Her love for other women and her struggle for acceptance were certainly sources of her originality and fueled her writing. Perhaps the description of her as "that furious lesbian" should become an admirable attribute rather than a scornful slur.

[lusciouskiwi]

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Meet the first known Native American woman engineer: Mary G. Ross (1908–2008), Mechanical Engineer. She was the first woman engineer at Lockheed’s Missiles Systems Division (1952). At Lockheed, Ross designed missiles and rockets, and developed systems for human space flight and interplanetary missions to Mars and Venus. After retiring, she began a second career as an advocate for women and Native Americans in engineering and mathematics.

For more about her: http://www.nmaie-newservice.com/v1i6/

[Kobi]

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Jane Bolin was the first black woman judge in the United States. Born April 11, 1908 in Poughkeepsie, New York, Bolin always knew she wanted to be a lawyer. Her father, Gaius Bolin, the first African American graduate of Williams College, practiced law in Poughkeepsie. Bolin graduated from Wellesley College in 1928, and received her law degree from Yale University School of Law in 1931

[Kobi]

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Frances Perkins was the U.S. Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945, and the first woman appointed to the U.S. Cabinet. As a loyal supporter of her friend, Franklin D. Roosevelt, she helped pull the labor movement into the New Deal coalition.

Frances Perkins, had an unenviable challenge: she had to be as capable, as fearless, as tactful, as politically astute as the other Washington politicians, in order to make it possible for other women to be accepted into the halls of power after her.

Perkins would have been famous simply by being the first woman cabinet member, but her legacy stems from her accomplishments. She was largely responsible for the U.S. adoption of social security, unemployment insurance, federal laws regulating child labor, and adoption of the federal minimum wage.

Perkins had a cool personality, which held her aloof from the crowd. Although her results indicate her great love of workers and lower-class groups, her Boston upbringing held her back from mingling freely and exhibiting personal affection. She was well-suited for the high-level efforts to effect sweeping reforms, but never caught the public's eye or its affection.

The Frances Perkins Building that is the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Labor in Washington, D.C. was named in her honor in 1980.

Perkins remains a prominent alumna of Mount Holyoke College, whose Francis Perkins Program allows "women of non-traditional age" (i.e., age 24 or older) to complete a Bachelor of Arts degree. There are approximately 140 Francis Perkins scholars each year.

[Kobi]

1655 Elizabeth Key Grinstead, who was a slave in Virginia, won her freedom in a lawsuit based on her father's status as a free Englishman (her mother was a slave and her father was her mother's owner), helped by the fact that her father had baptized her as Christian in the Church of England.

However, in 1662 the Virginia House of Burgesses passed a law stating that any child born in the colony would follow the status of its mother, slave or free.

This was an overturn of a long held principle of English Common Law, whereby a child's status followed that of the father; it enabled white men who raped slave women to hide the mixed-race children born as a result and removed their responsibility to acknowledge, support, or emancipate those children.

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In March 1776, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John Adams, who was rounding up support in Congress for a declaration of independence, recommending- "In the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands."

Her husband wrote back, "As to your extraordinary code of laws, I cannot but laugh...Depend upon it, we know better than to repeal our masculine systems."

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Coverture (sometimes spelled couverture) was a legal doctrine whereby, upon marriage, a woman's legal rights were subsumed by those of her husband. Coverture was enshrined in the common law of England and the United States throughout most of the 19th century.

Under traditional English common law an adult unmarried woman was considered to have the legal status of feme sole, while a married woman had the status of feme covert.

A feme sole had the right to own property and make contracts in her own name.

A feme covert was not recognized as having legal rights and obligations distinct from those of her husband in most respects. Instead, through marriage a woman's existence was incorporated into that of her husband, so that she had very few recognized individual rights of her own.

As it has been pithily expressed, husband and wife were one person as far as the law was concerned, and that person was the husband. A married woman could not own property, sign legal documents or enter into a contract, obtain an education against her husband's wishes, or keep a salary for herself. If a wife was permitted to work, under the laws of coverture she was required to relinquish her wages to her husband. In certain cases, a woman did not have individual legal liability for her misdeeds, since it was legally assumed that she was acting under the orders of her husband, and generally a husband and wife were not allowed to testify either for or against each other. Judges and lawyers referred to the overall principle as "coverture".

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony's first legislative victory came in 1860, when the New York State Legislature passed the Married Woman's Property Act, which gave a wife the right to keep her earnings, own property, share custody of her children, and sue in a court of law. Women in other states began pressuring their legislatures to pass similar measures.
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[Kobi]

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Lillian Moller Gilbreth (1878 – 1972) Industrial Engineer. Patented the famous trash can with a foot-pedal lid-opener. First women elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Interviewed over 4,000 women while working at General Electrics to design the proper height for stoves, sinks, and other kitchen fixtures.


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Bettie Page: An American pinup model from the '50s who has been called the "Queen of Pinups." Why she's scandalous: Besides being one of the earliest Playmates of the Month for Playboy magazine (Miss January 1955), Bettie Page was famous for her fetish and sadomasochistic modeling. In fact, she's considered the first famous bondage model.

[Greyson]

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Perhaps the description of her as "that furious lesbian" should become an admirable attribute rather than a scornful slur.


In my thinking, it is admirable in triplets. What is "furious" in your mind is passionate with action and commitment, in mine.

[Kobi]

In my thinking, it is admirable in triplets. What is "furious" in your mind is passionate with action and commitment, in mine.


From what little I have learned about her thus far, she was a fascinating woman and almost iconic by todays standards. She might have been a little ahead of her time tho.

[lusciouskiwi]

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Sister Rosetta Tharpe – gospel music’s first superstar, the godmother of rock and roll, “the original soul sister,” reconstructionist – waiting for The Blues Train in Chorlton, 1963.

With her unique singing style and electrifying stage presence, Sister Rosetta has influenced a range of beloved musicians, including Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bonnie Raitt, and The Noisettes.

In 1998, the United States Postal Service honored Tharpe with a commemorative stamp. In 2003, a dozen contemporary musicians recorded the tribute album Shout, Sister, Shout!. In 2007, Tharpe was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.

[Kobi]

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Zelda Wynn Valdes (June 28, 1905 – September 26, 2001) was an African-American fashion designer and costumer. In 1948, she opened her own shop on Broadway in New York City which was the first in the area to be owned by an African-American. Some of her clients included other notable black women of her era, including Dorothy Dandridge and Marian Anderson. She is also most famous for designing the original costumes for the Playboy Bunnies and the Dance Theater of Harlem.

[Kobi]

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Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852), born Augusta Ada Byron and now commonly known as Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. Her notes on the engine include what is recognized as the first algorithm intended to be processed by a machine. Because of this, she is often considered the world's first computer programmer.

[Kobi]

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Lupe Anguiano (born 12 March 1929) is a civil rights activist known for her work on women's rights, the rights of the poor, and the protection of the environment. In 2007 she was designated a Women's History Month Honoree by the National Women's History Project.

She joined Our Lady of Victory Missionary Sisters from 1949 to 1964. Anguiano was a national organizer for the United Farm Workers and the founder of the National Women's Employment and Education Model Program, which helped single female parents move beyond welfare poverty. She worked with Cesar Chavez, and in Michigan where she led the grape boycott of 1965.

She is a founding member of the National Women's Political Caucus, along with Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug, and has worked on behalf of the Equal Rights Amendment. Anguiano was a delegate to the historic "First Women's Conference" in Houston in 1977, where she, Jean Stapleton, and Coretta Scott King read the "Declaration of American Women."

She currently volunteers at the California Coastal Protection Network, the Pacific Environment, and other environmental organizations. Her papers are housed at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center.

[Kobi]

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Nettie Stevens (1861 – 1912). Biologist. Scientist at Bryn Mawr College. Discovered that the X and Y chromosome were responsible for determining the sex of individuals.


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Scientist Rosalind Franklin made the first clear X-ray images of DNA’s structure. Her work was described as the most beautiful X-ray photographs ever taken. Franklin’s ‘Photo 51’ informed Crick and Watson of DNA’s double helix structure for which they were awarded a Nobel Prize. Franklin died of ovarian cancer in 1958, aged 37, her contribution to DNA’s discovery story unacknowledged.


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Virginia Apgar (7 June 1909–7 August 1974) was an American obstetrical anesthesiologist. She was a leader in the fields of anesthesiology and teratology, and introduced obstetrical considerations to the established field of neonatology. To the public, however, she is best known as the developer of the Apgar score, a method of assessing the health of newborn babies that has drastically reduced infant mortality over the world.

[The_Lady_Snow]

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Edie Windsor

[Nadeest]

Thank you for posting that link, girl dee. It was most interesting, reading about what was happening there.

[Kobi]

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Joyce Hilda Banda née Mtila (born 12 April 1950) is a Malawian politician who has been the president of Malawi since 7 April 2012. She is the founder and leader of the People's Party, created in 2011.

An educator and grassroots women's rights activist, she was Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2006 to 2009 and vice-president of Malawi from May 2009 to April 2012.

Banda took office as president following the sudden death of President Bingu wa Mutharika. She is Malawi's fourth president and its first female president. Before becoming president, she served as the country's first female vice president.

She was a Member of Parliament and Minister for Gender, Children's Affairs and Community Services. Before her active career in politics she was the founder of the Joyce Banda Foundation, founder of the National Association of Business Women (NABW), Young Women Leaders Network and the Hunger Project.

Forbes named President Banda as the 71st most powerful woman in the world and the most powerful woman in Africa.

[Kobi]

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Madam C.J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove in 1867, the first child in her family born into freedom after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Her parents and five older siblings were slaves on a plantation in Louisiana. By the time of her death in 1919, Madam Walker was the wealthiest black woman in America and the first self-made female American millionaire. She made her fortune by developing and marketing a successful line of beauty and hair products for black women under the company she founded, Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company.


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Ann E. Dunwoody is the first female four-star general in U.S. history. She received her fourth star Nov. 14, 2008. She retired from the Army August 15, 2012.

[Kobi]

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Congress Woman Patsy Mink served for a total of 12 terms, representing Hawaii's 1st &2nd congressional districts. While in Congress she was noted for authoring the Title IX Amendment of the Higher Education Act. Mink was the first woman of color and the first Asian American woman elected to Congress and became the first Asian American to seek the Presidential nomination of the Democratic Party in the 1972 election, where she stood in the Oregon primary as an anti-war candidate.

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Aphra Behn was prolific dramatist of the English Restoration, the first English professional female writer. Her writing contributed to the amatory fiction genre of British literature.

She now dominates much cultural-studies discourse as both a topic and a set of texts. Much early criticism emphasized her unusual status as a female writer in a male-dominated literary world; more recent criticism has offered more thorough discussions of her works.

Today, the affinities between Behn's work and that of Romantic writers seem more pronounced than the publicly acceptable discussion of sexuality. According to scholars, Behn's writings unveil the homosocial role of male rivalry in stimulating heterosexual desire for women and explores the ways in which cross dressing and masquerade complicate and destabilize gender relations. Behn also analyzes female friendships.

In several volumes of writings by author Janet Todd, Behn's explorations of some of the key issues in Romantic studies, such as the role of incestuous and homosocial bonding in romance, the correlations between racial and gender oppression, female subjectivity, and, more specifically, female political and sexual agency are detailed.

She is credited with saying one of my favorite quotes of all time: "Women have two choices in life, marriage or prostitution. I consider prostitution the nobler of the two."

Aphra Behn died on 16 April 1689, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. The inscription on her tombstone reads: "Here lies a Proof that Wit can never be / Defence enough against Mortality." She was quoted as once stating that she had led a "life dedicated to pleasure and poetry."

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Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (December 3, 1842 – March 30, 1911) was the foremost female industrial and environmental chemist in the United States in the 19th century, pioneering the field of home economics. Richards graduated from Westford Academy (2nd oldest secondary school in Massachusetts). She was the first woman admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and its first female instructor, the first woman in America accepted to any school of science and technology, and the first American woman to earn a degree in chemistry.

Richards was a pragmatic feminist, as well as a founding ecofeminist who believed that women's work within the home was a vital aspect of the economy.

[Kobi]

Phlebotomy. Even the word sounds archaic—and that’s nothing compared to the slow, expensive, and inefficient reality of drawing blood and having it tested. As a college sophomore, Elizabeth Holmes envisioned a way to reinvent old-fashioned phlebotomy and, in the process, usher in an era of comprehensive superfast diagnosis and preventive medicine.

That was a decade ago. Holmes, now 30, dropped out of Stanford and founded a company called Theranos with her tuition money. Last fall it finally introduced its radical blood-testing service in a Walgreens pharmacy near company head­quarters in Palo Alto, California. (The plan is to roll out testing centers nation­wide.) Instead of vials of blood—one for every test needed—Theranos requires only a pinprick and a drop of blood. With that they can perform hundreds of tests, from standard cholesterol checks to sophisticated genetic analyses. The results are faster, more accurate, and far cheaper than conventional methods.

The implications are mind-blowing. With inexpensive and easy access to the infor­mation running through their veins, people will have an unprecedented window on their own health. And a new generation of diagnostic tests could allow them to head off serious afflictions from cancer to diabetes to heart disease.

None of this would work if Theranos hadn’t figured out how to make testing trans­parent and inexpensive. The company plans to charge less than 50 percent of the standard Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates. And unlike the rest of the testing industry, Theranos lists its prices on its website: blood typing, $2.05; cholesterol, $2.99; iron, $4.45. If all tests in the US were performed at those kinds of prices, the company says, it could save Medicare $98 billion and Medicaid $104 billion over the next decade.

Interview (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/02/elizabeth-holmes-theranos/)

Website (http://www.theranos.com/)

[The_Lady_Snow]

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¡Que Viva! Feliz International Women's Day.

[The_Lady_Snow]

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"Para decirse mujer, hay que ser mujer muy mujer... y yo lo soy." - Chavela

[The_Lady_Snow]

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"Diamond Shakoor is a 12-year old girl, who is one of the best chess players in the country. With close to 250 tournaments played, Diamond is a seven-time national champion. At age 8, she was the youngest African-American female to go undefeated in a Chess National competition."

[Gentle Tiger]

You cannot say you celebrate life and not celebrate Women.
Here's to You!

[The_Lady_Snow]

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[Kobi]

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Dori J. Maynard (1958-2015)


SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - When Dori J. Maynard was asked what her middle initial "J'' stood for, she didn't miss a beat in answering.

"Journalism," she replied.

Her middle name was really Judith, but the response was still appropriate. For Maynard, journalism wasn't just a part of her life, it was her life.

Maynard, president of the Robert C. Maynard institute for Journalism Education in Oakland and longtime champion of diversity in journalism and civic life, died Tuesday at her West Oakland home from complications from lung cancer. She was 56.

Because of Maynard's work, the "Fault Lines" concept of diversity is taught at many U.S. journalism schools and is used as a framework in newsrooms across America, said retired, former Los Angeles Times editor Frank O. Sotomayor. First developed by her late father, Robert C. Maynard, a trailblazing journalist, it was Dori Maynard who spent years holding training sessions and spreading the message tha t diversity is not only about race and ethnicity, but also gender, class, age, generation, geographical location, sexual orientation, religion and political views.

More than anything, friends and colleagues said, Dori Maynard was a teacher.

"She was a journalist. She was a storyteller. She was a business woman. She was a thought leader," said Martin G. Reynolds, senior editor for community engagement at the Bay Area News Group and a Maynard Institute board member. "But when you peel all of that back, really, she was a teacher. She was trying to teach an industry about something that was important for it to do its job. I think the best teachers are people who can connect and make people feel as though they are important and their views and values are being heard."

Bob Butler, president of the National Association of Black Journalists, said Maynard advocated tirelessly for the future of the institute and its programs, reminding everyone that the work of bringing the diverse voices of America into news and public discourse is more vital than ever.

"Under her leadership, the Institute has trained some of the top journalists in the country and helped newsrooms tell more inclusive and nuanced stories," he said.

The daughter of former Oakland Tribune owner and publisher Robert C. Maynard, the first African-American man to own a major U.S. newspaper, Maynard knew from an early age she wanted a life as a journalist.

"Her father was a huge influence on her, and I think his legacy influenced her so much," said Reynolds, who called Maynard one of his best friends. "His values of what a newspaper should be and reflect were commandments for her and her approach to her work. It was so much of who she was."

After graduating from Middlebury College in Vermont with a bachelor's degree in American history, she went on to work at the Detroit Free Press, the Bakersfield Californian, and The Patriot Ledger, in Quincy, Massachusetts. She was a Nieman fellow at Harvard University in 1993.

- See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/bostonglobe/obituary.aspx?n=Dori-Maynard&pid=174260723#sthash.kDmKe9wc.dpuf

[Kobi]

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Sara Bahayi is Afghanistan’s first female taxi driver in recent memory, and she is believed to be the only one actively working in the country. She’s 38, unmarried and outspoken. And in a highly patriarchal society, where women are considered second-class citizens and often abused, Ms Bahayi is brazenly upending gender roles.

Every day, she plies her trade in a business ruled by conservative men. She endures condescending looks, outright jeers, even threats to her life. Most men will not enter her taxi, believing that a woman should never drive for a man.

Yet she earns $10 (£6.50) to $20 a day, enough to provide for her 15 relatives, including her ailing mother. She relies on ferrying women shackled by traditions and fear, who vicariously live their dreams of freedom through her.

With every fare, Ms Bahayi says, she is determined to send a message to Afghan women: Get out of the house – earn money – don’t rely on men.

Improving the lives of women was a key goal after the Taliban regime collapsed in 2001. Far more girls today are in school. Afghanistan’s constitution guarantees equal rights for men and women. In practice, however, tribal traditions and religious strictures still subjugate most Afghan women and girls. Violence against women remains exceptionally high.

UN officials and women’s rights activists fear that the fragile gains women have made will be further eroded in light of the recent departure of most international forces, a resurgence of the Taliban, and expected reductions in international aid. Today, few role models for Afghan women exist. There are female ministers and lawmakers, as well as Rula Ghani, Afghanistan’s modern and sophisticated first lady. But most hail from privileged or liberal families. Ms Bahayi, though, lives a poor enclave in Mazar-e Sharif. She has neither an influential position nor a powerful family.

All she has is a hunting rifle she keeps loaded in case of intruders. Every day, she is among the rank and file, empowering local women with each fare. “She sends the message that men and women have equal rights,” said Arifa Saffar, head of the Afghan Women’s Network, a non-profit group helping women in Ms Bahayi’s Balkh province. “If a man can drive a taxi, why not a woman? She has shown the reality that a woman can drive just as well.”

Two years ago, Ms Bahayi took a class to acquire her licence to drive a taxi. There were 30 other students, all men. To escape the jokes and stares, she sat in the back. One day another student told her it was disgraceful for a woman to take a class with men. “If you don’t feel shame, I feel shame for you,” he said.

Two weeks later, she passed the road test and received her licence. Only nine of the men passed.

In the late 1990s, the Taliban killed her brother-in-law, and she was forced to care for her sister and her seven children. She worked for various aid agencies. A husband would never have allowed her to work, she said. “That’s why I am single,” she said.

The day after she received her taxi licence, her first client, a woman, was so stunned to see Ms Bahayi behind the wheel that she asked for a tour around Mazar-e Sharif. Along the way, children, and even some men, clapped and cheered. But most men refused to step into her cab. At the taxi stand, her male competitors tried to block her car or stop her potential passengers. Eventually, they got accustomed to seeing her around. But their disapproval persists.

But some men in Ms Bahayi’s neighbourhood see a layer of security for their family’s women. “Being a female taxi driver is like being a female doctor,” said Mohammad Akram, 50, a bearded man who was with three of his female relatives inside Ms Bahayi’s taxi on a recent day. “Our women feel comfortable with a woman driver. They feel safe.”

Safe. It’s a feeling that is vanishing for Ms Bahayi. As she has become well known in this province because of local media coverage, threats against her have grown.

This month, intruders tried to enter her house, she said. Perhaps they were after her beehives, which produce honey she sells to supplement her income. Perhaps they despised her career.

The next day, she bought the rifle. Now she and her brothers take turns sitting on their roof at night, guarding their house.

“My mom doesn’t want me to be a taxi driver,” Ms Bahayi said. “One day, she asked me: ‘Why are you still driving? One day they will kill you.’ ”

Two months ago, some women came to the taxi stand, seeking to be driven to a funeral in a Taliban-infested area. All the male taxi drivers refused. So Ms Bahayi donned a man’s coat and sunglasses and drove the women. She knew she faced a beating, or worse, if the insurgents learned a female was behind the wheel.

She has inspired at least seven other women to learn how to drive, said Ms Saffar of the Afghan Women’s Network. All run private car services for female clients. Ms Bahayi hopes they will become taxi drivers someday.

Now, Ms Bahayi is negotiating with some men to become partners in a car dealership. She will acquire the dealership licence, and they will lease the place. Eventually, she said she plans to kick her partners out – and replace them with women. It will become, she hopes, Afghanistan’s first female-owned car dealership.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/why-are-you-still-driving-one-day-they-will-kill-you-afghanistans-first-female-taxi-driver-10076486.html

[Kobi]

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The longest serving woman in Congress in U.S. history is ready to retire. Maryland Democrat Barbara Mikulski will not seek a sixth term in the Senate in 2016.

"I am here today ... to announce I will not be seeking a sixth term in the United States Senate," Mikulski said. "This is a hard decision to make."

"Do I spend my time raising money or spend my time raising hell?" the Maryland Democrat said is a question that factored into her decision.

Mikulski, whose direct and feisty character paved the way for women who joined the male-dominated Senate, joined the upper chamber in 1987 after ten years in the U.S. House. The 78-year old intends to serve out the remainder of her current term until January 2017.

Mikulski is currently the top Democrat on the powerful Appropriations Committee. She was the first woman to chair the committee responsible for determining and allocating government funding when she took the gavel in December of 2012.

Before joining Congress, Mikulski was a social worker. As a pioneer in the old-boys club, she is known for advocating for collegiality among women in the Senate, organizing a monthly dinner for women senators.

A record number of women - 20 - currently serve in the Senate.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/barbara-mikulski-longest-serving-woman-congress-retire-n315531

[Cin]

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

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[Cin]

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Malala Yousafzai is the youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate in history.

From a young age, Yousafzai made a name for herself in her community as someone who was unafraid to criticize the Taliban. She has been especially critical of terrorist attempts to prevent young girls from getting an education in Pakistan and elsewhere.

During her Nobel speech, she commented on her attempted assassination at the hands of a Taliban gunman in 2012. She was just 14 years old when the gunman boarded her bus, pointed a pistol at her head, and pulled the trigger in an attempt to silence her.

"I had two options — one was to remain silent and wait to be killed," Yousafzai said. "And the second was to speak up and then be killed. I chose the second one. I decided to speak up."

Yousafzai made a full recovery after the shooting.

Her attitude toward the threat of being shot and killed is astounding considering her young age.

"The terrorists tried to stop us," she said. "Neither their ideas nor their bullets could win. We survived. And since that day, our voices have grown louder and louder."

Yousafzai also called attention to her friends in the audience, noting that her story is not all that uncommon.

"I tell my story not because it is unique but because it is not," she said. "It is the story of many girls. Today, I tell their stories too. I have brought with me some of my sisters from Pakistan, from Nigeria, and from Syria who share this story.”

[Cin]

International Women's Day

International Women's Day has been observed since in the early 1900's, a time of great expansion and turbulence in the industrialized world that saw booming population growth and the rise of radical ideologies.

1908
Great unrest and critical debate was occurring amongst women. Women's oppression and inequality was spurring women to become more vocal and active in campaigning for change. Then in 1908, 15,000 women marched through New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting rights.

1909
In accordance with a declaration by the Socialist Party of America, the first National Woman's Day (NWD) was observed across the United States on 28 February. Women continued to celebrate NWD on the last Sunday of February until 1913.

1910
n 1910 a second International Conference of Working Women was held in Copenhagen. A woman named a Clara Zetkin (Leader of the 'Women's Office' for the Social Democratic Party in Germany) tabled the idea of an International Women's Day. She proposed that every year in every country there should be a celebration on the same day - a Women's Day - to press for their demands. The conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, representing unions, socialist parties, working women's clubs, and including the first three women elected to the Finnish parliament, greeted Zetkin's suggestion with unanimous approval and thus International Women's Day was the result.

1911
Following the decision agreed at Copenhagen in 1911, International Women's Day (IWD) was honoured the first time in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland on 19 March. More than one million women and men attended IWD rallies campaigning for women's rights to work, vote, be trained, to hold public office and end discrimination. However less than a week later on 25 March, the tragic 'Triangle Fire' in New York City took the lives of more than 140 working women, most of them Italian and Jewish immigrants. This disastrous event drew significant attention to working conditions and labour legislation in the United States that became a focus of subsequent International Women's Day events. 1911 also saw women's 'Bread and Roses' campaign.

1913-1914
On the eve of World War I campaigning for peace, Russian women observed their first International Women's Day on the last Sunday in February 1913. In 1913 following discussions, International Women's Day was transferred to 8 March and this day has remained the global date for International Women's Day ever since. In 1914 further women across Europe held rallies to campaign against the war and to express women's solidarity.

1917
On the last Sunday of February, Russian women began a strike for "bread and peace" in response to the death over 2 million Russian soldiers in war. Opposed by political leaders the women continued to strike until four days later the Czar was forced to abdicate and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote. The date the women's strike commenced was Sunday 23 February on the Julian calendar then in use in Russia. This day on the Gregorian calendar in use elsewhere was 8 March.

1918 - 1999
Since its birth in the socialist movement, International Women's Day has grown to become a global day of recognition and celebration across developed and developing countries alike. For decades, IWD has grown from strength to strength annually. For many years the United Nations has held an annual IWD conference to coordinate international efforts for women's rights and participation in social, political and economic processes. 1975 was designated as 'International Women's Year' by the United Nations. Women's organisations and governments around the world have also observed IWD annually on 8 March by holding large-scale events that honour women's advancement and while diligently reminding of the continued vigilance and action required to ensure that women's equality is gained and maintained in all aspects of life.

2000 and beyond
IWD is now an official holiday in Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, China (for women only), Cuba, Georgia, Guinea-Bissau, Eritrea, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Madagascar (for women only), Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Nepal (for women only), Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Zambia. The tradition sees men honouring their mothers, wives, girlfriends, colleagues, etc with flowers and small gifts. In some countries IWD has the equivalent status of Mother's Day where children give small presents to their mothers and grandmothers.

The new millennium has witnessed a significant change and attitudinal shift in both women's and society's thoughts about women's equality and emancipation. Many from a younger generation feel that 'all the battles have been won for women' while many feminists from the 1970's know only too well the longevity and ingrained complexity of patriarchy. With more women in the boardroom, greater equality in legislative rights, and an increased critical mass of women's visibility as impressive role models in every aspect of life, one could think that women have gained true equality. The unfortunate fact is that women are still not paid equally to that of their male counterparts, women still are not present in equal numbers in business or politics, and globally women's education, health and the violence against them is worse than that of men.

However, great improvements have been made. We do have female astronauts and prime ministers, school girls are welcomed into university, women can work and have a family, women have real choices. And so the tone and nature of IWD has, for the past few years, moved from being a reminder about the negatives to a celebration of the positives.

GoogleAnnually on 8 March, thousands of events are held throughout the world to inspire women and celebrate achievements. A global web of rich and diverse local activity connects women from all around the world ranging from political rallies, business conferences, government activities and networking events through to local women's craft markets, theatric performances, fashion parades and more.

Many global corporations have also started to more actively support IWD by running their own internal events and through supporting external ones. For example, on 8 March search engine and media giant Google some years even changes its logo on its global search pages. Year on year IWD is certainly increasing in status. The United States even designates the whole month of March as 'Women's History Month'.

So make a difference, think globally and act locally !! Make everyday International Women's Day. Do your bit to ensure that the future for girls is bright, equal, safe and rewarding.

http://www.internationalwomensday.com/about.asp#.VPyUxWM5CM9

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