"I demand more rights for women
because I know what women can do."
– Ellen Johnson Sirleaf,
President of Liberia, (2006-2018),
first African elected woman
head of state; 2011 Nobel Peace Prize
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WOW2 is a four-times-a-month sister blog to
This Week in the War On Women
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"There is no history about which there is so much
ignorance as this great movement for the establishment
of equal political rights for women."
– Susan B. Anthony, major figure in
the U.S. woman suffrage movement
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“The most fulfilled people are the ones who get up every morning
and stand for something larger than themselves. They are
the people who care about others, who will extend a helping
hand to someone in need or will speak up about
an injustice when they see it.”
– Wilma Mankiller, first woman Principal
Chief of the Cherokee Nation (1985-1995)
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The purpose of WOW2 is to learn about and honor women of achievement, including many who’ve been ignored or marginalized in most of the history books, and to mark events in women’s history.
These trailblazers have a lot to teach us about persistence in the face of overwhelming odds. I hope you will find reclaiming our past as much of an inspiration as I do.
THIS WEEK IN THE WAR ON WOMEN will post shortly, so be sure to go there and catch up on the latest dispatches from the frontlines.
Many, many thanks to libera nos, intrepid Assistant Editor of WOW2. Any remaining mistakes are either mine, or uncaught computer glitches in transferring the data from his emails to DK5. And much thanks to wow2lib, WOW2’s Librarian Emeritus.
Note: All images are below the person or event to which they refer.
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- November 17, 1558 – Queen Mary I dies, and Elizabeth I becomes Queen of England and Ireland (1558-1603), the last ruler from the House of Tudor.
- November 17, 1769 – Duchess Charlotte Georgine of Mecklenburg-Strelitz born, who became Duchess of Saxe-Hidburghausen by marriage at age 15; a patron of the arts, she brought musicians, painters, and poets to the court. Also known for giving half her annual income to the poor and pensioners, and for providing education and apprenticeships for children of lower class families. She died in 1818 at age 48, after surviving 12 pregnancies. Seven of her children lived to adulthood.
- November 17, 1866 – Voltairine de Cleyre born, American anarchist and Freethought movement activist, named for Voltaire; prolific writer, poet, and public speaker. She opposed capitalism, the state, marriage, and domination over women’s lives and sexuality by religion. She was an editor of the freethought newspaper The Progressive Age. In her 1895 lecture entitled Sex Slavery, de Cleyre condemned ideals of beauty that encourage women to distort their bodies and child socialization practices that create unnatural gender roles. She denounced prostitution, but her main focus was on marriage laws that allow men to rape their wives without consequences. Such laws make "every married woman what she is, a bonded slave, who takes her master's name, her master's bread, her master's commands, and serves her master's passions." She died at age 45 in 1912, from septic meningitis. Though she and Emma Goldman often disagreed, they respected each other, and a collection of de Cleyre’s essays were published posthumously in Goldman’s magazine Mother Earth in 1914.
- November 17, 1878 – Grace Abbott born, American social worker, advocate for immigrant rights, and for child labor laws. She worked at Hull House, and wrote weekly articles for the Chicago Evening Post exposing exploitation of immigrants. Abbott was a member of the Women’s Trade Union League, and served as director of the Child Labor Division of the U.S. Children’s Bureau (1917-1919). She wrote several sociological texts, including The Immigrant and the Community (1917), while she was director of the Immigrants’ Protective League in Chicago.
- November 17, 1880 – The first four women graduate from London University, with Bachelor of Arts degrees – but their names aren’t listed!
- November 17, 1903 – Molly Spotted Elk, born on the Penobscot Indian Island Reservation, in Maine; christened as Molly Alice Nelson; Penobscot dancer, actress, and writer. She toured in Vaudeville shows, dancing her tribe’s traditional dances, creating her own costumes and music. She won a Native American dance contest in Oklahoma, and was adopted by the Cheyenne, who gave her the name Spotted Elk. She moved to New York in 1926, and worked many different jobs before landing a place in the Foster Girls chorus line. While touring with the company, she wrote poetry, adventure stories, and other fiction. In 1930, she appeared as Neewa, in The Silent Enemy, a rare silent film featuring Native American performers playing Indians, about the Ojibwe tribe before the arrival of European settlers. In 1931, she moved to Paris, and performed traditional Native American dances. She married French journalist Jean Archambaud, and began researching folktales and traditions of Northeastern American tribes. When the Depression made earning a living in Paris untenable, she moved back to New York, where she gave birth to a daughter. She was reunited with Archambaud in 1938, but she and her daughter became separated from him during the Nazi invasion of Paris. They escaped, and eventually made their way on foot through the Pyrenees Mountains into Spain, but never saw Archambaud again. They returned to the U.S. and settled on the Penobscot Reservation. She died at age 73 in 1977. Among her published works are From Poverty in Old Town, Maine, to Fame in Paris — and Back; and Penobscot: Culture & History of the Nation.
- November 17, 1917 – Winson Hudson born as Anger Winson Gates; African American civil rights activist; the 10th of 13 children in a sharecropper family, she quit school in eleventh grade to get married, but went back to get a teaching certificate and taught elementary school and served food in the lunchroom. She was vice president of the Leake County chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) when it was founded in 1961, and she and her sister Dovie started a lawsuit to desegregate Leake County public schools, which was decided in 1964. The judge ordered Leake County schools be desegregated one grade at time starting with first grade. However, Black families attempting to send their children to white schools met with fierce resistance. The father of one girl was beaten up and fired from his job. Teachers who were members of the NAACP were also fired. Dovie’s house was bombed twice in three months in 1967 and there was an attempt to bomb Winson's house in November that year. In 1965, Winson Hudson appeared before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to speak about harassment of blacks attempting to register to vote. Winson started paying poll taxes in 1937 until it was no longer required after the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but during that time, she was only to able vote for the trustee of Harmony School. She first tried to register to vote in the National Elections in 1937, but it was not until 1962 when she and Dovie were able to pass a required “literacy test.” The U.S Justice Department sent an investigator to Leake County to scrutinize voter registration procedures. With the help of the NAACP, the sisters got grants from the Voter Education Project in Atlanta and started a voter registration drive, which registered about 1,000 black voters, and the sisters then worked get out them out to vote. Beginning in 1965, Winson also worked for the county’s first Head Start Program, and continued to promote efforts to desegregate public facilities. In 1994, Winson Hudson testified on behalf of Mississippi's poor citizens before President Bill Clinton's Health Reform Task Force Committee in Washington, D.C. She co-wrote her autobiography in 2002, Mississippi Harmony: Memoirs of a Freedom Fighter. Hudson died at age 86 in 2004.
- November 17, 1917 – Ruth Aaronson Bari born, American mathematician; worked on graph theory and algebraic homomorphisms; earned her MA at Johns Hopkins University in 1943, but was originally enrolled in the doctoral program; the university suggested that women in the graduate program should give up their fellowships so men returning from WWII could study; she acceded, marrying Arthur Bari, and raising their three children. Bari returned to Johns Hopkins in 1966, where she completed her dissertation on “absolute reducibility of maps of at most 19 regions” at the age of 47. In the early 1970s, she felt math teachers in Washington DC public schools were not as prepared as they should be, so she got a grant from the National Science Foundation to create and fund a pilot program for a master’s degree in teaching mathematics.
- November 17, 1923 – Ruth Bleier born, American neurophysiologist, feminist scholar, and social justice activist. She earned her MD from Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1949, and interned at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, then practiced medicine in Baltimore’s inner city. Bleier was an advocate for civil rights and ending the Korean War in the 1950s, which led to a subpoena from the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAAC). When she refused to cooperate, she was blacklisted, lost her hospital privileges, and was unable to practice medicine. In 1957, she went to Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine to study neuroanatomy, and completed her post-doctoral fellowship in 1961. She taught psychiatry and physiology at the Adolph Meyer Laboratory of Neuroanatomy until 1967, when she joined the University of Wisconsin-Madison department of Neurophysiology, and also worked with the Wisconsin Regional Primate Center, becoming an authority on the animal hypothalamus. In the 1970s, Bleier saw how the biological sciences were affected by sexism and other cultural biases, and argued against the idea of sociobiology as an explanation of conventional gender roles. She also campaigned to improve women’s access and advancement in higher education. Her work demonstrated how gender, sexuality, and science, rather than being static and judgment-free, are constantly changing in response to social values and ideas. Noted for her books, Science and Gender: A Critique of Biology and Its Theories on Women, and Feminist Approaches to Science. Bleier was a founding member of the Association of Faculty Women at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which challenged the administration to reassess the status and salaries of women instructors campus-wide, and to rectify inequalities. In 1975, she helped establish the Woman’s Studies Program, and served as its chair (1982-1986). Bleier came out as a lesbian after her marriage ended in divorce, and campaigned for lesbian rights within the women’s movement. She and her partner, Dr. Elizabeth Karlin, were activists for abortion rights. Bleier died from cancer at age 64 in 1988.
- November 17, 1942 – Dame Lesley Rees born, British professor and endocrinologist; Dean of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College (Bart’s) from 1989-1995, the first and only woman to hold this post; now Emeritus Professor of Chemical Endocrinology at Bart’s; she was the first Director of Education at the Royal College of Physicians in 1997. Her Handbook of Paediatric Nephrology is used by trainees and consultants worldwide.
- November 17, 1945 – Lesley Abdela born, British expert on women’s rights and representation; adviser for 40 different countries to governments and IGOs (including the UN), NGOs, and the European Commission; broadcast journalist and public speaker; in the 1990 Queen’s Birthday Honours, appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire for “services to the advancement of Women in Politics and Local Government.”
- November 17, 1955 – Yolanda King born, American activist and actor, oldest child of Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King Jr.; acted in Ghosts of Mississippi (1996), Our Friend, Martin (1999) and Selma, Lord, Selma (1999); supporter and ally of the LGBTQ Community; died at age 51 of complications related to a heart condition, just 16 months after her mother passed away.
- November 17, 1956 – Angelika Machinek born, German glider pilot, dramaturge, and writer; she was German gliding champion five times, and broke nine Fédération Aéronautique Internationale gliding world records. She was killed in 2006 at age 49 when her microlight crashed.
- November 17, 1964 – Susan Rice born, American public servant; U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (2009-2013); National Security Advisor (2013-2017). In 2012, she was nominated for Secretary of State after Hillary Clinton retired, but withdrew her name from consideration because of the ongoing Benghazi controversy, saying if she were the nominee, “the confirmation process would be lengthy, disruptive, and costly.”
- November 17, 1966 – Sophie Marceau born, French actress, director, screenwriter, and author; noted for writing and directing Speak to Me of Love (Parlez-moi d’amour), for which she won the 2002 Montréal World Film Festival Award for Best Director, and Trivial (La disparue de Deauville).
- November 17, 1969 – Rebecca Walker born, American author, feminist, and activist; co-founder of the Third Wave Foundation, which supports efforts of young women of color, and queer, intersex, and trans individuals as activists and leaders in their communities.
- November 17, 1978 – Rachel McAdams born, Canadian actress and environmental activist; she volunteered for the clean-up efforts after Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 Gulf of Mexico spill, and also participated in the Canada for Haiti telethon in 2010. An active participant in the Food & Water First Movement, she narrated the 2014 feature documentary Take Me to the River, on river pollution and efforts to save iconic rivers. McAdams has also volunteered for Habitat for Humanity builds in Canada, worked with the Sunshine Foundation of Canada, the Alzheimer’s Association, and is a member of the creative council of Represent.Us, an anti-corruption organization.
- November 17, 1985 – Carolina Neurath born, Swedish journalist and writer. She writes business articles for the Stockholm newspaper Svenska Dagbladet (Swedish Daily News), books on bank failures and venture capitalism, and a thriller called Fartblinda, about a woman journalist uncovering the business of shady financiers, the basis of a Swedish television series of the same name, which premiered in 2019.
- November 17, 2019 – Maria Ressa, journalist, co-founder and CEO of Rappler, arrived in Iceland, scheduled to speak at the Reykjavík Global Forum: Women Leaders 2019. Rappler is a Philippine online news website, whose license was revoked after it ran stories critical of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs.” His “war” has caused the killing of thousands of Filipinos, with police sometimes falsifying evidence to justify the killings. She and her team also received death threats after Duterte falsely claimed in a speech that Rappler was owned and controlled by foreigners.
- November 17, 2020 – The World Health Organization (WHO) set out a strategy for eliminating cervical cancer by 2050, which could save the lives of an estimated five million women and girls. Cervical cancer is the 4th most common cancer among women globally. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated, “Eliminating any cancer would have once seemed an impossible dream, but we now have the cost-effective, evidence-based tools to make that dream a reality.” The strategy, backed by WHO Member States at the World Health Assembly last week, involves vaccinating 90 per cent of girls by age 15, screening 70 per cent of women by age 35 and again by age 45, and treating 90 per cent of women identified with cervical disease. In 2018, 570,000 women had cervical cancer and 311,000 died. Without action to stop it, annual case numbers are projected to reach 700,000, with 400,000 associated deaths, by 2030. Tackling the disease is expected to bring huge economic dividends because of the improved prospects for women’s participation in the workforce, with $3.20 returned to the economy for every dollar invested – or $26 once the benefits for families, communities, and societies are factored in. “This is a big milestone in global health, because for the first time the world has agreed to eliminate the only cancer we can prevent with a vaccine and the only cancer which is curable if detected early,” WHO Assistant Director-General Dr. Princess Nothemba Simelela told a news conference. “We have an opportunity, as the global health community, to end the suffering from this cancer.”
- November 17, 2021 – The House voted 223 to 207 to censure hardline Republican Representative Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), and strip him of his committee assignments for tweeting an anime video depicting him killing Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) with a sword and attacking President Biden. Two Republicans, Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) — joined Democrats in favor of the measure, and Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio) voted "present." The vote marked the first such censure action in more than a decade. Gosar sat through the House debate wearing an American flag mask. He said "no threat was intended" by the post, and expressed no regret. "What is so hard about saying that this is wrong?" Ocasio-Cortez asked.
- November 17, 2022 – Speaker Nancy Pelosi — who shattered the "marble ceiling" to become the first woman to lead the U.S. House — announced she will step down from party leadership. "With great confidence in our caucus, I will not seek reelection to Democratic leadership in the next Congress. For me the hour has come for a new generation to lead the Democratic caucus that I so deeply respect," Pelosi said in a speech on the House floor. "I'm grateful that so many are ready and willing to shoulder this awesome responsibility." In her remarks, Pelosi warned that democracy is "majestic, but it is fragile" and said voters in 2022 sent a message to Congress that they would not support those who supported violence or insurrection. She also applauded the chamber for becoming more diverse over the course of her 35-year career. When she first entered Congress in 1987 there were 12 women in the Democratic caucus and now there are 90. "And we want more," she said, to applause. Her decision is consistent with a promise she made four years ago to self term limit after Democrats won the majority in 2018 and she became the first speaker since the legendary Sam Rayburn to claim the speakership twice.
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- November 18, 1630 – Eleonora Gonzaga born, Princess of Mantua, Nevers and Rethel; well-educated in literature, music, and art, expert in dances and embroidery, and also fluent in French, Spanish, and Italian, she wrote poetry of a philosophical or religious nature. She became Ferdinand III’s second wife in 1651, making her Holy Roman Empress, German Queen, and Queen consort of Hungary and Bohemia. She founded a literary academy and was a patron of musical theatre. As Holy Roman Empress, she promoted development of cultural and spiritual life at the Imperial court in Vienna. Despite being a staunch Catholic and benefactress of several monasteries, she had a tolerant attitude towards Protestantism. Eleonora founded two women’s honorary orders, the Order of Virtuosity (1662), and the Order of the Starry Cross (1668), for noble ladies, to encourage piety and charitable works, but she also encouraged interest in science. After her husband’s death in 1657, she was guardian of her children and her stepchildren. Her small court as Empress Dowager was a meeting place for politicians and diplomats, and her stepson, Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, often consulted her on both personal and political matters. She became a mediator in 1669 during a conflict between Pope Clement IX and Leopold over the appointment of a Cardinal for the Imperial Court. Eleonora died in Vienna in December 1686 at age 56.
- November 18, 1825 – Susan Tolman Mills born; with her husband Cyrus, co-founded Mills Seminary, a boarding school for young women, which became Mills College, the first women’s college in California. In 1890, she became the college’s president, hiring architect Julia Morgan in 1904 to design six buildings to expand the campus; she retired in 1909 at age 84.
- November 18, 1857 – Rose Markwood Knox born, with her husband Charles Knox, developed the world’s first pre-granulated ‘gelatine,’ eliminating the difficult process of making gelatin at home; when her husband died in 1908, Rose Knox ran the company for the next 40 years. She was the chair of the Knox Board of Directors until she died at age 93.
- November 18, 1861 – ‘Dorothy Dix’ born as Elizabeth M. Gilmer, but known by her pen name, American journalist and advice columnist, the highest paid and most widely read American woman journalist of her time, with about 60 million readers. In a column called The Ordinary Woman, she wrote, “Women who are toiling over cooking-stoves, slaving at sewing-machines, pinching and economizing to educate and cultivate their children ... the Ordinary Woman is the real heroine of life.” Dix also encouraged women to work outside the home. In 1902, she spoke at the 34th annual National American Suffrage Convention in Washington DC. Her speech, “The Woman With the Broom,” filled four columns in the Woman’s Journal, and she appeared in 1903 on a platform with Susan B. Anthony campaigning for woman suffrage. Dix wrote a circular for the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) outlining the social, political, and economic reasons why women should have the right to vote, addressing the impact of political questions on women and their homes, taxation, morals, household budgets, and education.
- November 18, 1869 – The American Woman Suffrage Association formed by Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, and other more conservative women’s rights activists, to work exclusively for woman suffrage by focusing on amending individual state constitutions, instead of a Constitutional Amendment.
- November 18, 1872 – Beebe Steven Lynk born, one of the first African-American women chemists and chemistry teachers; she earned a degree in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from the University of West Tennessee (then a two-year, pre-bachelor degree for teachers) in 1903, and became one of the two women faculty members (out of 10) at UWT’s new medical school, where she taught Latin botany and materia medica (collected knowledge of healing properties of various substances); author of Advice to Colored Women, published in 1896; active in the National Federation of Women’s Clubs, and as an advocate for women’s rights.
- November 18, 1872 – In Rochester, New York, Susan B. Anthony and 14 other women are arrested for voting in the U.S. presidential election of 1872. The ballot also included candidates running for seats in the U.S. Congress. Anthony and the others successfully registered to vote several days before the election, but Sylvester Lewis, a poll watcher, challenged Anthony’s qualifications as a voter. Election inspectors took the steps required by state law when a challenge occurred: they asked Anthony under oath if she was a citizen, if she lived in the district, and if she had accepted bribes for her vote. Following her satisfactory answers to these questions, the inspectors placed her ballots in the boxes. On November 15, warrants were issued by U.S. Commissioner William Storrs for the arrest of all the women, based on the complaint by Lewis. A deputy federal marshal called on Anthony three days later, and asked her to accompany him downtown to see the commissioner. She asked, “What for?” He said, “To arrest you.” When she asked if this was the way he arrested men, he said no, and she demanded that she should be arrested properly. Anthony was taken at government expense on the streetcar to the commissioner’s office, where she met her attorney, Henry Selden, and an assistant U.S. attorney, John Pound. When Pound asked for Anthony’s plea, Selden refused to enter one before an indictment. This obliged the commissioner to conduct an examination, which would determine if there were sufficient grounds to detain Anthony. In what became a pattern of singling out Anthony, the other women voters were arrested, but only Anthony’s actions were examined for evidence of a crime.
- November 18, 1878 – Soprano Marie Selika Williams became the first Black performer invited to perform at the White House, for President Rutherford B. Hayes and First Lady Lucy Webb Hayes.
- November 18, 1878 – Georgia Bullock born, first woman member of the Los Angeles Bar Association; first woman attorney to defend a client charged with murder; founder of the Women Lawyer’s Club of Los Angeles; first woman to serve as a judge of the Los Angeles Women’s Court; the first woman California Superior Court judge (1931-1955).
- November 18, 1882 – Frances Gertrude McGill born, pioneering Canadian forensic pathologist, pathologist, criminologist, and allergist; earned her medical degree at the University of Manitoba in 1915, then became the provincial bacteriologist (1918) and pathologist (1920) of Saskatchewan, working closely with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and local law enforcement for over 30 years. She traveled across the province conducting forensic examinations, and was an active supporter for establishing the first RCMP forensic laboratory (1937). A newspaper dubbed her the “Sherlock Holmes of Saskatchewan.” She became the forensic lab’s second director (1943-1946), and also trained new Mounties in forensic methods of detection, and in medical jurisprudence. After she left the director position, she was appointed as Honorary Surgeon, continuing as a consultant until her death in 1959.
- November 18, 1888 – Frances Marion born as Marion Owens, author, film director, and screenwriter; the first writer to win two Academy Awards, for Best Adaptation for The Big House and Best Story for The Champ. She also wrote scenarios for two major silent films starring Lillian Gish, The Scarlet Letter (1926) and The Wind (1928).
- November 18, 1904 – Esther McCoy born, American author and architectural historian. She studied at the University of Michigan, and in 1925 went to New York, where she wrote short stories for The New Yorker and Harper’s Bazaar, as well as novels and screenplays. She also wrote for Left publications like Direction, and United Progressive News. In 1932, suffering from pneumonia, she came to Los Angeles to recuperate. She bought a bungalow in Santa Monica, and lived there for the rest of her life, although she traveled widely. During WWII, she worked as a draftsman for architect R.M. Schindler, after being discouraged from applying to USC’s architecture school because of her age and gender. A frequent contributor to the magazines like Arts & Architecture, Architectural Record, and L’Architectura, she wrote about architecture for The Los Angeles Times. In 1960, she published her first major book on architecture, Five California Architects, followed by books sponsored by Arts & Architecture devoted to case study houses of architects like Richard Neutra, Craig Ellwood, and Calvin C. Straub. She also wrote extensively on Italian architecture. Her work helped bring modern architecture in Southern California to the attention of the world. McCoy died at age 85 in 1989.
- November 18, 1919 – Andrée Raymonde Borrel born, French WWII heroine, who nursed wounded soldiers until the Nazis took over Paris. She then worked with the resistance, helping smuggle Allied airmen out of France. In 1941, she fled to Portugal when the Gestapo uncovered her group. In 1942, she made it to England and became part of the French section of the SOE, and was one of two French women who parachuted into German-occupied France, where she was betrayed to the Gestapo, arrested, and killed at Auschwitz in July, 1944.
- November 18, 1924 – Lise Østergaard born, Danish psychologist and Social-Democratic politician; Minister of Culture (1980-1982). She chaired the 1980 UN World Conference on Women in Copenhagen; Minister without Portfolio (1977-1980); Folketing (parliament) member (1979-1984); spokesperson for the Danish Refugee Council (1974-1977); first woman to become professor of clinical psychology at Copenhagen University (1963); head of psychology at Copenhagen’s Rigshospitalet (State Hospital – 1958); published Den psykologiske testmetode og dens relation til klinisk psykiatri (The Psychological Test Method and its Relationship to Clinical Psychiatry) in 1961.
- November 18, 1928 – Sheila Jordan born, American Jazz singer-songwriter. She pioneered a bebop and scat jazz singing style with an upright bass as the only accompaniment. Charlie Parker called her “the singer with the million dollar ears.”
- November 18, 1932 – Amy Johnson, British aviator, who already held several solo flying records, arrived in Cape Town, South Africa, from England, breaking her previous record by over ten hours.
- November 18, 1936 – Suzette Haden Elgin born; author and PhD in linguistics; founder of the Science Fiction Poetry Association; creator of the language Láadan for her feminist Native Tongue science fiction series. Also noted for The Ozark Trilogy.
- November 18, 1939 – Margaret Atwood born, Canadian author, poet, and critic; known for her iconic novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, which won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, for The Blind Assassin, winner of the Man Booker Prize, and The Testaments, best-selling sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, the 2019 co-winner of the Booker Prize, shared with Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other.
- November 18, 1939 – Margaret Jay, Baroness Jay of Paddington born, English BBC television journalist and politician, Minister for Women (1998-2001), Leader of the House of Lords and Lord Privy Seal (1988-2001).
- November 18, 1944 — Jackie Goldberg born, American politician and teacher serving as a member of the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education for the 5th district. She attended the University of California, Berkeley, where she was a member of SLATE and a major contributor to the Free Speech Movement.[4] She went on to earn a master's degree in education from the University of Chicago. In 1983, Goldberg was elected to the LAUSD Board of Education, where she served for two terms. In 2019, Goldberg announced that she would be running to be a member of the Board, this time for the fifth district. She was re-elected to the LAUSD's Board of Education. In January 2023, Goldberg was elected as the president of the Board of Education.[9] She was re-elected as board president in December 2023. Goldberg is openly lesbian.[11] She is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.[14]
- November 18, 1945 – Wilma Mankiller born, Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation (1985-1995), community organizer.
- November 18, 1948 – Ana Mendieta born in Cuba, American performance artist, painter, sculptor, and video artist. She came to the U.S. as a refugee in 1961. Mendicta died in 1985 when she either fell or was pushed from her 34th floor apartment window in Greenwich Village, New York. Carl Andre, her husband of eight months, the only other person in the room, was tried but was acquitted of murder, on grounds of reasonable doubt, due to lack of witnesses or conclusive evidence. Her death remains an open question – accident, suicide, or murder? Feminists have continued to stage protests at exhibits of Carl Andre’s work.
- November 18, 1960 – Yeşim Ustaoğlu born, Turkish producer-director-screenwriter, who made several award-winning shorts before her feature film debut in 1994, Iz (The Trace). Her 1999 film, Günese Yolculuk (Journey to the Sun) won the Blue Angel Award for Best European Film at Berlinale. Other films: Bulutlari Beklerken (Waiting for the Clouds), Pandora’nin Kutusu (Pandora’s Box), Araf (Somewhere in Between), and Tereddut (Clair Obscur).
- November 18, 1964 – Rita Cosby born, American television news anchor and correspondent; CBS Inside Edition (2007 to present); author of Quiet Hero: Secrets From My Father’s Past, about her father, a WWII Polish Resistance fighter.
- November 18, 2003 – The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rules 4–3 in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, giving the state legislature 180 days to change the law, making Massachusetts the first U.S. state to grant marriage rights to same-sex couples.
- November 18, 2019 – In New York City, hundreds of farmworkers and their family members marched with allies to the Manhattan offices of Trian Partners, one of the largest shareholders of the fast-food giant Wendy’s. The farmworkers demanded Wendy’s sign onto the Fair Food Program, which required fast-food giants to buy tomatoes from growers that follow a worker-designed code of conduct that includes a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment and abuse in the fields. Wendy’s was the only major fast-food chain that refused to sign up. Comedian and supporter Amy Schumer spoke at the farmworkers’ rally, “... you are not alone. Actors and comedians, here in New York, in Hollywood, all around the United States, know about your struggle. And you’re fighting for your children. I know a lot of your own family members have struggled in the fields and at work. And we’re with you, and we’re going to fight and bring more and more awareness to this fight. There’s no excuse for Wendy’s having not joined the Fair Food Program.”
- November 18, 2019 – California Senator Kamala Harris introduced the Wildfire Defense Act, a bill to set aside $1 billion each year to pay for better infrastructure, land-use, and evacuation route planning in fire-prone communities. The proposed legislation would benefit cities and towns throughout the country, but especially those in California, where many communities are vulnerable and residents are struggling to adapt to longer and more intense fire seasons.
- November 18, 2020 – In the UK, Alexandra Ankrah, the most senior Black employee on the Home Office team responsible for the Windrush compensation scheme, resigned, calling the scheme systemically racist and unfit for purpose. The scheme was intended to compensate “the Windrush generation” (people who came to the UK from Caribbean countries between 1948 and 1971, named for the Windrush, a ship which brought workers from the islands to fill post-WWII labour shortages in the UK) and their families for the losses and impacts they suffered due to being unable to demonstrate their lawful immigration status. After an internal investigation of earlier allegations of racial discrimination went nowhere, and several proposals she made to improve the scheme were rejected, Ahkrah resigned because the programme was “not supportive of people who have been victims” and “doesn’t acknowledge their trauma.” By the end of October, 2020, the program had been running for 18 months, but had only paid out £1.6m to 196 people, instead of the thousands of applicants that had been expected. Ankrah said, “The results speak for themselves: the sluggishness of getting money to people, the unwillingness to provide information and guidance that ordinary people can understand.”
- November 18, 2021 – A private chartered plane arrived in the UK, carrying 130 passengers: 35 teenage members of the Afghan girls youth development football team and their families. Their dramatic journey started over four months earlier, before Kabul fell to the Taliban and triggered an exodus. After months of hiding, then temporary asylum, political negotiations, frantic calls and WhatsApp messages, the help of a reality TV star – and the heroic efforts of Khalida Popal, former team captain – the Afghan girls’ youth development football team finally touched down on British soil with the promise of a new future with Leeds United. The group was in Pakistan on temporary visas before being accepted into Britain after intense wrangling. Khalida Popal, whose determined efforts were essential in at least three evacuations of women footballers, said, “Afghan female football was built on activism – to use the power of our voices and the power of our sporting platform for women’s empowerment and justice beyond sport. This team have been through a lot and have made many sacrifices on their journey to freedom. Since August, they have been displaced from their homes and have been desperately looking forward to the freedoms and basic human rights that we often take for granted.” The Afghan women’s national team were evacuated from Kabul to Australia in August after the country fell to the Taliban, while the youth football team were granted asylum in Portugal. But the youth development team, which trains girls from underprivileged backgrounds, became stranded after attempts to evacuate them to Doha failed when they were denied access to Kabul airport amid a terror threat. It took the combined efforts of Khalida Popal, the ROKit Foundation, Leeds United chair Andrea Radrizzani, the NGO Football for Peace, the UK Jewish charity Tzedek, FIFA members, contributions from celebrities like Kim Kardassian, and advisers and lawyers working at all hours of the night and day to pull strings and work all avenues to finally secure a safe place for the team. As the players entered quarantine in the UK, Radrizzani said Leeds United was ready to support the girls and their families in an “inclusive and prosperous” future. “We can’t wait to see them playing football again,” he said.
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- November 19, 1828 – Lakshmibai born, Maharani of the princely state of Jhansi in Northern India; leading figure in the Indian Rebellion of 1857, and a symbol of resistance against the British Raj for Indian nationalists. Just before her husband died, he adopted a child as his heir in the presence of the British political officer, to whom he gave a letter instructing that the child be treated with respect and that the governing of Jhansi be given to his widow for her lifetime. Because the boy was adopted, the British East India Company applied the Doctrine of Lapse, rejecting the child’s claim to the throne, and annexing the state to its territories. Lakshmibai was given an annual pension and ordered to leave the palace and the fort. When the 1857 rebellion started in Meerut, the Rani got permission from the British political officer to raise a body of armed men for her protection. The city was still relatively calm, but the Rani conducted a Haldi Kumkum ceremony (a married women’s gathering where they exchange turmeric and vermillion powder as symbols of their married status and wishes for their husbands to have long lives) with pomp in front of all the women of Jhansi to provide assurance to her subjects, and convince them that the British were cowards and not to be afraid of them. British forces under Major-General Hugh Rose arrived in March, and Rose demanded the city surrender, saying otherwise it would be destroyed. The Rani issued a proclamation: "We fight for independence. In the words of Lord Krishna, we will if we are victorious, enjoy the fruits of victory, if defeated and killed on the field of battle, we shall surely earn eternal glory and salvation." The city was besieged under heavy bombardment, and an attempt by forces sent by Tantia Tope, a rebellion leader, to relieve the city failed. On April 2, the British breached the city’s wall, and in spite of determined resistance forcing them to fight block by block, they reached the palace. The Rani had fled in the night with her adopted son, surrounded by guards, and joined the rebel forces. The city was given no quarter, not even the children. The Rani went with the rebel forces to Gwalior, but it was attacked by Rose’s forces in June, and the Rani was severely wounded while wearing a sowar’s (horse soldier’s) uniform, and exchanging fire with a British soldier. Not wishing the British to capture her body, she said to burn it. Local people did cremate her after she died. The British captured the city of Gwalior three days later. In the British report of this battle, Hugh Rose commented that Rani Lakshmibai was "personable, clever and beautiful" and she was "the most dangerous of all Indian leaders." Rose reported she had been buried "with great ceremony under a tamarind tree under the Rock of Gwalior, where I saw her bones and ashes." Twenty years after her death, Colonel Malleson wrote in History of the Indian Mutiny: “Whatever her faults in British eyes may have been, her countrymen will ever remember that she was driven by ill-treatment into rebellion, and that she lived and died for her country. We cannot forget her contribution for India.”
- November 19, 1845 – Agnes Giberne born in India to a British officer and his wife, prolific English novelist and science writer. The family returned to England when Agnes and her sister Eliza were small children, then educated privately by governesses and special masters. At age seven, Agnes began writing stories for Eliza. By age 17, her short stories were being published in magazines under her initials “A.G.” Her first children’s book, A Visit to Aunt Agnes, published in 1864, sold for two shillings. The first book published under her name was The Curate’s House. Her books for children were in the Victorian evangelical genre, emphasizing the children’s faults and the need for salvation. She also wrote historical novels, mostly set in England or France, but she’s now remembered for books popularizing the sciences, especially astronomy, many for teenagers or children. However, her 1879 best-seller, Sun, Moon and Stars: Astronomy for Beginners, was popular with all ages, and reissued in a revised edition in 1903. She died at age 94 in 1939.
- November 19, 1868 – 172 women suffragists attempted to vote in Vineland, New Jersey, in the presidential election to test Constitution’s 14th Amendment which states, "no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." The suffragists, including four African American women, were turned away, so they cast their votes in a women's ballot box overseen by 84-year-old Quaker Margaret Pryer.
- November 19, 1873 – Elizabeth Henderson McCombs born, New Zealand Labour Party politician. Though New Zealand women won the right to vote in 1893, they couldn’t run for office until 1919. In 1921, she was the first woman elected to the Christchurch City Council, and served as one of New Zealand’s first women Justices of the Peace. McCombs ran for parliament in 1928 and 1931, but lost both races. In 1933, she won, the first woman elected to New Zealand’s Parliament (1933-1935). She promoted equal pay for women, changes to unemployment benefits, which were more generous for men, and recruitment of women into the police. Her sisters were also notable: Christina Henderson was a leader of New Zealand women’s suffrage movement, a founding member the National Council of Women, and an advocate for Prohibition. She fought for equal pay for women teachers, and also became one of New Zealand’s first women Justices of the Peace. Stella Henderson was the first woman parliamentary correspondent for a major New Zealand newspaper. Stella wasn’t allowed to sit with the male correspondents in the Press Box, who vociferously objected to a woman’s presence, so she bought a permanent ticket for the Ladies Gallery and wrote her notes on her knees – eventually, after complaints from her employer, a section of the Ladies Gallery was converted into a press box for her.
- November 19, 1876 – Tatyana Afanasyeva born, Russian-Dutch mathematician and physicist who contributed to the fields of statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics; co-author of The Conceptual Foundations of the Statistical Approach in Mechanics with her husband, Austrian physicist Paul Ehrenfest, published in 1911.
- November 19, 1900 – Anna Seghers born as Anna Reiling, German author; joined the Communist party of Germany in 1928, and wrote Die Gefährten, a novel warning of the dangers of Fascism, which led to her arrest by the Gestapo. She left Germany in 1934, and wrote The Seventh Cross in Paris, then fled from the German invasion in 1940; after making her way to Mexico by 1941, she founded Freies Deutschland (Free Germany), an academic journal. The Seventh Cross was published in the U.S. in 1942, and made into a motion picture in 1944, one of the few depictions of a Nazi concentration camp written during WWII.
- November 19, 1901 – Nina Bari born, Soviet mathematician, one of the first women accepted to Moscow State University’s Department of Physics and Mathematics; known for work on trigonometric series.
- November 19, 1910 – Gladys Lounsbury Hobby born, American microbiologist whose research played a key role in the development and understanding of antibiotics. Her work took penicillin from a laboratory experiment to a mass-produced drug during WWII. Hobby graduated from Vassar in 1931, earned a Ph.D. in bacteriology from Columbia in 1935, while working for Presbyterian Hospital and the Columbia Medical School (1934-1943). Hobby did major work on creating a form of penicillin effective on human hosts. In 1940, Hobby and her colleagues, Dr. Karl Meyer and Dr. Martin Henry Dawson, began working on refining penicillin into a drug, performing the first tests on humans in 1940 and 1941, before presenting their findings about penicillin’s effectiveness at the American Society for Clinical Investigation. Media coverage helped bring their work to the attention of the U.S. government, which funded mass-production of penicillin during WWII. She went to work for Pfizer Pharmaceuticals in 1944, where she did early work on streptomycin, terramycin, and viomycin, used in treating tuberculosis. She died at age 82 in 1993.
- November 19, 1917 – Indira Gandhi born as Indira Nehru, Indian politician, first woman Prime Minister of India (1966-1977 and 1980-1984). She was assassinated in October 1984. She had previously served as Minister of Defense (1980-1982), Minister of Home Affairs (1970-1973), Minister of Finance (1969-1979), and Minister of Information and Broadcasting (1964-1966). Indira Gandhi was her father’s personal assistant, during Jawaharlal Nehru’s tenure as India’s prime minister (1947-1964).
- November 19, 1919 – Lolita Lebrón born, Puerto Rican nationalist. When she was 18 years old, her political views were radicalized because of the 1937 Ponce massacre, where members of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party were killed during a peaceful protest. She moved to New York City, and worked as a seamstress, but lost several jobs because she vocally protested discrimination against Puerto Rican workers. By 1946, she joined the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, and influenced the party to support more involvement for women in politics, and support for economic and social reforms to help end discrimination against women. In May, 1948, a bill was introduced before the Puerto Rican Senate which would restrain the rights of the independence and nationalist movements in the island. The Bill, often called the "Ley de la Mordaza" (gag law), made it illegal to display a Puerto Rican flag, to sing a patriotic tune, to talk of independence, or to fight for the island’s independence. The Bill, similar to the anti-communist Smith Law passed in the U. S., was signed into law on June 10, 1948, by the U.S.-appointed governor of Puerto Rico. By November, 1950, there were armed uprisings in Puerto Rico. An attempt to reach Harry S. Truman with a letter from Nationalist Party leader resulted in a shoot-out in which one nationalist was killed, and was labeled an assassination attempt. The survivor eventually received a presidential pardon. After Puerto Rico became a commonwealth of the U.S., Lebrón and several others attacked the U.S. House of Representatives on March 1, 1954, firing weapons and injuring five lawmakers, one of them seriously. When Lebrón was arrested, she shouted, "I did not come to kill anyone, I came to die for Puerto Rico!" She served 25 years of a 50 year sentence for attempted murder and conspiracy, but was pardoned in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter.
- November 19, 1920 – Gene Tierney born, American stage and film star, notably in Laura, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, and Leave Her to Heaven (for which she was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress). Her daughter Daria was born deaf and mentally disabled because one of Tierney’s fans broke a rubella quarantine and infected the pregnant actress while she was volunteering at the Hollywood Canteen. Tierney later suffered from bouts of Manic Depressive Disorder, and was unable to work for most of the years from 1955 to 1961, but made a comeback in the 1962 film Advise and Consent, followed by Toys in the Attic. She stopped working in films in 1964, but made a few appearances on television before her death in 1991.
- November 19, 1924 – Dame Margaret Turner-Warwick born, British physician and thoracic specialist; first woman president of the Royal College of Physicians (1989-1992).
- November 19, 1932 – Eleanor F. Helin born, American astronomer, principal investigator of the Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) program of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory; she discovered several comets, and was the discoverer or co-discoverer of over 900 numbered minor planets and asteroids.
- November 19, 1937 – Penelope Leach born, British psychologist and author specializing in child development and parenting; author of Your Baby and Child: From Birth to Age Five.
- November 19, 1939 – Jane J. Mansbridge born, American political scientist; the Charles F. Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Noted for her contributions to democratic theory, feminist scholarship, and the empirical study of social movements and direct democracy. Her publications include Beyond adversary democracy, Why we lost the ERA, and Negotiating agreement in politics. In 2018, Uppsala University announced that Mansbridge would be the next laureate of the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science. When asked what made her a feminist, her short response is: “Harvard”. The sexism and misogyny commonplace in 1960s academia came as a shock and a call to action for the graduate from the all-female Wellesley College. Women were not allowed in the main library at Harvard, and were not allowed in the Harvard Faculty Club without a male escort. And that restriction included women professors.
- November 19, 1942 – Sharon Olds born, American poet, winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for Stag’s Leap, and the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry for The Dead and the Living. She was a Professor at New York University for 40 years. While she was not involved the Women’s Movement in the late 1960s, a time when she was married and had her first child, the movement did cause her to realize that “I had never questioned that men had all the important jobs. And that was shocking ...” When Olds first sent her poetry to a magazine in the 1970s, the reply was: "This is a literary magazine. If you wish to write about this sort of subject, may we suggest the Ladies' Home Journal. The true subjects of poetry are ... male subjects, not your children." Eventually, she published her first collection, Satan Says, in 1980 when she was 37 years old. In 2005, she declined an invitation from First Lady Laura Bush to the National Book Festival, stating in an open letter published in The Nation, “So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it."
- November 19, 1956 – Eileen Collins born, American astronaut, first woman Space Shuttle pilot, and first female commander of a U.S. Spacecraft, logging a total of 537 hours in space.
- November 19, 1956 – Ann Curry born on Guam, American television journalist who reported from war zones in Syria, Palestine, Darfur, Congo, Central African Republic, Kosovo, Israel, Lebanon, Afghanistan. and Iraq.
- November 19, 1958 – Annette Gordon-Reed born, American historian and Harvard law professor; her book, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (1997), won the Pulitzer Prize for History and the National Book Award for Nonfiction.
- November 19, 1962 – Jodie Foster born, American actress, director, and producer; winner of two Best Actress Oscars and two Golden Globes, for The Accused and The Silence of the Lambs. She also won an Alliance of Women Film Journalists 2007 Women Image Award. She made her acting debut in 1968 as a child in an episode of the TV series Mayberry R.F.D., and transitioned in the 1970s to films, including Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, and her break-through film in 1974, Taxi Driver. After graduating from Yale, she had trouble getting cast in adult roles, until the 1988 drama, The Accused. In 1992, she founded her own production company, Egg Pictures, and made her debut as a director with Little Man Tate, followed by The Beaver, and Money Monster. She rarely talks about her private life, especially after she was stalked by obsessed fan John Hinckley during her freshman year at Yale, who tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan in March, 1981, and claimed his motive was to impress her. Because of the media frenzy, she had to be accompanied by bodyguards on campus, and even though she had nothing to do with Hinckley’s crimes, had to give videotaped testimony, which was played at his trial. She was then targeted by other stalkers while still at Yale. In 2014, she married actress and fine art photographer Alexandra Hedison.
- November 19, 1967 – Randi Kaye born, American television news journalist; investigative reporter for the CNN program Anderson Cooper 360°, and for CNN’s documentary unit. She won an Emmy for Outstanding Coverage of a Current Business News Story for her reporting on black market infertility treatments in 2006. After her father committed suicide in 2002, she spoke out about her struggles to understand his death, and to promote suicide prevention.
- November 19, 1984 – Brittany Maynard born, American activist for the right-to-die, and legalization of assisted dying, after she was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. She moved from California to Oregon after being given a prognosis of six months to live in April, 2014, and ended her life on November 1, 2014, in accordance with Oregon state law regarding death with dignity. In response to criticism of her decision by the Pope and the National Right to Live Committee, Maynard’s mother responded, "My twenty-nine-year-old daughter's choice to die gently rather than suffer physical and mental degradation and intense pain does not deserve to be labeled as reprehensible by strangers a continent away who do not know her or the particulars of her situation." In part because of Maynard’s videotaped message made shortly before her death, California has since passed an act which allows terminally ill adults to self-administer lethal drugs under limited and specific circumstances.
- November 19, 2001 – The World Toilet Organization started World Toilet Day to highlight the 2.4 billion people living without a toilet, with the goal of preventing the spread of diseases like cholera, typhoid and hepatitis, as well as ensuring that women and children are not at risk of assault or rape because they lack indoor toilets.
- November 19, 2019 – In the UK, the leaked results of an independent review chaired by maternity expert Donna Ockenden for NHS Improvement shows that at least 42 babies and three mothers died preventable deaths, and 52 other babies suffered brain damage after being deprived of oxygen, in the wards of a hospital in Shropshire between 1979 and 2017. This is described as the largest maternity scandal in the history of the National Health Service, and more affected families came forward with their stories.
- November 19, 2020 – Joy Harjo, first Native American poet to serve as U.S. Poet Laureate, was reappointed to a rare third term by the Library of Congress. Most appointees serve two terms.
- November 19, 2021 – In the UK, flexible working is something employees want, and employers know they have to offer it, because it transformed almost every office in the nation during the pandemic and it’s here to stay. It enables disabled people, and workers with childcare and eldercare responsibilities to work from home, but economists and employment experts warn it could lead to more inequality at the office, particularly for working mothers. Bank of England policymaker Catherine Mann warned of a “she-cession,” saying women who accept their employer’s offer of working mostly from home risk damaging their careers, as they aren’t returning to the office after Covid to the same extent as men. Anna Whitehouse, a broadcaster and the founder of Flex Appeal, a campaign for the adoption of flexible working across all UK jobs, believes women are disadvantaged because they usually take responsibility for looking after children. “I got so frustrated with Catherine Mann’s comments, that it’s a female issue, for us to fix,” she said. “We’re obviously going to be taking up more flexible working because of the way the system is, the burden of childcare is still firmly strapped to female shoulders. But that’s not to say that there are these hapless dads who don’t want to step up to the challenge.” She added, “We are in a system set up for women to fail, to an extent, and I think we need companies to help us bridge that gender pay gap.” Indeed, some campaigners advocate increased uptake of flexible working by men as one way of improving pay disparity, especially given data from the Office for National Statistics which suggests that the gender pay gap widened during the pandemic. Ann Francke, chief executive of the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), is concerned because the majority of organisations have not yet done anything to ensure that a home office is not an obstacle. According to a recent survey, 30% of managers admitted their organisation had not taken steps to ensure employees were not passed over, while 38% did not know. Only 33% of companies had put procedures in place to ensure staff working remotely had an equal shot at future promotions. “Even though both men and women wish to work flexibly, of course more women than men will request it, and the implication is they are the ones who will suffer,” said Francke. “It is extremely important that organisations are not complacent. They need training on judging people and promotions by productivity not presenteeism.”
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- November 20, 1850 – Charlotte Garrigue born, American feminist and humanitarian who married Czech statesman Tomáš Masaryk in 1878. He added her surname to his, becoming Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. After their marriage, she was involved in social and humanitarian causes in Prague. With Karla Máchová, a leader of the Czech woman’s suffrage movement, she organized a lecture series for women on socialism, and advocated women’s equality. The Garrigue Masaryk family was separated during WWI, as he went into exile with their daughter Olga, traveling to gain support from world leaders for the independence of Czechoslovakia, while she and their other children remained in Prague, under “police supervision.” In 1915, their son Herbert died of typhus, while daughter Alice, a sociology professor, was arrested, then kept under house arrest, but taught classes in her home. At the end of the war, the family was reunited, and Masaryk served as the first President of Czechoslovakia (1918-1935). In 1923, Charlotte Garrigue Masaryk died at age 72, after suffering from cardiac problems.
- November 20, 1857 – Helena Westermarck born, Finnish artist and writer who was a Swedish speaker and worked for long periods in France; noted for her realistic style of portraiture. At the 1889 Exposition Universelle, her painting Strykerskor earned an honorable mention. But later she became ill with tuberculosis, and gave up painting, turning to writing as a critic and biographer, especially of notable Finnish women, regarded in Finland as significant contributions to Finnish culture and history.
- November 20, 1858 – Selma Lagerlöf born, Swedish author and educator; first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1909). Noted for her novels Gösta Berlings saga (The Story of Gösta Berling); and Herr Arnes penningar (Herr Arne's Hoard).
- November 20, 1869 – Zinaida Gippius born, Russian poet, novelist, playwright, editor, and religious thinker, a major figure in the Russian symbolism movement; when writing critical essays early in her career, she often used male pseudonyms. While she and her husband, author Dmitry Merezhkovsky, were critical of Tsarism after the 1905 Revolution, and spent much time out of Russia for the next several years, they denounced the 1917 October Revolution as a cultural disaster, and emigrated to Poland, then France, and later Italy. Her poetry is considered her best work.
- November 20, 1885 – Olive Wetzel Dennis born, American engineer whose railway passenger travel design innovations included: seats that partially reclined; stain-resistant upholstery in passenger cars; larger dressing rooms for women, supplied with free paper towels, liquid soap and drinking cups; ceiling lights that could be dimmed at night; individual window vents (which she patented) to allow passengers to bring in fresh air while trapping dust; and air-conditioning for compartments. Her design patents were signed over to the railroad, so her contributions were not credited to her for decades.
- November 20, 1896 – Rose Pesotta born in Ukraine to a family of Jewish grain merchants; American anarchist, feminist, and labor organizer. Beyond her childhood schooling, she read books in her father’s library, some of which first exposed her to anarchism. Her parents tried to arrange a marriage for her in 1913, but she refused, instead emigrating at age 16 to New York City, where she worked as a seamstress in a shirtwaist factory. In 1914, Pesotta joined the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, becoming heavily involved in activism and educating seamstresses. She was also a regular contributor to union and anarchist publications, in both Yiddish and English, including the anarchist newspaper Road to Freedom. Pesotta also attended summer schools at Bryn Mawr and Wisconsin in 1922 and 1930, and Brookwood Labor College, a school to train labor activists (1924–1926). In the 1920s, she became an ILGWU staff member, and traveled as an organizer. In 1933, she was sent to Los Angeles to organize garment workers, who were mostly Mexican immigrants, labeled as “unskilled workers” so employers could pay them much less. Pesotta, Anita Andrade Castro, and other ILGWU leaders rallied them to strike for 26 days in 1933, one of the most influential strikes in Los Angles after passage of the New Deal’s National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which enforced living wages and the right to bargain collectively. After this success, she was appointed as vice-president of the union in 1934. Later, when the press ignored one of her garment worker strikes in favor of showing the spring fashion shows, she dressed her workers in the very evening gowns they had made, and stole headlines with a high-fashion picket line in front of the Biltmore Hotel. But after working extensively with Los Angeles Local 484 while they were organizing, when she sought to manage the local, ILGWU president David S. Dubinsky rejected her request. Pesotta resigned from the union’s staff, in her resignation letter stating that the "men to whom I have been so useful" did not seem "to recognize the fact that I was competent" to manage locals. In 1944, she turned down a new term on the executive board, saying she could not be the only woman on the board when 85% of the union’s membership were women. She returned to work as a seamstress, and published two memoirs, Bread Upon the Waters, and Days of Our Lives. She died of cancer at age 69 in 1965.
- November 20, 1897 – Germaine Krull born in Posen, then Germany, now Poznań, Poland; Photographer, political activist, and hotelier. She was a pioneer in avant-garde photomontage. Born to a German family which moved frequently, she was schooled by her father, an engineer and free thinker, who let her dress as a boy when she was a child. She spent two or three years (1915-1917 or 18) at a photography school in Munich, then opened her own studio there, specializing in portraits. Her involvement in the Communist Party of Germany led to her arrest and then expulsion from Bavaria in 1920. She went to Russia, was imprisoned there as an “anti-Bolshevik” and expelled from there too. She resumed her photographic career in Berlin (1922-1925), moved to Amsterdam, then to Paris, where she entered a marriage of convenience with Dutch communist filmmaker Joris Ivens (1927-1943) to get a Dutch passport. She shot fashion photography, nudes and portraits, and published her best-known work, Métal, a portfolio of industrial landscapes, bridges and metal objects in 1928. After that, she worked mostly in photojournalism for French publications like Vumagazine until the mid-1930s, when she moved to Monte Carlo. In the 1940s, she traveled in Brazil, French Equatorial Africa and spent months in Algiers. After WWII, she traveled in Southeast Asia, where she became a part-owner of the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand, and stayed there until 1966. Next, while in Northern India, she converted to the Sakya school of Tibetan Buddhism. Her last major publication was a 1968 book, Tibetans in India, which included a portrait of the Dalai Lama. After a stroke, she was in a nursing home in Germany, and died in 1985.
- November 20, 1907 – Fran Allison born, American radio and television comedian, singer, and host; best known for the weekday puppet show, Kukla, Fran and Ollie (1947-1957), and the CBS Children’s Film Festival (1966-1977).
- November 20, 1910 – Pauli Murray born, American civil and women’s rights activist, lawyer, and author. She was the first African American woman ordained as an Episcopal priest, and among the first women to be ordained by that church. Orphaned very young in Baltimore, Maryland, she was raised by her maternal grandparents in Durham, North Carolina. After being denied entry to Columbia University because it was then a males-only school, at 16, she went to Hunter College in New York, graduating with a BA in English in 1933. During the Depression, she worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps at an all-woman camp founded at the urging of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, whom she met when she visited the camp, but Murray later clashed with the camp’s director after he found a Marxist book among her belongings, and he disapproved of her relationship with Peg Holmes, a white counselor. They both left the camp in 1935, and traveled the country on foot, hitching rides and hopping freight trains, before finding employment, Murray with the YWCA. In 1940, Murray was arrested for sitting in the whites-only section of a Virginia bus, a violation of Virginia’s segregation laws. After this incident, and her involvement with the socialist Workers’ Defense League, Murray enrolled in the law school at Howard University after being denied entry to the University of North Carolina because of her race. At Howard, her awareness of sexism increased, which she called “Jane Crow” (alluding to the Jim Crow laws which enforced racial segregation in the Southern U.S.). She graduated first in her class, but was denied entry to Harvard for post-graduate work because of her gender. In 1964, she delivered her speech “Jim Crow and Jane Crow” in Washington DC. She earned a master’s degree in law at University of California, Berkeley, and in 1965 she became the first African American to receive a Doctor of Juridical Science degree from Yale Law School. As a lawyer, Murray took on civil and women’s rights cases. Thurgood Marshall, then chief counsel for the NAACP, called her 1950 book, States’ Laws on Race and Color, the “bible” of the civil rights movement. Murray was appointed by President Kennedy to serve on the 1961-1963 Presidential Commission on the Status of Women, chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt until her death in 1962, then run by Esther Peterson, noted activist for labor, women’s rights, and the consumer movement. Murray was a co-founder of the National Organization for Women in 1966. In recognition of Murray’s seminal work on gender discrimination, Ruth Bader Ginsburg named her as co-author of a brief in the 1971 case, Reed v. Reed, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that administrators of estates cannot be named in a way which discriminates between sexes. The case involved the parents of a young man who had died, where their petitions to the Idaho Probate Court were decided in favor of the father only because the Idaho code specified that “males must be preferred to females” in appointing estate administrators. It was a landmark case because it was the first time that the Supreme Court ruled that the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause prohibited differential treatment based on sex. Murray taught law at Brandeis University from 1968 until 1973, when she became involved with Episcopal Church programs, and in 1977, at the age of 67, she was ordained as a priest, and became the first woman to celebrate the Eucharist at an Episcopal Church in North Carolina, then worked until 1984 in a parish in Washington DC. Murray died in 1985 of pancreatic cancer.
- November 20, 1913 – Libertas Schulze-Boysen born in Paris to German parents; she joined the Nazi Party in 1933, but became disillusioned, and left the party early in 1937, using time needed for household duties and taking care of her husband as an excuse. With her husband, Harro Schulze-Boysen, she began sounding out like-minded people to form a secret resistance group. In 1940, while she was writing film reviews for Essener Zeitung, Germany’s largest regional newspaper, she was visited by a Soviet intelligence officer, and introduced him to her husband. In 1942, the Gestapo discovered their resistance group, and her husband was arrested. She destroyed all the illegal documents, including some photographic evidence of Nazi war crimes, that the group had collected, and warned their friends, but she was also arrested a month after her husband. While in prison, she wrote a number of remarkable letters and poems to her mother, including memories of her childhood. She and her husband were brought before the Reichskriegsgericht (Reich Court Martial). They were both charged with “preparation” to commit high treason, and he was additionally charged with wartime treason, military sabotage and espionage, while she was charged with helping the enemy and espionage. On December 19, 1942, they were both given death sentences, and executed on December 22, 1942. She had turned 29 a month earlier.
- November 20, 1918 – Sister Mary Corita born as Corita Kent; American Catholic nun who was a Pop Art silkscreen artist; she left the religious order in 1967, continued peace work with Physicians for Social Responsibility; designer of the 1985 version of the U.S. Postal Service’s ‘Love’ stamp.
- November 20, 1919 – Jane Cook Wright born, American surgeon, and pioneering cancer researcher, known for her contributions to chemotherapy. She developed a technique using human tissue culture rather than laboratory mice to test the effects of potential drugs on cancer cells. She also pioneered the use of the drug methotrexate to treat breast cancer and skin cancer. Her father was one of the first African American graduates from Harvard Medical School; her grandfather, and other members of her family including her sister Barbara, were also doctors. After graduating from Smith College, she earned a full scholarship to study medicine at New York Medical College, graduating at the top of her class in 1945 with an honors award. She interned at Bellevue Hospital (1945-1946), and completed her surgical residency at Harlem Hospital in 1948. In 1949, she joined her father in research at the Harlem Hospital Cancer Research Center, succeeding him as director when he died in 1952. She worked on developing dosage recommendations for the new drugs beings developed to treat cancer, and campaigned for chemotherapy treatment to be more widely available. She also studied the effects of several different drugs on tumors. In 1951 she and her team were the first to identify methotrexate as an effective tool against cancerous tumors. Wright's early work brought chemotherapy out of the realm of an untested, experimental hypothetical treatment, into the realm of tested, proven effective cancer therapeutics, saving millions of lives. Her work with this form of chemotherapy proved to be the stepping stone for combination therapy as well as the individual adjustments due to patient toxicity. During her career, Cooke collaborated with cell biologist and physiologist Jewel Plummer Cobb, another noted African American woman scientist. In 1964, she was the only woman among seven physicians who helped to found the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and in 1971, she was the first woman elected president of the New York Cancer Society. She worked in Ghana in 1957 and in Kenya in 1961, treating cancer patients. She was vice president of the African Research and Medical Foundation (1973-1984). Wright retired in 1985 and was appointed emerita professor at New York Medical College in 1987.
- November 20, 1923 – Nadine Gordimer born, South African author and anti-apartheid activist; 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature; member of the African National Congress during the period it was banned; her books were also banned by the white South African government; she is known for July’s People, The Conservationist, and The Pickup.
- November 20, 1925 – Maya Plisetskaya born, Soviet ballet dancer, choreographer and ballet director; as a child, she was taken in by her aunt in 1938, after her father was arrested and executed during the Great Purge. Her mother was also arrested, but sent to prison, and then concentration camp. She studied at the Bolshoi Ballet School beginning at age 9, and first performed with the Bolshoi Ballet at age 11. At age 18, Plisetskaya became a member of the Bolshoi Ballet company, quickly rising to be their leading soloist. When the Soviet Union began allowing tours outside the country, she went with the Bolshoi in 1959, and later was allowed to tour as a star on her own. Her technical skill and dramatic presence set a higher standard for other dancers, and she created a number of leading roles, including Phrygia in 1958’s Spartacus. She was proclaimed the prima ballerina assoluta of the Bolshoi Theatre in 1960. In 1971, she ventured into choreography, with her ballet, Anna Karenina, followed by The Seagull and others. She was ballet director of the Rome Opera (1983-1984), and artistic director of the Ballet Teatro Linco Nacional in Madrid (1987-1990). In 1996, she was named President of the Imperial Russian Ballet, and danced the Dying Swan, her signature role, at a gala in her honor. She died in 2015.
- November 20, 1929 – Penelope Hobhouse born, British garden designer, author, and television presenter; awarded the MBE in the 2014 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to British Gardening. The Story of Gardening; Garden Style; and Plants in Garden History are among her many books.
- November 20, 1930 – Christine Arnothy born in Budapest, French author who went through the 1945 siege of Budapest, and later fled Hungary with her family. Her teenage diary was her only remaining possession when they arrived in France. She wrote J’ai quinze ans et je ne veux pas mourir (I am Fifteen and I Do Not Want to Die) based on her diary, which was published in 1955. The sequel, It is Not So Easy to Live, chronicles the journey to Paris after escaping from Hungary. Arnothy also wrote novels and, under the pen name William Dickinson, detective stories.
- November 20, 1940 – Wendy Doniger born, American Indologist (Indian subcontinent studies), a scholar of Sanskrit and Indian textual traditions; author of Asceticism and Eroticism in the Mythology of Siva; Hindu Myths: A Sourcebook; The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology; Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts; and The Rig Veda: An Anthology, 108 Hymns Translated from the Sanskrit. She is the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of History of Religions at the University of Chicago, where she has taught since 1978.
- November 20, 1940 – Anna Sofaer born, American researcher, artist, documentary filmmaker, and educator on the Ancestral Puebloans of the American Southwest and other ancient cultures. In 1977, while working as a volunteer recording rock art at Chaco Culture National Historical Park, she saw a connection between two spiral petroglyphs on Fajada Butte and three large stone slabs leaning against the cliff which channeled light and shadow onto the petroglyphs, bisecting one of the spirals, and she conjectured that they were connected to the winter solstice and equinoxes, and possibly even the lunar cycle. That section of the Fajada Butte is now known as the Sun Dagger, and there is an ongoing debate among experts about the importance and age of the Sun Dagger site., but a number of respected people in the field have seen some value in her theories. In 1978, Sofaer founded the non-profit Solstice Project, through which she produced a book of peer-reviewed research papers, Chaco Astronomy: An Ancient American Cosmology, and has also produced and directed two documentaries, The Sun Dagger and The Mystery of Chaco Canyon, for PBS.
- November 20, 1940 – Helma Sanders-Brahms born, German film producer-director, screenwriter, and feminist; noted for her influential films Unter dem Pflaster ist der Strand (Under the Pavement Lies the Strand), and Germany, Pale Mother.
- November 20, 1941 – Haseena Moin born, Pakistani playwright and screenwriter; she began her career writing radio dramas for Radio Pakistan Karachi, then wrote scripts for television, including the first original television drama not based on a novel. Known for her drama serial Dhoop Kinare, which first aired in 1987. She has also written scripts for motion pictures, and is considered the nation’s best dramatist.
- November 20, 1942 – Meredith Monk born, American composer, vocalist, director, filmmaker, and choreographer; her music was used in the Coen Brothers film The Big Lebowski, and the 1982 movie Plainsong.
- November 20, 1945 – Deborah Eisenberg born, American short-story writer; professor of writing at Columbia University; honored with six O. Henry Awards (1986, 1995, 1997, 2002, 2006, and 2013), and the 2000 Rea Award for the Short Story; her short story collection, Twilight of the Superheroes, was published in 2006.
- November 20, 1946 – Judy Woodruff born, American television journalist; anchor of PBS News Hour. Woodruff is a board member of the International Women’s Media Foundation, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
- November 20, 1959 – Diane M. James born, British Independence Party politician; Member of the European Parliament for South East England (2014-2020); Leader of the UK Independence Party (2016); Deputy Co-Chair of the UK Independence Party (2016), and UK Independence Party spokesperson for the Home Affairs, and Justice (2014-2016).
- November 20, 1966 – Jill Thompson born, American comic book writer-illustrator; noted for work on Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, and her own Scary Godmother series.
- November 20, 1968 – Robin Canup born, American astrophysicist, notable for her research on the giant impact hypothesis, and origins and planets; awarded the 2003 Harold C. Urey Prize.
- November 20, 1976 – Dominique Dawes born; part of the ‘Magnificent Seven’ U.S. Women’s Olympic Gymnastics team in 1996 at Atlanta, where she became the first African-American to win a gold medal in gymnastics. Dawes was honored with the 2003 "Caring Hands, Caring Hearts" Award by Ronald McDonald House Charities. She was President of the Women's Sports Federation (2004–2006), and a commentator for the Beijing Olympics in 2008. In 2010, President Obama appointed Dawes as co-chair of the newly renamed President's Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition.
- November 20, 1999 – Gwendolyn Ann Smith promotes the first Transgender Day of Remembrance, to honor the memory of Rita Hester, a transgender woman killed in 1998 – vigils and other events are now promoted by GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation).
- November 20, 2019 – Susan Choi’s novel Trust Exercise, about students at a performing arts high school, won the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction, and Sarah M. Bloom won the Nonfiction Award for her memoir The Yellow House, the story of her family and the shotgun house in New Orleans that was their home for almost 40 years. Since their founding in 1950, the National Book Awards are among the most prestigious literary prizes in the U.S. Out of over 70 authors who have won National Book Awards to date, 18 have been women.
- November 20, 2020 – Seven more women have come forward to accuse Gérald Marie, former European president of Elite, one of the world’s premier modeling agencies, of sexual misconduct. In October, 2020, nine women made allegations ranging from sexual harassment to rape against him. Lesa Amoore, who says Marie harassed her and attempted to sexually assault her twice over the three year period that she worked for Elite in the early 1990s, attested: “Anyone around for any length of time saw Gerald was chasing models. I mean, he’d do so in front of other people. Models shared warnings, while bookers like mine tried to help us steer clear.” British former model Catherine Donaldson, who says he attempted to assault her in 1985 when she was 19, and after he failed, humiliated her by requiring daily weigh-ins at his office for weeks because he claimed she was “fat,” declared: “Men like Gérald Marie do not exist in a vacuum. What he was doing was in plain sight.” Several of the women said that after they refused his aggressive sexual demands, he canceled photo shoots and other work that had been scheduled for them. Gérald Marie is no longer with Elite, but is connected with Oui Management, a top Parisian agency, as an investor with “significant control.”
- November 20, 2021 – President Joe Biden released a statement acknowledging Transgender Day of Remembrance. According to the Human Rights Campaign, 2021 had been the deadliest year on record for transgender and non-binary people, with at least 45 killed so far. Biden lamented "those we lost in the deadliest year on record for transgender Americans" as well as "the countless other transgender people — disproportionately Black and brown transgender women and girls — who face brutal violence, discrimination, and harassment."
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- November 21, 1631 – Catharina Questiers born, Dutch poet and dramatist, one of the few successful women poets in late 17th century Holland; The Battle for the Laurels was a joint publication with poet Cornelia van der Veer of a friendly contest - paired poems to see who most deserved the poetic laurels - which was declared a tie.
- November 21, 1835 – Hetty Green born, American businesswoman and financier, called the “Witch of Wall Street,” the richest woman in America, and a terrible miser; her daughter was dressed in cast-off clothes, and Green refused to pay for a doctor to set her teenaged son’s leg when it was broken in an accident. His leg later had to be amputated.
- November 21, 1868 – Martha Wollstein born, American physician and pediatric pathologist. Her first experimental work involved infant diarrhea and confirmed earlier studies relating the dysentery bacillus to the disease. At the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research, she collaborated on the first experimental work on polio in the U.S., worked on an early investigation of pneumonia and developed, with Harold Amoss, a method for preparing antimeningitis serum. She also was a pioneer in early research on mumps, indicating, though not proving, its viral nature. After 1921, Wollstein investigated pediatric pathology at the Babies Hospital, especially jaundice, congenital anomalies, tuberculosis, meningitis, and leukemia. In 1930, she became the first woman member of the American Pediatric Society.
- November 21, 1878 – Clara Westhoff born, German sculptor who traveled to Paris with expressionist painter Paula Modersohn-Becker, and studied with Auguste Rodin; later she married Rainer Maria Rilke, who was frequently absent for long periods of time, but they kept up a voluminous correspondence to maintain what Rilke called “an interior marriage.”
- November 21, 1897 – Mollie Steimer born in Tsarist Russia, U.S. anarchist, trade unionist, and advocate for prisoners’ rights; arrested with five others in 1918 for printing and distributing leaflets denouncing U.S. military action against the Bolshevik revolution. Their trial became a cause célèbre, the first major prosecution under the Sedition Act, notable for the blatant infringement of the defendants’ rights. They were all were represented by attorney Harry Weinberger, well-known for defending conscientious objectors, pacifists, and radicals. The two-week trial was in October, 1918. Weinberger argued that, since the defendants’ actions did not directly interfere with the war effort, they were not punishable under the provisions of the Sedition Act. Despite his defense, all but one of the defendants were found guilty, and four were given major sentences, including Steimer. She was convicted and sentenced to prison. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court. Steimer was deported to Russia in 1921. She protested in Russia against Bolshevik persecutions of Russian anarchists, and was deported again. She went first to Germany, then to Paris, aiding political prisoners and anarchist exiles. After the Germans took Paris in 1940, she was arrested and sent to an internment camp, but was released. She fled from Europe, and spent the rest of her life in Mexico.
- November 21, 1905 – Georgina Battiscombe born, British biographer specialising in lives of Victorian era figures, including Oxford Movement novelist Charlotte Mary Yonge; philanthropist Catherine Gladstone, the wife of Prime Minister William Gladstone; author Christina Rossetti; UK Queen Consort Alexandra of Denmark; and John Keble: A Study in Limitations, about the English churchman, which won the 1963 James Tait Black Memorial Prize. She lived to age 100.
- November 21, 1906 – Mary Ellen Bute born, abstract animation innovator, pioneer in electronic imagery, “Abstronic” (1952) very early use of electronically generated imagery.
- November 21, 1908 – Elizabeth George Speare born, American children’s author, known for historical novels, including two Newbery medal winners, The Witch of Blackbird Pond and The Bronze Bow; 1989 Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal for contributions to children’s literature.
- November 21, 1918 – The Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918: Women in the UK over age 21 have the right to stand for election as candidates for Members of Parliament. This followed the Representation of the People Act 1918, which passed in February, and reformed the electoral system so men over age 21, whether or not they owned property, and women over age 30 who resided in the constituency or occupied land or premises with a rateable value above £5, or whose husbands did, gained the right to vote. It extended the local government franchise to include women aged over 21 on the same terms as men. The Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928 finally enfranchised all women over age 21, regardless of any property qualification. In December, 1918, seventeen women stood for election.
- November 21, 1924 – Milka Planinc born, Yugoslav politician from Croatia; first woman Prime Minister of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1982-1986); Secretary of the League of Communists of Croatia (1971-1982); President of the Assembly of the Socialist Republic of Croatia (1968–1971); member of the Presidium of the League of Communists of Croatia (1966-1968); Secretary for Education of the Socialist Republic of Croatia (1963-1965); Secretary of Cultural Affairs of the City of Zagreb (1961-1963); elected to the Croatian Central Committee in 1959.
- November 21, 1929 – Marilyn French born, radical American feminist author of nonfiction and fiction; Beyond Power: On Women, Men and Morals; From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women; best known for her novel, The Women's Room. She survived esophageal cancer in 1992, but died of heart failure at age 79 in May 2009.
- November 21, 1932 – Dame Beryl Bainbridge born, English author; won the Whitbread Prize twice, for Injury Time (1977), and Every Man for Himself (1996).
- November 21, 1933 – Etta Zuber Falconer born, American mathematician and educator; one of the first African American women to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics, in 1969, from Emory University, with a dissertation on abstract algebra; she was as a mathematics instructor at Spelman College in 1965, and later became a professor, and then head of the department there; she earned a Master of Science degree in computer science in 1982 to enable her to set up a computer science department at Spelman. In 1995, Falconer was honored by the Association for Women in Mathematics, who awarded her the Louise Hay Award for outstanding achievement in mathematics education.
- November 21, 1937 – Marlo Thomas born, American actress-producer, known for the award-winning feminist children's franchise, Free to Be... You and Me, which she started in 1972. In 1973, Thomas joined Gloria Steinem, Patricia Carbine, and Letty Cottin Pogrebin as the founders of the Ms. Foundation for Women, the first women’s fund in the U.S. In 2014, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama.
- November 21, 1940 – Natalia Makarova born, Russian prima ballerina absoluta, and choreographer. She has staged and directed many productions for the American Ballet Theatre, from the late 1970s into the 21st century.
- November 21, 1942 – Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul born, German Social Democratic politician, from the left wing of the party (sometimes called ‘Red Heidi’); Federal Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development (1998-2009); Member of the German Bundestag (1987-2013); Socialist Member of the European Parliament (1979-1987); President of the European Coordination Bureau of International Youth Organisation (1977-1979).
- November 21, 1945 – Goldie Hawn born, American actress, comedian, dancer, and producer; she first came to national attention in the sketch comedy show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (1968-1973). Hawn won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the 1969 film Cactus Flower. In 2003, she started the Hawn Foundation, which sponsors youth education programs for underprivileged children, as well as research studies to improve academic performance. She is a supporter of the LGBTQ community.
- November 21, 1952 – Janne Kristiansen born, Norwegian jurist; head of the Norwegian Police Security Service (2009-2012); first head of the Criminal Cases Review Commission (2004-2009).
- November 21, 1953 – Tina Brown born in England, British-American journalist, magazine editor, and columnist. Editor of Vanity Fair (1984-1992), The New Yorker (1992-1998), and founding editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast (2008-2013). In 2007, she was inducted into the Magazine Editors’ Hall of Fame.
- November 21, 1970 – Karen Dávila born, Filipina journalist, radio broadcaster, and news reader; winner of over 20 awards for professional journalism from local and international organizations.
- November 21, 1977 – Yolande James born, Canadian Quebec Liberal Party politician; first black woman and youngest Member of the National Assembly of Quebec, representing Nelligan (2004-2014); first black cabinet member in Quebec, as Minister of Immigration and Cultural Communities & Minister of Family; political commentator on CBC programs.
- November 21, 1992 – After a damning story appeared in the Washington Post, U.S. Senator Bob Packwood (Republican-Oregon) issued an apology but refused to discuss allegations that he had made unwelcome sexual advances or assaulted at least 10 women, mainly former staffers and lobbyists, between 1969 and 1992: "I'm apologizing for the conduct that it was alleged that I did."
- November 21, 2017 – PBS suspended TV host Charlie Rose after eight women told The Washington Post that he made unwanted sexual advances, from groping them to making lewd phone calls to walking around naked in front of them. Three of the women spoke on the record; the others spoke on condition of anonymity, citing Rose's power in the industry and his allegedly volatile temper. Rose acknowledged acting "insensitively," although he said not all of the details were accurate. "It is essential that these women know I hear them and that I deeply apologize for my inappropriate behavior," said Rose, age 75, who was the host of The Charlie Rose Show on PBS from 1991 until the show was removed from the air in November 2017.
- November 21, 2017 – BuzzFeed News reports that Representative John Conyers (Democrat-Michigan) settled a wrongful dismissal complaint filed in 2015 by a former employee who said she was fired after refusing to "succumb" to Conyers' sexual advances. BuzzFeed cited sworn affidavits and other documents from the complaint. The woman, who asked to remain anonymous fearing retaliation, said she complained in 2014 to Congress' Office of Compliance, which has paid out $17 million over 20 years for 264 settlements with federal employees over sexual harassment and other violations. The accuser ultimately signed a confidentiality agreement in exchange for a settlement of $27,111.75, which came from Conyers' office budget. Conyers admitted no fault under the settlement, and his office did not respond to BuzzFeed News' requests for comment. Conyers, a long-time Civil Rights activist, was the longest-serving African American Representative (1965-2017) in the history of the House of Representatives. On this day, the House Ethics Committee launched an investigation into multiple sexual harassment allegations against Conyers. Later in November 2017, there were reports that a second woman accused Conyers of sexual harassment. In December, 2017, Conyers resigned his House seat because of the mounting sexual misconduct scandals. The announcement came the day after another former staffer released an affidavit accusing Conyers of sexual harassment.
- November 21, 2019 – The U.S. Senate confirmed Barbara Lagoa, Donald Trump’s appointee to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, by an 80-15 vote. Lagoa had previously served as a Justice on the Supreme Court of Florida for less than a year in 2019, after serving only eight days as Chief Judge of Florida’s Third District Court of Appeals. She was the first Hispanic woman and the first Cuban American woman to sit on the Florida Supreme Court. In September 2020, Lagoa joined the Supreme Court majority when the en banc circuit, by a vote of 6-4, upheld the constitutionality of the law the Florida legislature had passed requiring re-enfranchised felons to pay all financial obligations, including fines, fees, and restitution before being allowed to vote. Lagoa was Trump’s 5th appointee to the 11th circuit, shifting it to a 7-5 majority of Republican appointees. The 11th Circuit was the third of the nation's 13 federal appeals courts that was flipped ideologically under Trump. When he took office, only four of the appeals courts had Republican-appointed majorities. Now seven of the thirteen do.
- November 21, 2020 – Jessica Butcher, a digital entrepreneur, was appointed as one of four new commissioners at the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) by Liz Truss, the Minister for Women and Equalities. The EHRC’s role is to enforce the Equality Act, Britain’s key equality law, and to reduce inequality and tackle discrimination. Commissioners help set the body’s strategic direction. The appointment has caused shock and controversy, because of Butcher’s public statements criticising the #MeToo movement, “Men have had their careers and reputations ruined overnight by MeToo – some possibly justly, but without any due process, no innocence until proven guilty” and declaring that Feminism “has become obsessed with female victimhood.” Harriet Harman, former Labour deputy leader and key driver behind the Equality Act, declared: “The whole point of the EHRC is to fight against inequality. Its commissioners need to be people who understand the pernicious nature of discrimination and prejudice, who’ll expose it and drive change. The government’s twin role is to appoint commissioners who are fearless proven champions in the fight against inequality and provide the EHRC with sufficient resources. Right now it seems to be doing neither.” Sam Smethers, Fawcett Society chief executive, said: “With these appointments one can only conclude the government is more interested in undermining the credibility of the EHRC rather than ensuring we have an independent and effective statutory body with a strong understanding of structural inequalities.
- November 21, 2021 – President Joe Biden has nominated Alison Nathan, currently a district judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Second Circuit. She is the second LGBTQ woman he has nominated to a federal appellate court bench. His first nominee, Beth Robinson, was confirmed, making her the first out LGBTQ woman appointed to the appellate court.
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- November 22, 1515 – Mary of Guise born, a French noblewoman of the House of Guise, who became Queen consort of Scotland in 1540 when she married James V of Scotland. She ruled Scotland as regent (1554-1560) during the minority of her daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots. The regency became increasingly difficult to maintain for Mary of Guise, a Catholic, as the Protestant Scottish ‘Lords of the Congregation,’ and Scottish Reformation leader John Knox, gained power. They were opposed the betrothal of her daughter to the Dauphin of France, but with the Treaty of Haddington in 1548, the five-year-old queen Mary was betrothed to Francis, the Dauphin of France, and was sent to be brought up in France under the protection of King Henry II. As regent, Mary of Guise was determined to protect and advance her daughter’s dynastic interests, and maintain the Franco-Scottish alliance. She died in 1560, at age 44, from dropsy, an accumulation of excessive fluids in the body. Her death made way for the Treaty of Edinburgh. France and England each agreed to withdraw their troops from Scotland and the Scottish Protestants took control.
- November 22, 1532 – Anne of Denmark born, Danish princess of the House of Oldenburg, who married Augustus of Saxony in 1548, and became Electress of Saxony when he succeeded his brother in 1553. She gave birth to 15 children, but only four of them reached adulthood. She was notable for her knowledge of plants and her skill in the preparation of herbal remedies, and had her own large laboratory and library. Augustus entrusted her with the management of all of his estates, and she contributed to Saxony agriculture by introducing new crops, and new species of livestock. She was also a major influence on the introduction of orthodox Lutheranism to Saxony. Anne died in 1585 at age 52, after a long period of declining health.
- November 22, 1602 – Elisabeth of France born, daughter of Henry IV of France and Marie de’ Medici. She became Queen consort of Spain and Portugal as the first wife of King Philip IV of Spain. At first, the machinations of the Count-Duke of Olivares, who had much influence over her husband, kept her from being involved in state affairs. After the fall from favor of Olivares (which she was reputed to have engineered in a “women’s conspiracy” with other ladies of the court), she became one of the king’s most trusted advisers, and served as Regent (1640-1642 and 1643-1644) during the Catalan Revolt. She endured 11 pregnancies, but suffered three miscarriages, and only two of her children survived to adulthood. She died in 1644 at the age of 41, after a miscarriage.
- November 22, 1638 – Margaret Brent arrived in Maryland with her two brothers and a sister. She was approximately 37 years old, and unmarried. Brent claimed a land grant, and engaged in several business ventures, including trading in tobacco and land. She appeared in court to sue for debts and to protect her interests, and often acted for her brothers as well. Margaret Brent was named with Governor Leonard Calvert as joint guardian for Mary Kittamaquund, daughter of the chief of the Piscataways. Ten years after her arrival, Margaret Brent was prominent as a businesswoman and landowner. In 1647, Maryland was still recovering from the crisis caused by the English Civil War, and Governor Calvert, on his deathbed, appointed her as his executor. Margaret Brent's decisive actions ensured the survival of the settlement. The most pressing problem was paying Governor Calvert's soldiers, who were on the verge of mutiny. On January 21, 1648, Margaret Brent appeared before the Maryland assembly and asked for two votes for herself, one as Lord Baltimore's attorney, and one for herself as a landowner. She averted the mutiny by getting the assembly to transfer to her Leonard Calvert's power of attorney for his brother Lord Baltimore. Because Leonard Calvert's estate was not sufficient, she then sold some of Lord Baltimore's cattle to pay the soldiers. However, the assembly refused to give her the right to vote to which every male landowner was entitled.
- November 22, 1744 – Abigail Adams (new style birthdate, but November 11 O.S.) born, the second U.S. First Lady, who was anti-slavery, and a pioneering advocate for women’s rights. She and Barbara Bush are the only two women to be the wife of one U.S. president and the mother of another.
- November 22, 1819 – Mary Ann Evans born, better known as George Eliot, British author, poet, journalist, and translator; best known for her novels, including The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch, and Daniel Deronda.
- November 22, 1820 – Katherine Plunket born, Anglo-Irish aristocrat, prolific botanical illustrator; she traveled widely in Europe and made many floral sketches, which were bound into a volume presented to the Royal College of Science in 1903, and are now part of the collections of the Irish National Botanic Gardens. She lived to the age of 111, dying just a month before her 112th birthday in 1932.
- November 22, 1861 – Queen Ranavalona III born Princess Razafindrahety, last independent sovereign of the Kingdom of Madagascar (1883-1897). Her reign was marked by ongoing resistance to the colonial designs of the French. She was in a political marriage with Rainilaiarivony, a member of the Hova caste elite, who served as Prime Minister. She strengthened trade and diplomatic relations with the U.S. and Great Britain, but French attacks on coastal port towns and their assault on Anatananarivo, the capital city, led to the capture of the royal palace in 1895, ending the sovereignty and political autonomy of the century-old kingdom. France’s newly installed colonial government promptly exiled Rainilaiarivony to Algiers. Ranavalona and her court were initially permitted to remain as symbolic figureheads, but the outbreak of a popular resistance movement – the Menalamba Rebellion – and discovery of anti-French political intrigues at court led the French to exile the queen to the island of Réunion in 1897. Rainilaiarivony died that same year and shortly thereafter Ranavalona was relocated to a villa in Algiers, along with several members of her family. The queen, her family, and the servants accompanying her, were provided an allowance and enjoyed a comfortable standard of living, but in spite of her repeated requests, she was never allowed to return home to Madagascar. She died in 1917 at the age of 55, and was buried in Algiers, but 21 years later, her remains were disinterred and shipped to Madagascar, then placed within the tomb of Queen Rasoherina, who was the nominal ruler (1863-1868) of Madagascar, now a French client state.
- November 22, 1880 – Lillian Russell, internationally famous American actress-singer, makes her New York City vaudeville debut. For many years, she would be the foremost singer of operettas and musical theatre in the United States, performing continuously through the end of the 19th century. In 1912, she started writing a newspaper column, and advocated for women's suffrage. In 1913, she declared that she would refuse to pay her income taxes to protest "the denial of the ballot to women."
- November 22, 1900 – Helena Pantaleoni born, U.S. actress, humanitarian, and co-founder of U.S. Fund for UNICEF. Grandmother of actress Téa Leoni.
- November 22, 1909 – The “Uprising of the 20,000,” aka the New York Shirtwaist Strike, begins when Clara Lemlich, tired of hearing male speakers talk about the disadvantages to striking, takes the podium, moving that the shirtwaist workers strike. She receives a standing ovation and 2 days later thousands of workers walk off their jobs.
- November 22, 1912 – Doris Duke born, American heiress, horticulturalist, advocate for wildlife conservation, and historic building preservation; most of her over $1 billion fortune was put into a charitable Foundation which has funded medical research, ecology, and prevention of cruelty to children and animals.
- November 22, 1913 – Cecilia Muñoz-Palma born, Filipino jurist, first woman appointed to the Supreme Court of the Philippines (1973-1978); after leaving the Supreme Court, she became a leading figure in the political opposition to Ferdinand Marcos; chair of the 1986 Constitutional Commission that drafted the 1987 Constitution.
- November 22, 1919 – Máire McAteer Drumm born, Northern Irish civil rights leader, orator, and a figure in the republican movement; vice president (1972-1976) of Sinn Féin, and a commander in Cumann na mBan (The Irishwomen’s Council, a paramilitary auxiliary of the Irish Volunteers); involved with the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, helping Catholics forced from their homes by loyalist intimidation to find new housing; She was jailed twice for seditious speeches, and raids on her home by security forces became frequent. She was admitted to Belfast’s Mater Hospital in 1976 for an eye operation, and was shot to death in her hospital bed by the Ulster loyalist group Red Hand Commando, six days after her 57th birthday.
- November 22, 1925 – ‘Jerrie’ Geraldine Mock born, American pilot; the first woman to fly solo around the world, in 1964, in the Spirit of Columbus, a single engine Cessna 180. The trip lasted 29 days, with 21 stopovers, and covered 36,790 km (22,859 miles).
- November 22, 1943 – Billie Jean King born, tennis champion, won 20 Wimbledon titles; first woman athlete in any sport to earn $100,000 (1971).
- November 22, 1945 – Elaine Weyuker born, American computer scientist and engineer; elected to the National Academy of Science; received the Harlan D. Mills Award from IEEE Computer Society for leading research on rigorous software testing, and the Association for Computing Machinery’s 2010 Presidential Award for "her tireless efforts in the development and growth of the ACM Women's Council."
- November 22, 1947 – Valerie Wilson Wesley born, African-American mystery and children’s author; noted for the Tamara Hale mystery series.
- November 22, 1948 – Saroj Khan born, Indian dancer and choreographer; she was three years old when she made her first appearance on film; Khan was a pioneer in choreography for Bollywood films, and the first woman to rise from assistant choreographer in the Indian film industry. She choreographed over 3000 songs, and also wrote several stories for movies. Khan died of cardiac arrest in 2020 at age 71.
- November 22, 1954 – Denise Epoté born, Cameroonian journalist who heads the Africa management of the French pay television network, TV5 Monde; the first journalist in Cameroon to present the news in French on Cameroon Television; worked for Radio Cameroon (1981-1993), becoming the first woman to present the news on Radio Cameroon in 1985.
- November 22, 1958 – Jamie Lee Curtis born, American film and television actress, children’s author, writer, and activist. She is a contributor to the Huffington Post online. A recovering alcoholic, she is a supporter of Women in Recovery, and also supports the Children Affected by AIDS Foundation, and the Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles. In 2008, she campaigned for California Proposition 8, which was a bond issue for refurbishing and building children’s hospitals. She appeared at events for Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential race, and has since been a vocal critic of Donald Trump.
- November 22, 1959 – Lenore Zann born in Australia, Canadian actress and Liberal Party politician. Since 2019, she has been a member of the Canadian Parliament for Cumberland-Colchester. Zann was nine when her family emigrated to Canada. She worked as a screen, television, stage, and voice actress, and appeared in numerous television shows, films, radio, and animated series. Zann is best known as the voice of Rogue for the 1992 animated TV adaptation of the X-Men comic book series. In 2008, she started a community campaign for the restoration of a historic building in downtown Truro, Nova Scotia. It was restored and became a Regional Library, with a skating rink out front in the winter. Zann became a member of the Nova Scotia House of Assembly for Truro-Bible Hill-Millbrook-Salmon River (2013-2019).
- November 22, 1965 – Olga Kisseleva born, Russian artist known for large-scale installations, interactive exhibitions, and media art. She was invited in the 1990s by the Fulbright Foundation to be part of a team working on developing numerical technologies in the U.S. She now teaches New Media Art, and Art & Science, at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.
- November 22, 1968 – Sarah MacDonald born, Canadian conductor and organist, living in the UK since 1992; Fellow and Director of Music at Selwyn College, Cambridge, and Director of Ely Cathedral Girls’ Choir; the first woman to hold such a post at an Oxbridge Chapel.
- November 22, 1969 – Marjane Satrapi born in Iran, Iranian-French graphic novelist, cartoonist, illustrator, film director, and children’s book author; noted for her autobiographical graphic novels, first published in French, and her novel Poulet aux prunes (Chicken with Plums), which won the Fauve d’Or/Prix du meilleur (Best Prize) from the Angoulême International Comics Festival.
- November 22, 1971 – Cecilia Suarez born, Mexican actress, and prominent activist campaigning against femicide and violence against women. She works with UN Women and with the European Union, as well as speaking out for women’s rights and human rights in Mexico. She is notable for her roles in Capadocia; Nos vemos, papa; and The House of Flowers. Suarez is the first woman to be honored with Mexico’s lifetime achievement in cinema award.
- November 22, 1990 – The longest-serving British Prime Minister in the 20th century (1979-1990), Margaret Thatcher, signals the end of her leadership of the Conservative Party, then formally announces the end of her tenure as Prime Minister on November 28, 1990.
- November 22, 2005 – Angela Merkel is elected as Germany's first woman chancellor.
- November 22, 2019 – In the UK, senior lawyers and women’s organisations condemned the increasing use of “rough sex gone wrong” as a courtroom defence in trials for murder of women and called for a change to the law. Researchers found a tenfold rise over the past two decades in the number of times the claim was used in UK courts. According to the campaign group We Can’t Consent to This, 30 women and girls were killed in the past ten years in what were claimed to be consensual violent sexual activity. In 1996, there were two cases in which deaths and injuries to women were blamed on “rough sex” - by 2016, there were 20 cases a year. Fiona Mackenzie, an actuary, set up We Can’t Consent to This after the outcry over the killing of Natalie Connolly, 26, by her partner John Broadhurst, 40. Despite having 40 separate injuries, including serious internal trauma, a fractured eye socket and bleach on her face, in 2018 Broadhurst received a sentence of just three years and eight months for manslaughter. Mackenzie wants changes to the domestic abuse law, but says, “As well as changing the law, we need to have an attitude change across the justice system. People need to stop buying into these ‘rough sex’ excuses. Everywhere you look in the world, there’s the same failure in countries’ criminal justice systems. It’s terrifying.”
- November 22, 2020 – Esther Mahlangu, one of Africa’s best-known artists, called for governments and communities across the continent to preserve their traditions and culture in the face of globalization. “I am surprised that people are running away from their own culture. Our culture is good. The importance of our culture is to know where they are coming from. The children, the grandchildren must know which roots they are coming from. If the young children don’t learn from the elders, then everything will vanish.” Born in 1935 on a farm in a small town in the South African province of Mpumalanga, Mahlangu was taught to paint by her mother and grandmother. Traditionally, Ndebele women painted colourful geometric patterns on the outside of their homes, often representing important events such as weddings. Mahlangu began painting other objects and canvas, and used bright acrylic paints in place of muted, monochromatic traditional natural colours. Mahlangu’s pioneering use of the crafts of her Ndebele people brought her huge success on the world’s art markets, now shown and sold from Australia to New York.
- November 22, 2021 – In the UK, the Home Office inquiry into the rape and murder of Sarah Everard by a police officer will be chaired by Dame Elish Angiolini, formerly Scotland’s top prosecutor. It will examine whether there were missed chances to identify her murderer, who had been a serving officer of the Metropolitan Police since 2018, as a danger to women before he attacked Everard in March 2021. Angiolini was chosen as chair of the inquiry, which will be in two parts, following consultation with the family of Sarah Everard. Angiolini has considerable experience. In 2015, she chaired a review of rape for the Met, and led a government review into deaths in police custody, which was published in 2017. She also led a review into Scotland’s police complaints handling, investigations, and misconduct, which was published in November 2020. Angiolini described this inquiry as “a pivotal moment for policing.” However, the Home Office has refused to bow to calls to give the inquiry full powers, so it will be non-statutory. The government claims it will be quicker this way, but insists it could be converted into a statutory inquiry if needed.
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- November 23, 1805 – Mary Grant Seacole born, British-Jamaican healer who set up a convalescent “hotel” at Balaclava for British officers recovering from wounds or illness, and also did business as a sutler, selling everything “from a needle to an anchor” during the Crimean War. Seacole often went on the battlefield while under fire to attend wounded soldiers. One British medical officer described her in his memoir as “a coloured women who out of the goodness of her heart and at her own expense, supplied hot tea to the poor sufferers [wounded men being transported from the peninsula to the hospital at Scutari] while they are waiting to be lifted into the boats ... She did not spare herself if she could do any good to the suffering soldiers. In rain and snow, in storm and tempest, day after day she was at her self-chosen post ...” Her memoir, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, was the first travel memoir published by a black woman.
- November 23, 1868 – Mary Brewster Hazelton born, American portrait painter. She was the first woman to win an award open to both men and women in the United States when she won the Hallgarten Prize from the National Academy of Design in 1896.
- November 23, 1898 – Rachel Brown born, bacteriologist, in collaboration with microbiologist Elizabeth Lee Hazen, developed the first useful antifungal antibiotic, nystatin, a cure for many serious fungal infections, which combats Dutch Elm disease in trees, and is used to restore artwork damaged by water and mold. Royalties for nystatin totaled $13.4 million, which was all donated, half to set up the Brown-Hazen Fund to encourage and support women in biomedical studies and research, especially in medical mycology. The other half was given in scientific research grants.
- November 23, 1915 – Anne Burns born, British aeronautical engineer and glider pilot; during WWI, she worked for Ministry of Supply, in the Structures and Mechanical Department at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, concentrating on flutter problems and load stress measurements, but also developing windscreen wipers for bombers, and the double windscreen enclosing a supply of warm air to improve visibility. She also made test flights on Hawker Typhoons and Gloster Meteors. In the 1950s, she became a Principal Scientific Officer, and worked on the crashes of early de Havilland Comet jet airlines in 1954; awarded the Queen’s Commendation for Valuable Service in the Air in 1955, and the Royal Aeronautical Society R.P. Alston Medal in 1958.
- November 23, 1916 – P.K. Page born as Patricia Kathleen Paige; Canadian poet, author, and playwright; her poem “Planet Earth” was read in 2001 as part of the UN celebration of the International Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations.
- November 23, 1923 – Gloria Whelan born, American poet, short story writer, and novelist known primarily for children’s and young adult fiction; her first book, A Clearing in the Forest, was published in 1978, when she was 54 years old. Whelan won the 2000 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature for Homeless Bird. Many of her novels are historical fiction, including Chu Ju’s House, set in China during the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution.
- November 23, 1934 – Rita Rossi Colwell born, American microbiologist; the first woman to become the director of the National Science Foundation. In the 1960s, she was the first U.S. scientist to create a computer program to analyze data related to the taxonomic classification of different strains of bacteria. This led to her revolutionary discovery that the strain of cholera bacteria that had been linked to the disease belonged to the same species as benign strains of cholera. With her team of researchers she later found that both the harmless and the disease-causing (toxin-producing) strains were found commonly in estuaries and coastal waters.
- November 23, 1936 – LIFE magazine is reborn as a successful photo magazine; the first cover of the renewed magazine is Margaret Bourke-White’s picture of the Fort Peck Dam.
- November 23, 1955 – Mary Landrieu born, American politician; U.S. Democratic Senator from Louisiana (1997-2015); Chair of the Senate Small Business Committee (2009-2014); State Treasurer of Louisiana (1987-1996); in 2014, there was a controversy over her use of federal funds to pay for airline flights not related to her Senatorial duties; though leaning conservative, she supports abortion rights, and voted 97% of the time in favor of President Obama’s positions. She was defeated by her Republican opponent in a run-off election in 2014, and is currently a senior policy adviser for a Washington DC law firm.
- November 23, 1963 – Gwynne Shotwell born, American businesswoman and mechanical engineer, with an additional degree in applied mathematics; President and CEO of SpaceX, a U.S. space transportation company, which she joined in 2002; worked for Microcosm Inc (1998-2002) as director of the space systems division; did technical work on military space research and development, and thermal analysis at Aerospace Corporation (1988 -1998).
- November 23, 1964 – Lorna Jane Clarkson born, Australian entrepreneur, fashion designer, and author; owner of a chain of retail stores in Australia, Britain, Canada, Dubai, South Africa and the U.S.; creator of Lorne Jane activewear; author of Move, Nourish, Believe: The Fit Woman’s Secret Revealed, and The Fit Woman’s Cookbook.
- November 23, 1965 – Jennifer Michael Hecht born, American historian, author, and poet; The End of the Soul: Scientific Modernity, Atheism, and Anthropology in France, 1876-1936.
- November 23, 1967 – Salli Richardson born, American film and television actress and director; known for her role in the 1994 film A Low Down Dirty Shame, and for playing Dr. Blake in the television series Eureka (2006-2012). As a director, she has mostly worked on episodic television, including two episodes of Queen Sugar, and an episode of the historical drama Underground. In 2019, Richardson won a Black Reel Award for Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series for directing an episode of Black-ish.
- November 23, 1986 – In Manila, Philippine President Corazon Aquino dismisses Defense Minister Enrile after discovering officers loyal to him plan a coup. All 25 members of her cabinet tender their resignations, and she will decide which ones to accept in the following week.
- November 23, 2005 – Ellen Johnson Sirleaf elected as President of Liberia (2005-2018), the first black woman to be elected as a head of state, and the first woman to lead an African country. She was a co-recipient of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize with Leymah Gbowee and Taawakkul Karman "for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work."
- November 23, 2019 – Stella Creasy, a pregnant Labour MP who is pro-choice, was targeted by a new set of leaflets distributed by the Christian Peoples Alliance (CPA) that cited the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform (CBR), an anti-abortion group under investigation by police, accused of harassing Creasy in September. Creasy, now due to give birth within days, said the leaflets raised serious questions about undeclared electoral interference. “CBR UK have never registered themselves as a political campaigning organisation but are clearly trying to influence an election,” she said. In September, CBR UK had placed graphic adverts showing a foetus with the words “Stop Stella” in locations around Creasey’s Walthamstow constituency, and held street protests. The Met police recently submitted evidence to prosecutors over whether the targeting of Creasy by CBR UK constituted harassment. The offending leaflets, titled “How well do you know your MP?” listed various claims about Creasy, aimed at gaining the support of Muslim worshippers at Friday prayers at a mosque in Walthamstow. Members of the Muslim community alerted Creasy, who had become the target of anti-abortion campaigners after leading the successful Westminster efforts to decriminalise terminations in Northern Ireland. Creasy said, ”My Muslim community are absolutely furious that these people have done this. They told me they were angry that people were targeting me in this way and have said this is not the kind of politics we want here.”
- November 23, 2020 – In the UK, the University of Oxford’s effort to design, develop, manufacture, and set up trials to produce a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine at breakneck speed has been headed by project leader Sarah Gilbert, a professor of vaccinology who has been making and testing T cell responses for over ten years, chiefly using antigens from malaria and influenza. Several of the vaccines developed in her laboratories went into clinical trials – at the normal, much slower rate of speed. She arrived at Oxford in 1994 to work with Professor Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute and a senior member of the team, on the malaria parasite, plasmodium. She soon fell into work on experimental vaccines, starting with one that roused white blood cells to fight malaria, followed by a “universal” flu vaccine. Oxford’s coronavirus work has been built on research pioneered by Gilbert and Hill on vaccines based on a virus that causes common colds in chimpanzees. The adenovirus could be rendered harmless and then modified to smuggle genetic material into human cells. The trick was to make that material the gene for a protein on the surface of a nasty virus, one the immune system could lock on to. Hill and Gilbert patented the technology and in 2016 co-founded Vaccitech, an Oxford spin-off, to capitalise on the research. The chimp cold virus, ChAdOx, became their weapon of choice against what the World Health Organization called “Disease X” – a hypothetical future pathogen with epidemic or pandemic potential. The Oxford team went to work on the Covid vaccine on the morning of Saturday, January 11, just hours after scientists in China published the first genetic sequence of the virus. The vaccine was largely designed that weekend by Sarah Gilbert, Teresa Lambe, another team member, with contributions from other team members. It wasn’t clear how fast the virus would spread, but Gilbert saw it as an opportunity to demonstrate rapid vaccine development against a new viral threat. Within a few weeks, Oxford had usable vaccine for lab tests. Gilbert, who colleagues note can send emails from 4am until late at night, immediately gave some to Oxford’s manufacturing facility to churn out clinical grade shots for human trials. The Clinical Biomanufacturing facility, run by Catherine Green, was prepared for the task and quickly made the first batch of shots for phase 1 safety trials. Sandy Douglas and his team devised a way to make the vaccine at industrial scale and set up a consortium of manufacturers to produce it in the UK, the Netherlands, India and China. By March, facilities were gearing up to make tens of millions of doses before anyone knew whether the vaccine worked. By the beginning of April, Oxford had enough vaccine to launch clinical trials. Andrew Pollard, the head of the Oxford vaccine group, who has spent 20 years running clinical trials, prepared and oversaw them. His team worked with doctors at 19 trial sites around the UK and six each in Brazil and South Africa to get the trials done, and before the end of April, the first shots went into volunteers. On this day in November, just ten months after they began, the scientists can say that the vaccine works.
- November 23, 2021 – A Virginia jury found organizers of the 2017 Charlottesville "Unite the Right" rally liable for counterprotesters' injuries. The jury awarded $26 million in damages, but deadlocked on federal conspiracy charges. Jurors found that the defendants, who included white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and Confederate sympathizers, bore responsibility under state law for what happened at the rally, which began as a protest of the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue. During the event, people carrying torches chanted, "Jews will not replace us!" A neo-Nazi plowed his car into counterprotesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring numerous others, including four of the nine plaintiffs. More than $12 million of the damages were assessed against James A. Fields Jr., who is serving a life sentence for killing Heather Heyer.
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The Feminist Cats:
There’s A LOT to be thankful for this Thanksgiving!
While there is still so much work to be done before the 2024 Elections, let’s take a moment to savor all the wins for Abortion Rights ballot measures and Pro-Choice Democrats –
We GOTV and We WON!
For those of you who want to dive deeper, the extended list of this week’s Women Trailblazers and Events in Women’s History is here: