___________________________
“You don't master your fear.
You're not able to say, 'I'm not
going to be scared.' But what
you can do is say, 'OK, I'm very
very scared, but I have to do
this and this and this.'”
– Ingrid Betancourt,
Columbian politician held hostage
over 6 years by a guerilla group
___________________________
.
WOW2 is a four-times-a-month sister blog to
This Week in the War On Women
.
___________________________
“From our research experience in discovering
artemisinin, we learned the strengths of both
Chinese and Western medicine. There is great
potential for future advances if these strengths
can be fully integrated.”
– Tu Youyou,
Chinese pharmaceutical chemist, discoverer
of plant extracts now used to treat malaria,
and have the potential to treat some cancers
___________________________
“The better we feel about ourselves
the fewer times we have to knock
somebody else down to fall.”
– Odetta, African-American
singer-songwriter and
civil rights activist
___________________________
This is the final edition of WOW2. After more than 8 years, I am leaving rediscovering the rest of Women’s History’s missing pages to a younger generation. To all you readers who have supported this massive project, my deepest and most heart-felt THANK YOU.
To my co-conspirators, especially libera nos, no thanks could ever be enough for all your enthusiasm and contributions which have made such a difference to this series!
And finally, I am so honored to have posted WOW2 under the banner of This Week in the War On Women. Sisterhood Forever!
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.
Note: All images are below the person or event to which they refer.
_______________________________
- December 25, 1281 – Alice de Lacy born at Denbigh Castle, suo jure (in her own right) Countess of Lincoln and of Salisbury; her two brothers died in childhood accidents, leaving Alice as the sole heir to two Earldoms, one from each parent. King Edward I arranged her betrothal to his nephew, Thomas of Lancaster, when she was 9 years old. They were married when she was 12 or 13 years old. By the terms of their marriage settlement the bulk of her great inheritance from her father, which included the Earldom of Lincoln and many other estates, was to go to Thomas, with reversion to Thomas's heirs. In other words, during his lifetime Thomas had control of Alice's inheritance from her father. If Alice outlived Thomas, and had control of her father's inheritance returned to her on his death, then on her own death her father's inheritance would pass to Thomas's heirs. Her father also came to an agreement with the King that should Alice have no children, her father's Earldom of Lincoln would pass into the royal family on her death. But the marriage was not successful – they lived separate lives, and had no children. When her parents died, Thomas inherited all her lands, and controlled her inheritance from her mother, making him the richest and most powerful man in England. In the spring of 1317 Alice was abducted from her manor of Canford, Dorset, by some of the household Knights of John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, and taken to the Warenne stronghold of Castle Reigate. The disreputable Warenne is thought to have carried out the abduction in order to humiliate Thomas of Lancaster, who had helped block Warenne's divorce, and persuaded the Bishop of Chichester to prosecute Warenne for his adultery with his mistress, resulting in Warenne's excommunication in 1316. After Alice was abducted, her husband Thomas then waged a private war on Warenne, but never once asked for Alice's return. Thomas also thought King Edward II, his cousin, had been involved in the planning of the abduction. It is not known when Alice was released, and her whereabouts from 1317 to 1322 are uncertain. Thomas of Lancaster was captured at Boroughbridge after the failure of his rebellion against the King. On 22 March 1322 he was executed for treason. With Thomas gone, Alice should have had control of the vast inheritances from both of her parents for the first time. Thomas's estates were forfeited to the Crown, but that could not legally include the estates that he controlled by right of his wife and that were her inheritance. But the King had Alice arrested and imprisoned at York, under threat of execution. Alice surrendered into the King's hands a great part of the lands which she had inherited from her father, in order to secure the confirmation of some portion of these possessions to herself. She was then permitted to hold some of her estates in life tenure by the king's "special grace.” In addition, she had to pay a staggering indemnity of £20,000 to the Crown, in order to secure her release from prison, be allowed to remarry if she chose, and to gain control of what lands and income remained of her inheritance. She lost the Earldom of Salisbury to the Crown, but the Earldom of Lincoln was restored to her. But she was placed under virtual house arrest for “her own protection” and even more of her lands were stripped from her, and her abductor was given a life grant of many of them. When Edward II was deposed, his wife Isabella took for herself some of the estates that had been taken from Alice. In 1331, Edward III restored some of Alice’s forfeited lands to her, but only for her life. Even when Alice married Eubulus le Strange, at age 42, which made it unlikely they would have children, the King made certain that Eubulus could not claim them by right of his wife. After Eubulus died in 1335, Alice genuinely mourned him, and took a vow of chastity. But even after all that had been taken from her, she was still a rich woman, and she was abducted a second time at the age of 54, by Hugh de Freyne, Baron Freyne, who raped her, and forced her to marry him. But the marriage had not been licensed by the King, so Sheriffs were sent to take the lands, goods, and chattels into the King’s hands. Hugh probably paid a fine, because the lands were restored to his control in 1336, but he died less than a year later. Alice was imprisoned again shortly after that by Roger le Strange, the nephew and heir of Eubulus, and Sir John de Lacy of Lacyes (Alice’s illegitimate half-brother.) Eventually, she made a deal with Roger, and was released. She died at age 66 in 1348, and was buried next to Eubulus. Her Earldom of Lincoln became extinct upon her death. Her remaining lands from her father went to the nephew of her first husband. Most of her lands reverted to the Crown upon her death, and what was left went to Roger le Strange.
- December 25, 1584 – Margaret of Austria born, Queen consort of Spain and Portugal (1599-1611). She was an influential figure in the court of her husband, Philip III. She formed a circle with Empress Maria, widow of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II, and the latter's daughter Archduchess Margaret, who lived as a nun in Madrid, which wielded considerable influence. She was also a great patron of the arts. She bore five children who survived past childhood, but died in 1611 at age 26, while giving birth to her youngest child, Alfonso. Philip III did not remarry, and he died in 1621.
- December 25, 1665 – Lady Grizel Baillie born, Scottish songwriter; "And werena my heart light I wad dee" is her best-known song; her meticulously kept account books (1692-1746) are valuable to historians because they contain much information about social life in 18th century Scotland.
- December 25, 1771 – Dorothy Wordsworth born, English author, poet, and diarist; sister of William Wordsworth; noted for her diaries and Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland, published in 1874, and Grasmere Journal, published posthumously, which was taken from diaries of her life in the Lake District, where she lived with her brother and his family.
- December 25, 1781 – Sydney, Lady Morgan born, Irish novelist and poet; best known for her novel, The Wild Irish Girl.
- December 25, 1805 – Mariya Volkonskaya born, Russian noblewoman. In 1825, she married the Decembrist rebel Major General Prince Sergey Grigorievich Volkonsky. When Volkonsky was arrested and exiled to Siberia in 1826, she followed him into exile, but only on the condition that any children born after her departure to Siberia would be forever struck from the noble estate and become bonded laborers. This threat, however, was not put into practice. She moved to the Siberian city of Irkutsk, where she became known as the Princess of Siberia. She founded a local hospital and opened a concert hall, and often hosted musical and cultural soirees in her home. She was one of the inspirations for Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, and for several of his poems. The Princess of Siberia, by Christine Sutherland, is a detailed biography.
- December 25, 1806 – Martha Coffin Wright born, woman’s rights pioneer and abolitionist, who was part of the Underground Railroad. She called for and helped organize the first Woman’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls in 1848, together with her sister Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and others. She was president of women’s conventions in 1855 in Cincinnati, Saratoga, and Albany, then became the founder of the American Equal Rights Association (1866). She continued working for equal suffrage during the American Civil War.
- December 25, 1809 – Dr. Ephraim McDowell performs first ovariotomy, removing a 22-pound tumor from Jane Todd Crawford of Green County KY, who traveled 60 miles to Danville KY to brave the surgery without anesthetic or antisepsis, returned home 25 days later, and lived another 32 years.
- December 25, 1821 – Clara Barton born, American nursing pioneer, humanitarian, and almost single-handedly, founder (1881) and first president (1882-1904) of the American Red Cross. In the 1850s, Barton worked as a U.S. Patent Office clerk; at the outbreak of the American Civil War, she began collecting provisions and medical supplies for the Union Army. Restless with her limited role, and undeterred by War Department regulations and prevailing stereotypes, Barton not only distributed supplies, but also tended to the wounded and dying, despite life-threatening conditions. She was called "the angel of the battlefield" for her nursing of wounded soldiers, often under fire. After the war, she helped to reunite missing soldiers and their families, or resolve what happened to MIAs, and later lectured to crowds about her war experiences. She went to Europe to further her nursing studies, and was a volunteer with the International Red Cross during the Franco-Prussian War. When she returned to the U.S., she founded the American Red Cross, and expanded its mission beyond wartime work, to also help victims of disasters during peacetime.
- December 25, 1865 – Evangeline Booth born, English-American, first woman Salvation Army General; after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, she led a mass meeting in New York’s Union Square, raising over $12,000 for Salvation Army relief work among the victims of the disaster.
- December 25, 1878 – Helena Rubinstein born as Chaja Rubinstein in Austrian Poland; Polish-American businesswoman, art collector and philanthropist. Founder of the Helena Rubinstein cosmetics company, which began in 1915 as a cosmetics salon, became a major enterprise, which made her one of the world’s richest women. She had an intense rivalry with Elizabeth Arden. The Helena Rubinstein Foundation, established in 1953, provided funds to organizations specializing in health, medical research and rehabilitation, and education projects and scholarships, as well as the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, until it ceased operations in 2011 after distributing over $130 million USD over nearly sixty years.
- December 25, 1878 – Noël, Countess of Rothes, born, noted as a prolific philanthropist, especially for the Red Cross, as a nurse for wounded soldiers who turned her home into a hospital during WWI, and as a woman suffrage supporter. But she is best remembered for helping to maintain order and morale aboard her lifeboat during the 1912 Titanic disaster. She took a turn at the tiller, steering the boat clear of the sinking liner, then encouraged the other survivors, including a young woman whose husband went down with the ship, with her calm decisiveness and comforting words, while helping to row the lifeboat. She and the other survivors sang “Pull for the Shore” and “Lead Kindly Light” when the Carpathia, the ship which rescued them, was sighted. She then cared for the rescued women and children from steerage aboard the Carpathia, but shunned reporters who labeled her a heroine, giving all the credit to the cool head and skill of Seaman Jones, who was in charge of their lifeboat, and the other women aboard. She gave an inscribed silver pocket watch to Seaman Jones as thanks, and they wrote to each other for her Christmas Day birthday until her death in 1956.
- December 25, 1883 – Hana Meisel born in Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire; Israeli agronomist, Zionist, and feminist; founder of Havat HaAlamot (the maidens’ farm) and a women’s agricultural school at Hahalal.
- December 25, 1886 – Malak Hifni Nasif born, Egyptian feminist and writer. After graduating in 1903 at the top of her class from the Saniyyah Teacher Training College, she taught in the Girls Section of the Abbas Primary School, but was forced to quit when she married in 1907 because of an Egyptian law forbidding married women work as teachers. She began writing under the pen name Bahithat al-Badiya, and soon found out that her husband already had a wife and children which he had told her nothing about before their marriage. Unable to get a divorce, she stayed on as his second wife until her death, but her writing became full of observations about the status of women in Egypt, and she corresponded extensively with women writers. She also wrote rebuttals to some of the writings of major male writers involved the growing nationalist political movement who wanted reforms for Egyptian men, but not for women. She was however opposed to unveiling, advocated by most of the other women’s rights activists of the time. She mostly wrote about making major reforms in the marital rights of Egyptian women, including ending polygamy, raising the minimum age for women to marry to at least age 16, and advocating for women to have the right to divorce their husbands. She was also concerned with better education for women, which she believed must not be in missionary schools, but in public schools controlled by Egyptians, which included the history and culture of Egypt in the curriculum.
- December 25, 1889 – Lila Bell Wallace born, American magazine publisher and philanthropist; co-founder in 1922 of Reader’s Digest with her husband. She gave an estimated $60 million USD to various charities in her lifetime.
- December 25, 1911 – Louise Bourgeois born in Paris, French-American artist best known for her large-scale sculpture and installation art, but she was also a painter and printmaker; her work is somewhat related to both Surrealism and Feminist art, but is not considered as fully part of either school.
- December 25, 1921 – Zaib-un-Nissa Hamidullah born, Pakistani author, journalist, publisher, poet, and feminist; a pioneer of Pakistani literature and journalism in English, and in women’s rights in Pakistan. Before independence, she was the first Muslim woman to write a column in an Indian newspaper. After independence, she became Pakistan’s first English-language woman columnist, writing for the Karachi daily newspaper Dawn, as well as a pioneering woman editor, publisher, and political commentator when she founded Pakistan’s first glossy social magazine, The Mirror. She was also the first Pakistani woman included in press delegations sent to other countries. She was a founding member of the Pakistani Working Women’s Association and the Karachi branch of Business and Professional Women’s Foundation. In 1957, her magazine was banned for six months because of her outspoken editorials criticising the harsh regime of Major-General Iskander Mirza. After refusing to publically apologise to get the ban lifted, she appealed to the Supreme Court of Pakistan, which found in her favour, holding the ban order illegal and unconstitutional, making her the first woman journalist to win a case in the Pakistani Supreme Court.
- December 25, 1929 – Christine Miller Jones born, American Democratic politician and teacher; member of the Maryland House of Delegates and served on the Economic Matters Committee (1982-1994); chaired the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland (1991-1992); Assistant Majority Floor Leader in 1994; died at age 84, from injuries and burns after being rescued from a house fire in 2013.
- December 25, 1930 – Mary Rose Tuitt born, Montserratian educator and politician; the first woman to serve as a government minister in Montserrat. She was head teacher at St. Patrick’s school (1955-1968). In 1970, she ran as a candidate for the Progressive Democratic Party in the Southern district and was elected to the Legislative Council of Montserrat. She was named as Minister responsible for Education and Health and Welfare (1970-1978). She then worked in the administration of the American University of the Caribbean - Montserrat campus, until it was destroyed by the Soufrière Hills volcano eruption in 1995. She died in 2005.
- December 25, 1935 – Jeanne Hopkins Lucas born, first African American woman elected to the North Carolina state Senate, where she was originally appointed to finish out the term of Senator Ralph Hunt in 1993, and then was re-elected six times, serving in leadership positions like Majority Whip and Senior Chair of the Appropriations on Education and Higher Education Committee.
- December 25, 1940 – Hilary Spurling born, British writer, journalist, and biographer; won the 2005 Whitbread Prize for the second volume of her Henri Matisse biography, Matisse the Master: The Conquest of Colour 1909-1954.
- December 25, 1942 – Barbara Follett born, British Labour politician and literary agent-business manager; Parliamentary Undersecretary, Department for Communities and Local Government (2009-2010); Undersecretary of State for Equality (2007-2008); Undersecretary of State for Department for Work and Pensions (2007); Minister for the East of England, Regional Affairs (2007-2010); Member of Parliament for Stevenage (1997-2010); she left politics in 2010 to take over as CEO of the Follett Office, and literary agent for her husband, author Ken Follett.
- December 25, 1945 – Eve Pollard born Evelyn Pollack, Lady Lloyd, English author, journalist, and editor; second woman editor of a UK national newspaper, at the Sunday Mirror (1987-1991), and the Sunday Express (1991-1994); in 1985, launch editor-in-chief of ELLE magazine in the U.S.; published books include Jackie, a biography of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and her novels Splash, Best of Enemies, and Unfinished Business.
- December 25, 1948 – Kay S. Hymowitz born, American nonfiction author, and contributor to the Wall Street Journal; her books include Liberation’s children: parents and kids in a postmodern age, and Marriage and caste in America: separate and unequal families in a post-marital age.
- December 25, 1948 — Barbara Mandrell born. Singer and musician playing several instruments, mostly country music, also R&B, soul, gospel, and pop influences. Between 1980 and 1982, she and her siblings co-hosted the NBC television series Barbara Mandrell & the Mandrell Sisters.[4] It helped Mandrell become the first performer to win back–to–back Entertainer of the Year awards from the Country Music Association in both 1980 and 1981. After a near-fatal car accident in 1984, Mandrell seriously considered retirement. However, she returned to recording in 1985 and had several more top ten country singles. She began guest-starring in several television shows and numerous commercials. Mandrell appeared in several television films and shows during the late 1980s and 1990s. She continued recording into the 1990s, announcing her retirement in 1997. After her retirement, Mandrell sold all of her musical instruments. She continued acting until 2000. In 2009, she was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame for her work in the industry. In July 2022, Mandrell celebrated 50 years as a member of the Grand Ole Opry. Several Opry members and country artists performed on the stage to honor Mandrell's legacy. Among the artists who performed that night were Suzy Bogguss, Jeannie Seely and Carrie Underwood.[94]
- December 25, 1950 – Kay Matheson, and her co-conspirators Ian Hamilton, Gavin Vernon, and Alan Stuart, all Scottish students and activists for Scottish Nationalism, removed the Stone of Scone from Westminster Abbey in a daring raid, and returned it to Scotland. The stone, also known as the Stone of Destiny, had for centuries been used in the coronation of Scottish kings, until it was taken as spoils of war by English forces during the invasion of Scotland by Edward I in 1296. It was housed in Westminster Abbey, and became part of the coronation ceremonies for most English and then British sovereigns ever since. After an extensive but unsuccessful search launched by the British government, the conspirators in April, 1951, left the stone on the altar in the ruins of Arbroath Abbey, and then returned to Westminster Abbey. But in 1996, faced with growing dissatisfaction among Scots over the prevailing constitutional settlement, the British government made the symbolic gesture of returning the Stone of Scone to Scotland, with the understanding that it would be returned to Westminster Abbey for use whenever a new monarch was crowned. There was a formal handover ceremony at the Scottish border in 1996, and the stone now rests in the Crown Room of Edinburgh Castle.
- December 25, 1961 – Íngrid Betancourt born, Colombian Oxygen Green Party politician, and anti-corruption activist, with dual Columbian and French citizenship; Senator of Colombia (1998-2002); Member of the Chamber of Representatives of Colombia (1994-1998). She was kidnapped by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in February 2002 while campaigning for the Colombian presidency as a Green, and was rescued by Colombian security forces six and a half years later in July 2008, along with 14 other hostages (three U.S. citizens, and 11 Colombian policemen and soldiers).
- December 25, 1975 – Pardis Sabeti born, Iranian-American computational biologist, medical geneticist, and evolutionary geneticist. She developed a bioinformatic statistical method which identifies sections of the genome that have been subject to natural selection and an algorithm which explains the effects of genetics on the evolution of disease. In 2014, Sabeti was part of a team led by Christian Happi, a Cameroonian geneticist, which used advanced genomic sequencing technology to identify a single point of infection from an animal reservoir to a human in the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. She is a full professor in the Center for Systems Biology and Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and on the faculty of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and is an institute member at the Broad Institute and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She is the head of the Sabeti Lab.
- December 25, 1984 – Jessica Origliasso born, Australian singer, songwriter; she and her twin sister Lisa formed the pop duo The Veronicas (2004-present); noted as a bi-sexual, Origliasso has campaigned for LGBTQ rights and protection of animals as a member of Wildlife Warriors Worldwide and PETA.
- December 25, 2017 – New Zealand singer-songwriter Lorde cancelled a June 2018 concert in Israel one week after it was announced because of a campaign by activists opposed to Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Two women in particular influenced her decision – Nadia Abu-Shanab and Justine Sachs, who are now living in New Zealand, and wrote her an open letter: “Dear Lorde . . . we’re two young women based in Aotearoa, one Jewish, one Palestinian. Today, millions of people stand opposed to the Israeli government’s policies of oppression, ethnic cleansing, human rights violations, occupation and apartheid. As part of this struggle, we believe that an economic, intellectual and artistic boycott is an effective way of speaking out against these crimes. This worked very effectively against apartheid in South Africa, and we hope it can work again. We can play an important role in challenging injustice today. We urge you to act in the spirit of progressive New Zealanders who came before you and continue their legacy.”
- December 25, 2019 – Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was “disturbed” to hear Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell say he would work in “total coordination" with White House lawyers on Trump's impeachment trial. "There will be no difference between the president's position and our position as to how to handle this, to the extent that we can," McConnell told Fox News. Murkowski said that Republicans should not work "hand in glove with the defense." Murkowski's statement was a rare sign of disagreement within the GOP, which unified in defending Trump against House Democrats' charges that Trump abused his office and obstructed the House impeachment inquiry.
- December 25, 2020 – In Utah, the percentage of women reporting workplace harassment across the legal field had risen sharply compared to a decade ago. According to a new study released by the Women Lawyers of Utah organization, about one in four women reported that they had been harassed in 2020. Though more women are graduating from law school and working in law firms in Utah than in 2010, they remain “significantly underrepresented” in the legal profession compared to the rest of the nation. They “continue to face significant issues of bias,” in addition to “obstacles to advancement and promotion,” researchers wrote. In Utah, women make up 23% of practicing attorneys, compared to 38% of women nationally. The gap grows among partners at law firms, with women representing 24% of partners across the country and 12% in Utah. Men are almost twice as likely as women to hold a leadership role, and while 47% of men hold a top job, only 4% of women of color who are lawyers currently hold a leadership position in Utah. While there’s been improvement in flexible work schedules and access to mentorship compared to 2010, Kimberly Neville, president of Women Lawyers of Utah, said what stood out to her was that 61% of lawyers in the state worked in offices without any women in senior roles in 2020.
- December 25, 2021 – The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a report calling for increasing women’s participation in green economies. The transition to low carbon, green, inclusive, and resilient economies will require investing in education for girls and women, transforming gender norms, and challenging gender stereotypes that have an influence on the career opportunities and aspirations of female students. A United Nations report found that 80% of people displaced by climate change are women, so women have an even bigger stake in mitigating the global climate crisis, and must become leaders in building climate resilience at both the community and international levels.
_______________________________
- December 26, 1526 – Rose Lok Hickham born, English memoirist and Protestant exile, who worked for her husband and one of her brothers, who were mercers (dealers in textiles, especially silk and other fine materials) in partnership together. Her father had been King Henry VIII’s mercer. But when Catholic Mary I came to the throne in 1553, Rose’s husband and brother were imprisoned as ‘religious heretics’ but were later released to house arrest, and eventually freed. The Hickhams went into exile in Antwerp, but Rose returned to England after Queen Mary’s death. At the age of 84, she wrote an account of her parents, and of the events during her life up to the year 1558.
- December 26, 1618 – Elisabeth Princess of the Palatinate born, Princess-Abbess of Herford Abbey (1667-1680); she provided refuge for persecuted Protestants; noted for her extensive correspondence with the prominent intellectuals of the time, René Descartes in particular, with whom she carried on a lively debate about his idea of Dualism (mind separate from the body); this correspondence has given scholars insight into 17th century theoretical debates.
- December 26, 1780 – Mary Fairfax Somerville born, Scottish polymath and author; she and Caroline Herschel became the first women members of the Royal Astronomical Society at the same time; the term “scientist” was first used to describe her, someone who possesses the intellect to combine mathematics, astronomy and physics seamlessly; author of “On the Magnetizing Power of the More Refrangible Solar Rays.”
- December 26, 1819 – E.D.E.N. Southworth born, American author of over 60 novels, who took up writing to support her children when her husband deserted the family in 1844; supporter of women’s rights and friend of Harriet Beecher Stowe; best known for The Hidden Hand, a novel which first appeared in serial form in the New York Ledger.
- December 26, 1862 – The USS Red Rover is commissioned by the U.S. Navy as a hospital ship and takes aboard Sisters of the Order of the Holy Cross, the first women to serve as nurses aboard a navy ship.
- December 26, 1885 – Bazoline Esther Usher born, African-American educator known for her work in the public schools of Atlanta, Georgia. As director of education for black children in the district prior to integration, she was the first African-American to have an office at Atlanta City Hall. Usher also founded the first black Girl Scout troop in Atlanta in 1943. Her career in education lasted over 50 years. In 1988, the Bazoline E. Usher Middle School was named in her honor. She died at age 106 in 1992.
- December 26, 1900 – Evelyn Bark born, leading member of the British Red Cross; fluent in six languages with a working knowledge of several others, she developed language cards to help doctors and nurses communicate with patients when there was no shared language; during WWII, she was part of the British Red Cross Commission entering just-liberated Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany; one of the first volunteers to enter the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp; after the war, worked for the Red Cross International Tracing Service, helping survivors from the camps, trying to reunite them with their families, as well as organizing a hospital and rehabilitation center for them; coordinated relief for Hungarian refugees in 1956; one of the first women to receive the British Order of St Michael and St George in 1967; No Time to Kill is her autobiography.
- December 26, 1916 – The New York County Medical Society voted down a resolution in support of lobbying to change New York state’s anti-birth-control law, 210 against and 72 in favor. All six of the women members of the NYCMS voted in favor of the resolution. Section 1142 of the New York State Penal Code classed contraceptives and contraceptive information as banned obscene items. But Section 1145 granted an exemption to physicians who gave contraceptive advice, articles, or instruments to a patient “for the cure or prevention of disease.” Most physicians refused to test Section 1142 since the burden of proof would be on them to show that their actions were to prevent or to cure a specific ailment, and failure to provide such proof – especially to an anti-birth-control judge or jury – could result in imprisonment.
- December 26, 1918 – Dame Olga Lopes-Seale born in Guyana, social and community volunteer in Barbados, and radio broadcaster in both countries; she worked as a broadcaster for Radio Demerara in Guyana, then for Barbados Rediffusion Services, and was actively involved with the Needy Children’s Fund in Barbados.
- December 26, 1939 – Lynn Morley Martin born, American Republican politician and businesswoman; U.S. Secretary of Labor (1991-1993), where she was noted for instituting a Glass Ceiling Commission, pushing for greater representation of women and minorities in the corporate world, and was a crusader against sexual harassment in the workplace. She was the first woman vice chair of the House Republican Conference (1985-1989); and U.S. Representative from Illinois (1981-1991). As a representative, she was a fiscal conservative, but a social liberal, an advocate for the Equal Rights Amendment, pro-choice, and in favor of raising the minimum wage. She lost a bid to replace Illinois Democratic Senator Paul Simon in 1990, in part because of poor advice from consultant Roger Ailes, who would become the infamous CEO of Fox News a few years later. George H. W. Bush considered her as his running mate in 1988, but chose Dan Quayle instead – another piece of advice from Roger Ailes.
- December 26, 1942 – Catherine Coulter born, American author of suspense novels and historical romances; she was working as a speechwriter for a Wall Street executive, when her first novel was published in 1978. By 1982, she was able to quit her job and write full-time. She has written over 50 books, most of them best-sellers. Known for the Sherbrooke series, and her Savich and Sherlock FBI Thrillers.
- December 26, 1948 – Candy Crowley born, American news anchor and political correspondent; she began her career at the Washington DC radio station WASH-FM, became a news anchor for Mutual Broadcasting, and then the Associated Press White House Correspondent. In 1987, she moved to CNN, hosting Inside Politics, and became anchor of the Sunday morning political talk show, State of the Union (2010-2014). She was the moderator for the second debate between President Barack Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney in 2012. In 2015, Crowley became a fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics.
- December 26, 1954 – Susan Butcher born, sled dog racer, 4-time winner of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
- December 26, 1964 – Elizabeth Kostova born, American author, best known for her first novel, The Historian, a historical fantasy thriller, for which she won the 2005 Quill Award for Debut Author of the Year.
- December 26, 1991 – Gabriella Smith born, American composer and environmentalist; known for her organ concerto, Breathing Forests, Strobe, and her album Lost Coast. She makes field recordings of soundscapes in nature which often inspire her compositions, and sometimes become part of them.
- December 26, 2015 – Arezu, an Isis slave, would be sold with a user guide and a list of defects, so that the buyer could not complain later about her disobedience or bad attitude. She was around 20 years old, and the sound of her crying was so pitiful that it broke her neighbours’ hearts in the town of Raqqa in Syria. Horrified by Arezu’s fate even before they met her, they ended up pooling their savings to buy her, then put their lives on the line for the sake of a desperate stranger, in an extraordinary act of heroism and generosity. The town was still adjusting to the bleak restrictions of life under Isis rule, even for free men and women. They had not wanted to believe the rumours of mass captivity of Yazidi women as sex slaves. Many Yazidis are followers of Zorastrianism and Christianity, so Isis branded them as devil-worshippers. The family posed as would-be slave owners to buy Arezu, then pretended to despise her while nursing her back to health, and hunting desperately for her surviving relatives. Fearing her former owners would try to reclaim her, they moved house for several months, and finally risked all their lives to spirit her across the Turkish border. When they returned to Raqqa, questions about what happened to Arezu caused them to flee into hiding in a southern Turkish city. Arezu is now in Iraq, reunited with what is left of her family. The family which saved her has been broken up – the women still in Turkey, while the men have traveled to Europe to find work, because Turkey’s rules for refugees mean they cannot work or study there.
- December 26, 2019 – It was announced that in 2020, thousands of people would attend high-level UN events and forums in Mexico City and Paris to mark the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action. The Beijing Platform was adopted unanimously by 189 governments at the UN’s fourth world conference on women, held in China in 1995. It is considered the most progressive international blueprint for advancing women’s rights. Events would be held in Mexico City, and then in Paris, co-hosted by the governments of Mexico and France. Government representatives, women’s rights activists, and businesses will form coalitions to agree on fully-funded action plans on abortion rights, ending violence against women, and other specific issues. UN Women would also launch a year-long Generation Equality campaign.
- December 26, 2020 – After a decade-long fight by women’s rights activists, Iran’s Guardian Council approved an amendment to grant Iranian citizenship to the children of Iranian women married to foreign men. The Guardian Council was the last body needed to approve reforming Iran’s discriminatory citizenship laws. Previously, Iran’s civil code granted children and spouses of Iranian men citizenship automatically, while children born in Iran to Iranian women and foreign fathers must live in Iran at least until they are 19 before they could apply for citizenship. The latest push to reform the law was inspired by Maryam Mirzakhani, a world-renowned Iranian mathematician and Fields Medal recipient, who passed away from cancer in 2017. Because her husband was not Iranian, her daughter could not obtain Iranian citizenship. In May, 2020, Iran’s Parliament adopted the proposed reform, but it went back and forth with the Guardian Council, a body of 12 Islamic jurists, to determine whether it is in accordance with Iran’s Constitution and Sharia (Islamic law). They approved the amendment in October, and it went into effect on this day in December, 2020. But the amended law still does not give equal status to the children of Iranian women and foreign nationals. Children of Iranian men married to foreign women are automatically Iranian nationals. But Iranian mothers must still apply for their children to become Iranian nationals, or their children can apply for themselves at age 18, but in either case, there has to be a security check, which could arbitrarily disqualify applicants if they, or their parents, are seen as critical of the government.
- December 26, 2021 – Sarah Weddington, the lawyer who successfully argued the landmark abortion rights case Roe v. Wade before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972 when she was just 26 years old, died in her sleep at her home in Austin, Texas, at the age of 76. She also served three terms as a Texas state lawmaker, before becoming general counsel of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and later was an adviser on women’s issues to President Jimmy Carter. In 2019, she attended a signing ceremony for a New York state law to safeguard abortion should the current Supreme Court overturn Roe v Wade.
_______________________________
- December 27, 1797 – Manuela Sáenz born, Ecuadorian revolutionary; she left her husband to join Simón Bolívar, who led the fight against Spain to liberate the Spanish Empire in South America, now the republics of Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Panama. In choosing the revolution and its charismatic leader over her marriage to a rich husband, she said, “Marriage pledges one to nothing.”
- December 27, 1821 – Lady Jane Wilde born, Irish poet, essayist, and women’s rights advocate, supporter of the Irish nationalist movement, writing under the pseudonym Speranza; and collected Celtic folktales. She was the mother of Oscar Wilde.
- December 27, 1845 – Ether anesthetic is used for childbirth for the first time by Dr. Crawford W. Long in Jefferson, Georgia, when he had his wife Caroline inhale ether while she was giving birth.
- December 27, 1888 – Thea von Harbou born, German screenwriter, novelist, and film director; noted for writing the original story and the screenplay for the science fiction film classic Metropolis.
- December 27, 1901 – Marlene Dietrich born, legendary film star, actor-singer, and early opponent of Nazism; she financed the escape of several Jewish friends before WWII. In 1937, Hitler’s agents offered her an almost blank check to return home to star in movies of her choice – she angrily rejected the offer, and her films were banned in Germany. She became an American citizen in 1939. During World War II, she made anti-Nazi broadcasts in German, took part in war-bond drives, and tirelessly entertained half a million Allied troops and war prisoners across North Africa and Western Europe.
- December 27, 1907 – Mary Howard born as Mary Edgar, English novelist who used Mary Howard as her pen name for romance novels, and published gothic romances under the name “Josephine Edgar.” She wrote over 50 books, and is one of only two writers to win the Romantic Novel of the Year Award three times, given by the Romantic Novelists' Association. She was an active member of the Society of Women Writers and Journalists, and served a term as SWWJ chair. She died at age 83 in 1991.
- December 27, 1911 – Anna Russell born in London, English-Canadian singer and comedian, best known for her send-ups of opera divas, and for The Ring of the Nibelungs (An Analysis) – a humorous 22-minute synopsis of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen – and her parody How to Write Your Own Gilbert and Sullivan Opera. She died at age 94 in 2006.
- December 27, 1924 – Jean Bartik born, American computer scientist and engineer; one of the original programmers for the ENIAC computer; studied mathematics in school then began work at the University of Pennsylvania, first manually calculating ballistics trajectories, then using ENIAC to do so. She and her colleagues developed and codified many fundamentals of programming while working on the ENIAC, since it was the first computer of its kind. After her work on ENIAC, Bartik went on to work on BINAC and UNIVAC, and spent time at a variety of technical companies as a writer, manager, engineer, and programmer.
- December 27, 1927 – Anne Armstrong born, American diplomat and Republican politician; first woman Counselor to the President (1973-1974); first woman United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom (1976-1977); Chair of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board (1981-1990); Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient in 1987.
- December 27, 1927 – Audrey Wagner born, All-American Girls Professional Baseball League outfielder (1943-1949), and All Star player for the National Girls Baseball League of Chicago (1950-1953). Wagner later earned a Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Illinois, and became an obstetrician and gynecologist; she earned a private pilot’s license, and also served on the Crescent City city council in Northern California. She was killed in the crash of a small plane in Wyoming at the age of 56.
- December 27, 1930 – Meg Greenfield born, named editorial editor at the Washington Post in 1979 after winning a Pulitzer Prize; penned commentaries on civil rights, integration, nuclear arms, and the military establishment.
- December 27, 1935 – Regina Jonas receives her semicha and is ordained as a rabbi, becoming the first woman to officially serve in that role.
- December 27, 1943 – Cokie Roberts born, American television journalist and syndicated columnist; reporter on National Public Radio; won the Edward Weintal Prize for Diplomatic Reporting in 1988 for coverage of the Iran-Contra Affair; author of Capital Dames: The Civil War and the Women of Washington, 1848-1868.
- December 27, 1946 – Janet Street-Porter born, English journalist, broadcaster and media personality; career highlights include: reporter on LWT’s The London Weekend Show (1975-1979); produced Twentieth Century Box (1980-1982) for LWT; editor of Network 7 (1987-1988) for Channel Four; editor of The Independent on Sunday (2000-2002); since 2011, she has been a regular panelist on ITV’s Loose Women.
- December 27, 1946 – Polly Toynbee born, British journalist and author; worked for The Guardian, the BCC and The Independent newspaper; president of the British Humanist Association (2007-2012).
- December 27, 1952 – Tovah Feldshuh born, American actress, singer, and playwright, known primarily for her work on Broadway, but she has also appeared on television and in films. On Broadway, she played Yentl, and Golda Meir in Golda’s Balcony. She has toured the U.S. with her cabaret show Tovah: Out of Her Mind. In 2000, she co-wrote and performed a one-woman play about Tallulah Bankhead called Tallulah Hallelujah! In 2015, she did another one-woman show called Aging is Optional. For her active support of many charities, she was honored with the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanities Award, and the Hadassah Myrtle Wreath. In 2015, at the age of 62, she hiked Mount Kilimanjaro with her son, in part because of the death of her mother in 2014 at age 103. Feldshuh said, "I really do feel we're only in this body once ... the idea of taking a trip and trekking Mt. Kilimanjaro, or going on the Trans-Siberian railroad, or tracking lemurs in Madagascar — these things are very exciting to me. To see the world until I leave my own body. It's now or not at all."
- December 27, 1954 – Mandie Fletcher born, British television and film director; noted for directing series episodes and the 2016 film of Absolutely Fabulous; she also worked on the TV series Hamish Macbeth (1996-1997), and Jam and Jerusalem (2006-2009); her feature film debut was Deadly Advice in 1994; in 2018, she co-authored the screenplay and then directed Patrick, a comedy film.
- December 27, 1966 – Marianne Elliott born, British theatre director; currently working with Elliott & Harper Productions since 2017; has worked at the National Theatre (2002-2017), where her production of Saint Joan won the 2008 Olivier Award for Best Revival, and at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester (1995-2005), where she also served as artistic director (1998-2005).
- December 27, 1969 – Sarah Vowell born, American non-fiction author, journalist, social commentator, and essayist, noted for her quirky and amusing books on American History, including Unfamiliar Fishes; Assassination Vacation; and Lafayette in the Somewhat United States.
- December 27, 1971 – Savannah Guthrie born in Australia, Australian-American attorney and broadcast journalist; co-anchor on NBC’s Today show since 2012; NBC News White House correspondent (2008-2010), legal analyst and trial reporter (2007-2008).
- December 27, 1982 – Erin E. Stead born, American children’s book illustrator; winner of the 2011 Caldecott Medal for A Sick Day for Amos McGee.
- December 27, 1987 – Michaela Skovranova born in Slovakia, Australian-based filmmaker and photographer, known for underwater photography, and capturing environmental stories in extreme environments. She made an underwater live video in Australia on World Ocean's Day 2018, as part of the National Geographic Australia ‘Planet or Plastic’ campaign focusing on the impact plastic has on the marine ecosystem.
- December 27, 2007 – Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto is assassinated in Rawalpindi by a gunman, who fired three shots at her, then detonated a suicide vest packed with ball bearings, which also killed twenty people in the crowd.
- December 27, 2016 – In the UK, the Fashion and Textile Children’s Trust, a charity once chaired by Charles Dickens, has been overwhelmed by struggling shop workers with requests for requests for support, because of the collapse of British Home Stores, an 88-year-old general store, which left 11,000 people, the majority of them women, without jobs. The charity assists children whose parents work in the retail sector but are struggling to make ends meet. Its grants aim to help meet the cost of essentials like school uniforms, winter clothing and shoes, or specialist equipment for disabled children. The trust was founded in 1853 by a group of philanthropic textile merchants to support the bereaved family of a colleague. Sir Philip Green was BHS’s owner from 2001 until he sold it for £1 to Retail Acquisitions. He is being investigated by the Pensions Regulator to resolve a £571 million hole in the retailer’s pension scheme, which could affect about 22,000 pensions. The Green family and other shareholders collected at least £580 million from BHS in the years before Green sold it off, described in a report by the Pensions Regulator as “systemic plunder.”
- December 27, 2019 – In the UK, the news year honours were announced. Among the honorees were Nicolette Peel and Yashmin Harun. Nicolette Peel, a teacher who retrained as midwife because of her experiences when she was diagnosed with breast cancer shortly after the birth of her first child, received an MBE for her work supporting pregnant women and mothers with cancer. There was no training for midwives in helping pregnant women who were also dealing with cancer, so she wrote a module for the Royal College of Midwives, and started Mummy’s Star, a charity which offers online connections and advice for mothers with cancer and their caregivers, and grants for research and new help programmes. Peel, whose cancer has returned, said: “The honours system gives me so much hope. It fills me with joy that the compassionate qualities are recognised and appreciated, and that ordinary people are represented. My life might not be long but I feel it will be worthwhile.” Yashmin Harun was honored with a British Empire Medal (BEM) for her work in opening up sports like football, badminton, tennis, and fencing to minority ethnic women. She set up free football sessions for women in partnership with Dagenham and Redbridge FC community trust and a mosque. “I am really humbled,” she said. “All I really wanted to do was to create opportunities for women to take part in sport.”
- December 27, 2020 – In Indiana, Dr. Susan Moore, age 52, died of COVID-19, just two weeks after she posted a video on Facebook, which went viral, describing the racist and sexist treatment by a medical staff that did not respond to her pleas for care in spite of being in intense pain and being a physician. She declared in the video, “You have to show proof that you have something wrong with you in order for you to get the medicine. I put forth, and I maintain: If I was white, I wouldn’t have to go through that … This is how Black people get killed, when you send them home, and they don’t know how to fight for themselves.” Moore’s son Henry said his mother had tested positive for COVID-19 on November 29, but was sent home from the hospital closest to their home on December 7. She was only home for 12 hours before he had to call an ambulance to rush her to a different hospital which was farther away. When she arrived at the second hospital, her temperature was 103 degrees, and her blood pressure had fallen to 80/60. Her condition grew steadily worse. In spite of much better care, and being placed on a ventilator, she died just a few weeks later. An analysis by the Brookings Institution released earlier in 2020 showed that Black people with COVID have died at 3.6 times the rate of white people.
- December 27, 2021 – In Afghanistan, the Taliban banned long-distance travel for unaccompanied Afghan women, saying they should not be allowed on the road or on an airplane unless they’re escorted by a close male relative. The Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice also demanded vehicle owners refuse rides to women not wearing headscarves. The ban follows the Taliban dissolving Afghanistan’s election commission. The comission supervised the polls during the previous U.S.- and Western-backed government. A Taliban spokesperson said, “There is no need for these commissions to exist and operate.”
_______________________________
- December 28, 1522 – Margaret of Parma born, illegitimate but acknowledged daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Appointed by her half-brother Philip II of Spain as Governor of the Netherlands (1559-1567), she resigned when it became clear that her authority would be less than that granted to the Duke of Alba, sent to put down by force northern Dutch opposition to Philip’s religious oppression, in spite of her warnings that military intervention would be disastrous.
- December 28, 1722 – Eliza Lucas Pinckney born in the British West Indies, was educated in French, music, and botany, a subject at which she excelled. When her family moved to South Carolina from Antigua, she became an overseer on one of her family's plantations, and kept a detailed record of her decisions and experiments. She later took over management of two other plantations after her father had to return to Antigua when he was appointed lieutenant governor of the island. The result of her work was that indigo became one of the South’s major cash crops – its cultivation and processing as a dye would produce one-third of South Carolina’s exports before the Revolutionary War. Her detailed writings have become a major source of information about the life of elite colonials in the American South in the 18th century.
- December 28, 1789 – Catharine Maria Sedgwick born, American novelist and short story writer who earned her living with her pen; noted for her spirited heroines, and her promotion of the idea of American mothers as custodians and transmitters of republican ideals, civic virtue, and patriotism, advocating for the education of women, but only in order to make them better mothers and wives; her books include Hope Leslie, which encouraged religious tolerance and fair treatment for American Indians.
- December 28, 1816 – Elizabeth Packard born, advocate for women’s rights and for those wrongly committed to insane asylums. In 1839, her parents pressured her into an arranged marriage with a minister 14 years her senior, and they had six children. In 1860, her husband had her committed to the Jacksonville Insane Asylum in Illinois because she disagreed with him on religion, how to raise their children, and the issue of slavery. She spent three years denying she was insane before her older children were able to pressure the authorities into releasing her, but her husband locked her in the nursery of their home and nailed the windows shut. She managed to get a letter out to her friend Sarah Haslett, who gave it to Judge Charles Starr. Starr issued a writ of habeas corpus, and after hearing the couple’s conflicting statements, scheduled a jury trial to determine her sanity. At the trial of Packard v. Packard, her husband’s family members testified that she argued with him, and had tried to withdraw from his congregation. The State Hospital records stating that her condition was incurable were entered into evidence. Her lawyers called neighbors who were not members of his congregation as witnesses to testify that they had never seen her exhibit any signs of insanity. The last witness was Dr. Duncanson, a physician and theologian who had interviewed her, and testified that he did not agree with some of her religious beliefs, but “I do not call people insane because they differ with me. I pronounce her a sane woman and wish we had a nation of such women.” The jury returned a verdict in her favor after only seven minutes of deliberation, and the Judge issued an order that she should not be confined. But when Elizabeth Packard returned to the family home, she found that the night before her release, her husband had rented their home to another family, sold her furniture, and had taken her money, notes, wardrobe, and children, leaving the state for Boston MA. She appealed to both the Supreme Courts in Chicago and Boston, but had no legal recourse, as married women in these states at the time had no legal rights to their property or children. In 1869, after legislation was passed in Massachusetts granting married women property and child custody rights, her husband ceded custody of the children back to her. The Packards never divorced, but remained separated for the rest of their lives. She founded the Anti-Insane Asylum Society, and published several books, including Marital Power Exemplified, or Three Years Imprisonment for Religious Belief. In 1867, Illinois passed a Bill for the Protection of Personal Liberty which guaranteed that all people accused of insanity, including women accused by their husbands, had the right to a public hearing.
- December 28, 1882 – Lili Elbe born as Einar Magnus Wegener, Danish painter, and a pioneering transgender woman, who underwent sex reassignment surgery in 1930, but died from complications caused by an attempted uterus transplant in 1931.
- December 28, 1894 – Burnita Shelton Matthews born, American judge; the first woman appointed to serve on a U.S. district court, as Judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (1949-1968). During World War I, she moved to Washington DC, took the civil service exam, and worked at the Veterans Administration. She enrolled in night school at National University Law School (now George Washington University Law School). She earned her degree and passed the District of Columbia bar in 1920. As a young law student in DC, she staged a silent vigil after learning she could carry a banner outside the White House but would be arrested for not having a permit if she spoke. She worked as counsel for the National Woman’s Party. In 1949, President Truman appointed her a Federal District Court Judge.
- December 28, 1895 – Carol Ryrie Brink born, American novelist and juvenile author; her book Caddie Woodlawn won the 1936 Newbery Medal.
- December 28, 1918 – Constance Gore-Booth Markievicz, Irish revolutionary, nationalist, socialist, and feminist; while detained in Holloway prison for making a seditious speech, she became the first woman to be elected as a Member of Parliament (representing Dublin St. Patrick’s) to the British House of Commons. But as a member of Sinn Féin, she declined to take her seat after being released from Prison, as part of their abstentionist strategy. She was one of the Sinn Féin MPs who formed the first Dáil Éirenn in 1919, the lower house of the Irish legislature. Markievicz served as the Minister for Labour (1919-1922) in the self-declared Irish Republic, one of the first women in the world to hold a cabinet position.
- December 28, 1919 – Emily Cheney Neville born in England, American children’s author; won the 1964 Newbery Medal for It’s Like This, Cat.
- December 28, 1925 – Hildegard Neff born as Hildegard Knef, German actress, singer, song-writer, and autobiographer. As a teenager she was an apprentice animator with Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft (now UFA), then studied at the State Film School. When her love affair with a Nazi officer during WWII when she was 19 came to light, it hurt her acting career in Hollywood, so she went on the stage in New York, then had a successful concert and recording career as a singer. Noted for her best-selling autobiographies The Gift Horse, about her life in Germany, from childhood until after WWII, and The Verdict, a chronicle of her struggle with breast cancer. After German reunification, she moved back to Berlin, where she died of a smoking-related lung infection at age 76 on 2002.
- December 28, 1930 – Mariam A. Aleem born, Egyptian artist, academic, graphic designer, and illustrator; at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Alexandria, she first taught in (1957-1968), then became head of, the Printmaking Department (1968-1975), and was promoted to head of the Design Department (1985-1990).
- December 28, 1934 – Maggie Smith born, English actress, Academy award winner for The Prime of Miss Jean Brody, and Best Supporting for California Suite; Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter films, and Violet Crawley in Downton Abbey. Smith helped with the raising of $4.6 million needed to rebuild the Court Theatre in Christchurch, New Zealand, after the earthquake in 2011 that caused severe damage to the area. In 2012, she became a patron of the International Glaucoma Association. In 2012, she contributed a drawing of her own hand to the 2012 Celebrity Paw Auction, to raise funds for Cats Protection.
- December 28, 1943 – Dame Joan Ruddock born, Welsh British Labour politician; appointed as a member of the Privy Council in 2010; Minister of State for Energy (2009-2010); MP for Lewisham Deptford (1987-2015).
- December 28, 1944 – Sandra M. Faber born, American astrophysicist known for research on the evolution of galaxies, making important discoveries linking the brightness of galaxies to the speed of their stars; co-discoverer of the Faber-Jackson relation, an empirical power-law relation; worked on the design of the Keck observatory and its telescopes in Hawaii; awarded the National Medal of Science in 2013.
- December 28, 1946 – Barbara Thomas Judge, Lady Judge, born in the U.S., but has dual British-American citizenship; first woman Chair of the Institute of Directors; Chair Emeritus of the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA); Chair of the United Kingdom's fraud prevention service Cifas; former Chair of the Pension Protection Fund and a UK Business Ambassador on behalf of UK Trade & Investment; also a trustee of several cultural and charitable institutions, including the Royal Academy of Arts.
- December 28, 1952 – Bridget Prentice born, British Labour politician; Member of the Labour Party Electoral Commission since 2014; MP for Lewisham East (1992-2010).
- December 28, 1953 – Martha Wash born, singer-musician, civil rights activist who campaigned for legislation to make vocal credits mandatory; The Weather Girls, “It’s Raining Men.”
- December 28, 1954 – Gayle King born, American television journalist; co-anchor of CBS This Morning since 2012, and an editor-at-large for O, The Oprah Magazine.
- December 28, 1967 – Muriel ‘Mickie’ Siebert becomes the first woman to own a seat on the N.Y. Stock Exchange.
- December 28, 1970 – Elaine Hendrix born, American television, film, and stage actress and animal rights activist. She began as a dancer with the Garry Harrison Dance Company, but she was hit by a car in 1992 while riding her bicycle, which ended her career in dance. She transitioned to acting, and appeared on several TV series, and then in films. Hendrix is on the board of Stray Rescue of St. Louis, and also travels frequently as a speaker to advocate for animals, and to help build habitats. In 2012, she founded The Pet Matchmaker, to rescue, foster, and find forever homes for homeless pets.
- December 28, 1981 – Elizabeth Jordan Carr, first American test-tube baby, is born in Norfolk VA; she becomes a journalist, currently working as editor of Daybreak.com, and has worked for newspapers in Maine, and for the Boston Globe.
- December 28, 2014 – The woman who was raped by UK football player Ched Evans had to move five times in three years because of Twitter trolls who tormented her. They supported Evans’ claims the sex was “consensual” in spite of his conviction and time served in prison. Her father said, “I couldn’t even see her over Christmas because it’s too risky for her to visit me. I don’t even know where she is living at the moment, so I haven’t been able to give her the Christmas presents I bought her. The last time I saw her was almost a year ago, and it’s been hard not having her at home over Christmas.” Ched Evans, now released from prison, was unable to find a club willing to hire him as a player because of his conviction. He said he was “determined to continue the fight to clear my name,” and offered a £50,000 reward for information that could clear his name, as well as hiring private investigators. In 2016, his conviction was overturned after the Court of Appeal heard evidence concerning the victim’s sexual behavior with other men, in spite of cross-examination of the victim’s sexual history being banned in the UK since 1999. Former solicitor general Vera Baird said that details of the woman's sexual past should not have been heard in court and the case could discourage people who are sexually assaulted from reporting it to police.
- December 28, 2019 – Lawyers representing victims of Harvey Weinstein could get as much as 10 times more than some of the accusers themselves if a controversial settlement deal, which has come after two years of negotiations, should go ahead. The proposed settlement is part of a $47 million deal aimed at paying the Weinstein Company’s debts. Of this sum, around $6.2 million would go to the 18 accusers who filed cases in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. And approximately $18.5 million is thought to be set aside for the class-action participants – which more victims are expected to join. Over 30 women are already involved in the tentative settlement deal. If approved in court, the settlement will bring to an end most of the civil lawsuits pending against Weinstein. The agreement has drawn much criticism from lawyers and some of the accusers themselves, several of whom are now considering objecting to its terms and opting out of the agreement altogether. Elizabeth Fegan, the lead attorney representing the women who are part of the original class action lawsuit, and all future claimants who choose to join it, could receive up to 25% of the payout if the settlement goes ahead, legal observers said. They pointed out that sum could end up being 10 times or more the payment to individual victims, especially if more join the case and dilute the amount of the awards. Lawyer Douglas Wigdor says this is one of the grounds upon which he intends to fight the proposed settlement on behalf of two of his clients who have announced they will object.
- December 28, 2020 – Loujain al-Hathloul, one of Saudi Arabia’s most prominent women’s rights activists was sentenced to five years and eight months in prison under a vague and broadly worded counterterrorism law, charged with “undermining the kingdom” by communicating with foreign diplomats, journalists, and rights organizations and pushing for women’s rights. Her long “pretrial detention” had drawn international criticism, since she had been arrested in May 2018, along with other notable women activists. They had campaigned to end the ban on Saudi women driving, and were detained just before the ban was finally lifted in June 2018, which was touted by the Saudi government as proof of the increasing freedom of the kingdom’s women. According to her family, the judge suspended two years and 10 months of her sentence. With credit for the time she had already served, she was released after two months. Ms. al-Hathloul was also placed on probation for three years and barred from traveling outside Saudi Arabia for five years. Ms. al-Hathloul said that during her time in prison she and other inmates were subject to sexual harassment and torture, including beatings and electric shocks, but a judge rejected the complaint she filed about the alleged torture, after the government cleared itself of wrongdoing. Her family said the investigation was really just a cover-up.
- December 28, 2021 – In the UK, a Merseyside police officer was found guilty by a disciplinary tribunal of gross misconduct. The officer committed repeated offences over a six-year period, including using his mobile phone to take photos, which he then shared via Whats App, of people in mental health crisis, selfies at a murder scene, and used the app to send messages and images that were racist, homophobic, and sexually “severely offensive.” He resigned before the discipline tribunal convened, which ruled he would have been sacked if still a serving officer. He is barred for life from rejoining the service. Earlier, two Metropolitan police officers had been found to have used their mobile phones to take photos at the scene of two sisters who were murdered. The two officers were convicted in court and sacked.
_______________________________
- December 29, 1709 – Elizabeth Petrovna born, Empress Elizabeth I of Russia, who strengthened the nobles’ dominance in local government, reconstituting the senate, which her predecessor had abolished, encouraged the establishment of the University of Moscow and the Imperial Academy of Arts, and also spent exorbitant sums of money on the Winter Palace and the Smolny Cathedral; after she was brought to power in a bloodless coup staged by the Imperial Guard in 1741, she vowed as Empress, she would not sign a single death sentence, a vow she kept all the way to her death in 1762.
- December 29, 1843 – ‘Carmen Sylva’ born Princess Elizabeth of Wied, became Queen consort of Romania, author as Carmen Sylva of poetry, prose aphorisms, plays, novels and short stories. English translation is available for The Bard of the Dimbovitza. She was secretly pro-Democracy (from her diary): “I must sympathize with the Social Democrats, especially in view of the inaction and corruption of the nobles. These "little people" after all, want only what nature confers: equality. The Republican form of government is the only rational one. I can never understand the foolish people, the fact that they continue to tolerate us.”
- December 29, 1879 – Edith Houghton Hooker born, American social worker and a leader of the suffrage movement in Maryland, founder in 1909 of the Just Government League, and affiliate of the American Woman Suffrage Association. In 1910, she began educating the public about suffrage through open air meetings at locations across Maryland. As a speaker Hooker was deft with persuasive use of language and practical evidence gathered from her research. In order to promote support she noted that women's suffrage would reduce disease, improve water quality, and make women better wives. This was a tactic used by Hooker and other suffragists who supported combining the Social Hygiene Movement and the women's suffrage movement to improve society. In 1912, Hooker established the Maryland Suffrage News, a weekly newspaper and the official organ of the Just Government League, and in 1917, she was invited to become the editor of The Suffragist, the weekly newspaper of the National Woman's Party. Hooker was also active in the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, and was elected finance chair of the organization's executive committee in 1915. After suffrage was won, her efforts focused on introducing a bill that would ensure women equal political and civil rights. Although the bill was passed by the Maryland House of Delegates, it was rejected by the Maryland Senate; a subsequent revision, which was revised to include only a section stating that women would be allowed to hold office, was passed by both houses in 1922.
- December 29, 1898 – Jeanne Leleu born, French pianist and composer, daughter of a bandmaster and a piano teacher. She entered the Conservatoire de Paris at the age of nine, and gave the premiere performance of Ravel's Ma mère l'oye with Geneviève Durony in 1910. Her cantata Beatrix won the Prix de Rome in 1923. She was the third woman to win this premier Grand Prize after Lili Boulanger and Marguerite Canal. Leleu went on to win the Georges Bizet and Monbinne Prizes. She is known for works for symphony, for piano, and for ballets, including Femmes and Virevoltes. She became a professor of sight reading at the Conservatoire, then professor of harmony in 1947. Leleu died at age 80 in 1979.
- December 29, 1920 – Viveca Lindfors born in Sweden, American stage, screen and television actress, acting coach, pacifist, and poet. She was a naturalized American citizen. In 1967, she read poetry at the first meeting of the Jeanette Rankin Brigade, a women's peace organization, where participants, including Coretta Scott King, planned a protest at the Capitol on January 15, the opening day of Congress. Lindfors was a liberal Democrat, and supported Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign. In the last years of her life, she taught acting at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. Of her former co-star Ronald Reagan, she said, "Ronnie was not a big star. He didn't carry enough weight. To think that the guy became president is really kind of funny."
- December 29, 1923 – Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat born, French mathematician and physicist; proved the local existence and uniqueness of solutions to the vacuum Einstein Equations; pioneer in mathematical study of supergravity; first woman elected to the Académie des Sciences Française (French Academy of Sciences); a Grand Officer of the Légion d’honneur.
- December 29, 1936 – Mary Tyler Moore born, American actress, producer, and advocate for diabetes research and animal rights. Best known for playing Laura Petrie on the Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-1966), and as Mary Richards on the Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977), featuring one of the few central women characters in television who was unmarried and focused on her successful career, which TIME magazine listed as one of the “17 Shows That Changed TV” calling it "a sophisticated show about grownups among other grownups, having grownup conversations." She was the International Chair of the JDRF (Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation), using her celebrity status to raise funds and awareness of diabetes mellitus type 1, and was a supporter of the ASPCA and Farm Sanctuary. She died at age 80 from cardiac arrest in 2017.
- December 29, 1937 – Thea Bowman born, the first black Catholic nun to join the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration; she was instrumental in the 1987 publication of the hymnal, Lead Me, Guide Me: The African American Catholic Hymnal. She was a teacher, and a speaker on racial inequality.
- December 29, 1943 – Molly Bang born, versatile American children’s book illustrator, including The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher; Ten, Nine, Eight; and The Paper Crane; three-time runner-up for the Caldecott Medal, and 2016 Phoenix Picture Book Award winner.
- December 29, 1952 – Gelsey Kirkland born, American ballerina and choreographer; soloist and principal with the New York City Ballet (1968-1974) and the American Ballet Theatre (1974-1984); danced Clara in Baryshnikov’s 1977 televised production of The Nutcracker; her biography, Dancing On My Grave, sent shockwaves through the dance world because of her detailed chronicle of struggles with anorexia, bulimia, and drug addiction; co-director of the Gelsey Kirkland Academy of Classical Ballet and the Gelsey Kirkland Ballet Company.
- December 29, 1958 – Nancy J. Currie born, American engineer, U.S. Army officer and flight instructor, NASA astronaut on four space shuttle missions, and academic in the Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering at Texas A&M.
- December 29, 1959 – Paula Poundstone born, American stand-up comic, author, interviewer, and commentator; (2017); author of There Is Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say and The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness; National Spokesperson for the American Library Association's "United for Libraries" since 2007.
- December 29, 1967 – Ashleigh Banfield born in Canada, Canadian-American journalist and co-anchor at CNN (2012-2013), and for HLN (2014-2018). In 2001, she had covered the attack on the World Trade Center and its aftermath live from the streets of Manhattan, and later interviewed Taliban prisoners and visited a Kabul hospital during the conflict in Afghanistan.
- December 29, 1974 – Twinkle Khanna, born as Tina Jatin Khanna, Indian author, newspaper columnist, film producer, actress, and menstrual hygiene activist. She produced a feature film of her second novel, The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad, titled Pad Man, which tackled the taboos around menstruation. Khanna is a columnist for The Times of India, and Daily News and Analysis. In 2019, she launched Tweak, a bilingual digital media platform for women.
- December 29, 1987 – Juliana Huxtable born, American artist, performer, author, and poet; co-founder of the New York City-based nightlife project Shock Value; author of Mucus in My Pineal Gland, and co-author with Hannah Black of Life. In 2020, she relocated to Berlin.
- December 29, 2012 – The 23-year-old Indian medical student whose gang rape triggered vigils and mass protests died this day, of organ failure in the Singapore hospital where she was being treated. She had been severely beaten, raped multiple times, then thrown out of a moving bus in Delhi on December 16. The government announced a controversial new policy of publishing the names and photographs of thousands of convicted sex offenders, raising fears of vigilantism. "It is true that there is a risk of such attacks but at the moment it is the victim who has to suffer the shame and social ostracism," said Ranjana Kumari, director of Delhi's Centre for Social Research. "She can't get married, for example.”
- December 29, 2019 – An Italian court sentenced a Romanian man to 20 years in prison for running a sex and forced labor trafficking ring which lured dozens of Romanian women with the promise of decent jobs and shared living space with fellow Romanians to work on fruit and vegetable farms in Ragusa, Sicily. But when they arrived, they were forced to live in terrible conditions in outbuildings on farms without heating, were not paid for their long hours of manual labour under harsh conditions, were given rotten food to eat, were beaten and forced to have sex with their employers and other men, and threatened with guns if they protested. Twelve women who were trafficked from Romania to Italy assisted police with their investigations. Their lawyer, Liliana Battaglia, commended their bravery and said the case had exposed modern slavery at the heart of Italy’s agricultural production. She said when they learned “they had been deceived, it was too late. They were forced to work every day and to prostitute themselves. They were raped by members of the gang, and everything they earned went to their torturers. They were enslaved, in the true sense of the word.”
- December 29, 2020 – Adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have a strikingly high prevalence of attempted suicide, and women are at particular risk, researchers say. The study of nearly 22,000 Canadian adults found that 14% of those with ADHD had attempted suicide. That was roughly five times the rate of adults without ADHD, at 2.7%. Among men with ADHD, 8.5% said they had ever attempted suicide, versus 2% of men without the disorder. Of women with ADHD, 23.5% reported a past suicide attempt, compared with just over 3% of other women. The findings among women were particularly worrisome, the researchers said. "To see these numbers is devastating," said lead researcher Esme Fuller-Thomson, a professor at the University of Toronto's Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work in Canada. A large part of the relationship between ADHD and suicide attempts appeared to be explained by higher rates of depression and anxiety disorders among people with ADHD, the study found. Those with a history of drug or alcohol abuse were more likely to report a suicide attempt. The same was true of adults who had been exposed to parents' domestic violence as children.
- December 29, 2021 – Former British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell was found guilty in Manhattan federal court. She had been charged with six counts, and was convicted on five of the charges, including conspiracy to entice individuals under the age of 17 to travel in interstate commerce with intent to engage in illegal sexual activity; conspiracy to transport individuals under the age of 17 to travel in interstate commerce with intent to engage in illegal sexual activity; transportation of an individual under the age of 17 with intent to engage in illegal sexual activity; and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of individuals under the age of 18. She was found not guilty of enticement of an individual under the age of 17 to travel with intent to engage in illegal sexual activity. Jurors reached their verdict after 40 hours of deliberations over the course of six days. Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement: “A unanimous jury has found Ghislaine Maxwell guilty of one of the worst crimes imaginable: facilitating and participating in the sexual abuse of children. Crimes that she committed with her longtime partner and co-conspirator, Jeffrey Epstein. The road to justice has been far too long … I want to commend the bravery of the girls, now grown women, who stepped out of the shadows and into the courtroom. Their courage and willingness to face their abuser made this case, and today’s result, possible.” In June, 2022, Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison, followed by five years of supervised release, and ordered to pay a $750,000 fine.
_______________________________
- December 30, 1841 – Agnes Irwin born, American educator; the first dean of Radcliffe College (1894–1909). She was principal (1869-1894) of the West Penn Square Seminary for Young Ladies in Philadelphia (later renamed the Agnes Irwin School in her honor).
- December 30, 1899 – Juliane Aisner born as Julienne Mary Simart, French agent in the UK’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) during WWII. Aisner worked with the Farrier circuit as a courier. She was recruited by alleged double agent Henri Déricourt in January 1943. The circuit worked on finding landing fields and arranging receptions or departures for SOE agents arriving by air. Aisner was assigned to find safe houses in Paris for arriving or departing SOE agents and producing or obtaining false identity documents for them to use. Aisner was sent to England for SOE training, then returned to France in May 1943. She became engaged to fellow circuit member Jean Besnard. The circuit bought Café Mas, a small restaurant in Paris, and used it as a center for messages and contacts with agents. In March 1944, Aisner and Besnard suspected they were being followed by German agents, and Besnard was warned he was about to be arrested. They were evacuated to London in April, but Déricourt was accused of being a double agent for the Germans, they were "quarantined" for a time and their loyalties questioned. Besnard was put to work at the BBC and she was employed in the Cinema section of the Ministry of Information. In April 1944, they were married. In October 1944, following the liberation of France from German control, they were allowed to return to France. She died of cancer at age 47 in February, 1947 in Paris. The British awarded Aisner the War Medal with King's Commendation for Brave Conduct.
- December 30, 1912 – Margaret Wade born, won semi-professional basketball state and regional championships, as HS coach set a lifetime record of 453 wins, 89 losses and 6 ties, inspired the Wade Trophy (1978), awarded annually to the best collegiate women’s team.
- December 30, 1913 – Elyne Mitchell born, Australian author; noted for her Silver Brumby series of children’s novels, and non-fiction books about Australia’s natural wonders and history, including: Speak to the Earth, Light Horse: The Story of Australia’s Mounted Troops, and Discoverers of the Snowy Mountains.
- December 30, 1919 – The Middle Temple, one of the four Inns of Court in London, admits its first female bar student, Helena Normanton, after the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 receives Royal Assent and becomes law on December 23, 1919. The act amended all laws that prevented ‘persons’ by sex or marriage “from the exercise of any public function, or from being appointed to or holding any civil or judicial office or post, or from entering into or assuming or carrying on any civil profession or vocation, or for admission to any incorporated society ...” Women over age 30 who met minimum property requirements got the right to vote in 1918, but universal suffrage for women over age 21 didn’t come until 1928.
- December 30, 1922 – Jane Langton born, American illustrator and author of children’s books and adult mystery novels; noted for The Hall Family Chronicles, and Homer Kelly series. She died in 2018, just a few days short of her 96th birthday, from respiratory complications.
- December 30, 1924 – Yvonne Brill born, Canadian-American propulsion engineer; developed rocket and jet propulsion systems, much of her work for NASA; awarded U.S. National Medal of Technology in 2010.
- December 30, 1929 – Dame Rosalinde Hurley born, British physician, microbiologist, pathologist, public health administrator, and barrister; her medical thesis on perinatal candida infections led to her lifelong interest in mycology; knighted in 1988 for services to medicine and public health.
- December 30, 1930 – Tu Youyou born, Chinese pharmaceutical chemist who discovered artemisinin and dihydroartemisinin, used to treat malaria, saving millions of lives; co-recipient of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Medicine, the first woman from the People’s Republic of China to receive the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
- December 30, 1939 – Glenda Adams born, Australian author and playwright, Dancing on Coral, The Monkey Trap.
- December 30, 1946 – Patti Smith born, American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and poet; dubbed the “punk poet laureate.” Best known for “Because the Night,” co-written with Bruce Springsteen. She won the 2010 National Book Award for her memoir Just Kids.
- December 30, 1952 – June Anderson born, American coloratura soprano; the first non-Italian to win the prestigious Bellini d’Oro prize. She made her professional opera debut as the Queen of the Night in Mozart's The Magic Flute at the New York City Opera in 1978.
- December 30, 1959 – Tracey Ullman born, English-American television, stage, and film performer, screenwriter-producer-director, and author; the animated TV series, The Simpsons, was originally a spin-off from The Tracey Ullman Show.
- December 30, 1969 – Kersti Kaljulaid born, Estonian politician and state official; Estonian politician and state official; she was the first woman, and the youngest person, to be elected as President of Estonia; Estonia’s representative in the European Court of Auditors (2004-2016).
- December 30, 1972 – Dita Indah Sari born, Indonesian trade unionist, social and human rights activist; sentenced to 5 years in prison in 1996, charged with sedition. Amnesty International named her a prisoner of conscience. After her release in 1999 she was elected Chairperson by the Congress of the National Front for Indonesian Workers Struggle (FNPBI). She was awarded the 2001 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership. In 2002 she refused a $50,000 human rights award from Reebok to protest what she considers is the company's poor record on the issue of workers’ rights. She is the leader of the PRD, a socialist party within the broader Papernas alliance.
- December 30, 1980 – Eliza Dushku born, American television and film actress, honorary citizen of Tirana, Albania, and the city’s honorary ambassador of culture and tourism. She has struggled with ADHD, and addiction to opioids and alcohol, but has been sober for almost a decade. She is the founder of Boston Diva Productions, and serves on the board of the THRIVEGulu organization (The Trauma Healing and Reflection Center in Gulu), an organization dedicated to helping the survivors of war (including former child soldiers) in Northern Uganda. In January 2018, Dushku made public an account of her sexual molestation by stunt coordinator Joel Kramer when she was 12 and working on the film True Lies. She wrote that soon after, an adult friend of Dushku confronted Kramer on set, and that the same day, Dushku was injured during a stunt and several of her ribs were broken, while Kramer was responsible for her safety. Kramer has denied the accusation of sexual misconduct.
- December 30, 1980 – Alison McGovern born, British Labour politician; Member of Parliament for Wirral South since 2010; Chair of the Advisory Committee on Works of Art since 2016.
- December 30, 2012 – Haneen Zoabi, an Israeli-Arab politician who took part in a flotilla attempting to breach the blockade of Gaza in 2010, was able to compete in the general election in the three weeks after the Israeli supreme court unanimously overturned a ban on her candidacy. A panel of nine judges overruled a decision by the central elections committee to disqualify Haneen Zoabi from seeking re-election as a member of the Israeli parliament. The committee's decision was based on her participation in the flotilla. Zoabi, a member of the Israeli-Arab party Balad, said, "This ruling does little to erase the threats, delegitimisation and physical as well as verbal abuse that I have endured … over the past three years." In May 2010, she was a passenger on the Mavi Marmara, when nine Turkish activists were killed by Israeli commandos intent on stopping the flotilla reaching Gaza. She spoke out against the Israeli offensive on Gaza, saying Israel was breaking international law and "no military force can crush the people's survival instinct." After a supreme court hearing earlier about the disqualification, Zoabi was heckled and jostled by about 30 Israeli rightwing activists outside the court, forcing her to take shelter until security guards cleared the area. Israeli-Arabs make up 20% of the country's 7.8 million population, and there are currently only 11 members of the 120-seat parliament representing Israeli-Arab parties.
- December 30, 2017 – Caoimhe Anglin, a 28-year-old computer engineer, announced she would embark in 2018 on a tour of Ireland to convince voters to support changes to the abortion law, as the country prepared for the referendum on repealing its ban on the procedure in almost all circumstances. Beginning in January, she relayed her story of being forced to leave home to terminate a pregnancy in England in 2016. Her story, and others like it, helped persuade the electorate – particularly in rural Ireland – to support the abolition of the eighth amendment in the Irish constitution. “A year ago, when I was experiencing a crisis pregnancy, I felt very alone,” Anglin said. “I wasn’t involved in any campaigns. I was the only person I knew who went through this, right up to the time I had the abortion in Manchester in 2016. I never thought I would get involved.” After she returned from Manchester in 2016, she was unwell and too frightened to tell her parents or go to a doctor. The eighth amendment granted Irish citizenship to an embryo at conception, and was passed after a referendum in 1983, backed by 67% of voters. Pro-choice groups in Ireland said it created a legal “chill factor” among medical teams, even in cases where Irish law allowed for a termination, such as when a pregnancy would result in the woman’s death. Anglin said she was prepared for a “vicious public debate” in the run-up to the referendum, but the ‘Everyday Stories’ project, for which she was a key speaker, helped overturn the ban, with a “Yes” vote of 66% in May, 2018.
- December 30, 2019 – A UK Foreign Office spokesman announced, “The UK is seriously concerned about the fair trial guarantees in this deeply distressing case, and we will be raising the issue with the Cypriot authorities.” At issue is the fairness of a trial in Cyprus in which a 19-year-old British woman was found guilty of lying about being gang-raped. She spent four and a half weeks in a cell after the charge was filed against her in July, and was unable to leave Cyprus for months. The ruling was immediately and strongly condemned by her defence team and human rights groups. They claimed the trial was full of legal irregularities that called the verdict into question and suggested a desire to protect relations with Israel may have influenced the process. The case against the student hinged on a statement retracting her original accusation, signed after hours of questioning by detectives in a police station, that was neither recorded nor attended by a lawyer. She said in court that the police had forced her to change her story, telling the judge she was “scared for my life,” and that her retraction had been dictated to her word for word by the detective in charge. Her defense lawyer, Nicoletta Charalambidou, said, “We believe there have been many violations of procedure and the rights of a fair trial … The judge has been very strict. He has rejected all the witnesses of defence and our repeated requests to expedite the case … We are planning to appeal the decision before the supreme court, and if justice fails … take our case to the European court of human rights.” The legal aid group Justice Abroad said the trial had been far from fair because the judge had refused to consider whether the defendant had actually been assaulted. The judge repeatedly insisted “This is not a rape trial, I don't want to hear evidence about rape,” and refused to consider any evidence of rape, including a condom with DNA of three of the accused attackers and blood on it. The young woman was sentenced in January, 2020, to a four-month jail term, suspended for three years.
- December 30, 2020 – Argentina became the largest Latin American country to legalize abortion when its senate voted 38 to 29 in favor of the historic change. Pro-choice campaigners who had been keeping vigil outside Buenos Aires’s neoclassical congressional palace erupted in celebration as the result was announced. Many wept tears of joy. The bill, which legalises terminations in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy, was approved by Argentina’s lower house earlier this month after being put to congress by the country’s leftwing president, Alberto Fernández. Argentina becomes only the third South American country to permit elective abortions, alongside Uruguay, which decriminalised the practice in 2012, and Guyana, where it has been legal since 1995. Cuba legalised the practice in 1965, while Mexico City and the Mexican state of Oaxaca also allow terminations. Giselle Carino, head of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, Western Hemisphere Region, said she believed the victory in the home country of Pope Francis would reverberate across a region that is home to powerful Catholic and evangelical churches and some of the harshest abortion laws in the world. She added, “I feel incredibly proud of what we’ve been able to achieve. This is a historic moment for the country, without a doubt. It shows how, in spite of all the obstacles, change and progress are possible. Argentinian women and what’s happening right now will have an enormous impact on the region and the world.”
- December 30, 2021 – French car manufacturer Citroën has withdrawn an advertisement featuring the Egyptian singer Amr Diab after it sparked widespread accusations of promoting the harassment of women. Posted on Egyptian social media in early December, the ad features the 60-year-old pop star using a camera installed in the car’s rearview mirror to secretly take a picture of a woman crossing in front of the vehicle. The woman clearly does not give her consent to the photograph, but Diab is seen smiling at the image as it pops up on his phone. He then invites the woman to join him in the car. In a 2019 survey by the Arab Barometer research network, 90% of the women respondents between ages 18 and 39 reported having been harassed. “Taking a picture of a woman without her consent is creepy,” Reem Abdellatif, co-founder of African Women Rights Advocates (AWRA), tweeted. “You’re enabling sexual harassment.”
- December 30, 2022 – Barbara Walters, American broadcast journalist known for her interviewing skills, died at age 93. She was on The Today Show as a writer and segment producer, and then in 1974, she became the show’s co-host. In 1976, she broke the gender barrier on network evening news as the co-anchor with Harry Reasoner on the ABC Evening News. She went on to work as producer and co-host on the newsmagazine 20/20 (1979-2004). She also interviewed every sitting U.S. president from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama.
_______________________________
- December 31, 1493 – Eleonora Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino, born; she was largely responsible for the internal government of Urbino during her husband’s exile from 1521 to 1538, and a notable patron of the arts, including the Italian painter Titian.
- December 31, 1805 – Marie d'Agoult born in Germany, French historian and author who used the pen name Daniel Stern to publish her three volume Histoire de la révolution de 1848, and several other works, including her novels Nélida and Mes souvenirs; after divorce from her husband, the Comte d’Agoult in 1835, she lived with Franz Liszt – they had three children together but never married.
- December 31, 1834 – Mary Jane Safford Blake born, American educator and nurse for the Union Army during the American Civil War. She later graduated from medical school and worked as a practicing physician.
- December 31, 1878 – ‘Elizabeth Arden’ born as Florence Nightingale Graham; Canadian-American businesswoman who founded Elizabeth Arden, Inc. By 1929, she owned 150 salons in Europe and the United States, and her products were being sold in 22 countries. She was the sole owner, and at the peak of her career she was one of the wealthiest women in the world. Archrival of Helena Rubinstein.
- December 31, 1900 – Selma Burke born, American sculptor, part of Black Renaissance; worked for Augusta Savage at the Harlem Community Arts Center. Burke is known for creating the artwork for the “Roosevelt dime.” She started the Selma Burke Art Center (1960s-1980s) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
- December 31, 1905 – Helen Dodson Prince born, American astronomer; pioneer in work on solar flares, also studied the spectroscopy of 25 Orionis; during WWI, worked at MIT on radar.
- December 31, 1914 – Mary Logan Reddick born, African-American neuroembryologist; noted for worked on embryo chick blastoderm, transplanting tissues, nerve cell differentiation and time-lapse microscopy; first woman biology instructor at Morehouse College in 1939; she was a full professor and chair of the biology department at the University of Atlanta (1953- 1966).
- December 31, 1919 – Recy Taylor born, black American sharecropper. When she was a 24-year-old wife and mother walking home from church with two friends on the evening of September 3, 1944, she was abducted and raped by six white men armed with guns and knives. After she reported the crime, white vigilantes set her porch on fire. The story was widely covered in the black press, and the NAACP sent Rosa Parks, later famed for refusing to give up her seat on the bus, as an investigator. In spite of the outcry among African-Americans, including prominent black leaders like W.E.B. Dubois, across the nation, two all-white-male grand juries refused to indict the men, even though one of them admitted to having sex with her, but claimed the men had paid her. In 2010, historian Danielle L. McGuire published her doctoral dissertation, “At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance — a New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power.” Her account of Recy Taylor’s story prompted the Alabama Legislature to issue an official apology to Mrs. Taylor in 2011, calling the failure to prosecute her attackers “morally abhorrent and repugnant.”
- December 31, 1919 – Carmen Contreras-Bozak born in Puerto Rico, first Hispanic American to serve in the U.S. Women’s Army Corps (WAC) and one of the first to go overseas, working as an interpreter and also transmitting encoded messages (1942-1945).
- December 31, 1925 – Daphne Oram born, British composer and pioneer in electronic music.
- December 31, 1926 – Valerie Pearl born, British historian noted for work on the English Civil War; Lecturer in History at Somerville College, Oxford.
- December 31, 1930 – Odetta Holmes born, known simply as Odetta, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, actress, civil and human rights activist, “The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement.”
- December 31, 1937 – Tess Jaray born, British painter-printmaker; has completed a number of major public art projects, including the terrazzo pattern design for the London Victoria train station and the forecourt of the new British Embassy in Moscow; Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects.
- December 31, 1945 – Connie Willis born, American science fiction and fantasy writer; winner of a record 11 Hugo Awards and 7 Nebula Awards, she was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2009, and named as a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 2011; noted for Firewatch, Doomsday Book and Blackout/All Clear.
- December 31, 1949 – Ellen Datlow born, American science fiction, fantasy, and horror anthologist; she was fiction editor of Omni magazine (1981-1998); honored in 2010 with the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement; in 2014, she won the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement; and in 2020, she won the Hugo Award for Best Editor, Short Form.
- December 31, 1949 – Susan Shwartz born, American author of fantasy and science fiction; noted for Byzantium's Crown; Queensblade; Silk Roads and Shadows; and The Woman of Flowers.
- December 31, 1950 – Cheryl Womack born, American businesswoman who founded VCW and National Association of Independent Truckers, Inc., which became a $100 million USD business selling insurance to independent truckers.
- December 31, 1962 – Jennifer Higdon born, American composer of orchestral music; awarded the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her Violin Concerto.
- December 31, 1965 – Julie Doucet born, Canadian underground cartoonist and artist; best known for Dirty Plotte; My New York Diary; and The Madame Paul Affair.
- December 31, 1991 – Noelle Stevenson born, American cartoonist and animation producer; note for the comic Nimona, and the comic series Lumberjanes. She is also the creator, showrunner and executive producer of the animated TV series She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.
- December 31, 1995 – “Gabby” Gabrielle Douglas born, U.S. artistic gymnast and author; at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, she was one of the “Fierce Five,” the U.S. team that won the artistic gymnastics team gold medal, and she was also the first African American to win the gold medal for the individual all-around event. She was a member of the 2016 U.S. Olympic team, dubbed the “Final Five” which won the gold medal for the team event in Rio de Janeiro. She is the author of two memoirs: Grace, Gold, and Glory: My Leap of Faith and Raising the Bar.
- December 31, 2019 – In 2018, California passed Women on Boards, becoming the first U.S. state to require all publically held domestic or foreign corporations whose principal executive offices are located in California to have at least one female director on their boards by December 31, 2019, either by filling an open seat or by adding a seat. One or two more female directors would be required, depending upon the size of the publicly held corporation, by December 31, 2021. By the 2019 deadline, out of 625 impacted corporations, only 282 reported compliance. In 2022, a Superior Court judge ruled that the law violated the right to equal protection under the California Constitution. During the time the law was on the books, the percentage of women on boards of California corporations rose from 17% in 2018 to over 30% as of September 2021.
- December 31, 2020 – Jane Garvey paid tribute to her “remarkable” listeners as she presented her final Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4 after fronting the show for 13 years. The broadcaster said presenting the show had taught her more about feminism, and that women were held to higher standards. “During the course of this cataclysmic 13 years, I have learned for all sorts of reasons that women have to be better, we have to try harder, it is going to be tougher for us. I really am glad I’ve been able to play a small part in opening up a whole range of conversations.” The 56-year-old said the decision to leave had been one of the toughest of her life. “The reason I’m going is because I could have stayed. I sometimes think the hardest thing is to change when it’s the last thing you want to do, but probably the best thing to do. It’s the best thing for the programme. I really do mean it.” “Our female audience ranges in age from 19 to 103, we get emails from women in their 90s. We get such a cross-section of experience and point of view.” The show has been on the BBC since 1946. The former 5 live presenter Emma Barnett took over from Garvey in January, 2021.
- December 31, 2021 – Betty White died, American television pioneer, actress, and animal lover, who was born January 17, 1922. Her family moved from Illinois to California during the Great Depression in the 1930s. She began her career on the radio, but got her breakthrough role on the syndicated television sitcom Life with Elizabeth, which she also co-produced with series writer George Tibbles and executive producer Don Fedderson, making her one of the first women in TV with creative control both in front and behind the camera. But she is best remembered for her roles on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and The Golden Girls. She was nominated for 21 Primetime Emmys, and won five times. She was 99 years old when she died in her sleep, less than three weeks before her 100th birthday.
_______________________________
Sources
_______________________________
The Feminist Cats
Send You a Very Fond Farewell
__________________________
Defend Women’s Rights –
GOTV in 2024!