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“Women writers are the custodians of the
world’s best-kept secret. Merely the private
lives of one half of humanity.”
– Carolyn Kizer, Pulitzer Prize
winning poet, from Pro Femina
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WOW2 is a four-times-a-month sister blog to
This Week in the War On Women
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“The Great Spirit instructed us that, as
Native people, we have a consecrated
bond with our Mother Earth. We have
a sacred obligation to our fellow creatures
that live upon it. For this reason it is both
painful and disturbing that the United States
government and the nuclear power industry
seem intent on forever ruining some of the
little land we have remaining. The nuclear
waste issue is causing American Indians to
make serious, possibly even genocidal,
decisions concerning the environment
and the future of our peoples.”
– Grace Thorpe, from Our Homes are not
Dumps: creating Nuclear-Free Zones
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“In order for us as poor and oppressed
people to become part of a society that
is meaningful, the system under which
we now exist has to be radically changed
... It means facing a system that does not
lend its self to your needs and devising
means by which you change that system.”
– Ella Jo Baker, American civil rights
activist, NAACP field secretary
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The purpose of WOW2 is to learn about and honor women of achievement, including many who’ve been ignored or marginalized in most of the history books, and to mark events in women’s history.
These trailblazers have a lot to teach us about persistence in the face of overwhelming odds. I hope you will find reclaiming our past as much of an inspiration as I do.
THIS WEEK IN THE WAR ON WOMEN will post
shortly, so be sure to go there and catch up
on the latest dispatches from the frontlines.
Many, many thanks to libera nos, intrepid Assistant Editor of WOW2. Any remaining mistakes are either mine, or uncaught computer glitches in transferring the data from his emails to DK5. And much thanks to wow2lib, WOW2’s Librarian Emeritus.
Note: All images are below the person or event to which they refer.
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- December 9, 1745 – Maddalena Laura Sirmen born in Venice, Italian violinist and composer; noted as one of the finest and most famous violinists and composers ever taught in a Venetian orphanage; married the renowned violinist Ludovico Sirmen; they toured together, and sometimes composed music together, but she was a notable composer in her own right.
- December 9, 1779 – Tabitha Babbit born, Shaker toolmaker and inventor, designed an improved spinning wheel head, and refined the circular saw.
- December 9, 1839 – Elizabeth Ann Follansbee born, American medical doctor. In 1875, she was one of only two women enrolled in medical school at the University of California. Facing much resistance, she left after a year and continued her medical training at the University of Michigan, before completing her degree in 1877 at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania. She returned to California, and co-founded the Women’s and Children’s Hospital of San Francisco with Drs. Charlotte Blake Brown, Martha Bucknell, and Sara E. Brown. In 1883, Follansbee moved to Los Angeles for health reasons, and became the first woman admitted as a member of the Los Angeles County Medical Association. She became the first woman on the facility of the University of Southern California College of Physicians and Surgeons, teaching pediatrics, and later chairing the pediatrics department. Arranged for USC women medical school graduates to intern at the Children's Hospital of San Francisco. When The California Medical and Surgical Reporter launched in 1905, Follansbee was an assistant editor. For two years, she shared a small practice in pediatrics with Rose Talbot Bullard, another early woman physician in Los Angeles. She was also an on-call physician at the Florence Home for Erring Girls in the 1890s. Follansbee died in 1917, at age 77.
- December 9, 1848 – Mary Mitchell Slessor born, Scottish Presbyterian missionary to Nigeria, who learned Efik, one of the local languages, then began teaching. Because of her understanding of Efik and her bold personality, Slessor gained the trust and acceptance of the locals and spread Christianity while also promoting women's rights and protecting native children. She stopped the common practice of the infanticide of twins in Okoyong, an area of Cross River State, Nigeria.
- December 9, 1850 – Emma Abbott born, American operatic soprano and impresario; went to Europe for further training. She began her career in Paris, then was under contract with London’s Royal Opera, before making her American debut in New York. In 1878, she was the first woman to form an opera company in America, the Emma Abbott Grand English Opera Company. Her husband was the company’s business manager, and she was the artistic director and frequent star. In 1891, she died suddenly of pneumonia at age 40 while on tour.
- December 9, 1870 –Dr. Ida S. Scudder born, third-generation American missionary in India. She treated women, who weren’t allowed to receive medical treatment from male doctors, then trained Indian women as doctors and nurses. In 1900 she founded the Christian Medical College and Hospital in Vellore, India, still one of the foremost teaching hospitals in India.
- December 9, 1889 – Mabel Stark born as Mary Ann Haynie; American animal trainer, famous for training and performing with tigers. She began in this male-dominated field in carnivals and small circuses before joining Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1922, performing with tigers and a black panther at Madison Square Garden. The following year, she starred in the Ringling center ring, but in 1925, the circus banned all wild animal acts. She relocated to Europe, then returned to the U.S. in 1928. She was injured several times during her act, but shortly after she began working for the John Robinson Show, she lost her footing in a muddy area, and was badly mauled by tigers, suffering lacerations all over her body, a torn deltoid, and nearly losing a leg. Yet she returned to the ring in a matter of weeks, while still using a cane. She worked with tigers for nearly 60 years. At one point, she was working with 18 big cats at the same time. In 1932, her tiger act was filmed for the Paramount’s film King of the Jungle. Stark is seen putting her tigers through their paces when fire erupts in the big top. Her autobiography, Hold That Tiger, co-written with Gertrude Orr, was published in 1938. She spent her last working years at what would become Jungleland in Thousand Oaks, California, but in 1968 the attraction was sold to a new owner who disliked Stark and fired her. In April, 1968, at age 78, she committed suicide with an overdose of barbiturates.
- December 9, 1890 – Laura G. Salverson (nee Guðmundsdóttir) born, Canadian author and poet whose work reflects her Icelandic heritage; her parents emigrated to Manitoba in 1887. Her first novel, The Viking Heart, was published in 1923; her novel, The Dark Weaver: Against the Sombre Background of the Old Generations Flame the Scarlet Banners of the New, and her autobiography, Confessions of an Immigrant’s Daughter, won the Governor General’s Awards in 1937 and 1939.
- December 9, 1895 – Dolores Ibárruri born, known as “La Pasionaria” (the Passionflower), Spanish Republican hero of the Spanish Civil War and communist politician of Basque origin, known for her rallying cry “¡No Pasarán!” (They shall not pass) during the Battle for Madrid in November 1936. She joined the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) in 1921, and in the 1930s, wrote for the PCE periodical Mundo Obrero (Workers World.) In 1936, she was elected to the Cortes Generales (the Spanish legislature) as a PCE deputy for Asturias. She was exiled from Spain at the end of the Civil War in 1939; appointed in 1942 as General Secretary of the exiled Central Committee of the Communist Party of Spain (1942-1960.) In 1960, she ceded her post as secretary-general and was appointed as honorary president of the PCE. She traveled extensively, and spent much time in Moscow. She wrote her first memoir, El Unico Camino (The Only Way), and after the Spanish government lifted the ban on the PCE, she applied for a visa to return to Spain, which was eventually granted in 1977. She ran for and was elected to the Cortes Generales (1977-1979), where she voted with a loud “Yes” for the new Spanish Constitution. Failing health prevented her from running again. She died at age 93 in 1987. Thousands of people came to pay homage as her body lay on a catafalque, before a cortege carried her body to the Plaza de Columbus for her eulogy, where a multitude of mourners chanted “¡No Pasarán!”
- December 9, 1897 – Marguerite Durand, inspired by covering the 1896 Congrès Féministe International (International Feminist Congress) for the leading French newspaper Le Figaro, returns to Paris, and founds the feminist daily newspaper La Fronde (“Slingshot” – published daily from 1897-1903, then monthly until it closed in 1905). The paper was run exclusively by women, who were paid the same wages as their male counterparts. La Fronde advocated for women's rights, including admission to the Bar association and the École des Beaux-Arts. La Fronde editorials demanded women be eligible for the Legion of Honor and to participate in parliamentary debates. The paper also covered politics, news, the sciences, and the arts from the woman’s point of view, fostering the idea that women were knowledgeable and had strong opinions on issues and about fields considered to belong strictly in the “Male Sphere.” At the 1900 World's Fair in Paris, Durand organized the Congress for the Rights of Women. She also campaigned for working women, and helped organize several trade unions. Durand compiled an enormous collection of papers that she gave to the French government in 1931. The following year, the Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand opened in Paris. In 2019, the library was still open and researchers worked beneath Durand’s portrait. The building was closed during the height of the pandemic, but maintained an online presence. The library is currently open Tuesday through Saturday afternoons.
- December 9, 1898 – Irene Greenwood born as Irene Driver; Australian radio broadcaster, feminist, and peace activist. She met her husband while working as a secretary at the Department of Agriculture (1918-1920). She took part in 1920’s first strike by civil servants Australia. Greenwood became a broadcaster in Sydney (1931-1935), then in Perth, where she ran radio programmes, several aimed at women audiences, and some featuring political issues, until she retired from broadcasting in 1953. Following in her mother’s footsteps, she joined the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the Australian Federation of Women Voters. After retiring from radio, she was a delegate to national conferences, and worked with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. She was also a founding member of the Family Planning Association in Western Australia, and the Abortion Law Repeal Association. In 1975, Greenwood was made a Member of the Order of Australia for her "service to women's welfare." She died at age 93 in 1992.
- December 9, 1900 – Margaret Brundage born, American illustrator and painter, who created most of the covers for Weird Tales magazine between 1932 and 1945.
- December 9, 1902 – Margaret Hamilton born, American actress, schoolteacher, and philanthropist. Though involved in amateur theatrics from an early age, she worked as a kindergarten teacher until she made her screen debut in 1933, then appeared in small parts in several films, working her way up to featured roles. In 1939, she played the dual roles of Almira Gulch and the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. Her wicked witch, one of the most memorable villains in film history, became the role of her career. Ironically, in her private life, Hamilton was deeply concerned about the welfare of children and animals, and actively supported several related charities. She served on the Beverly Hills Board of Education (1948-1951). Hamilton also worked frequently on the radio, and later on television, as well as making several appearances on Broadway. Her final Broadway role was Madame Armfeldt in A Little Night Music in 1973, forty years after she made her film debut. In the 1980s, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and died in her sleep at age 82 in 1985.
- December 9, 1906 – Esther Eggersten Peterson born, American women’s rights campaigner, consumer advocate, teacher, labor organizer-lobbyist. In the 1930s, she taught at the innovative Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry, which brought milliners, telephone operators, and garment workers onto the campus. In 1938, Peterson became a paid organizer for the American Federation of Teachers in the New England region. In 1944, Peterson was the first lobbyist for the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D.C. The State Department offered Peterson’s husband a position as a diplomat in Sweden in 1948. The family returned to Washington in 1957, and Peterson joined the Industrial Union Department of the AFL-CIO, becoming its first woman lobbyist. She was Assistant Secretary of Labor and Director of the U.S. Women’s Bureau under President John F. Kennedy. In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson named her to the newly created post of Special Assistant for Consumer Affairs. She later served as President Jimmy Carter’s Director of the Office of Consumer Affairs.
- December 9, 1906 – Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper born, American navy officer, mathematician, and pioneer in computer science. She worked with John Presper Eckert and John William Mauchly in designing and developing the BINAC (Binary Automatic Computer), and contributed ideas to the first commercial electronic computer, Univac I. She was a key figure in the development of the computer programming language COBOL (common business oriented language), especially its naval applications. With a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Yale University (1934), she taught mathematics (Vassar, 1931-1943), before she joined the Naval Reserve. In 1944, she was commissioned as a Lieutenant (Jr. Grade), assigned to the Bureau of Ordnance where she became involved in the early development of the electronic computer. For more than four decades, she was a leader in computer applications and programming languages.
- December 9, 1914 – Ljubica Sokić born, Serbian-Yugoslav painter; studied who presented her first solo show at age 24. One of the founders of the art group Desetorica (The Group of Ten), and a professor at the Academy of Visual Arts in Belgrade (1948-1972). In addition to painting, she drew cartoons for the Belgrade Pravda newspaper, and illustrations for over 30 children’s books. She died at age 94 in 2009.
- December 9, 1915 – Eloise Jarvis McGraw born, American children’s and young adult author; won the Newbery award for her novels Moccasin Trail (1952), The Golden Goblet (1962), and The Moorchild (1997).
- December 9, 1915 – Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf born in Germany, Austro-British soprano, known as a singer of lieder, and for her performances of Mozart, Strauss, and Viennese operetta. She had wanted to study medicine, but her father, a school headmaster, was banned from teaching after he refused to allow a Nazi party meeting at his school, and she was not allowed to go to university, so she studied music at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik instead. She made her professional debut in 1938, and was awarded a full contract with the Deutsches Opernhaus in 1940, but it was conditional on joining the Nazi Party, which she did reluctantly. In 1942, she sang at the Vienna State Opera. In 1945, she was granted Austrian citizenship to enable her to become part of the Vienna State company. Schwarzkopf made her first record in 1946. She made her debut at London’s Royal Opera House in 1948, and at La Scala in 1950. Her last operatic performance was in 1971. She did lieder recitals until her retirement from performing in 1979. She died at age 90 in 2006.
- December 9, 1928 – Joan W. Blos born, American writer, teacher, and advocate for children’s literacy; her historical novel, A Gathering of Days: A New England Girl’s Journal, 1830-1832, won the 1980 U.S. National Book Award in Children’s Books, and the 1980 Newbery Medal for the year’s most distinguished contribution to American children’s literature.
- December 9, 1934 – Dame Judi Dench born, highly regarded English theatre and film actress; she was in the companies of the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare, and is a seven-time Oscar nominee and one-time winner, and a six-time British Academy Film Award winner. Dench is a patron of over 180 charities, including the alumni foundation of Drama Studio London, the UK charity Revitalise for the disabled, charities for the deaf, and of several arts and theatre programs. She worked with Survival International, on their campaigns to protect the rights the San of Botswana and the Arhuaco of Colombia. Dench is an outspoken critic of the prejudice in the movie industry against older actresses.
- December 9, 1941 – In a “man on the street” interview conducted by John Lomax for the Library of Congress, Lena Jameson, a California woman visiting her family in Dallas, Texas, gave her reaction to Pearl Harbor, “My first thought was what a great pity that ... another nation should be added to those aggressors who strove to limit our freedom. I find myself at the age of eighty, an old woman, hanging on to the tail of the world, trying to keep up. I do not want the driver’s seat. But the eternal verities–there are certain things that I wish to express: one thing that I am very sure of is that hatred is death, but love is light. I want to contribute to the civilization of the world but ... when I look at the holocaust that is going on in the world today, I’m almost ready to let go ...”
- December 9, 1943 – Joanna Trollope born, English historical and romance novelist (sometimes under pen name Caroline Harvey), playwright, and author of the non-fiction Britannia's Daughters: Women of the British Empire.
- December 9, 1946 – Sonia Maino Gandhi born in Italy, Indian politician; Member of the Indian Parliament, 1999 to present; Leader of the Opposition 1998-2004; President of the Indian National Congress 1998-2004.
- December 9, 1948 – Marleen Gorris born, Dutch writer-director, outspoken feminist, and LGBT rights supporter; first woman director whose film won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film – Antonia’s Line in 1995.
- December 9, 1950 – Joan Armatrading born, British singer-songwriter and guitarist; a three-time Grammy nominee, and winner of the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contemporary Song Collection in 1996. In 2001, she earned a BA in history from the Open University. She and her partner Maggie Butler entered a civil partnership in 2011.
- December 9, 1960 – Caroline Lucas born, British politician, co-leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, and her party’s first elected MP.
- December 9, 1962 – Roxanne Swentzell born, Santa Clara Pueblo sculptor and ceramicist who studied at the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the Portland Museum Art School in Oregon. Her first public exhibit was at the 1984 Santa Fe Indian Market; in 1986, she won eight awards for her sculpture at the Market. In 1994, she won the Market’s Creative Excellence in Sculpture award. She has work displayed at Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.
- December 9, 1966 – Kirsten Gillibrand born, American attorney and Democratic politician; U.S. Senator from New York since 2009; previously a member of the U.S. House of Representatives (2007-2009); she is outspoken on the issue of sexual harassment, and on sexual assault in the military. Gillibrand is a member of the Senate Women’s Caucus, and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
- December 9, 1972 – Saima Wazed Hossain born, Bangladesh Autism activist; member of the World Health Organization (WHO) Expert Advisory Panel on mental health. Organized the first South Asia conference on Autism in 2011 in Bangladesh, and successfully campaigned for the “Comprehensive and Coordinated Efforts for the Management of Autism Spectrum Disorders,” a resolution adopted by the World Health Assembly. In 2016, elected as chair of the International Jury Board of UNESCO for Digital Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, and in 2017 became the WHO Goodwill Ambassador for autism in the South-East Asia region. Honored with the International Champion Award for her outstanding contributions.
- December 9, 1996 – In Ontario, Canada, Gwen Jacob, University of Guelph student, was acquitted of indecency by the Ontario Court of Appeal for going topless on a hot July day on a street where many of the men around her were doing the same. She was arrested, and defended herself in court, arguing that breasts were merely fatty tissue. The judge disagreed, saying breasts were "part of the female body that is sexually stimulating to men both by sight and touch," and therefore shouldn’t be exposed, and fined her $75. Her appeal was dismissed by the Ontario Court, General Division. So she appealed to the Ontario Court of Appeal, which overturned the previous ruling on the basis that the act of being topless is not in itself a sexual act or indecent. The court held that "there was nothing degrading or dehumanizing in what the appellant did. The scope of her activity was limited and was entirely non-commercial. No one who was offended was forced to continue looking at her" and that furthermore "the community standard of tolerance when all of the relevant circumstances are taken into account" was not exceeded. The Ontario Government decided not to appeal the case to the Supreme Court of Canada, so it remains the prevailing interpretation of the Criminal Code in Ontario. Since then, the court ruling has been tested and upheld several times.
- December 9, 2004 – Canada’s Supreme Court rules that same-sex marriage is constitutional.
- December 9, 2017 – In Australia, the legalization of same-sex marriage goes into effect.
- December 9, 2019 – Finland’s Prime Minister Antti Rinne stepped down, and was replaced by Social Democrat Sanna Marin; at age 34, she became her nation’s third woman, and youngest serving, Prime Minister. A coalition government was put together by five parties, all of them led by women, and three with leaders in their 30s. Marin and her new ministers represented Finland at the EU leaders’ summit in December.
- December 9, 2020 – Caroline Criado Perez, author of Invisible Women, shows how societies being primarily designed by men for men impacts women adversely. She described in harrowing detail how she was forced to deal with a miscarriage without her partner because of restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. After being driven to the maternity unit, she wrote, “I didn’t expect to have to walk in completely alone, because my partner was not allowed to come in with me – yes, even if you’re bleeding copious red blood and passing clots.” She added, “Try not feeling humiliated bleeding with your pants off in front of strangers while being told that your body has failed in one of its most basic functions, and there is no one in the room to turn to … I keep replaying the moment in my mind. I’ve never felt more vulnerable, I’ve never felt more utterly alone.” In the UK, one in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage, according to the Miscarriage Association. In a November survey by the group Pregnant Then Screwed (PTS), 82% of respondents said their local hospital had restrictions in place (for labour or scans), while 90% said these restrictions had a negative impact on their mental health. Of the 5,131 pregnant women who responded, 77% said their hospital’s restrictions prevented their partner attending the duration of labour. Of these, 97% said restrictions increased their anxiety around childbirth. Criado Perez described her dread of going for a scan alone. “The night before the scan I had a panic attack about going through it on my own,” she wrote. “But I also tried to tell myself that these were extraordinary times, that we all had to make sacrifices. Having now been through it and experienced that trauma first hand, I can tell you that the refusal to allow partners to attend scans is inhumane.” Joeli Brearley, founder of Pregnant Then Screwed, said that throughout the pandemic the needs of pregnant women were ignored. “Pregnancy is such an all-encompassing experience. It can make you feel vulnerable and powerless, particularly when you are told that your baby’s health is in jeopardy,” she said. “How a society protects and supports pregnant women is not only a measure of our humanity, but it is also critical to a well-functioning society … The government and NHS officials must now step up and fix these problems to keep pregnant women safe and supported. We are devastated for Caroline and her partner.”
- December 9, 2021 – The Emily Warren Roebling Plaza was dedicated in New York’s Brooklyn Bridge Park. Emily Warren Roebling became liaison for her husband, Washington Roebling, the project’s chief engineer, after he became bedridden with decompression sickness. She took over most of his on-site duties as chief engineer during the ten years it took to complete the last section of the Brooklyn Bridge. At the opening ceremony in May 1883, N.Y. Congressman Abram Stevens Hewitt said in his speech that the bridge was “an everlasting monument to the sacrificing devotion of a woman and of her capacity for that higher education from which she has been too long disbarred.”
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- December 10, 1783 – María Bibiana Benítez born, Puerto Rico’s first woman poet and one of its first playwrights. She published her first poem in 1832, La Ninfa de Puerto Rico (The Nymph of Puerto Rico). She also wrote the first dramatic play by a Puerto Rican, La Cruz del Morro (The Cross of El Morro) in 1862. Benítez adopted the daughter of her brother Pedro José and his wife after they died. Her niece, Alejandrina Benítez de Gautier, would also become a notable poet.
- December 10, 1811 – Caroline Mehitable Fisher Sawyer born, American poet, biographer, editor, and translator of German literature; after a short time at a Baptist school, her uncle, an invalid but highly educated in science and literature, took over her schooling. Her poems were published in newspapers like the Boston Evening Gazette when she was still a young girl. She became a prolific Christian Universalist writer after her marriage to Reverend Thomas J. Sawyer in 1831. She was a regular contributor to the Rose of Sharon from its inception in 1840, then became its editor in 1849. She also edited The Ladies’ Repository and the youth department of the Christian Messenger (1835-1847).
- December 10, 1815 – Ada Lovelace born, pioneering English mathematician and computer scientist, who collaborated with inventor Charles Babbage, designer of an “Analytical Engine.” She was among the first to recognize the potential of computers and has been called the first computer programmer. (The programming language Ada is named after her.) Her other plans, such as a Calculus of the Nervous System, failed to mature - the obstacles in her way because she was a woman were simply too great. For example, women were denied access to the Royal Society Library. In 1844, her paper on the theoretical Analytical Machine was published under the pseudonym A.A.L. She said the machine could handle complex computations, but also envisioned its future use for all kinds of tasks, including creating music. It was not until the 1870s, 20 years after her death, that A.A.L. was publicly recognized as Augusta Ada Lovelace, the only legitimate child of poet Lord Byron.
- December 10, 1830 – Emily Dickinson born, one of the greatest, most original, and prolific American poets, and one of its most famous recluses; her friendships were maintained by correspondence; Hope is the thing with feathers is probably her best-known poem. After she died at age 55 in May 1886, her sister Lavinia discovered nearly 1800 poems in a locked chest of drawers. The first volume of her poems was published four years after her death.
- December 10, 1869 – Wyoming became the first U.S. territory where women won the right to vote.
- December 10, 1885 – Elizabeth Faulkner Baker born, American economist, academic, and author, who specialized in scientific management, and the relationship between employment and technological change, especially the role of women; she earned her M.A (1919) and Ph.D. (1925), both in economics, and was chair of Barnard College’s Department of Economics (1940-1952). During WWII, she served as a hearing officer of the National War Labor Board.
- December 10, 1891 – Nelly Sachs born, German-Swedish poet and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate; born into a Jewish family in Berlin, she wrote as a teenager, including corresponding with Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf. Shortly before Lagerlöf died in 1940, she convinced the Swedish royal family to help Sachs and her mother escape to Stockholm, after Sachs was told to report to work at a concentration camp. They lived in a tiny apartment, and Sachs supported them making translations from German to Swedish. Sachs wrote poetry and plays inspired by family members who lost their lives in concentration camps. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1966.
- December 10, 1903 – Women win the right to vote in state elections in Tasmania. Despite self-government in 1856, most Tasmanians couldn't vote – only men who owned property could vote before 1900. Women did not gain the right to stand for parliament until 1922. Aboriginal peoples of either sex in Australia had limited voting rights which varied from state to state until 1965.
- December 10, 1903 – Mary Norton born, English children’s author; The Borrowers series.
- December 10, 1909 – Selma Lagerlöf becomes the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, Gösta Berling's Saga.
- December 10, 1913 – Pannonica “Nika” de Koenigswarter born in Britain, champion of Jazz, author of Les musiciens de jazz et leurs trois vœux ("The jazz musicians and their three wishes"). She was a decoder, driver, and radio host for the Free French during WWII.
- December 10, 1921 – Grace Thorpe (aka No Teno Quah) born, daughter of Jim Thorpe; environmentalist, Indian rights activist, and WWII Women’s Army Corps veteran. She was a Corporal (1943-1945) in the New Guinea campaign during the war in the Pacific, and was awarded a Bronze Star for her service. She stayed on after the war, working in Japan at General MacArthur’s Headquarters as Chief of the Recruitment Section, Department of Army Civilians, Tokyo. In 1950, she began living in New York state. In 1967, she moved to Arizona. She was one of the 89 Indians, a group called Indians of All Tribes, who occupied Alcatraz Island from November, 1969, to June, 1971. They asserted that in the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie signed by the U.S. government with the Lakotas, all retired, abandoned, or out-of-use federal land was to be returned to the Indians who once occupied it. Alcatraz penitentiary was closed on March 21, 1963, and the island was declared surplus federal property in 1964, so a number of Red Power activists felt the island qualified for reclamation by Indians. Some of the occupants left the island in January, 1970, and by late May, the government cut off all electrical power and phone service to the island. Left without power or fresh water, more occupiers left, and a large force of federal officers removed the remaining few. Thorpe became a lobbyist for the National Congress of American Indians, working to further economic opportunities for Native families on reservations by pushing factories to locate on Native land. In 1971, she co-founded the National Indian Women’s Action Corps: “We want all Indian women who want to be active to join us in finding solutions to our problems.” In 1974, she was a legislative assistant to the Senate Subcommittee for Indian Affairs, then was a member of the American Indian Policy Review Board (1975-1977), working in Communications and Public Information. In 1992, Thorpe discovered that her Sac and Fox tribe had accepted a federal grant to study the placement of radioactive waste on tribal land. The Department of Energy’s Monitored Retrievable Storage (MRS) program offered $100,000 to study temporarily storing used nuclear rods on tribal land before moving them to permanent storage on government land. The Sac and Fox, as well as sixteen other Native American tribes, accepted the grant, believing that the money would come without strings attached and would help alleviate their high unemployment. Thorpe researched nuclear waste and its hazards, and the details of the funding, most of which actually went to lawyers and consultants. She started working to convince her tribe to withdraw from the program, and went through the process outlined in the Sac and Fox constitution to reverse the decision of the elected tribal leaders; she gathered signatures of 50 tribe members on a petition calling for a special meeting, and at that meeting on February 29, 1992, 70 out of 75 members present voted to withdraw from the MRS program. The Sac and Fox were the first tribe to withdraw. She continued her fight against what she dubbed “environmental racism,” helping to found the National Environmental Coalition of Native Americans (NECONA) in 1993 and served as its president, traveling the country and working to educate tribes about the dangers of storing nuclear waste and persuade them to refuse the MRS. She also helped persuade tribe leaders to rewrite their constitutions and revert their government to democracy rather than the elected tribal councils established under the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1934 and more susceptible to government pressure. In 1993, NECONA joined forces with Nuclear Free America to create the Nuclear Free Indian Lands Project. Thorpe persuaded 15 out of the 17 tribes that had accepted grants to withdraw. In 1999, she received a Nuclear-Free Future Award for her work. She died after a heart attack at age 86 in 2008.
- December 10, 1922 – Agnes Nixon born, American television scriptwriter and producer; creator of the long-running soap operas One Life to Live (1968-2012) and All My Children (1970-2011). She introduced new storylines to U.S. daytime television: the first health-related storyline, the first Vietnam War storyline, the first on-screen lesbian kiss, and the first abortion storyline. Nixon won 5 Writer’s Guild of America Awards, 5 Daytime Emmy Awards, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
- December 10, 1925 – Carolyn Kizer born, notable American poet, academic, and feminist; won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Yin, three Pushcart Prizes, and the 1988 Frost Medal for lifetime achievement.
- December 10, 1931 – Jane Addams became a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, the first American woman to be honored.
- December 10, 1938 – Pearl S. Buck won the Nobel Prize for Literature for The Good Earth and two biographies about her missionary parents in China.
- December 10, 1939 – Allina Ndebele born, South African artist and master weaver; established a small workshop in her father’s village to teach neighbourhood women to card, spin, dye, and weave. In 2005, President Thabo Mbeki bestowed the Order of Ikhamanga in Silver on Ndebele for excellence and her contributions in the creative arts.
- December 10, 1941 – Fionnula Flanagan born, Irish actress, writer, and producer; known as an interpreter of James Joyce, for the 1967 film of Ulysses, and her one-woman show, James Joyce’s Women, which she also wrote and produced.
- December 10, 1942 – Ann Gloag born, Scottish co-founder of the international transport company Stagecoach Group, beginning with a single bus line; and founder of the Freedom from Fistula Foundation.
- December 10, 1949 – Yasmin Alibhai-Brown born in Uganda, British journalist, author, and columnist for the London Evening Standard and The Independent, known for commentary on immigration, diversity and multiculturalism. A Shia Muslim, she was a founding member of British Muslims for Secular Democracy, and won 2002’s George Orwell Prize for Political Journalism.
- December 10, 1954 – Eudine Barriteau born, Barbadian professor of gender and public policy, Principal of the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados; President of the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE, 2009-2010). She wrote about feminist theory, gender and public policy, Caribbean political economy, and theories on heterosexual women’s socio-sexual unions. Author of Confronting power, theorizing gender interdisciplinary perspectives in the Caribbean.
- December 10, 1958 – Cornelia Funke born, bestselling German-American children’s author, the Inkheart trilogy, twice winner of the BookSense Book of the Year Children’s Literature award.
- December 10, 1959 – Georgia Little Shield (Taylor) born, director of Pretty Bird Woman House, on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, named in memory of Ivy Pretty Bird Woman Archambault, who was kidnapped, raped, and beaten to death in 2001. Standing Rock has high rates of poverty, unemployment, and crime, as well as high rates of rape and domestic violence against women. But when the perpetrator is non-Indian, there is little chance to catch or prosecute them because the Tribal authorities have no jurisdiction over non-Indians, even when they commit a crime on reservation land. Only federal authorities have jurisdiction over non-Indians on tribal land. Pretty Bird Woman House is the first place to provide support to the women of Standing Rock, and shelter for victims of domestic violence. Opponents cut the shelter’s phone lines, ransacked it, then burnt to the ground. The original building was replaced, through major fundraising efforts, much of it right here at Daily Kos. Georgia Little Shield also helped many people on Cheyenne River. Over the years, she took in many foster children, helping them to realize that they did not need gangs, drugs, or alcohol to be happy and enjoy life, and choose education and helping others instead. She volunteered with the Isabel Lakota Youth Group, and was their mentor for many years. She made many friends in many places across the country because of her travel to workshops and conferences, so she was given the Lakota Name, Wanbli Hupahu Win (Eagle Wings Woman), because she was "always flying somewhere." She hung up her wings, deciding to retire in 2010, moving to the country with her husband, Norman Little Shield. They raised horses together and helped raise their grandchildren, Isis and Talib Smith and Krystal Brings Plenty. She was volunteering as President of the Isabel Okiciyap, which created a food pantry and started the Isabel Community Pow-Wow in 2011. She was helping until her death in April 2012.
- December 10, 1959 – Police in Namibia opened fire on protesters, killing 11 and wounding 44 others. Doctors at hospitals turned away the wounded, telling them “go to the United Nations for treatment ... [as] political patients.” The protests took place at the ‘Old Location’ – an area created in 1912 to segregate Black residents of Windhoek, then the capital of South West Africa (which became Namibia). In the 1950s, the Windhoek municipality and the South African colonial administration tried to forcefully move the Black residents 5 miles (8 kilometers) north of the city. The Black residents owned the erven (a plot of land, marked off for building purposes), but the municipality owned the new erven, which was a lot smaller, and communal gardens weren’t allowed. The Black families would have to pay rent, and take buses to work. The new SWANU party organised protests and an effective boycott of municipal services. The date of the massacre is now Namibia Women’s Day, to honor the women who took part in the struggle for independence.
- December 10, 1965 – Stephanie Morgenstern born in Switzerland, Canadian actress, filmmaker, and screenwriter. Co-creator with her husband and writing partner, Mark Ellis, of the Canadian TV police drama Flashpoint (2008-2012). They also wrote the third season of X Company, a WWII espionage thriller series. She co-wrote and directed the short films Remembrance and Curtains.
- December 10, 1980 – Sarah Chang born as Young Joo Cjang, Korean American classical violinist. Recognized as a child prodigy, she first played as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1989. She graduated from Juilliard in 1999. Since then, Chang has performed as a soloist with many major orchestras, and at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Barbican Centre, and on tour. In 2011, President Obama appointed her to the Presidential Commission on Russian Relations, and she also served as a State Department Special Cultural Envoy.
- December 10, 1992 – Oregon Senator Bob Packwood holds a news conference, acknowledging that what he called his "unwelcome and offensive" actions toward women were wrong, apologizes to the women he hurt, but claimed his actions were “not done with malice or evil intent” and said he didn’t intend to resign.
- December 10, 1999 – Helen Clark sworn in as Prime Minister of New Zealand, the nation’s second woman Prime Minister, following Jenny Shipley. She became head of the Labour Party in 1993; when the party formed a governing coalition after the 1999 election, Clark became Prime Minster (1999-2008).
- December 10, 2004 – Wangari Maathai of Kenya receives the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, the first African woman to receive the prize. Maathai was a minister in the Kenyan government and founder of the Green Belt Movement.
- December 10, 2007 – Cristina Fernandez is sworn in as Argentina's first elected woman president.
- December 10, 2012 – Unknown gunmen assassinated Nadia Sediqqi, a leading women’s rights activist and head of the Women’s Affairs Department of Laghman Province in Afghanistan. Her predecessor heading the department, Hanifa Safi, was murdered in July 2012 in a bombing that also killed her husband, after her repeated requests for police protection were ignored. According to Amnesty International, “... a number of Afghan women in public roles have been assassinated over the past 10 years.” Many Afghan women government officials work without the protection of bodyguards, making them especially vulnerable to attacks by religious extremists and others who opposed women’s presence in the workforce. Since the return to power of the Taliban, hundreds of women judges fled the country or went into hiding. The Talban released thousands of prisoners from the nation’s jails, and many of them sentenced by these women for crimes against women, including domestic violence, rape, and murder. Now many of these former prisoners work for the Taliban as armed guards. One woman judge who did try to return to court was told “Women can’t work in a courthouse where men are, go back home or send a male relative to collect your wages.” Many civil servants, teachers, and NGO workers were also told not to return to work. Some judges were turned away, or have gone into hiding because of the release of violent prisoners they sentenced. Saeeq Shajjan, head of a law firm in Kabul, said, “There is no legal system in Afghanistan anymore. They decide everything right there on the spot. Whatever a commander or an elder says is now the law.”
- December 10, 2017 – Beatrice Fihn, Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, said in her speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize on the organization’s behalf that "the deaths of millions may be one tiny tantrum away." In Oslo she said the world has a choice to make: "the end of nuclear weapons or the end of us." Fihn said the risk of using nuclear weapons is "greater now than during the Cold War." North Korea is testing missiles, some believed able to deliver a nuclear warhead to the continental U.S.
- December 10, 2019 – International Pro-Choice activists launched Abortion without Borders, an initiative to provide advice and funding for women in European countries with severe abortion restrictions so they can travel abroad to obtain an abortion. Poland has some of Europe’s most severe abortion laws, and proposals backed by the rightwing government to introduce a total ban on abortions in 2016 were scrapped only after large-scale protests. “We are going to emphasize that it doesn’t really matter how much money you have and how far in your pregnancy you are, even if you don’t have money and are past the 12th week. ‘I cannot fund an abortion’ cannot be a reason for someone to become a parent,” said Karolina Więckiewicz, from Abortion Dream Team, a pro-choice advocacy and campaigning group. Mara Clarke, of the Abortion Support Network, which helps fund the project, said five groups in four countries have come together to launch Abortion Without Borders. Clarke’s network helped Irish women travel abroad for abortions for a decade, until the 2018 referendum in the Republic of Ireland to legalize abortion won by a landslide. The network has expanded its efforts to Malta and Gibraltar as well as Poland, where the total abortion ban attempted in 2016 became reality in 2021.
- December 10, 2020 – Two days before the fifth anniversary of the Paris Climate Accord, Greta Thunberg, whose 2018 school strike launched the Friday for Future global youth movement, called world leaders to account for failing to reverse rising carbon emissions, “We are still speeding in the wrong direction. The five years following the Paris agreement have been the five hottest years ever recorded and, during that time, the world has emitted more than 200bn tonnes of CO2. Distant hypothetical targets are being set, and big speeches are being given. Yet, when it comes to the immediate action we need, we are still in a state of complete denial, as we waste our time, creating new loopholes with empty words and creative accounting.” She continued, “Leaders should be telling the truth: that we are facing an emergency and we are not doing nearly enough. We need to prioritise the action that needs to be taken right here and right now, because it is right now that the carbon budget is being used up. We need to stop focusing on goals and targets for 2030 or 2050. We need to implement annual binding carbon budgets today.” Thunberg said recent pledges by the UK – to cut carbon emissions by 68% by 2030 compared with 1990 levels – and by China, Japan, and South Korea to become net carbon zero were creating a sense of progress, and she added: “That is a very dangerous narrative because of course we’re not going in the right direction. We need to call this out.”
- December 10, 2021 – The U.S. Supreme Court’s extreme rightwing majority ruled that Texas abortion providers could sue over the state’s ban on most abortions, but the justices allowed the law, the strictest state regulation to that date, to remain in effect. The majority opinion, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, makes the distinction that the case was not addressing the issue of abortion rights per se, or whether the Texas ban was consistent with existing federal law. Texas abortion providers pressed ahead with their legal challenge, but their legal path forward is narrower and they will be forced to direct their efforts at a small number of state employees. As part of their challenge to SB 8, abortion clinics attempted to sue a Texas state judge. That was dismissed unanimously by the nine justices as being inconsistent with a 1908 supreme court ruling that prohibits federal courts imposing injunctions on state courts. The court ruled by a lesser margin that the providers could continue to challenge SB 8 by focusing on four licensing officials involved in taking action against abortion clinics under the terms of the new ban. But state court clerks and the attorney general of Texas, Ken Paxton, who were also named as defendants, could not be sued. Justice Sonia Sotomayor in her dissenting opinion wrote, “The court should have put an end to this madness months ago, before SB 8 went into effect. It failed to do so then, and it fails again today … Federal courts can and should issue relief when a state enacts a law that chills the exercise of a constitutional right.” Meanwhile, a judge in Texas ruled that the law violated the state’s constitution because it allows private citizens to sue abortion providers. State district court judge David Peeples was ruling on the law but abortion providers had already signaled that despite the ruling, they were unlikely to resume the procedure until the supreme court announced its decision.
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- December 11, 1849 – Ellen Key born, Swedish difference feminist (belief that there are differences between men and women, but no value judgment can be placed on them, and both genders have equal moral status as persons), suffragist, prolific writer, essayist, and early advocate for child-centered education and parenting. Best known for Barnets århundrade (The Century of the Child), published in 1900, and On Freedom of Speech and Publishing; Individualism and Socialism; The Woman Movement; The Morality of Woman; and War, Peace, and the Future (written in 1916). Ellen Key died at age 76 in 1926.
- December 11, 1863 – Annie Jump Cannon born, American astronomer., Hired at the Harvard College Observatory in 1896, she remained there for her entire career. She worked on the Harvard Spectral Classification System, first developed by Edward Pickering, the Observatory’s director, which she helped to further develop, refine, and implement. Her cataloging work, classifying 350,000 stars, was a major contribution to development of contemporary stellar classification. She reorganized the classification of stars in terms of surface temperature in spectral classes O, B, A, F, G, K, M – a classification that is still in use – and catalogued over 225,000 stars for the monumental Henry Draper Catalogue of stellar spectra, (1918-1924). Cannon had to overcome being nearly deaf throughout her career. She was a woman suffragist, and member of the National Women’s Party. She also worked to help women gain acceptance and respect within the astronomical community. The American Astronomical Society presents the annual Annie Jump Cannon Award for distinguished work in astronomy to women astronomers.
- December 11, 1876 – Eliza Suggs born, American author, the daughter of former slaves, born with Osteogenesis imperfecta (brittle bone disease), and suffered frequent bone breakage from infancy on. Unable to move around normally, she had to be pushed in a special chair to school, and be carried in the chair up and down stairs to and from the classroom. Her book, Shadow and Sunshine, was published in 1906. She died at age 32 in 1908.
- December 11, 1892 – Harriet Adams born, AKA “Carolyn Keene,” author/syndicator of the Nancy Drew series, worked with ghost writers on Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, and other popular juvenile series. She ran the Stratemeyer Syndicate, founded by her father, for 52 years.
- December 11, 1900 – Hermína Týrlová born, Czech filmmaker, animator, and screenwriter; produced over 60 animated shorts using puppets and stop action animation.
- December 11, 1904 – ‘Marge’ (pen-name of Marjorie Henderson Buell) born, American cartoonist, creator of the Little Lulu comic strip.
- December 11, 1910 – Mildred Cleghorn born aka Eh-Ohn or Lay-a-Bet, Chiricahua Apache, first chair of the Fort Sill Apache Tribe (1976-1995), educator, and traditional doll maker. She was one of the last Chiricahua Apaches to be born under “prisoner of war” status, and worked as a home extension agent (a federal program through land grant colleges), and a home economics teacher. She was a cultural leader, and worked to sustain the history and traditional culture of the Chiricahua people. Some of her dolls were exhibited at the 1967 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. In 1996, she was part of Cobell v. Salazar, a class action lawsuit filed by several tribes against the federal government for failure to properly manage Indian trust assets on behalf of all present and past individual Indian trust beneficiaries. Cleghorn died in 1997. The suit was finally settled for $3.4 billion USD in favor of the plaintiffs in 2009.
- December 11, 1916 – Elena Garro born, Mexican novelist, and playwright; noted for the political and social causes in her work, including Indian rights; she was married to Octavio Paz (1937-1959).
- December 11, 1920 – Mary Ivy Burks born, American reporter and environmental activist; founding member and first president of the Alabama Conservancy; she started as a reporter in 1942 at the Birmingham Post, but married in 1946, and left her job after the birth of her son. Doing community volunteer work, she met Blanche Evans Dean, a schoolteacher, passionate naturalist, and conservationist, who recruited Burks to the cause of preserving Alabama’s wilderness areas. In 1967, the Alabama Conservancy (now called the Alabama Environment Council) held its first meeting in Burks’ home. The Wilderness Act of 1964 posed a threat to U.S. national forests. The U.S. Congress didn’t view national forests as recreational; instead national forests were largely used for cutting timber. The Conservancy began field studies in 1969, in the Bankhead National Forest, Alabama’s oldest national forest, and gained the suspension of timber cutting and road construction for a year, while hearings were held. The group focused on the Sipsey Wilderness within the Bankhead National Forest, campaigning to get it recognized as part of the National Wilderness Preservation System. Burks spoke in front of Congress, and spearheaded the fight leading to the 1974 Eastern Wilderness Act. In January, 1975, legislation was signed to protect the Sipsey Wilderness. Burks died in 2007, at age 87.
- December 11, 1922 – Pauline Jewett born, Canadian Member of Parliament (1963-1965); social justice and women’s rights advocate; served as Director of the Institute of Canadian Studies (1967–1972). In 1974, she became the first woman president of a Canadian co-educational university, at Simon Fraser University.
- December 11, 1922 – Grace Paley born, American author, poet, pacifist, and anti-war activist. During the Vietnam War, she joined the War Resisters League, and in 1968, signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" a pledge to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. In 1969, Paley accompanied a peace mission to Hanoi to negotiate release of prisoners of war. She was a delegate to the 1974 World Peace Conference in Moscow and, in 1978, was arrested as one of "The White House Eleven" for unfurling an anti-nuclear banner (that read "No Nuclear Weapons—No Nuclear Power—USA and USSR") on the White House lawn. In the 1990s, Paley campaigned for human rights and against U.S. military intervention in Central America. Noted for her short story collections: The Little Disturbances of Man and Enormous Changes at the Last Minute.
- December 11, 1926 – ‘Big Mama’ Thornton born, African American rhythm-and-blues singer and songwriter.
- December 11, 1931 – Rita Moreno born as Rosa Dolores Alverio, American actress, dancer, and singer. Her career on stage, screen, and television ranged from Singin’ in the Rain and The King and I in the 1950s through voicing Carmen for Where on Earth is Carmen San Diego? Rita Moreno’s 1961 breakout role in West Side Story almost led her to quit acting. Make-up artists colored her skin darker and Moreno, a native Puerto Rican, felt her accent “didn’t make any sense.” She resented being asked to sing “America,” which had lines like “Puerto Rico, you ugly island, island of tropic diseases.” She spoke up, and the lyrics were changed. In her nearly 70-year career, Moreno never stopped fighting against typecasting and for fair representation of Latinos. TIME magazine made her their Woman of the Year in 1961. In 1962, she was the first Latina to win an Oscar (Best Supporting Actress for Anita in West Side Story), and later won an Emmy, a Grammy, and a Tony Award, something only 15 entertainers have accomplished. She also won a Golden Globe, and a Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2000, the Hispanic Organization of Latin Actresses (HOLA) renamed their award the HOLA Rita Moreno Award for Excellence, and the Library of Congress honored her with a Living Legends Award. In 2009, President Obama presented her with the National Medal of Arts. She played a new character created for her in Steven Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story, released in December, 2021.
- December 11, 1946 – Susan Spaeth Kyle born, American writer and journalist, whose main pen name is Diana Palmer. She was a newspaper reporter for the Gainsville Times in Georgia for 16 years before she began writing novels. As Diana Palmer, she is known for writing romantic novels, including the Friends and Lovers series and the Soldier of Fortune series, but she also writes science fiction as Susan S. Kyle. Among the many conservation and charitable organizations she supports are the Native American Rights Fund, the American Museum of Natural History, the Archaeological Institute of America, the Planetary Society, and the Georgia Conservancy.
- December 11, 1951 – Mazlan Othman born, Malaysian astrophysicist and astronomer; Malaysia’s first astrophysicist, she pioneered her country’s participation in space exploration. Othman helped create the astrophysics curriculum at the National University of Malaysia. In 1999, she was appointed as Director of the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, and served as director until 2002, when she became the founding General Director of Angkas, the Malaysian National Space Agency.
- December 11, 1953 – Bess Armstrong born, American film, stage, and television actress; In 1991, she spoke out about her abortion in the book The Choices We Made: Twenty-Five Women and Men Speak Out About Abortion.
- December 11, 1956 – Lani Brockman born, American theatre director and actress; founder and Artistic Director of Studio East, a Seattle-based professional theatrical touring company, and performing arts school for students ages 4 through 19.
- December 11, 1968 – Emmanuelle Charpentier born, French researcher and professor in microbiology, genetics, and biochemistry, and CRISPR-Cas. In 2018, she became the Founding and Acting Director of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens. In 2020, she and American biochemist Jennifer Doudna won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for " the development of a method for genome editing" (through CRISPR), the first science Nobel ever won by two women alone.
- December 11, 1977 – Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams, leaders of 'Peace People' (pro-peaceful resolution of 'the Troubles' in Northern Ireland) became co-recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize.
- December 11, 1980 – Adi Keissar born of Yemeni heritage, Israeli poet and founder of the cultural group Ars Poetica, which stages monthly poetry events. Keissar has three poetry collections, and also edited two Ars Poetica anthologies.
- December 11, 2017 – Three women who accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct in 2016 revived their allegations for what they called "round two," sharing them on the Megyn Kelly Show and appealing for a congressional investigation. In all, 16 accusers called for an investigation, hoping to get a broader hearing for their stories thanks to the still-building strength of the #MeToo movement. Trump denied all of the accusations, and the White House dismissed the renewed public airing of the stories, saying that the questions were “litigated” in the 2016 election and included nothing new. Privately, Trump aides acknowledged the allegations could pose problems for Trump in the newly charged atmosphere.
- December 11, 2019 – Greta Thunberg named as TIME magazine’s Person of the Year; at age 16, the youngest person to be so honored. The magazine lauded her for starting an environmental campaign in August 2018 which became a global movement, initially skipping school and camping out in front of the Swedish parliament to demand action. “In the 16 months since, she has addressed heads of state at the UN, met with the Pope, sparred with the U.S. president, and inspired 4 million people to join the global climate strike on September 20, 2019 … the largest climate demonstration in human history,” TIME said. “Margaret Atwood compared her to Joan of Arc. After noticing a hundredfold increase in its usage, lexicographers at Collins Dictionary named Thunberg’s pioneering idea, climate strike, the word of the year.”
- December 11, 2020 – The Yukon Territory became the first jurisdiction in Canada to announce a strategy to end violence against Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people. The plan, called Changing the Story to Upholding Dignity and Justice, was signed by 14 Yukon First Nations, and representatives from municipal, territorial, and federal governments. The strategy stresses 31 priority actions under four paths: Strengthening Connections and Supports; Community Safety and Justice; Economic Independence and Education; Community Action and Accountability. One of the strategy’s main developers, Liard Aboriginal Women’s Society Executive Director Ann Maje Raider, said: “All of the advocates, family members, and survivors that have fought so hard for so long should see today as an important step forward in restoring dignity and justice for Indigenous women, girls, and Two-spirit+ people. Thank you for your guidance and your strength over the years – nothing about this work has been easy, but your tireless work and commitment is the reason we are here today.”
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- December 12, 1474 – Isabella of Castile crowns herself queen of Castile & León.
- December 12, 1873 – Lola Ridge born in Ireland as Rose Emily Ridge, anarchist poet, editor, and feminist. Her poems were published in magazines, and five poetry collections. When she was a toddler, her mother emigrated with her to New Zealand. Ridge was briefly married in 1895, but moved to Australia, to study painting at the Sydney Art School. She emigrated to the U.S. in 1907, and settled in San Francisco, where she used the name Lola, and gave her age as ten years younger. In 1908, The Overland Monthly was the first American magazine to publish one of her poems. She moved to New York, and worked in a factory, then became involved in working class politics and protests. She also worked for Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger. In 1918, her long poem, The Ghetto, was published in The New Republic, and then in her first book, The Ghetto and Other Poems, a critical success which led to work for her as an editor on avant-garde magazines. Her other poetry collections include Red Flag; Firehead; and Dance of Fire. She won the Shelley Memorial Award twice, in 1934 and 1935. In 1941, she died at age 67 of pulmonary tuberculosis.
- December 12, 1881 – Louise Thuliez born, French schoolteacher, author, and resistance fighter. During WWI, she was with an underground network in northern France helping allied soldiers trapped behind enemy lines in Belgium to reach Holland. They rescued about 200 soldiers before the Nazis closed in on the network. In July, 1915, Thuliez, with Belgian architect Philip Baucq, were the first members of the group to be arrested, followed by British nurse Edith Clavel and Princess Marie de Croÿ of Belgium in August. Except for Princess Marie de Croÿ, who bravely insisted she and her brother were the only ones responsible for the rescues, they were all sentenced to death, and Baucq and Clavell were executed. The Princess was condemned to ten years hard labor. Alfonso XIII of Spain, who interceded for thousands of POWs, was able to get the sentence of Thuliez reduced to life in prison. She was imprisoned until November, 1918, when Allied and Belgian troops liberated the country. She published her memoir, Condemned to Death, in 1933. Thuliez worked with Princess Marie de Croÿ again during WWII, helping Allied soldiers escape from the Auvergne region of occupied France while Princess Marie hid soldiers in a château in Bellignies. Thuliez died in Paris at the age of 84 in 1966. In 1974, a street in Paris was named after her.
- December 12, 1900 – Maria Telkes born, Hungarian-American physical chemist, a pioneer in the application of solar energy to water distillation and home heating. She immigrated to the U.S. in 1925, worked as a biophysicist (1926-1937), and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1937. As a civilian adviser to the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development during WWII, she worked out a solar heated water distillation system to make seawater potable. In the late 1940s, she designed a system of chemical storage of solar energy for the first solar-heated house, a project of MIT constructed in Dover, Massachusetts. She also developed a solar-powered stove, and in the 1970s, experimented with an air-conditioning system that stored cool night air for use during the heat of the next day.
- December 12, 1904 – Katherine Sui Fun Cheung born in China; Chinese American pilot. She came to U.S. at age 17 to study at the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. She married George Young in 1924 and became a naturalized American citizen, but continued to use her maiden name. She began taking flying lessons in 1931, and in 1932 she was the first Chinese American woman licensed pilot, in an era when only 1% of American pilots were women. Cheung said, “I don't see why women have to stay in the kitchen, when instead they could learn to fly.” She performed aerial stunts including acrobatic loops, barrel rolls, inverted flying (inside an open cockpit plane), spiral dives and blind flying at air shows, county fairs, and stunt derbies. “What’s the point of flying a plane, if you can’t have fun doing it?” During World War II, she became a flight instructor. When the war ended, she bought a flower shop, which she operated until her retirement in 1970. She was a member of the women’s Ninety Nines flying club and the American Aviation Association. Cheung was inducted into the Aviation Hall of Fame in 2001. She died at age 98 in September 2003.
- December 12, 1909 – Karen Morley born, American film actress, who began her career as a stand-in for Greta Garbo in screen tests. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer soon signed her, and cast her in roles in major films in the 1930s like Mata Hari, Scarface, Dinner at Eight, and Our Daily Bread. In the 1940s, she was in several Broadway productions, but her career ended in 1947, when she refused to answer questions posed by the House Un-American Activities Committee. After being blacklisted, she remained a political activist, and ran unsuccessfully for Lieutenant Governor of New York on the American Labor Party ticket. In the 1970s, she played a few guest roles on TV series, and was in 1993’s documentary television series, The Great Depression, talking about the making of Our Daily Bread, and being overwhelmed by all the poverty and suffering during the Depression, in such contrast to her privileged life as a Hollywood actress.
- December 12, 1928 – Helen Frankenthaler born, major American abstract expressionist artist. She began exhibiting her large-scale abstract expressionist paintings in contemporary museums and galleries in the early 1950s. She was included in the 1964 Post-Painterly Abstraction exhibition, and there was a retrospective of her work in 1989 at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMa). In 2001, Frankenthaler was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Bill Clinton. She died at age 83 in 2011.
- December 12, 1940 – Dionne Warwick born, African American singer, six-time Grammy Award-winner; one of the most-charted female vocalists of all time, with 56 of her singles making the Billboard Hot 100 between 1962 and 1998, and 80 singles making all Billboard charts combined. She was a U.N. Global Goodwill Ambassador (2002-2009). In 2011, she published her autobiography, My Life, as I See It.
- December 12, 1945 – Portia Simpson-Miller born, Jamaican politician, leader of the People’s National Party 2006-2017; Prime Minister of Jamaica (2006-2007 and 2013-2016).
- December 12, 1951 – Paula Ackerman, the first woman appointed to perform rabbinical functions in the U.S., led services for the Temple Beth Israel congregation in Meridian, Mississippi.
- December 12, 1955 – Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki born, Greek shipping business executive, and politician. Elected to the Athens Municipal Council in 1986, and to the Greek Parliament in 1989. Angelopoulos-Daskalaki was president of the Athens Organizing Committee for the 2004 Olympic Summer Games (2000-2005).
- December 12, 1962 – Ulrike Tillmann born, German mathematician and algebraic topologist; has made important contributions to study of moduli space of algebraic curves.
- December 12, 1968 – Rory Kennedy born, American documentary filmmaker and social activist; her films focus on issues like addiction in Women of Substance; poverty in American Hollow; the AIDS crisis in Pandemic: Facing AIDS; nuclear power in Indian Point: Imagining the Unimaginable; labor history in Homestead Strike; and prisoners of war in Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, winner of 2007’s Primetime Emmy Ward for Best Documentary. She is the daughter of Robert and Ethel Kennedy.
- December 12, 1969 – Madeleine Sophie Townley born, whose pen names are Sophie Kinsella and Madeleine Wickham; English author noted for comic novels, including Can You Keep a Secret?; The Undomestic Goddess; Sleeping Arrangements; and her Shopaholic series.
- December 12, 1975 – Mayim Bialik born, American actress, and author with a doctorate in neuroscience from UCLA; she wrote the script and was to direct her first film, As Sick As They Made Us, starring Dustin Hoffman and Candice Bergen, which went into pre-production in 2019, and scheduled for release in 2020, but delayed by Covid-19, and released in April, 2022. She has also been a host on the TV game show Jeopardy!
- December 12, 1982 – Protesting against the proposed placing of U.S. Cruise missiles at the base, 20,000 women encircle the RAF Greenham Common Air Base; the encampment and protests lasted 19 years — with between 250 and 30,000 British women camped there at different times.
- December 12, 2009 – Houston elects Annise Parker as the city’s second woman mayor (2010-2016), and becomes the largest U.S. city to elect an openly gay mayor. She had previously served as the City Controller (2004-2010).
- December 12, 2013 – Hawaii becomes the 15th state to approve same-sex marriage.
- December 12, 2018 – The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced a non-prosecution agreement with American Media, Inc., the National Enquirer’s parent company. As part of this agreement, prosecutors said the publisher admitted it paid Karen McDougal, one of the women who says she had an affair with Donald Trump in 2006, to “suppress” her story and “prevent it from influencing the election.” AMI also told prosecutors it made this payment “in concert with” Trump’s campaign. Trump’s ex-lawyer, Michael Cohen, was sentenced to three years in prison after violating campaign finance laws by arranging this $150,000 payment. Trump denies McDougal’s allegations.
- December 12, 2019 – Donald Trump mocked 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg after Time named her Person of the Year. In a tweet, Trump criticized Time's decision as "so ridiculous" while writing, "Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Greta, Chill!" Trump previously mocked Thunberg, who is on the autism spectrum, after her passionate United Nations speech by sarcastically tweeting that she "seems like a very happy young girl." Thunberg quickly turned Trump's mockery into her new Twitter bio, which now reads, "A teenager working on her anger management problem. Currently chilling and watching a good old fashioned movie with a friend."
- December 12, 2020 – In the UK, an independent investigation into Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital’s Maternity Unit was expanded. The investigator’s interim report revealed 1,862 serious incidents, mostly between 2000 and 2019, including the deaths of hundreds of babies, abnormally high maternal deaths, and a catalogue of incompetence, neglect, and cruelty; failure to handle high-risk cases correctly; reluctance to perform caesarean sections in the overzealous pursuit of “natural” (vaginal) births; inadequate consultant supervision; adversarial attitudes between midwives and doctors. Struggling mothers were mocked as “lazy” and mothers were blamed for their babies’ deaths. Barbara Ellen, a columnist for the Observer, writes: “The report shows how women were pressured, even hounded, into giving birth “naturally”, sometimes with lethal consequences. This ideology is by no means confined to Shrewsbury and Telford. The ‘natural birth at all costs’ culture has become a cosh with which to beat expectant mothers. Women who don’t have natural births are made to feel like failures ... Why are high risk and lack of pain management deemed normal and laudable in maternity, but not in other branches of medicine? ... In times gone by, women and babies died at alarming rates during childbirth (in parts of the world, they still do). The human body hasn’t changed, medicine has … The stark truth is that women have never received enough respect for the risks they take during childbirth, and making them suffer for some warped ‘natural birth’ ideology is as much part of that as overmedicalisation. While there’s much else to address with Shrewsbury and Telford, let’s hope it calls a halt to the increasingly troubling systemic ideological obsession with ‘natural’ birth.”
- December 12, 2021 – Afghanistan's Taliban leaders issued a "special decree" on women’s rights which said "A woman is not a property, but a noble and free human being; no one can give her to anyone in exchange for peace ... or to end animosity …" and set rules governing marriage and property for women, stating women should not be forced into marriage and widows should have share in their late husband's property. Courts should “take into account the rules” when making decisions, and religious affairs and information ministries should promote these rights, the decree said. There was no mention of female access to education or work outside the home. While the Taliban is permitting some women to work in health care, few others have held onto their jobs. And even elementary school is no longer open to girls in many areas. Wazhma Frogh, co-founder of the Women and Peace Studies Organization in Afghanistan and a member of the Afghan Women's Network, said “we literally laugh at” the new Taliban decree on women’s rights.
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- December 13, 1814 – Ana Néri born, the first Brazilian nurse, who volunteered for the Brazilian Army’s health corps during the Triple Alliance Paraguayan War (1864-1870), founding a nursing house which cared for over 6,000 wounded soldiers; the first Brazilian School of Nursing is named for her; she is also listed in the Brazilian Book of Fatherland Heroes.
- December 13, 1818 – Mary Todd Lincoln born, U.S. First Lady (1861-1865). She was a student at Madame Mentelle’s Finishing School, where she learned to speak French fluently. Before she married Abraham Lincoln, she was courted by Lincoln’s political opponent Stephen A. Douglas. She was 23 when she married Lincoln, ten years younger than he was. They had four sons, but only the eldest, Robert, outlived her. The deaths of her three youngest sons, and the assassination of her husband as they sat next to each other at Ford’s Theatre worsened her bouts of depression. She was the first widow of a president to receive a lifetime pension, reluctantly given by Congress, after she pointed out that the widows of soldiers received pensions, and her husband was their fallen commander. Her behavior became increasingly erratic. In May 1875, her son Robert initiated proceedings to have her involuntarily institutionalized. Three months after being committed, she smuggled letters to her lawyers, James Bradwell and Myra Bradwell, and wrote to the editor of the Chicago Times. She was released into her sister Elizabeth’s custody in Springfield. In July 1876, she was declared competent to manage her own affairs. On July 15, 1882, exactly eleven years after her youngest son died, she collapsed at her sister's home, lapsed into a coma, and died the next morning of a stroke at age 63.
- December 13, 1830 – Mathilde Fibiger born, Danish feminist, and novelist; the first public figure in Denmark to be an advocate for women’s rights. Fibiger wrote two pamphlets: Hvad er Emancipation? (What is Emancipation?) and Et Besøg (A Visit) which countered arguments against women’s equality. She worked as a private tutor in 1849, which inspired her novel, Clara Raphael, Tolv Breve (Clara Raphael, Twelve Letters). In spite of critical acclaim, her books were controversial but not very profitable, so she also worked as a dressmaker and translator. In 1863, she trained as a telegraph operator for the Danish State Telegraph service, which had just started accepting women candidates. In 1866, she completed her training, and became the first woman employed as a telegraph operator in Denmark. After two years in Helsingør, she was transferred to Nysted in 1869 to manage a newly opened station. She encountered resistance from male operators, who saw the employment of a woman as a threat to their livelihood. In spite of her managerial position, her pay at Nysted was scarcely sufficient to pay her expenses. In 1870, she transferred to the telegraph station in Aarhus, but also had difficulties with the station manager there. Her health, never robust, suffered under the stress, and she died in Aarhus in 1872. She is remembered in Denmark as a pioneering feminist, and for opening the door for women’s employment by the Danish State Telegraph service.
- December 13, 1867 – Emma Azalia Smith Hackley born, African American concert soprano, newspaper editor, teacher, choir director, and advocate for music education for people of color. Born in Tennessee, but her family moved to Detroit, where she was the first black student to attend public school. She graduated with honors from Washington Normal School in 1886, and earned a teaching certificate. She taught elementary school (1887-1894), then married Colorado attorney and publisher Edwin Hackley. In Colorado, she was the women’s section editor of the newspaper Hackley co-founded, The Colorado Statesman. The Hackleys were co-founders of the Imperial Order of Libyans, to combat racial prejudice and advocate for equality. However, her health suffered in Denver’s high altitude, and she went to live in Philadelphia in the early 1900s. Though they never divorced, she and her husband lived apart for long periods of time. She became a choir director and organized festivals showcasing African American spirituals in Black churches and schools. Smith-Hackley also wrote newspaper articles, gave lectures, and performed at benefit concerts to raise money for scholarships for African American classical musicians. She collapsed on stage in the middle of a performance in San Diego in 1921, and was brought to her sister’s home in Detroit, where she died at age 55 in December 1922.
- December 13, 1871 – Emily Carr born, Canadian painter and author, inspired by the Pacific Northwest forests and the region’s indigenous peoples; one of Canada’s ‘Group of Seven’ painters.
- December 13, 1882 – Jane Edna Hunter born, African American social worker and lawyer. In 1904, she completed training at the Hampton Institute in Virginia. She moved to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1905, and founded the Working Girls Association in 1911, to offer shelter, assistance, and education to women. The name was changed to the Phillis Wheatley Association of Cleveland, in honor of poet Phillis Wheatley. In 1925, she graduated from the Cleveland Law School, and was admitted to the Ohio Bar. Hunter oversaw construction of an eleven-story residence for black women, completed in 1927, that had a beauty school, dining facilities, a nursery school, and the Booker T. Washington playground. She invested in Cleveland real estate, was active in the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), and served as a Central State University trustee. In 1937, Hunter was awarded the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal. She was on the NAACP Board of Directors. In 1940, she published A Nickel and a Prayer about her experiences. Hunter retired as executive director of the Phillis Wheatley Association of Cleveland in 1947. She died in 1971 at the age of 88.
- December 13, 1885 – Annie Dale Biddle Andrews born, American mathematician; first woman to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley; Constructive theory of the unicursal plane quartic by synthetic methods; she worked as a math instructor at the University of Washington (1911-1912) and the University of California (1915-1932).
- December 13, 1903 – Ella Jo Baker born, African American civil rights organizer, and human rights activist, advocating for widespread local action as a means of social change. She was a field secretary (1938-1953) for the NAACP to build grassroots campaigns and develop local leaders; Executive Director of Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1957-1960); and worked with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (1960-1966). She spoke out against the sexism in the civil rights movement during the time when all of its leaders were men.
- December 13, 1905 – Ann Barzel born, American writer, dance critic and lecturer; she studied and performed as a dancer (1931-1943); in the 1940s, she became an instructor and began writing entertainment reviews for the Chicago Times and lecturing. Barzel was dance critic for the paper (1951-1974), and also wrote for Dance Magazine and other international dance publications. She was a founder of the Ballet Guild of Chicago, and in 1986 was added to the lifetime honors list of the Chicago Dance Coalition. She lived to be 102 years old.
- December 13, 1908 – Elizabeth Alexander born, British geologist and physicist; during WWII, correctly interpreted anomalous radar signals as caused by the sun, which led after the war to the development of radio astronomy; also did early work on the geology of Singapore.
- December 13, 1934 – Antoinette Rodez Schiesler born, African-American chemist and astronomer; Director of Research at Villanova University; former Roman Catholic nun, and Episcopal priest.
- December 13, 1935 – Türkan Saylan born, Turkish medical doctor and dermatologist, writer, academic, and social activist. She did work on leprosy, founded the Fight Against Lepra Association and Foundation, and worked as the voluntary head of the Istanbul Lepra Hospital for 21 years.
- December 13, 1942 – Anna Georges Eshoo born, American Democratic politician; the only Assyrian American in congress, and one of two congresswomen of Armenian descent; has served in the U.S. House of Representatives from two different California districts since 1993. In November 2023, she announced she would not seek reelection in 2024.
- December 13, 1949 – R. A. MacAvoy born, American fantasy and science fiction author; noted for Tea with the Black Dragon, The Book of Kells, and her Damiano and Lens of the World series. She was diagnosed with dystonia (a neuro-muscular disorder causing painful sustained muscle contractions) in the 1990s, and had to stop writing. The disorder is now under control, and she has co-authored Albatross, and its sequel, Shimmer, with Nancy L. Palmer.
- December 13, 1950 – Linda Bellos born, British Labour politician, radical feminist, lesbian, and the first non-white lesbian to join the Spare Rib feminist collective in 1981; vice-chair of the successful Black Sections campaign to elect African Caribbean and Asian candidates for local and parliamentary races; Bellos was elected in 1985 as a councillor to Lambeth London Borough Council, and served as council leader (1986-1988); co-chair of the LGBTQ Advisory Group to the Metropolitan Police (2000-2003). She advocates for an inclusive approach to women’s issues, taking into account social class, minority and majority ethnic identity, disability, sexual identity, and religion.
- December 13, 1950 – Dame Julia Slingo born, British meteorologist and climate scientist; chief scientist at the Meteorological Office (the U.K.’s national weather service) since 2009; former Director of Climate Research in the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) National Centre for Atmospheric Science, and founding Director of the Walker Institute for Climate System Research.
- December 13, 1961 – Irene Sáez Conde born, Venezuelan politician; Governor of Nueva Esparta (1999-2000); Mayor of Chacao (a municipality of Caracas, 1993-1998); she was also the first woman to run for President of Venezuela in 1998, but was defeated by Hugo Chavez.
- December 13, 1970 – Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner born, Austrian mountaineer; first woman to climb the 14 “eight-thousanders” without the use of supplementary oxygen or high altitude porters; won the 2012 National Geographic Explorer of the Year Award.
- December 13, 1971 – Leanne Wood born, Welsh Plaid Cymru politician; first woman Leader of Plaid Cymru (2012-2018); Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly for Wales (2016-2017); Member of the Welsh Assembly (2016-2021); Member of the Welsh Assembly for South Wales Central (2003-2016); she identifies as a socialist, republican and a proponent of Welsh independence.
- December 13, 1976 – Rama Yade born in Senegal, French moderate-conservative politician and author; Regional Advisor of Île-de-France since 2010; Ambassador of France to UNESCO (2010-2011); Secretary of State for Sports (2009-2010); Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Human Rights (2007-2009); author of Noirs de France (Blacks in France) and Carnets du pouvoir (Diary of Power), as well as several other books on political issues. She identifies herself as a feminist.
- December 13, 1989 – Taylor Swift born, American singer-songwriter; winner of 11 Grammy awards. She has been an outspoken critic of the sexism and double standards in the music industry, and campaigned successfully in urging her fans to register and vote. Her song “Blank Space” parodies the media’s portrayal of her as "a girl who's crazy but seductive but glamorous but nuts but manipulative."
- December 13, 1993 – Susan A. Maxman becomes first woman president of American Institute of Architects in its 135 year history.
- December 13, 2017 – PBS announced it had “indefinitely suspended distribution” of Tavis Smiley’s late-night talk show after he was accused of sexual misconduct. “PBS engaged an outside law firm to conduct an investigation immediately after learning of troubling allegations regarding Mr. Smiley,” the public broadcaster said in a statement. “This investigation included interviews with witnesses as well as with Mr. Smiley. The inquiry uncovered multiple credible allegations of conduct that is inconsistent with the values and standards of PBS, and the totality of this information led to today’s decision.” On the same day, the New York Times reported that four women had spoken to the newspaper on the record, describing violent sexual assault or rape by music mogul Russell Simmons from 1988 to 2014. Simmons “vehemently” denied the allegations. “These horrific accusations have shocked me to my core and all of my relations have been consensual,” he said. In November, 2017, Simmons announced he was stepping down from his companies after screenwriter Jenny Lumet accused him of sexual assault, the second woman to do so. Simmons apologized for being “thoughtless and insensitive.” He said he was working toward “witnessing the birth of a new consciousness” about women, but would “not accept responsibility for what I have not done.” A total of 13 women eventually came forward with allegations, and some were under age at the time they say the harassment, assaults, or rapes took place. In 2018, Simmons reportedly sold off his assets, transferred his accounts, and moved to Bali, Indonesia, a country without an extradition treaty with the U.S.
- December 13, 2019 – In the UK, a record 220 women were elected as Members of Parliament, raising the proportion of women MPs in the House of Commons to 34%. The majority are from the Labour Party, which now has more women MPs – 104 – than men – 98. By contrast, the Conservatives have only 87 women, and 277 men. Overall, men still hold 430 seats out of the total 650 seats. There are 207 women in the House of Lords – 27% of its peers.
- December 13, 2020 – Abortion rights activists in Poland reported that Polish women were traveling abroad to seek abortions even though the nation’s constitutional court ruling declaring abortions unconstitutional, even in cases of severe fetal abnormalities, was not yet in force. Justyna Wydrzyńska, of Abortion Dream Team, which runs an advice hotline, said calls increased from 25 or 30 a day to 100, “They want to find out what choices they would have if they do get pregnant and find themselves in a situation of foetal abnormalities.” Doctors were reluctant to perform abortions, because the moment the judgment goes into force, they can be charged with committing a crime. In countries where Polish women must now go for abortions, women expressed public support, and connected with networks to help the Poles with transport and expenses.
- December 13, 2021 – A mortgage company in South Dakota apologized for unintentionally disrespecting teachers. The company donated $5000 to a competition pitting 10 teachers against each other, in a scramble for dollar bills to pay for classroom supplies in front of a crowd egging them on. Footage of the teachers on their hands and knees snatching up dollars and stuffing them down their sweaters and into hats went viral, causing a widespread backlash. American Federation of Teachers president, Randi Weingarten, tweeted: “This just feels demeaning … teachers shouldn’t have to dash for dollars for classroom supplies. No doubt people probably intended it to be fun, but from the outside it feels terrible.” The company and the Sioux Falls Stampede said in a joint statement, “Although our intent was to provide a positive and fun experience for teachers, we can see how it appears to be degrading and insulting towards the participating teachers and the teaching profession as a whole.”
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- December 14, 1631 – Anne Finch Conway born, English philosopher; friend and correspondent of Henry More, of the Cambridge Platonist school; after she converted to Quakerism, her home was a center for Quaker activity; she was persecuted and imprisoned; author of Principia philosophiae antiquissimae et recentissimae (Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy).
- December 14, 1640 – Aphra Behn born, English playwright, author, and poet. One of the first women to earn her living as a writer, she became a role model for future generations of women authors; she sometimes used the pen name Astrea, especially for her early work.
- December 14, 1789 – Marianna Szymanowska born, Polish composer, and one of the first professional virtuoso pianists of the 19th century. After touring Europe extensively, she settled in St. Petersburg, and composed music for the Russian imperial court.
- December 14, 1851 – Mary Tappan Wright born, American novelist and short story writer; many of the short stories she wrote for Scribner’s Magazine were collected in her first book, A Truce, and Other Stories, published in 1895. In 1900, she was a founding member of the Boston Authors Club. Tappan Wright’s first novel, Aliens (1902), was a portrait of northerners in a racially tense Southern town, and attracted much attention.
- December 14, 1883 – Jane Cowl born, American stage and silent film actress, who also co-authored several plays with playwright and screenwriter Jane Murfin, under the joint pen name Allan Langdon Martin; their biggest hit was Smilin’ Through (1919).
- December 14, 1891 – Katherine MacDonald born, American actress, one of the first women to produce motion pictures, producing nine silent feature films for her company, Katherine MacDonald Pictures (1919-1921), including Passion’s Playground in 1920, in which Rudolf Valentino had a featured part. She left the movie business after 1926, to run a successful cosmetics business.
- December 14, 1897 – Margaret Chase Smith born, first woman elected to both U.S. houses of Congress (Republican-Maine), served 8 years in House of Representatives and 24 in Senate. She was the first in the Senate to challenge Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade with her “Declaration of Conscience” on June 1, 1950: “It is high time that we stopped thinking politically as Republicans and Democrats about elections and started thinking patriotically as Americans about national security based on individual freedom. It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques – techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life.”
- December 14, 1904 – Virginia Coffey born, American social reformer and civil rights activist; in the 1920s, she taught at an all-black school in Cincinnati Ohio, and joined the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); she worked for the YWCA in the early 1930s, and founded the first Girl Scouts troop for African-American girls in the 1940s. She was named Deputy Director of the Mayor of Cincinnati’s Friendly Relations Committee (1948-1962), working on integration of city swimming pools and parks. Director of Memorial Community Center (1965-1968), and executive director of the Cincinnati Human Relations Commission (1968-1973).
- December 14, 1916 – Shirley Jackson born, American short story writer and novelist; she wrote six novels, over 200 short stories and two memoirs, but her 1948 short story The Lottery is what attracted the most attention (and controversy). Her 1959 novel, The Haunting of Hill House, is widely considered one of the best ghost stories ever written.
- December 14, 1917 – June Taylor born, American dancer and choreographer, founder of the June Taylor Dancers, featured on Jackie Gleason’s television variety shows.
- December 14, 1920 – Rosemary Sutcliff born, English Young Adult author, theatrical and radio playwright of historical and mythological fiction, many set in Roman Britain; runner-up for the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1974; noted for her Eagle of the Ninth series and Arthurian novels, such as The Lantern Bearers, and The King Arthur Trilogy. She was affected by Still's disease when she was very young, and used a wheelchair most of her life. Due to her chronic illness, Sutcliff spent most of her time with her mother, from whom she learned many of the Celtic and Saxon legends that she would later expand into works of historical fiction. Sutcliff's early schooling was constantly interrupted by moving house and her illness. She did not learn to read until she was nine years of age.
- December 14, 1939 – Ann Cryer born, British nuclear disarmament activist and politician; Labour Member of Parliament for Keighley (1997-2010).
- December 14, 1941 – Ellen Willis born, American liberal political essayist, feminist, and first pop music critic for the New Yorker; contributor to the Village Voice and Rolling Stone. A 2014 collection of her essays, The Essential Ellen Willis, received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.
- December 14, 1946 – Patty Duke born, actress, Academy Award winner, president of the Screen Actors Guild, and mental health advocate.
- December 14, 1947 – Dilma Rousseff born, Brazilian economist and politician; she joined a Marxist urban guerilla group after the 1964 military take-over of the country. She was captured, tortured, and imprisoned (1970-1972). After her release, she helped found the Democratic Labour Party, but left it in 2001, to join the Workers’ Party. In 2003, she was appointed as Minister of Mines and Energy (2003-2005), then served Chief of Staff of the Presidency (2005-2010). She became Brazil’s first woman president in 2011, but she was impeached in 2016, and suspended pending the trial outcome, then removed from office for breaking budgetary laws. Vice President Michel Temer, who succeeded her, received an eight-year ban in June 2016 from running for office after accusations of violating election laws, making him ineligible to hold any office after he finished Rousseff’s term, but was later acquitted. He was charged in 2017 with accepting bribes, and attempted to dissolve the Amazonian Reserve in northern Brazil, which would have allowed mining and forest clearance by agro-business companies, but revoked it after widespread criticism and protests. President Juan Bolsonaro was accused of campaign illegalities, and upon taking office, moved to strip the indigenous affairs agency FUNAI of the responsibility to identify and demarcate indigenous lands, arguing those territories have very tiny isolated populations, who would be “controlled” by NPOs, and was dubbed the “Trump of the Tropics.”
- December 14, 1955 – Jill Pipher born, president of Association of Women in Mathematics (AWM, 2011-2013); first director of Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics (ICERM, 2011-), Elisha Benjamin Andrews Professor of Mathematics at Brown University.
- December 14, 1956 – Linda Fabiani born, Scottish National Party politician; Deputy Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament (2016-2021); Convener of the Scottish Parliament Scotland Bill Committee (2011-2016); Member of the Scottish Parliament for East Kilbride since 2011; Member of the Scottish Parliament for Central Scotland (1999-2011).
- December 14, 1961 – President’s Commission on the Status of Women is established to examine and eliminate discrimination against women.
- December 14, 1966 – Helle Thorning-Schmidt born, Danish Social Democratic politician; Prime Minister of Denmark (2001-2015); Leader of the Social Democrats (2005-2015); member of the Danish Parliament (2005-2011); leader of the secretariat of the Danish delegation of Social Democrats in the European Parliament (1994-1997).
- December 14, 1968 – Kelley Armstrong born, Canadian fantasy novelist; noted for her series and trilogies, including Women of the Otherworld and Darkness Rising.
- December 14, 1978 – Martina Filjak born, Croatian concert pianist; she gave her first public performance at age 6, and won the 2007 prize for pianists at the Viotti International Music Competition. She made her New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall in 2009.
- December 14, 1985 – Wilma Mankiller takes office as the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, the first woman to lead a major American tribe in modern times.
- December 14, 2019 – Michael Bloomberg’s past alleged comments about women caused him fresh problems as he campaigned for the U.S. presidency. Allegations he has made rude remarks about women, and the cases of 17 women who took legal action against his company, three of them specifically naming Bloomberg for his role in the company’s culture, didn’t help him with Democratic women voters, who are more likely to go to the polls during the primaries than male Democrats. A gift book he received from colleagues at a 1990 office party, a compilation of comments he supposedly made, included “If women wanted to be appreciated for their brains, they’d go to the library instead of Bloomingdales.” Donna Clancy, an attorney for three former employees who sued both Bloomberg and his firm, said, "We have investigated the company for the last four years, and the culture is such that women are not valued. In fact, they're objectified, based upon the complaints that I've filed on behalf of three plaintiffs and the history that's listed in those complaints." In 2007, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency policing workplace harassment and discrimination, brought a sweeping case against his news and financial services company, Bloomberg LP, alleging discrimination against pregnant women and new mothers, based on claims by 29 individual plaintiffs, and interviews with several dozen others. Complaints made by the women to Bloomberg's human resources department were dismissed. In 2013, a federal judge threw out the lawsuit, saying several instances of individual bias were not evidence that discrimination was Bloomberg LP’s standard operating practice. The judge did allow part of a case by one plaintiff to go forward.
- December 14, 2020 – New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s declaration of a climate emergency, committing the government to buying only electric or hybrid vehicles, reducing the fleet by 20%, and phasing out all coal-fired boilers in public services buildings, as well as setting up a Climate Change Commission tasked with putting New Zealand on a path to net zero emissions by 2050, was criticized by Greta Thunberg, who tweeted, “In other words, the government has just committed to reducing less than 1 percent of the country’s emissions by 2025.” Ardern responded, “It is not our sum ambition. And it is not the totality of our plans on climate change.” Ardern also said, “But equally I think it’s only a good thing there are people out there continuing to urge ambition in action.”
- December 14, 2021 – The U.S. House of Representatives passed Representative Ilhan Omar's (D-Minn) bill seeking to create an office at the State Department dedicated to tracking and fighting Islamophobia. The vote came as Democrats push back against Representative Lauren Boebert's (R-Colo.) anti-Muslim rhetoric against Omar. Boebert referred to Omar and other progressives as a "Jihad Squad," and joked that Omar posed a terror threat to the Capitol. Progressive Democrats called for the House to strip Boebert of her committee assignments. House Republicans spent much of the hearing on the bill mocking it. "I have many Pennsylvania Dutch that feel that they're not treated properly," said Rep. Dan Meuser of Pennsylvania, sarcastically calling for their inclusion in Omar's anti-Islamophobia bill. "How about those that are gay, you know, the LGBTQ community? That should be part of this bill. Let's keep going, you know, there are people that are overweight, and there are skinny kids that get picked on. Why aren't they included in this as well?" Ilhan Omar responded, "It is shameful and embarrassing that the Republican Party's response to blatant Islamophobia and incitement of violence is to double down on anti-Muslim rhetoric. Instead of engaging in a good faith discussion on how to address the rise of Islamophobic violence, Republicans engaged in ad hominem attacks, belittled Muslims, and minimized the pain of Muslim communities around the world." The bill passed with no Republican support, and received by the Senate the next day, read twice, and referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations. A Senate version, S.1916, was introduced by Senator Cory Booker in June 2023.
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- December 15, 1751 – Mary McKeehan Patton born in England, American gunpowder manufacturer; her Powder Branch Mill was in Carter County, Tennessee. During the American Revolution, she provided 500 pounds of gunpowder used by the Overmountain Men, a militia of 850-900 Americans from west of the Appalachians. The Overmountain Men used the gunpowder at the Battle of Kings Mountain, on the South Carolina border, October 7, 1780. The gunpowder was a major factor in the defeat of the larger force of British loyalists, which was decimated, and their leader killed. This was a pivotal moment in the Southern campaign, coming after a series of American defeats by troops commanded by Lord Cornwallis. Cornwallis abandoned his plan to invade North Carolina, and retreated into South Carolina.
- December 15, 1774 – Hannah Wilkinson Slater born, American inventor and holder of the first patent issued in the United States directly to a woman. The patent was for a new way of spinning cotton thread. This invention resulted from her working partnership with her husband, Samuel Slater, who founded the American cotton textile industry. By using spinning wheels to twist fine Surinam cotton yarn, she created a No. 20 two-ply thread that was an improvement on the linen thread previously in use for sewing cloth.
- December 15, 1886 – Wanda Krahelska-Filipowicz born, Polish Catholic Socialist activist and editor of the art magazine Arkady. A co-founder with Zofia Kossak of Żegota, underground Polish Council to Aid Jews, and a leading figure in Warsaw’s underground resistance movement, using the code name “Alinka,” throughout the Nazi occupation of Poland during WWII. As the well-connected wife of a former ambassador to Washington DC, she used her contacts with both the military and political leadership of the Polish Underground to influence the underground’s policy of aiding Poland’s Jewish population during the war, and persuade the Government in Exile of the importance of setting up a central organization to help Poland’s Jews, and to back the policy with significant funding. By the end of the war, there were thousands of students, writers, journalists, doctors, and members of the railway, tramway and sanitation workers organizations who took part in Żegota’s vast network, which was never broken by the Nazis. Krahelska-Filipowicz, Kopssak, and Żegota were recognized as Righteous Among Nations for saving between 40,000 and 50,000 Polish Jews, including smuggling 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto, and hiding them with Polish and Austrian families.
- December 15, 1909 – Eliza Atkins Gleason born, first African American to earn a Doctorate in Library Science, in 1940 from the University of Chicago; in 1941, she established and became the first Dean of the School of Library Service at Atlanta University and created a library education program that trained 90 percent of all African-American librarians by 1986. Gleason was also the first African American to serve on the board of the American Library Association (1942-1946).
- December 15, 1913 – Muriel Rukeyser born, poet, social justice and feminist activist; best known for her collections: Theory of Flight; The Book of the Dead; The Speed of Darkness; and Breaking Open.
- December 15, 1915 – Eila Campbell born, English geographer, academic, and cartographer; known for her work on Domesday Geography of England, and for editing the international journal, Imago Mundi. She was a member of the Royal Geographical Society, and served on the society’s library and maps committee for over 20 years. The Royal Society awarded her the Murchison Award, given for publications that have contributed most to geographical science, in 1979.
- December 15, 1928 – Ida Haendel born, Polish Jewish violinist; child prodigy who began playing at age three, and won the Warsaw Conservatory’s Gold Medal and the Huberman Prize at age five, in 1933. She studied in London and Paris. In 1937, her London debut brought her worldwide critical acclaim, and she made 68 appearances at the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall. During WWII, she played in factories, for British and American troops, and performed in Myra Hess's National Gallery concerts. She lived in Canada (1952-1989), and was a regular adjudicator at international violin competitions. After moving to Florida, she was involved the Miami International Piano Festival. She died from cancer at age 91 in July, 2020.
- December 15, 1930 – Edna O’Brien born, Irish novelist, poet, and short story writer; her first novel, The Country Girls, published in 1960, was banned by the Irish censorship board, and her family’s parish priest publically burned copies of the book. But she also won the 1962 Kingsley Amis Award for The Country Girls. O’Brien left Ireland, and lives in London. Among many other honours, her work received the 2001 Irish PEN Award.
- December 15, 1939 – Cindy Birdsong born, African American singer with Patti LaBelle and the Blue Belles (1962-1966), and Diana Ross & the Supremes (1966-1970).
- December 15, 1942 – Kathleen Blanco born, first woman elected Governor of Louisiana (2004-2008); Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana (1996-2004); Louisiana House of Representatives (1984-1989).
- December 15, 1945 – Heather Tobis Booth born, American civil rights activist, feminist, and political strategist involved in organizing and coordinating for many progressive causes. Journalist David Wood wrote in a 2017 profile of Heather Booth: “Inside almost every liberal drive over the past five decades ― for fair pay, equal justice, abortion rights, workers’ rights, voter rights, civil rights, immigration rights, child care ― you will find Booth. But you may have to look hard. Because she’s not always at the head of the protest march. More often, she’s at a let’s-get-organized meeting in a suburban church basement or a late-night strategy session in a crumbling neighborhood’s community center. She’s helping people already roused to action figure out practical ways to move their cause forward. And always she’s advancing the credo she learned as a child: that you must not only treat people with dignity and respect, but you must shoulder your own responsibility to help build a society that reflects those values.”
- December 15, 1948 – Melanie Chartoff born, American actress, voice actress, comedian, and inventor; she and fellow actor Michael Bell had an idea for a graywater recycling device for home reuse of shower and sink water, the Grayway Rotating Drain, which they finished with the help of Ronald K. Ford and patented in 1992. Chartoff is known for her roles on the TV series Fridays. She started and produces the annual Halloween for Hope event to benefit children’s cancer research, and has also done benefits for the homeless.
- December 15, 1952 – Julie Taymor born, American theatre, opera, and film director; the first woman to win a Tony for directing a Broadway musical, for the stage version of The Lion King; also won an Original Costume Design Tony for the show’s costumes.
- December 15, 1969 – Chantal Petitclerc born, Canadian independent politician, Senator for Grandville Quebec since 2016. She lost the use of both legs in an accident when she was 13, and was helped by her high school physical education teacher, who taught her to swim during lunch hours. She became a wheelchair racer, winning numerous medals, including 12 golds, in the Paralympic Games between 1992 and 2008.
- December 15, 1972 – Alexandra Tydings born, American actress, director, writer, producer, and activist, known for playing Greek goddess Aphrodite on the TV series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and its spin-off, Xena: Warrior Princess. In 2015, Tydings wrote and directed The Trial of Hanna Porn, a multi-media history of the ongoing struggle for control of the female body, which won the Best of Fringe award at the Charm City Fringe Festival. She then wrote, directed, and produced Rainbow Bridge, an independent film about two women navigating the challenging legal and emotional landscape of reproductive rights in the U.S.
- December 15, 1975 – Samira Saraya born, Palestinian film, television and theatre actress, filmmaker, poet, rapper, spoken word artist, and activist for LGBTQ rights. Played lead character in the 2014 Israeli film Self Made, directed by Sira Geffen, shown at the Cannes Film Festival.
- December 15, 2009 –The Washington, D.C. City Council votes to legalize same-sex marriage.
- December 15, 2017 – A federal judge issued a temporary injunction against the Trump administration’s modification of ObamaCare’s contraception mandate. The Affordable Care Act requires employers to pay for birth control as part of employee health plans, with limited exemptions. The Trump White House issued a new rule expanding those exemptions to allow almost any business to decline to offer contraception coverage for religious or moral reasons. Judge Wendy Beetlestone of Pennsylvania wrote in her opinion that the rule could cause “enormous and irreversible” harm, potentially driving women out of the workplace entirely if large numbers of employers change their coverage policies.
- December 15, 2017 – The Washington Post reported that the Trump White House directed the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to avoid using seven words and phrases in agency documents. The list of banned words and phrases: “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based,” and “science-based.” In place of the latter two phrases, the directive suggested saying things like, “CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes.” While the ban on the first five words drew fire for its implicit commentary on minorities, LGBTQ issues, and abortion, the prohibition of “evidence-based” and “science-based” garnered particular criticism from the medical and scientific communities given the scope of the CDC’s responsibilities.
- December 15, 2017 – Professor Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, after a two-week fact-finding mission across America, released an initial report on the wide-spread poverty in the U.S. which is often called “the richest country in the world.” There are 41 million people in the U.S. who officially live below the poverty line determined by the federal government, and nine million of them have no income at all. His tour began the day Republicans in the U.S. Senate voted for sweeping tax cuts for the super wealthy, which in time will raise taxes on many lower-income families. The changes will exacerbate wealth inequality that is already the most extreme in any industrialized nation, with three men – Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffet – owning as much as half of the entire American population. A few days later, the Republican leadership announced plans to slash key social programs of the already threadbare welfare state. In Los Angeles, Alston met Ressy Finley, age 41, who lived in a tent on a Skid Row street off and on for over a decade, receiving no formal income. The meager amount she earns recycling bottles and cans can’t begin to cover the cost of an apartment, and she relies on near-by missions for most of her food. Hepatitis A is spreading in homeless encampments on the West Coast due to lack of sanitation. L.A.’s Skid Row has access to only nine toilets at night for an estimated 1,800 people who live on its streets, because local parks and amenities close at night to keep them out. Alston, who has reported on poverty in Saudi Arabia and China, said after his tour of Skid Row, “I was feeling pretty depressed. The endless drumbeat of horror stories. At a certain point you do wonder what can anyone do about this, let alone me.” Over 500 anti-homeless laws were passed in California cities in recent years. At the federal level, Ronald Reagan set the trend with his 1980s tax cuts, followed by Bill Clinton, whose 1996 decision to scrap welfare payments for low-income families is still punishing millions of Americans. The cumulative attack left struggling families, including 15 million children officially living in poverty, with dramatically less support than in any other industrialized economy. The poverty rate for households headed by women was at 28.5%, and an estimated 29% of homeless individuals were women in 2017.
- December 15, 2019 – The all-male monastic republic of Mount Athos in Greece has barred all females, except female cats, since the 10th century. For an estimated 2,500 monks living in caves, shacks, or the 20 monasteries dotted around the 400-square mile peninsula, the Virgin Mary is the only acceptable female presence. But during conservation work on a Byzantine chapel, among bones found embedded in the soil beneath its stone floor, were some bones that may be female. American-born anthropologist Laura Wynn-Antikas, who specializes in working on ancient skeletal remains from sites across Greece, says “You never know what you are going to find. Bones don’t lie. They tell you how a person lived and perhaps even how they died. You go in prepared to see everything.” Despite the EU declaring the prohibition illegal, the no-females measure is rigorously upheld, extending up to 500 metres of Athos’s coastline, even though in modern times some women deliberately tried to break it. “If a woman is found among the bones it will be the first known incident of a female finding her final resting place on Mount Athos,” said the architect restorer Phaidon Hadjiantoniou, who discovered the remains. “This is the first time I have ever seen bones placed under a chapel floor. I was immediately curious and got in touch with specialists including Laura. What is sure is that they wouldn’t be there if these people weren’t significant to the monastery.” The painstaking business of dating the bones took months, then DNA testing confirmed that the bones were from a female human.
- December 15, 2020 – The virtual scrapbook company Pinterest paid a record $20 million to settle a gender discrimination lawsuit brought by Françoise Brougher, the company’s former chief operating officer, who alleged she was fired after “speaking out about the rampant discrimination, hostile work environment, and misogyny” at the San Francisco firm. As part of the settlement with Brougher, the $43bn company will invest $2.5 million in “advancing women and underrepresented communities in the technology industry.” Brougher, fired in April on a video call with Pinterest’s billionaire chief executive, Ben Silbermann, said she agreed to the settlement only on condition that it was made public, to help other women in the male-dominated tech industry. “My goal was about accountability and driving change,” she said.
- December 15, 2021 – In the UK, a 67-year-old man who murdered two young women, and sexually assaulted the bodies of over 100 women and girls in a mortuary where he worked, was found guilty and given a whole-life sentence. He videotaped his attacks on the bodies of females aged nine to 100. One victim’s relative said “In a world where women are not safe when they are alive, they are not safe when they are dead.” The man stalked, sexually assaulted, and murdered two young women in Kent in 1987, and for 33 years got away with his crimes, before a DNA breakthrough led to him being identified as the prime suspect. When police raided his home in December 2020, they uncovered hard drives full of his attacks on the dead and extremely violent pornography from the internet. He admitted to the murders and assaulting the dead during the trial at Maidstone Crown Court. Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb said, “Having killed two young women who were full of the promise of life you became a vulture, picking your victims from among the dead, within the hidden world of hospital mortuaries which you were left free to inhabit, simply because you had a swipecard. The depravity of what you did reveals that your conscience is seared; callused over. The sentence I am about to pass means you will spend every day of the rest of your life in prison.”
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- December 16, 1630 – Mary Somerset, Duchess of Beaufort born, English gardener and botanist, whose collection of plant specimens and seeds numbered in the thousands; she published a 12-volume herbarium.
- December 16, 1717 – Elizabeth Carter born, English poet, classicist, and translator; a member of the Bluestocking Circle; first to translate into English the extant works of Epictetus, the Greek Stoic philosopher.
- December 16, 1775 – Jane Austen born, English author, one of the most widely read authors in English literature – best known for Pride and Prejudice; Sense and Sensibility; and Emma.
- December 16, 1843 – Josephine Shaw Lowell born, American charity worker and social reformer; first woman appointed to the New York State Board of Charities (1876-1889); founder of the NY Consumers League (1890) which advocated for better wages and working conditions for women, publishing a “White List” of retail stores which treated their women clerks well (which initially had few stores on it), and inspired chapters in other cities across the U.S., becoming the National Consumers League, a powerful lobbying group.
- December 16, 1844 – Fanny Garrison Villard born, suffragist and philanthropist. During Reconstruction, helped feed and clothe newly freed slaves, and funded schools for their education; president (1898-1922) of NY Diet Kitchen Association, which provided more nutritional food that doctors associated with the program would “prescribe” as cures for sick slum dwellers; founding member of the NAACP; American Woman Suffrage Association member; worked with Women’s Peace Party. She helped found Barnard College, and the Harvard Annex (which became Radcliffe College).
- December 16, 1869 – Bertha Lamme Feicht born, American mechanical engineer with a specialty in electricity; in 1893, she was the first U.S. woman to earn an engineering degree in other than civil engineering, and the first woman graduate in engineering from Ohio State University; first woman engineer hired by Westinghouse; her daughter Florence became a physicist for the U.S. Bureau of Mines.
- December 16, 1900 – Lucille Lortel born, American theatrical producer, co-producer, and artistic director of nearly 500 plays; noted for producing Marc Blitzstein's adaptation of the Bertolt Brecht-Kurt Weill Threepenny Opera, which ran Off Broadway for seven years, and the New York Times said “put Off Broadway on the map.”
- December 16, 1901 – The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter’s first book, is published, setting a new standard for children’s books, and marking her first step to independence.
- December 16, 1901 – Margaret Mead born, renowned American cultural anthropologist, known for studying the indigenous people of Oceania, including the cooperation, competition, and communication between them, together with the oceanic ethnology and comparative child psychology. She first began her research in the South Pacific at age 23, as a doctoral student. Throughout her life, she traveled in other countries doing research on various cultures, including the Arapesh, Mudugumor and Tchambuli of New Guinea. Her public lecture topics ranged widely from atomic politics to cybernetics to feminism. Author of Coming of Age in Samoa; and Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies.
- December 16, 1916 – Ruth Johnson Colvin born, founder of the non-profit Literacy Volunteers of America (now ProLiteracy Worldwide); worked with literacy specialists to develop training materials for volunteer tutors, now considered authoritative sources for basic literacy and ESL tutor training courses; awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2006.
- December 16, 1932 – Grace Alele Williams born, first Nigerian woman to earn a doctorate degree and first woman to become a Nigerian university vice-chancellor, at the University of Benin. She is also a professor of mathematics education, and a consultant to UNESCO and the Institute of International Education Planning.
- December 16, 1938 – Liv Ullmann born, Norwegian actress and film director; her first directing project was Sofie in 1992, followed by Faithless (2000), nominated for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and in 2009, she directed Cate Blanchett in a stage production of A Streetcar Named Desire, which opened in Sydney Australia, then moved to the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. In 2014, her film adaptation of Miss Julie, starring Jessica Chastain, was released.
- December 16, 1941 – Leslie Stahl born, American television journalist; she recounted the night of the 1972 Nixon-McGovern election, her on-air studio chair was labeled “Female” in masking tape, instead of with her name as her colleagues’ chairs were; noted for her coverage of Watergate, which earned her a promotion to CBS White House Correspondent; since 1991, she has reported for 60 Minutes; when Katie Couric was hired in 2006, CBS news asked Stahl to take a $500,000 cut in pay to accommodate Couric’s salary; Reporting Live is her memoir.
- December 16, 1949 – Dame Heather Hallet born, English judge; as a Bencher of the Inner Temple, she was the first woman to chair the Bar Counsel in 1998; appointed in 2005 as the fifth woman to sit in the Court of Appeal; Vice-President of Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal (2013-2019).
- December 16, 1955 – Carol Browner born, American lawyer and environmentalist; Director of the Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy (2009-2011), a position abolished by the Trump administration; Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA – 1993-2001).
- December 16, 1965 – Melanie Sloan born, Minority Counsel for the House Judiciary Committee, worked on criminal justice issues for Ranking Member John Conyers (D-MI), and as Counsel for the Crime Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, drafting portions of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act; District of Columbia Assistant U.S. Attorney (1998-2003); co-founder in 2003, and first Executive Director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) which publishes a “Most Corrupt Members of Congress” list. In November 2017, Sloan publicly accused John Conyers of harassment and verbal abuse when she worked for the House Judiciary Committee, then several other women came forward. Conyers denied all the allegations, but later announced his resignation.
- December 16, 1976 – Jen Golbeck born, America computer scientist, academic, and author; Associate Professor at the College of Information Studies, University of Maryland, College Park, and director of the University of Maryland Human–Computer Interaction Lab (2011-2014); noted for work on computational social network analysis; program co-chair of ACM RecSys 2015; contributor to the on-line magazine Slate. She started the Freedom of Science Network after the last presidential election, to help government scientists find new jobs if they were fired, then used the network to ask for help in finding housing and work for scientists stranded by the administration's travel ban in 2017, and got 1,000 offers of help within 72 hours; her publications include Online Harassment (editor), and Trust on the World Wide Web: A Survey.
- December 16, 2012 – The gang rape and fatal torture of Jyoti Singh, a 23-year-old Indian physiotherapy intern, on a private bus in Delhi sparks international outrage, and protests in India demanding tougher penalties for rape and sexual violence.
- December 16, 2013 – Michelle Bachelet wins back the presidency of Chile in a runoff election, leading her opponent by 62 percent to 38 percent. Bachelet is the first Chilean leader to serve two terms since General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).
- December 16, 2017 – Film director Peter Jackson admitted to blacklisting Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino in response to a smear campaign orchestrated by Harvey Weinstein at Miramax, which he ran with his brother. “I recall Miramax telling us they were a nightmare to work with and we should avoid them at all costs,” Jackson said. As a direct result, he said, both women fell out of the running for parts in his Lord of the Rings series. “At the time, we had no reason to question what these guys were telling us. But in hindsight, I realize that this was very likely the Miramax smear campaign in full swing. I now suspect we were fed false information about both of these talented women.” Harvey Weinstein’s “complicity machine” was built by enablers, silencers, and spies warning others who discovered his secrets to say nothing. He used it to protect himself against sexual assault claims, and to punish those who rejected his advances. Sorvino and Judd both said they refused Weinstein’s pressure to have physical relationships, and Sorvino said she felt “iced out” of the industry after rejecting his advances. On seeing Jackson’s interview, Sorvino tweeted: “I burst out crying. There it is, confirmation Harvey Weinstein derailed my career, something I suspected but was unsure. Thank you Peter Jackson for being honest. I’m just heartsick.” Judd said, “I remember this well.” Jackson said he didn’t know about the sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein, but he had ceased working with the Weinstein brothers because they acted like “second-rate mafia bullies.”
- December 16, 2019 – The PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) tests are given every three years to 15-year-olds from 80 countries across the globe. The most recent results for British girls alarmed UK educators: they rank as the fifth “most afraid of failure” in the world, behind Taiwan, Macau, Singapore, and Brunei, and the gender gap is substantial. The pressure to excel is great, because passing exams with good rankings leads to opportunities in higher education, and degree holders earn higher wages. The difference in earnings for women between a graduate career and a lower-paid vocational role is even greater than the difference for men. Add to this finding the NHS (National Health Service) statistic that one in five UK girls are struggling with emotional disorders by age 19, often including self-harm, a rate that is three times higher than same-age boys, and the alarm bells got louder. Girls in this age group still regularly test higher academically than their male counterparts, but at what cost? Students in countries which wait to give tests that have such an impact on their future academic careers until they reach age 18 show lower stress levels for both girls and boys.
- December 16, 2020 – In the UK, Ella Kissi-Debrah suffering from severe asthma, died at age nine in February 2013. Her mother, Rosamund Kissi-Debrah, fought for years for a second inquest into her death, and was finally vindicated when the coroner at the second inquest ruled “Ella died of asthma contributed to by exposure to excessive air pollution.” It is the first known ruling that air pollution was a major contributing cause of an individual’s death. “The whole of Ella’s life was lived in close proximity to highly polluting roads,” the coroner said. “I have no difficulty in concluding that her personal exposure to nitrogen dioxide and PM was very high.” Her family lived within 25 metres of the busy south circular road in Lewisham. During her lifetime, nitrogen dioxide emissions and particulate matter (PM) limits in Lewisham exceeded EU and national legal limits and World Health Organization guidelines. In the three years before her death, Ella had multiple seizures and was admitted to hospital 27 times after severe asthma attacks. Air pollution induced and exacerbated her severe asthma. Rosamund Kissi-Debrah said, “We’ve got the justice for her which she so deserved. I think that it would be a fitting legacy, to bring in a new Clean Air Act and for governments – I’m not just talking about the UK government – governments around the world to take this matter seriously. My biggest desire is to prevent future deaths, anything that saves future lives I am going to be in support of.”
- December 16, 2021 – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration ended a restriction against accessing abortion pills by mail. The FDA previously required women to obtain the pills for medication abortion (a common method for ending pregnancies up to 10 weeks' gestation) in person from certified health-care providers. In April, 2021, the FDA temporarily suspended the in-person requirement to obtain the drug, mifepristone, due to the coronavirus pandemic.
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Sources
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The Feminist Cats Learn that
“Rudolf” is RUBY the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Male reindeer lose their antlers in winter,
while female reindeer do not,
so Santa’s sleigh is pulled by a team
of strong, unacknowledged females!
Let’s Hear It for the Girls!
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If you want to dive deeper, the extended
list of this week’s Women Trailblazers
and Events in Women’s History are here: