Welcome to WOW2 — Early March!
WOW2 is a twice-monthly sister blog to This Week in the War on Women. This edition covers women and events from March 1 through March 16.
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 moments in women’s history. It also serves as a reference archive of women’s history. There are so many more phenomenal women than I ever dreamed of finding, and all too often their stories are almost unknown, even to feminists and scholars.
This is an on-going, evolving project. So many women have been added to the lists over the past three years that even changing the posts from monthly to twice a month, the pages keep getting longer and more unwieldy – an astonishing and wonderful problem to have!
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A Modest Proposal
March is National Women’s History Month in the United States. This is especially important because the U.S. does not have a single national holiday which honors the contributions of American women to our country. No image of an American woman has even appeared on U.S. folding money, in spite of the campaign to choose a woman for this honor.
The women who fought the battle for our right as citizens to vote for 72 years, from the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention to the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, have been given only token acknowledgement by our government. Their hard work and sacrifice to win the vote for half the U.S. citizenry is a major historical milestone, but even Susan B. Anthony was “honored” with a dollar coin the size of a 25 cent piece.
Yet Christopher Columbus is still given a federal holiday, in spite of not being the first European to reach the so-called New World, in spite of thinking he was off the coast of India when land was sighted, and in spite of never actually setting foot on the North American continent.
2019 is the 99th year since the passage of the 19th Amendment. Women’s rights are under attack from federal, state and local governments and the judiciary. Wouldn’t it be really appropriate in 2020 to designate August 18th as a federal holiday, in honor of the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, and to finally acknowledge the suffragists?
Surely they are more deserving than that bumbler Christopher Columbus.
And no, gentlemen, Mother’s Day doesn’t count.
Even Anna Jarvis, who started Mother’s Day, repudiated it after it was taken over by the florists, greeting card companies, and candy manufacturers, and she tried to get it removed from the calendar.
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For the entire previous EARLY MARCH list as of 2018, click HERE:
www.dailykos.com/...
Otherwise, what you’re seeing on this Early March 2019 page are only the NEW people and events, or additional information, found since last year.
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
has posted, so be sure to go there next to catch
up on the latest dispatches from the frontlines:
www.dailykos.com/...
Early March’s Women Trailblazers and Events in Our History
Note: All images and audios are below the person or event to which they refer
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- March 1 every year is Black Women in Jazz & the Arts Day
- March 1, 1683 – Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach born, Queen consort of Great Britain and Ireland, and Electress consort of Hanover, married to King George II, noted for her political alliance with leading British minister Robert Walpole, and her major influence over policy, including more freedom of the press and of speech in Parliament, and urging clemency for the Jacobites. She was made temporary regent for five months in 1729 while her husband was attending to duties in Hanover, during which she helped defuse a diplomatic crisis over the Portuguese seizure of a British ship, and pressed for reform of the penal system, after an investigation revealed widespread abuses, but was unable to gain any major changes to the outdated system. She was far more intellectual and more widely read than her husband, who often listened to her council, and was a notable patron of the arts and letters. She was widely mourned in the British Isles when she died, by Protestants for her moral example, and even by many Jacobites because of her intervention for mercy toward their compatriots. King George II refused to remarry after her death
- March 1, 1890 – Theresa Bernstein-Meyerowitz born in Poland, American Jewish artist and writer; co-founder of the Society of Independent Artists
- March 1, 1934 – Joan Hackett born, American stage, film and television actress; noted for her performances in The Group, Will Penny and The Last of Sheila; active supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA); died of ovarian cancer at age 49 – her epitaph reads: “Go Away – I’m Asleep”
- March 1, 1952 – Jerri Lin Nielson born, American physician, after discovering a breast tumor while working in Antarctica in 1998, she self-administered a biopsy, and later chemotherapy, using supplies that had to be parachuted to her. In spite of weather delays which caused her evacuation to be several weeks later than planned, she survived the ordeal, and co-wrote Ice Bound: A Doctor’s Incredible Story of Survival at the South Pole. But in 2005, the cancer recurred and metastasized, spreading to her brain. She died in 2009 at age 57
- March 1, 1978 – Women’s History Week is first observed in Sonoma County, California, a modest proposal by the Education Task Force of the Sonoma County Commission on the Status of Women, for the week leading up to International Women’s Day, March 8th – it inspires Women’s History events all over the country, and grows into National Women’s History Month (see also 1987 entry below)
- March 1, 1983 – Lupita Nyong’o born in Mexico City, of Kenyan parents, Kenyan actress; noted for Twelve Years a Slave, for which she won 2014’s Best Supporting Actress Oscar, and Black Panther; one of the women who has spoken out about Harvey Weinstein; activist for women’s rights, against sexual harassment, for diversity and for prevention of cruelty to animals
- March 1, 1987 – The U.S. Congress passes a resolution permanently designating March as National Women’s History Month
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- March 2, 1860 – Susanna M. Salter born, first American woman elected as a mayor, of the town of Argonia in Kansas, and an activist in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. In 1887, her name was put on the ballot by a group of men who were against women entering politics, expecting her to be soundly defeated, which they believed would discourage women from running for office. The ballot was not made public before election day, so she didn’t even know her name was on it until the polls opened. When she agreed to serve if elected, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union abandoned the candidate they had been supporting and voted en masse for Salter, and the local Republican Party also voted for her, so she was elected by a two-thirds majority. The New York Sun sent a reporter to cover a city council meeting over which she presided, and even newspapers in Sweden and South Africa carried the story. The pay for the office of mayor was a token $1 per year. Salter was the mother of the first baby born in Argonne, and eight more children, one of whom died in infancy during her term of office. She declined to run for reelection. She lived to be 101 years old
- March 2, 1901 – Grete Hermann born, German mathematician and philosopher; noted for her early work on the foundations of quantum mechanics and her critique of a no-hidden-variable theorem by John von Neumann, which was ignored until 1966, when John S. Bell made almost the same argument. Hermann, a member of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) which Hitler had banned in 1933, left Germany in 1936, going first to Denmark, then to France, and finally to London, where she made a marriage of convenience with a man named Edward Henry in 1938, in order to avoid standing out as a German national. In 1940, her prescience was justified when the British government invoked Regulation 18B of the Defence Regulations of 1939, identifying as enemy aliens thousands of refugees who had fled Germany because of politics or racial heritage, and putting them in internment camps. After WWII ended in 1945, she returned to Germany, and rejoined the SDP, contributing to the Godesberger Programm, the party’s revamping of its orientation and goals from ending capitalism to reforming it, rejecting Marxist class struggle and materialism theories, seeking to expand beyond its trade unionist origins. Hermann became a professor of philosophy and physics at Pädagogische Hochschule in Bremen(University of Education at Bremen), and presided over Philosophisch-Politische Akademie (The Philosophical-Political Academy, a non-profit education and social justice advocacy association) from 1961 to 1978
- March 2, 1922 – Frances Spence born, a pioneer in computer programming; one of the original programmers for the ENIAC, the first digital computer; inducted with other ENIAC “computers” into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame in 1997
- March 2, 1948 – Carmen Lawrence born, Australian psychologist and Labor politician; elected to the Parliament of Western Australia in 1986, and became a government minister in 1988; Premier of Western Australia (1990-1993), Australia’s first woman state premier; Member of the national Australian Parliament for Fremantle (1994-2007); served 1994-1996 as both Minister for Human Services and Health and Minister for Women. Elected as national president of the Labor Party (2004-2005)
- March 2, 1966 – Ann Leckie born, American author and editor of science fiction and fantasy; her 2013 debut novel Ancillary Justice won the both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel, the British Science Fiction Association Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the Locus Award for Best First Novel. The sequels Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy each won Locus Awards for Best Science Fiction Novel and were nominated for Nebula Awards
- March 2, 1980 – Rebel Wilson born, Australian writer, producer, actress and singer; she wrote, produced and starred in the 2008 musical comedy series Bogan Pride; best know in the U.S. for the movies Bridesmaids and Pitch Perfect; Wilson is a supporter of stricter gun laws in the U.S., “I don’t like getting political but America you really have to follow Australia’s example re gun laws. I don’t remember a mass shooting in Australia since they overhauled the gun laws. It seems like every week in America there’s a shooting. I just want people to be safe, especially people that are doing one of my favorite things in the world—going out to the movies to have fun.”
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- March 3, 1678 – Madeleine de Verchères born as Marie-Madeleine Jarret, Canadian New France leader; as a 14-year-old girl led a fight against Iroquois warriors attacking Fort Verchères, preventing the Iroquois from capturing the fort
- March 3, 1880 – Florence Auer born, American theatre and film actress, and screenwriter for the early silent films Her Great Price (1916), A Modern Cinderella (1917) and Her Mad Bargain (1921)
- March 3, 1882 – Elisabeth Abegg born, German educator and resistance fighter against Nazism, who sheltered about 80 Jews during the Holocaust. Born in Strasbourg, she moved to Berlin in 1918 after earning a doctorate in classical philology and Romance studies from Leipzig University. She was involved in post-WWI relief work organized by the Quaker community, was an active member of the German Democratic Party, and taught at the Luisengymnasium Berlin (a secondary school for girls). When Hitler came to power in 1933, she openly criticized the Nazi regime, and was punished by being transferred to another school. In 1938, the Gestapo questioned her. In 1941, she was forced to retire from teaching, and officially converted to Quakerism. In 1942, she started helping Jews find safe shelter, then established an extensive network of rescuers among Quaker friends and her former students. She sold her jewelry to pay for the escape of some Jews to Switzerland, and tutored Jewish children while they were hidden in her apartment. After WWII ended, she resumed teaching in Berlin, and continued to be active in Quaker groups and joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany. In 1947, a group of Jews she had rescued published a book, And a Light Shined in the Darkness, dedicated to her. Abegg received the Verdienstkreuz am Bande (Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany) in 1957, and was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Veshem in 1967
- March 3, 1893 – Beatrice Wood born, American illustrator, sculptor and acclaimed studio potter; co-founder/editor of The Blind Man magazine with artist Marcel Duchamp and writer Henri-Pierre Roché in 1917. Her autobiography, I Shock Myself, was published in 1985 when she was 90 years old, but she lived to be 105. She said about her long life: “I owe it all to chocolate and young men.”
- March 3, 1900 – Ruby Dandridge born as Ruby Butler, African American actress, best known for roles on the radio shows Amos ‘n Andy and the Judy Canova Show. In 1937, she played one of the witches in a “sepia” (all black cast) version of Macbeth at the Maya Theatre in Los Angeles. She was the mother of actress Dorothy Dandridge
- March 3, 1913 – Margaret Bonds born, African American pianist and composer, one of the first black composers to gain recognition in the U.S.; member of the National Association of Negro Musicians, and founded the Margaret Bonds Chamber Society, black musicians group performing works by classical black composers; best known for her frequent collaboration with poet Langston Hughes, including her voice and piano setting of The Negro Speaks of Rivers. She wrote Montgomery Variations for orchestra in honor of Martin Luther King Jr and the 1965 Freedom March from Selma to Montgomery
- March 3, 1913 – The Suffrage Procession, led by Inez Millholland on a white horse, the first suffragist parade in Washington DC. Organized by suffrage strategist Alice Paul and her committee, which includes Lucy Burns, for the National American Woman Suffrage Association, over 5,000 suffragists march down Pennsylvania Avenue on the day before President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration “. . . in a spirit of protest against the present political organization of society, from which women are excluded,” the official program said. The marchers, mobbed by the crowd, sustained a number of injuries
- March 3, 1945 – Hattie Winston born, African American actress and singer, best known for her role as Valerie the Librarian on the PBS children’s series, The Electric Company. She served as national co-chair for the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) Equal Employment Opportunities Committee. In 1998, she donated the Hattie Winston African American Scripts and Screenplays Collection to the University of Louisville in Kentucky. In 2006, she was one of the readers of “Slave Narratives: A Mighty, Mighty People” for Stories On Stage, a non-profit performing arts organization
- March 3, 1949 – Bonnie J. Dunbar born, American engineer, academic, worked for NASA (1978-2005), and served as an astronaut on five missions beginning in 1985; honored with the NASA Superior Accomplishment Medal in 1997; president and CEO of The Museum of Flight (2005-2010); head of the University of Houston’s STEM Center (2013-2015); professor of aerospace engineering at Texas A&M University since 2016
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- March 4, 1895 – Margaret D. Foster born, American chemist who joined the U.S. Geological Survey three days after graduation in 1918, the first woman hired by the Survey as a chemist. She focused on analysis of natural waters: surface waters, hot springs and ground waters. Foster wrote papers on new methods for quantitative analysis of manganese, boron, sulphate and fluoride in water, and also studied the ground waters of the South Atlantic Coastal Plain and in the Houston-Galveston area in Texas. She was recruited during WWII for the Manhattan Project, and worked on a new quantitative methods of analysis for uranium and for thorium. After the war, she studied the geochemistry of the platy minerals: clays, micas, chlorites and glauconites
- March 4, 1902 – On this date, the British House of Commons finally takes up the report of the Ladies Commission, headed by Millicent Fawcett, concerning the appalling conditions which caused about 30,000 deaths from illness and starvation in the concentration camps holding Boer women and children during and after the Second Anglo-Boer War. While the Ladies commission’s report had been finished since December 12, 1901, it was not published in Britain until February, 1902. The Opposition party makes the following motion: “This House deplores the great mortality in the concentration camps formed in the execution of the policy of clearing the country.” In his reply to them, Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain states that it was the Boers who forced the British ‘scorched earth’ policy on them. and the camps are actually an effort to minimize the horrors of war. The Opposition motion is defeated by 230 votes to 119. The Ladies Commission was formed because of the outcry caused when Emily Hobhouse, founder of the Distress Fund for South African Women and Children, came back from South Africa in 1900 and went to the newspapers with her story of the overcrowding, inadequate sanitation, food and potable water shortages, and lack of medical aid in the concentration camps. The Ladies Commission did not address issue of the horrifying plight of the non-combatant black Africans forced into separate concentration camps. When Emily Hobhouse points this out to Mr. H.R. Fox, secretary of the Aborigines Protection Society, he writes on March 24 to Colonial Secretary Chamberlain, requesting the government institute an additional inquiry into the conditions in these camps. Sir Montague Ommaney, permanent under-secretary at the Colonial Office, records later that it seemed undesirable “to trouble Lord Milner . . . merely to satisfy this busybody.” Lord Milner was the British Administrator (1901-1902) and then first Governor (1902-1905) of the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony
- March 4, 1933 – Frances Perkins is appointed as Secretary of Labor, the first woman to serve in a U.S. Presidential cabinet
- March 4, 1948 – Jean O’Leary born, lesbian and gay rights activist, founder of Lesbian Feminist Liberation, one of the first lesbian activist groups in the women’s movement, was an early member and co-director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, co-founded National Coming Out Day
- March 4, 1998 – In Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that federal law banning on-the-job sexual harassment still applies when both parties are the same sex
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- March 5, 1871 – Rosa Luxemburg born, Polish economist, Marxist theorist, philosopher, feminist, revolutionary socialist and anti-war activist; she became a naturalized German citizen at age 28, and joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). She broke with the party when it supported German involvement in WWI, and co-founded Spartakusbund (Spartacus League), an anti-war group with Karl Liebknecht, which later became the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). She also founded its newspaper, Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag), the central organ of the Spartacist movement, during the November Revolution (1917-1923). The revolution evolved from a series of strikes as sailors refused to take orders, and workers, fed up with the war and growing food shortages, went on strike. The country’s federal constitutional monarchy lost control, and was replaced with a democratic parliamentary republic, Deutsches Reich (1918-1933), which ended after Adolph Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933. When the Spartakusbund staged an uprising in 1919, even though she thought it was a mistake, Luxemburg went along with it. She and Karl Liebnecht were captured by the Freikorps (an all-volunteer military group), questioned under torture, then summarily executed. Her body was flung into Berlin’s Landwehr Canal. Rosa Luxemburg is noted for her book, “The Accumulation of Capital” which was highly controversial among Leftists and Communists when it was published in 1913
- March 5, 1882 – Dora Marsden born, English radical feminist, literary modernist journal editor; she first joined the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) headed by Emmeline Pankhurst, but found the organization too focused on middle-class women, and left in 1911 to found The Freewoman, a weekly feminist newspaper which only lasted a year, but published articles on women’s paid work, housework, motherhood, the suffrage movement, and literature. The frank discussions of sexuality, advocacy of free love, and encouragement for women to remain single brought it much notoriety. Although its circulation was very small, writers like Rebecca West and H.G.Wells, who were contributors added to its cachet. It was revived in 1913 as The New Freewoman journal, which became The Egoist (1914-1919), focusing more on philosophical concepts and literary works, and much influenced by Rebecca West, Ezra Pound, and suffragette-trade unionist Mary Gawthorpe. It was also much more successful journal than the two previous publications, and was a pioneer in publishing modernist poetry and fiction
- March 5, 1953 – Katarina Frostenson born, a leading Swedish poet and writer; elected to the Swedish Academy in 1992, and honored in 2016 with the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize; noted for her poetry collection I det gula (In the Yellow), and a work of fiction, Berättelser från dom (Stories from Them)
- March 5, 1966 – Oh Eun-sun born, South Korean mountaineer, the first Korean woman to climb the Seven Summits
- March 5, 1973 – Nelly Arcan born, French Canadian novelist; her first novel, Putain (Whore) was a finalist for the Prix Médicis and the Prix Fémina, and her next novel, Folle (Hysteric) was also nominated for the Prix Fémina. Both books contained events based on her own experience as an escort sex worker. She wrote two other novels, several short stories, and contributed to newspapers and literary magazines before she committed suicide in 2009 at age 36
- March 5, 2004 – Author, TV Host and Entrepreneur Martha Stewart is convicted of obstructing justice and committing perjury in testimony about selling her Imclone Systems Inc. stock just before the price plummeted; she spent five months in prison, followed by a two-year term of supervised release. Martha Stewart sold $230,000 of Imclone stock. None of the family members of Imclone CEO Samuel Waksal, who were tipped off by him and sold their stock worth over $10 million before the price crash, were ever prosecuted
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- March 6 is Sonya Kovalevsky High School Mathematics Day
- March 6, 1780 – Lucy Barnes born, American author; her letters, poems and dissertations were collected and printed in a large pamphlet after her death, The Female Christian, believed to be the first defense written by a woman of Universalism (no eternal damnation, all souls will ultimately be reconciled to God)
- March 6, 1806 – Elizabeth Barrett Browning born, English poet and writer; in frail health, she used her pen to campaign for the abolition of slavery and influence reform of child labour laws. After the publication of her Poems in 1844 was much acclaimed, Robert Browning began a correspondence with her, which turned into a secret courtship and marriage. Her father disinherited her when he learned of their wedding. She and her husband moved to Italy in 1846, where she gave birth to their son in 1849. Her health continued to decline, and she died in Florence in 1861. Robert Browning published her last poems posthumously
- March 6, 1944 – Mary Wilson born, American singer, one of the founding members of The Supremes; author of Dreamgirl: My Life as a Supreme and Supreme Faith: Someday We’ll Be Together
- March 6, 1947 – Rayda Jacobs born, South African author and documentary filmmaker; noted for her novels, Eyes of the Sky, which won the 1996 Herman Charles Bosman Prize for English Fiction, The Slave Book and Sachs Street. She also wrote the screenplay and co-directed Confessions of a Gambler, based on her novel of the same name
- March 6, 1960 – In Switzerland, women finally gain the right to vote in municipal elections, but they still cannot vote in federal elections until 1971. Beginning in the late 1950s, Swiss women in some French-speaking cantons were able vote in local referendums. The first petition by Swiss women for political rights had been presented to the Federal Assembly in 1886
- March 6, 1961 – Ruth Golembo born, South African financial journalist and managing director of Lange Public Relations (1995-2016); worked as investment columnist for the Business Times, the Financial Mail and the Sunday Times
- March 6, 2016 – Honduran President Juan Hernández asks UN High Commissioner on Human Rights Zeid bin Ra’ad Al-Hussein to assist in the investigation of the murder of Berta Cáceres on March 2, 2016. Cáceres was an environmental activist and indigenous leader, coordinator of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, and winner of the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize, for spearheading “a grassroots campaign that successfully pressured the world’s largest dam builder to pull out of the Agua Zarca Dam” at the Río Gualcarque” in Western Honduras. The river is sacred to the Lenca people, the largest indigenous group in Honduras, who depend on it for their subsistence. By 2018, David Castillo Mejía, the executive president of the company which was to build the dam which Cáceres campaigned against, was the ninth person arrested for the murder, and the fourth with ties to the Honduran military. Castillo Mejía was accused by arresting authorities of providing logistical support and other resources to one of the hitmen already charged. He is the first person to be charged as being the “intellectual author” of Cáceres’s murder and the attempted murder of Mexican environmentalist Gustavo Castro. Before her murder, Berta Cáceres told close friends and family that Castillo Mejía hounded her with texts, phone calls, and appeared without warning at her home, work events and even the airport.
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- March 7, 1903 – Maud Lewis born, Canadian folk artist from Nova Scotia. After living in poverty most of her life, she came to national attention in 1964 when an article was published about her in the Star Weekly in Toronto. Two of her paintings were ordered for the White House in the 1970s during Richard Nixon’s presidency. Her small paintings, which sold for two or three dollars in the 1950s, now sell in the $10,000-$20,000 range. Sadly, she was crippled with arthritis by the time she was “discovered,” and couldn’t produce many of her paintings in the late 1960s which would have sold for far greater sums than her earlier work. She died in 1970, and her husband Everett was killed in an attempted robbery of their home in 1979
- March 7, 1908 – Cincinnati’s Mayor Leopold Markbreit announces before the city council that “Women are not physically fit to operate automobiles.” He is not re-elected
- March 7, 1917 – Janet Collins born, African American pioneer in classical ballet; dancer, choreographer and teacher; at age 16, she auditioned for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, but refused the offer to join the company because she would have been required to paint her skin white to perform. She moved to New York in 1948, and began performing as a featured dancer in Broadway Musicals, then broke the color barrier as the first black ballet dancer to perform at the Metropolitan Opera, but could not go on tour with the company in the American Deep South, where her roles were danced by white understudies. She was the first African American dancer hired full-time for the Metropolitan Opera Ballet in 1951. Singer Marian Anderson was signed shortly before Collins, but did not perform at the Met until 1955. In 2007, the Janet Collins Fellowship was created to encourage talented black ballet dancers
- March 7, 1947 – Helen S. Eadie born, Scottish Labour Co-operative politician; Deputy Convener of the Scottish Parliament Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee (2011-2013); Member of the Scottish Parliament for Cowdenbeath/Dunfermline East (1999-2013); died of cancer at age 66 in 2013
- March 7, 1956 – Andrea Levy born in London to Jamaican parents, English author best known for her novels, Small Island, which won the 2004 Whitbread Book of the Year, the 2004 Orange Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and The Long Song, which won 2011 Walter Scott Prize. She died at age 62 after a 15-year battle with breast cancer
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- March 8 is International Women’s Day, which is celebrated under various names as a PUBLIC HOLIDAY in Abkhazia, Angola, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, China (for women only), Eritrea, Georgia, Guinea-Bissau, Kazakhstan, Kygyyztan, Laos, Madagascar (for women only), Moldova, Mongolia, Nauru, Nepal (for women only), North Korea, Russia, Sierra Leone, Tajikistan, Transdniestria, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Zambia
- March 8, 1702 – England’s Queen Anne becomes Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland upon the death of King William III. She rules from 1702 until her death in 1714 at the age of 49, worn out by 17 pregnancies, with no surviving issue. Succeeded by her second cousin, George I of the House of Hanover, her closest relative who was not a Catholic
- March 8, 1907 – The British House of Commons turns down a woman suffrage bill. Women had not been explicitly banned from voting in national elections in Great Britain until the 1832 Reform Act; in 1851, the Sheffield Female Political Association brought a petition in support of enfranchising women to the House of Lords, but it didn’t become a national movement until the 1870s; in 1880, women freeholders on the Isle of Man got the vote; by 1903, there was a majority of support for suffrage in parliament, but the ruling Liberal Party refused to allow a vote on the issue. Some British women over the age of 30 got the vote in 1918; the Representation of the People Act in 1928 finally extended the franchise to British women on the same basis as British men
- March 8, 1910 – At the Second International Conference of Women in Copenhagen, German Socialist Luise Zietz and Clara Zetkin, head of the Women’s Office for the German Social Democratic Party, inspired by the events in the U.S., propose an International Women’s Day (the first Woman’s Day was launched on February 28, 1909, in the United States; Charlotte Perkins Gilman addressed a crowd in New York City, proclaiming, “It is true that a woman’s duty is centered in her home and motherhood but home should mean the whole country and not be confined to three or four rooms of a city or a state.”)
- March 8, 1911 – International Women’s Day is celebrated for the first time
- March 8, 1923 – Ruth Lyttle Satter born, American botanist, chronobiologist, plant physiologist and mathematician; best known for her work on circadian leaf movement; worked at Bell Laboratories (1944-1947); earned her Ph.D in Botany in 1968; active in the American Institute of Biological Sciences, the American Society of Plant Physiology, and the Association for Women in Science (AWIS); a supporter of opportunities for women in science, in her will, she set up an award for women re-entering the sciences after a break in their education to raise a family. She died in 1989 from leukemia. The Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize in mathematics was established by American Mathematical Society in 1990
- March 8, 1945 – Lilia Ann Abron born, entrepreneur and chemical engineer; in 1972, she was the first African American woman to earn a PhD in chemical engineering; founder and CEO of PEER Consultants, engineering solutions to protect populations from adverse environmental factors, while protecting the environment by reducing human impact
- March 8, 1951 – Monica Helms born, transgender activist, author, and veteran of the United States Navy, creator of the Transgender Pride Flag
- March 8, 1961 – Camryn Manheim born, American actress, writer and theatre producer, best known for her role in the television series The Practice; noted for her Off-Broadway one-woman show, Wake Up, I’m Fat, and her book of the same name. She is the co-chair of the Justice Ball, the annual fundraiser for Bet Tzedek Legal Services, a leading non-profit legal center for social justice, civil rights, and the protection of the rights of people living in poverty
- March 8, 1966 – Jaime Levy born, American author, interface designer, user experience strategist, and lecturer; a pioneer in software design and information technology. Her career began in 1990 with the creation of the electronic magazines, Cyber Rag and Electronic Hollywood, and in 1993, the first commercially released interactive press kit for EMI Records, to market Billy Idol’s Cyberpunk CD. She also worked on an animated electronic book, Ambulance, with text by Monica Moran, and music by Mike Watt and Jaime Hernandez. In 1994, she worked for IBM in interface design, and also hosted “CyberSlacker” salons for programmers and animators, then moved in 1995 to Icon CMT, as a creative director, launching the online magazine WORD. She became an independent consultant, designing Malice Palace, a multi-user environment, and the CyberSlacker cartoon series, then founded JLR Interactive in 2010
- March 8, 1978 – In California, a modest proposal by the Education Task Force of the Sonoma County Commission on the Status of Women is the seed from which National Women’s History Month grows. In 1978, they initiated a “Women’s History Week” celebration, choosing the week of March 8th, International Women’s Day. Local activities met with enthusiastic response, and dozens of schools planned special programs. Over one hundred community women participated by doing special presentations in classrooms throughout the county, and the first annual “Real Woman” Essay Contest drew hundreds of entries. The finale for this Women’s History Week was a celebratory parade and program held in the center of downtown Santa Rosa, California. In 1979, Molly Murphy MacGregor, one of the Sonoma organizers, spoke of their success at the Women’s History Institute at Sarah Lawrence College, chaired by noted historian Gerda Lerner, who invited national leaders of organizations for women and girls to a conference. When the participants learned about the impact of Sonoma County’s Women’s History Week celebration, they decided to start similar celebrations within their own organizations, communities, and school districts. They also agreed to support an effort to secure a “National Women’s History Week,” which has since expanded into the Women’s History Month now being celebrated
- March 8, 1998 – Girls Write Now Day is launched by Girls Write Now Inc, a New York City mentoring program which matches inner city high school girls with professional women writers and media makers; their exceptional success rate means almost all of the girls in the program graduate from high school and go to college, over half of them with scholarships or awards
- March 8, 2014 – International Women’s Collaboration Brew Day is started by Sophie de Ronde of Project Venus, who joined forces with members of the Pink Boots Society to raise awareness of women in the brewing industry. Women brewmasters around the world brew the same recipe of craft beer. The Pink Boots Society is non-profit organization which supports women in the brewing industry, helping match up members with mentors to further their education and learn the skill needs to be beer judges
- March 8, 2017 – ‘A Day Without a Woman’ strike in protest against policies that are sexist, racist, and heterocentric. Thousands of women across the globe in 400 cities and over 50 countries participated, particularly in Poland. There were also large demonstrations in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, and many schools in Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland and Washington DC were closed because so many teachers took the day off. Providence RI’s municipal court was forced to close because so many women employees weren’t at work
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- March 9, 1910 – Sue Lee born, American labor organizer in San Francisco, helped form the first Chinese chapter of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU); led 15-week strike against the National Dollar Stores garment factory for better wages and working conditions. Her story was featured in Unbound Voices: A Documentary History of Chinese Women in San Francisco
- March 9, 1948 – Emma Bonino born, Italian politician, Minister of Foreign Affairs (2013-2014); Member of the Italian Senate (2008 -2013); Vice President of the Italian Senate (2008-?); Minister of European Affairs and International Trade (2006-2008); European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection (1995-1999); Italian Chamber of Deputies (1976- 2006). Long-time campaigner for abortion rights and against nuclear power. Honored in 2004 with the Open Society Prize and the Prix Femmes d’Europe for Italy, and the North-South Prize in 1999
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- March 10, 1850 – Hallie Quinn Brown, African-American educator, author and civil rights activist for women and black Americans, founder of the Colored Woman’s League of Washington, D.C. which merges with the National Association of Colored Women in 1894; first woman to earn a Master of Science degree from Wilberforce University; dean of Allen University in South Carolina (1885-1887) and principal under Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee Institute (1892-1893), then became a professor at Wilberforce in 1893; a noted orator, she often traveled with “The Wilberforce Grand Concert Company” fundraising for the school
- March 10, 1898 – Josephine Groves Holloway born, organization executive, college registrar, social worker; founded the first unofficial Girl Scout troop for African American girls (1924); worked for two decades to have her troops recognized by the Nashville Girl Scout Council in 1942
- March 10, 1924 – In Radice v. New York, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds a New York statute “prohibiting employment of women in restaurants in large cities (cities of the first and second class) between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. held not an arbitrary and undue interference with the liberty of contract of the women and their employers, but justifiable as a health measure” – in spite of being unable to say “whether this kind of work is so substantially and especially detrimental to the health and welfare of women” or not; held not to deny equal protection under the law “either (a) because it applies only to first and second class cities, or (b) because it does not apply to women employed in restaurants as singers and performers, to attendants in ladies’ cloak rooms and parlors and those employed in hotel dining rooms and kitchens, or in lunch rooms or restaurants conducted by employers solely for the benefit of their employees” – “To be violative of the Equal Protection Clause, the inequality produced by a statute must be actually and palpably unreasonable and arbitrary”
- March 10, 1932 – Marcia Field Falkender born, Baroness Falkender (1974), British Labour politician and writer; started as private secretary to Harold Wilson (1956-1964), became his political secretary and head of the political office when Wilson became leader of the Labour party and during his years as Prime Minister (1964-1970 and 1974-1976); columnist for the Mail on Sunday (1983-1988); author of Inside Number 10, and Downing Street in Perspective
- March 10, 1945 – Katherine Houghton born, American actress and playwright; thought best known for her role in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Houghton has written eleven plays which have been produced, and the book for the musical Bookends
- March 10, 1947 – Kim Campbell born, Canadian Progressive Conservative politician; became leader of her party in 1993, and was appointed by the Governor-General as the first woman and first British Columbian to be Prime Minister of Canada (1993), but the Progressive Conservatives were swept from power by a Liberal landslide that October. Her autobiography, Time and Chance, was a bestseller in Canada. In 1996, she became the Canadian consul general to Los Angeles, until 2000. Chair of the Council of Women World Leaders (1999-2003);President of the International Women’s Forum (2003-2005)
- March 10, 1949 – Barbara Corcoran born, American businesswoman, investor, syndicated columnist and author; co-founder of The Corcoran-Simoné, a real estate business (1973-1980), then formed her own firm, The Corcoran Group, and began publishing The Corcoran Report, covering real estate trends in New York City. In 2001, Che sold her business to NRT Inc. for $66 million. Columnist for More Magazine, The Daily Review and Redbook; author of Shark Tales: How I Turned $1,000 into a Billion Dollar Business
- March 10, 1983 – Janet Mock born, American author, television producer and host of POPular!, and transgender rights activist; her debut book, Redefining Realness, was a New York Times bestseller
- March 10, 1990 – By Senate Joint Resolution 257, Harriet Tubman Day is proclaimed on the anniversary of her death, March 10, 1913
- March 10, 1993 – Dr. David Gunn is shot to death by an anti-abortion terrorist during an anti-abortion protest outside the Pensacola Women’s Medical Services clinic. Don Treshman, national director of ‘Rescue America,’ the group staging the protest, said after the murder, “While Gunn’s death is unfortunate, it’s also true that quite a number of babies’ lives will be saved.” Death threats, vandalism and arson at abortion clinics increased dramatically during the 1990s; while new laws are passed to protect abortion clinics and Pro-choice advocates successfully sue anti-abortion groups under existing racketeering laws, the number of doctors providing abortion services plummets. Dr. Gunn was a husband and the father of two children
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- March 11, 1279 – Mary of Woodstock born, seventh named daughter of Edward I of England and Eleanor of Castile. She became a nun at Amesbury Priory, at the request of her grandmother, dedicated at age seven, and formally veiled at age 12. Her parents granted her ₤100 per year, and she received double the normal clothing allowance and special entitlements to wine from the Priory’s stores, as well as private quarters. In 1292, she was also given the right to forty oaks from royal forests and twenty tuns of wine (a tun is a large barrel – sizes varied, but probably about 252 gallons per tun) per year from Southampton, and later, the management of Grove Priory in Bedfordshire. In spite of the papal decretal by Pope Boniface VIII, requiring the claustration (strict enclosure away from the secular world) of nuns, Mary had “a retinue of up to 24 horses” who traveled with her, and she regularly attended court, even running up considerable dice gambling debts there, which her father paid. The English Dominican friar, Nicholas Trevet, dedicated his Chronicles to her, which became an important source for several popular works of the period
- March 11, 1708 – Queen Anne withholds Royal Assent from the Scottish Militia Bill, fearing an armed Scottish military would not be loyal to the British crown; this is the last bill to be refused Royal Assent, which is now considered a formality
- March 11, 1815 – Anna Bockholtz, German coloratura soprano, teacher and composer; noted for her vocal range, and performances in operas by Mozart, Beethoven and Bellini; became in 1846 a “Membre Solo de la Sociètè du Conservatoire de Paris.” She performed mostly in Germany, Austria and Paris, and composed several songs with piano accompaniment
- March 11, 1872 – K. C. Groom born as Kathleen Clarice Groom in Australia, British novelist and short-story writer who also used other variations on her name as pen names, including Mrs. Sydney Groom and Clarice Klein; noted for The Mystery of Mr Bernard Brown, Phantom Fortune and The Recoil
- March 11, 1898 – Dorothy Gish born, American theatre and silent film actress; in the early days of silent film she also wrote and directed. While her sister Lillian was famous as a dramatic actress, Dorothy was better known as a comedian, and her films for Triangle and Mutual were very popular and financially successful, often covering the higher costs of D.W. Griffith’s expensive epic productions. Lillian Gish said in her autobiography, “I couldn’t make people laugh, but Dorothy could make them laugh and cry, so therefore she was the better actress than I was.” Sadly, many of Dorothy Gish’s films, especially the early ones, have been lost
- March 11, 1927 – Freda Meissner-Blau born, Austrian politician, founder of the Austrian Green Party, and a leading figure in the Austrian Anti-Nuclear and environmental movements; Elected to the Austrian National Council (Parliament – 1986-1988). In 1995, she co-chaired the first International Human Rights Tribunal in Vienna, condemning the Republic of Austria in all seven cases that were brought forward by the LGBT community for the persecution of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender persons in Austria between 1945 and 1995. Austria abolished LGBT discrimination laws by 2005
- March 11, 1959 – Lorraine Hansberry’s drama A Raisin in the Sun opens at New York’s Ethel Barrymore Theatre, the first play by a black woman to run on Broadway, and the first Broadway play with an African-American director, Lloyd Richards. All the major characters are black. Only ten dramas previously on Broadway had been written by African-American playwrights, all men, and only Mulatto, by Langston Hughes, had lasted a year. A Raisin in the Sun was nominated for four Tony Awards, and named “Best Play” by the New York Drama Critics’ Circle. Hansberry was the first African-American and youngest person whose play won the Circle Award for Best Play. The original production ran from March, 1959, to June, 1960, for 530 performances. At her insistence, as a condition for selling the movie rights, Lorraine Hansberry also wrote the screenplay for the 1961 film version. Sidney Poitier and Claudia McNeil were nominated for Golden Globes for their performances, and in 2005, the film was selected for preservation by the U.S. National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant"
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- March 12, 1864 – AliceTegnér born, Swedish, music educator, poet and composer, especially of children’s songs; became a member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Music in 1926
- March 12, 1884 – Mississippi authorizes the first state-supported college for women, Mississippi Industrial Institute and College
- March 12, 1904 – Lyudmila Keldysh born, Russian mathematician known for her work on set theory and geometric topology; she taught at the Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences, beginning in 1934, but had to flee with her family in 1941 from the advancing German troops to Kazan, living in the gym of Kazan University until they were assigned a dorm room. In late 1942, they returned to Moscow. She was honored with the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, the Order of Maternal Glory in the 2nd degree, and in 1958 received the Prize of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. In 1964, she became a full professor at Moscow State University, but resigned in 1974 to protest of the expulsion of one of her students, and died in 1976
- March 12, 1929 – Lupe Anguiano born, Mexican-American civil rights activist, advocate for women’s rights, the rights of the poor, and protection of the environment; she was a member of Our Lady of Victory Missionary Sisters (1949-1964) but left the church after joining picket lines and protesting a proposed law to reverse the 1963 Rumford Fair Housing Act, which was aimed at stopping racial discrimination by landlords; worked for and in consultation with government agencies and legislative bodies, as well as for Cesar Chavez, and as a national organizer for the United Farm Workers. She founded the National Women’s Employment and Education Inc., which has helped hundreds of women gain education and work skills enabling them to get off welfare. Some of her ideas were incorporated into the landmark welfare reform legislation passed by the U.S. Congress in 1996. She was a founding member of the National Women’s Political Caucus, and campaigned for the E.R.A. Now an advocate for the California Coastal Protection Network, she campaigns on environmental issues
- March 12, 1935 – Vakentyna Shevchenko born, Ukrainian politician; deputy chair of the Supreme Council Presidium of the Ukrainian SSR (1975-1985); when Oleksandr Andreyev died in office in 1984, she became acting chair of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR, and then officially chair (1985-1990). In 1989, she refused to sign the prohibition against the People’s Movement of Ukraine
- March 12, 1946 – Liza Minnelli born, singer-actress, international star of stage, screen and television. Has served on the board of the non-profit Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential (IAHP/child brain development) for 20 years; and given generously of her time to AmfaR (foundation for AIDS research)
- March 12, 1948 – Sandra Brown born, American bestselling mystery and suspense novelist; has also used pen names, including Rachel Ryan and Erin St. Claire, usually for romance novels; noted for The Alibi, Seeing Red and Tailspin
- March 12, 1978 – Arina Tanemura born, Japanese shōjo manga artist, known for I.O.N., and several series, including Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne and Full Moon o Sagashite
- March 12, 1994 – The Church of England ordains its first women priests
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- March 13, 1916 – Lindy Boggs born, American Democratic politician, first woman elected to the US House of Representatives from Louisiana (1973-1991); noted for her work on the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, adding the provision banning discrimination due to sex or marital status. First woman to preside over a major party convention (1976 Democratic National Convention). U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican (1997-2001)
- March 13, 1918 – Women are scheduled to march in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York for the first time because of a shortage of men due to World War I
- March 13, 1949 – Sian Elias born in London, New Zealand jurist; Chief Justice of New Zealand (1999-2019); Administrator of the Government (for short periods in 2001, 2006, 2001 and 2016), a duty of the Chief Justice in times when the Governor-General is unable to fulfill his or her duties; became a High Court judge in 1995; was one of the first two women to become Queens Counsel in New Zealand in 1988; Law Commissioner (1984-1988); she began as a barrister in 1975, and also served as a member of the Motor Spirits Licensing Appeal Authority and of the Working Party on the Environment. She is noted as a champion of legal justice for Maori people
- March 13, 1954 – Robin Duke born, Canadian comedian, voice actress and comedy writer, noted for her work on SCTV (1980-1981) and Saturday Night Live (1981-1984); in 2004, she co-founded Women Fully Clothed, a sketch comedy troupe which toured in Canada, the U.S. and appeared at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland
- March 13, 1956 – Dana Delany, American actress, producer and activist; best known for her roles in TV series, China Beach (1988-1991), Desperate Housewives (2004-2012) and Body of Proof (2011-2013), and the films Housesitter and Tombstone. She has served on the board of the Scleroderma Research Foundation since the 1990s, and campaigned for funding to find a cure for the disease, and is a board member and former co-president of Creative Coalition, an arts advocacy group; also a supporter of Planned Parenthood, and of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
- March 13, 1964 – Kitty Genovese is raped and stabbed to death in New York City; neighbors hear her screams for help, but no one calls the police
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- March 14, 1902 – Margaret A. Hickey born, American attorney, journalist, and women’s rights activist; as a lawyer, she worked primarily in poverty law because of the Depression, and established the Margaret Hickey School for Secretaries in 1933; chaired the Women’s Advisory Committee of the War Manpower Commission (1942). She was president of the National Federation of Business and Professional Women (1944-1946), and represented the NFBPW at the UN Conference in San Francisco (1945). Served as chair of the Commission on the Status of Women in 1961
- March 14, 1918 – Zoia Horn, born in the Ukraine, American librarian; her family emigrated to Canada when she was 8 years old, and then to New York City, where she attended the Pratt Institute Library School, and first began working in a library in 1942. She joined the American Librarian Association and state library organizations. She was a peace activist, participating in vigils protesting the Vietnam War. In 1968, she became Head of the Reference Department at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. In January 1971, she was contacted by the FBI agents seeking information on Father Philip Berrigan, noted anti-war activist, who was serving a sentence in a nearby federal prison for burning draft files. The FBI believed he was plotting with six others to blow up heating tunnels under Washington DC, and to kidnap Henry Kissinger. Boyd Douglas, a prisoner working at the Bucknell library on a work/study program, was relaying letters between Berrigan and other anti-war activists. Horn was subpoenaed by the prosecution, but refused to testify at the trail on grounds that her forced testimony would threaten intellectual and academic freedom. She served 20 days in jail, but was released after the prosecution’s case proved unreliable. Though the ALA did not at first support her, after they discussed with her why she would not testify, they did give her their full backing. Judith Krug, of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, called Horn “the first librarian who spent time in jail for a value of our profession.” In 2002, she was honored with the Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award. Horn continued to speak out on issues of intellectual freedom, defending librarians who were dismissed or attacked for supplying “subversive materials,” and opposed the Patriot Act provisions for library surveillance, and gaining warrants for records of library patrons. She also campaigned against fees in public libraries, because she believed they created barriers to information access
- March 14, 1922 – China Zorrilla born, Uruguayan theatre, film and television actress, producer, director, and writer, a “Grande Dame” of South American theatre, who was popular on stage, screen and television in both Argentina and Uruguay. Co-founder of Teatro de la Ciudad de Montevideo, which also toured in Buenos Aires, Paris, and Madrid. They won the Spanish Critics Award for their 1961 productions of plays by Spanish authors Federico García Lorca and Lope de Vega. In the 1960s, she staged a children’s musical, Canciones para mirar, written by Argentine poet Maria Elena Walsh, in New York City. Zorilla was a correspondent for the Uruguayan newspaper El País, covering events like the Cannes Film Festival. She also directed operas by Puccini and Rossini at the Teatro Argentino de La Plata for their 1977 season. In 2008, she was invested Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government. She lived to be 90 years old
- March 14, 1972 – Irom Chanu Sharmila born, Indian poet, civil rights and political activist, often called “the world’s longest hunger striker,” for her hunger strike which lasted from 2000 to 2016, to protest the civil rights violations under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act which only applies to her home state of Manipur, and gives the army the power to search properties without a warrant, and to arrest people, or to use deadly force if there is “reasonable suspicion” that a person is acting against the state. She has been arrested several times for “attempting suicide,” and nasogastric intubation forced on her for while being held in custody for long periods. Amnesty International has declared her as a prisoner of conscience
- March 14, 1975 – Rushanara Ali born in Bangladesh, British Labour politician, Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow since 2010; worked at the Communities Directorate of the Home Office (2002-2005), where she led a work programme to mobilise local and national agencies in the aftermath of the 2001 riots; research fellow at the Institute of Public Policy Research (1999–2002); and worked on human rights issues at the Foreign Office (2000–2001); worked as parliamentary assistant to MP Oona King (1997-1999). When she went to Oxford, she was the first in her family to go to university, then worked as a research assistant for sociologist Michael Young. She also helped develop Language Line, a national telephone interpreting service available in over 100 languages
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- March 15, 1825 – Harriet E. Wilson born, one of the first African-American women novelists; her novel, Our Nig, or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, was published anonymously in 1859 in Boston, but was not widely known until it was discovered in 1982 by the scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
- March 15, 1868 – Grace Chisholm Young born, British mathematician; educated at Girton College, University of Cambridge, where she passed her final examinations with the equivalent of a First class degree, but women at the time were only given certificates, and not included on the Honours Lists. On a challenge from a classmate, she took the exam for the Final Honours School in mathematics at the University of Oxford in 1892, and outperformed all the Oxford students, making her the first person to (unofficially) achieve the level of a First at both Oxford and Cambridge in any subject. Young continued her studies at Göttingen University in Germany, working on an equation to determine the orbit of a comet, and in 1895 she became the first woman to receive a doctorate in any field from a German University. Her early work on the theory of functions of a real variable was published under the name of her husband, fellow mathematician William Henry Young. After she began publishing under her own name, Girton College awarded her the Gamble Prize for Mathematics for her work on calculus (1914-1916). She and her husband also collaborated and published their work jointly until his death in 1942, although she did the majority of the writing. They were the first to publish a textbook on set theory, The Theory of Sets of Points (1906)
- March 15, 1887 – Marjorie Merriweather Post born, American owner of General Foods, philanthropist and noted art collector. She funded a U.S. Army Hospital in France during WWI, and was presented in 1971 with the Silver Fawn Award by the Boy Scouts of America for her support, and Lake Merriweather at the Goshen Scout Reservation in Virginia is named for her
- March 15, 1907 – In Finland, women win their first seats in the Finnish Eduskunta; they take their oaths of office on May 23. In 1906, Finland’s national assembly, Eduskunta in Finnish, became the first parliament in the world to adopt full gender equality, granting equally to all men and women the right not only to vote but also to stand for election
- March 15, 1909 – Jaroslava Muchová born, Czech painter and art restorer, noted for her work on Slovanská epopej (The Slav Epic), a major project initiated by her father, painter Alphonse Mucha, and especially for her restoration of works from the Slav Epic damaged by frost and water when they were hidden away during WWII to keep them falling into the hands of the Nazis
- March 15, 1933 – Ruth Bader Ginsburg born, American lawyer, professor, and the second woman appointed as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1993); courtroom advocate for fair treatment of women, co-founder of Women’s Rights Law Reporter, the first U.S. law journal to focus exclusively on women’s rights (1970); taught at Columbia Law School (1972-1980), becoming Columbia’s first female tenured professor; worked on the ACLU Women’s Rights Project cases involving discriminatory labor laws
- March 15, 1939 – Julie Tullis born, British mountaineer and filmmaker; first British woman to reach the summit of K2 in 1986, but she died from injuries after a fall during the descent
- March 15, 1943 – Lynda La Plante born, English author, and screenwriter; best known for the television crime series, Prime Suspect
- March 15, 1948 – Kate Bornstein born, American author, playwright performer and gender theorist; in 1986, she identified as gender non-conforming and underwent gender affirmation surgery. Author of Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us; My Gender Workbook: How to Become a Real Man, a Real Woman, the Real You, or Something Else Entirely; and A Queer and Pleasant Danger: A Memoir
- March 15, 1958 – Ann Davies born, British television and radio presenter and newsreader, currently for BBC East Midlands Today, and the documentary program Inside Out
- March 15, 1959 – Lisa Holton born, American journalist, editor and non-fiction author; president since 2012 of Classroom, Inc, a nonprofit organization working to close the achievement gap for low-income adolescents by using technology; former Chicago Sun-Times Business Editor
- March 15, 1965 – Sunetra Gupta born, Indian Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology in the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford with an interest in infectious disease agents that are responsible for malaria, HIV, influenza and bacterial meningitis. Awarded the 2009 Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award for her research on Surviving pandemics: a pathogen’s perspective. She is also the author of works of fiction in Bengali and in English, including the English-language novel, Memories of Rain, awarded the 1996 Sahitya Akademi Award by the Government of India
- March 15, 1967 – Naoko Takeuchi, Japanese manga artist; known for her series, Sailor Moon
- March 15, 1973 – Robin Hunicke born, American video game designer and producer; noted for MySims, Bloom Blox and Journey
- March 15, 1976 – Katherine Brooks born, American film writer and director; noted for her feature films, Loving Annabelle, and Waking Madison. She is an LGBTQ activist, and a spokesperson for PETA
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- March 16, 1808 – Hannah T. King born in England, Mormon pioneer and author; last woman sealed to Brigham Young, who had 55 wives; author of Songs of the Heart
- March 16, 1846 – Rebecca Cole born, second black American woman to become a physician; opens the Women’s Directory Center in Philadelphia with Charlotte Abbey (1873) to provide legal and medical services to poor women and children; appointed superintendent of the Association for the Relief of Destitute Colored Women and Children in Washington DC (1899); continued to practice medicine for 50 years
- March 16, 1883 – Susan Hayhurst graduates from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, the first woman pharmacy graduate, at the age of 63. She was already the pharmaceutical department head at the Woman’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and had returned to school to further her knowledge
- March 16, 1916 – Mercedes McCambridge born, American actress who struggled with alcoholism, and went public with her addiction in order to help others and bring public recognition to alcoholism as a disease; from 1975 to 1982, she devoted her time to the Livengrin Foundation, a treatment and rehabilitation center, first as a volunteer board member, then as President and CEO, responsible for day-to-day operations. She was a staunch liberal Democrat, and campaigned for Adlai Stevenson. Her memoir The Quality of Mercy: An Autobiography is quite frank about her problems. She was a member of Orson Welles’ Mercury Summer Theatre of the Air company, and won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for All the King’s Men, and was nominated again in the same category for Giant
- March 16, 1948 – Catherine Quéré born, French Socialist politician and wine-grower; Member of Parliament for Charente-Maritime’s 3rd constituency since 2007; Vice-president and Regional Councillor of the Poitou-Charentes Regional Council (2004-2007)
- March 16, 1956 – Yoriko Shono born as Yoriko Ishikawa, Japanese writer; noted for her short story collection, Nani mo Shitenai (Not Do Anything), winner of the Noma Literary Prize for New Writers, and her story “Ni Hyaku Kaiki” (roughly translated as “repeated regression”) which won the Mishima Yukio Prize
- March 16, 1956 – Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf born, Swiss politician; President of Switzerland (2012); Vice President of Switzerland (2011); Minister of Finance (2010-2015); Minister of Justice and Police (2008-2010); Member of the Swiss Federal Council (2008-2015)
- March 16, 1958 – Kate Worley, American comic book writer; noted for her work on Omaha the Cat Dancer; also a writer and performer for the science fiction comedy show Shockwave Radio Theater. She died of cancer in 2004
- March 16, 1960 – Jenny Éclair born, English comedian, novelist and actress; helped develop and worked on Grumpy Old Women (2004-2007) and was a panelist on Loose Women (2011-2012); author of The Book of Bad Behaviour (non-fiction), and the novels Having a Lovely Time, and Life, Death and Vanilla Slices
- March 16, 1967 – Lauren Graham born, American actress and author; best known for her role on the television series Gilmore Girls (2000-2007); she also published a novel, Someday, Someday, Maybe in 2013, which made the NY Times bestseller list; a memoir in 2016, Talking as Fast as I Can: from Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls (and Everything in Between); and In Conclusion, Don’t Worry About It, in 2018. In 2017, she wrote a screenplay based on the novel The Royal We, by Heather Cocks
- March 16, 1976 – Zhu Chen born in China, Qatari Chess Grandmaster; in 2001, she became Women’s World Chess Champion, and had previously been World Junior Girls Chess Champion (1994 and 1996). Her FIDE rating as of March 2019 is 2423, and her highest rating was 2548, in 2008. In 2001, she married Qatari Grandmaster Mohammed Ahmed Al-Modiahki, became a Qatari citizen in 2006
- March 16, 1984 – Aisling Bea born, Irish comedian, writer and actress; co-writer of the BBC Radio 4 comedy folklore series Micks and Legends, and since 2018, she’s been the co-host on the BBC Radio 2 show, What’s Normal? Bea was a vocal supporter in 2018 of the ‘Repeal the Eighth’ campaign to make abortion legal in Ireland, and also campaigned for the 2015 Irish same-sex marriage referendum
- March 16, 2003 – Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American woman involved with the International Solidarity Movement, is killed trying to prevent a Palestinian home from being destroyed by a bulldozer in Rafah
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Sources
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