WOW2 is a four-times-a-month sister blog to This Week in the War on Women. This edition covers trailblazing women and events from January 9 through 16.
The next WOW2 edition will post
on Saturday, January 22, 2022.
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 WEEK IN THE WAR ON WOMEN
will post shortly, so be sure to go there next, and
catch up on the latest dispatches from the frontlines.
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 special thanks to wow2lib, WOW2’s Librarian Emeritus.
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.
Trailblazing Women and Events in Our History
Note: All images and audios are below the person or event to which they refer
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- January 9, 1431 – The preliminary inquiry into her character and habits begins for the inquisitorial trial of Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc), commonly known as The Maid. Nicolas Bailly was commissioned to collect testimony. He would report that he "had found nothing concerning Joan that he would not have liked to find about his own sister." Bishop Pierre Cauchon, head of the Church court, and a supporter of the English, was so infuriated that he accused Bailly of being "a traitor and a bad man" and refused to pay the salary Bailly had been promised.
- January 9, 1624 – Empress Meishō of Japan born, the seventh of eight women to become empress regnant (a woman monarch who rules in her own right) as opposed to a consort, who is married to the ruler, but has no power; she officially ruled Japan from 1629 to 1643, after her father renounced the throne in her favor, although she was 5 years old when she became Empress and never really came into power. Her half brother, Prince Tsuguhito was named Crown Prince in 1641, and she abdicated in his favor in 1643. After abdication, she promoted the art of Shodo (calligraphy), and helped to propagate Buddhism.
- January 9, 1753 – Luisa Todi born, Portuguese mezzo-soprano; she traveled extensively, giving extremely popular concerts and performances in London and Paris, as well as touring in Italy, Germany, Austria, Russia, and Spain. She began having vision problems, and returned to Portugal in 1793, where she had to obtain special authorization to perform, because women were forbidden to appear on the public stage at that time in her country. She was not as admired in her homeland, so she spent some time performing in Naples, before returning to Portugal. When her husband died in 1803, she retired, and dressed in mourning for the remainder of her life. She was forced to flee from her home in Porto to Lisbon when the Napoleonic army invaded, and lost most of her belongings, including her priceless jewels, which left her impoverished for the last years of her life. By 1823, she was completely blind. She suffered a stroke in July, 1833, and died in October, 1833, at the age of 80.
- January 9, 1773 – Cassandra Austen born, English watercolorist and illustrator; Jane Austen’s elder and only sister; with six brothers, the two girls, who were born only two years apart, quickly became dear friends and close allies. Cassandra drew the illustrations for Jane’s manuscript The History of England, a highly entertaining account Jane wrote at age fifteen, “The History of England from the reign of Henry the 4th to the death of Charles the 1st, By a partial, prejudiced & ignorant Historian.” Over 100 of their letters to each other have survived, and have been an invaluable source for historians, and biographers of Cassandra’s more famous sister.
- January 9, 1848 – Princess Frederica of Hanover born; she lived most of her adult life in England, and was known for her charitable works, including founding the Convalescent Home in 1881, an institution for poor women who had given birth but were discharged from maternity hospitals, and supporting the Royal Normal College and Academy of Music for the Blind at Upper Norwood. In 1889, she opened the Princess Frederica School in Kensal Rise. She was a patron of the Training College for Teachers of the Deaf at Ealing, and of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
- January 9, 1858 – Elizabeth Knight Britton born, American botanist and a notable expert in bryology, the study of mosses. She was a major driving force in the founding of the New York Botanical Gardens in 1891. Britton went on numerous botanical expeditions to the West Indies and into wilderness areas of the Adirondacks. Through publications, lectures, and correspondence, Britton also raised public interest in conservation issues and promoted legislation for the protection of endangered native plants. In 1893 she was the only woman nominated to be one of 25 charter members of the Botanical Society of America.
- January 9, 1859 – Carrie Chapman Catt born, American women’s rights activist; first woman school superintendent in Mason County Iowa (1885); first female reporter in San Francisco (1887); president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (1900-1904 and 1915-1920); campaigned for the 19thAmendment, which gave U.S. women the right to vote; founder of the League of Women Voters and the International Alliance of Women.
- January 9,1875 – Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney born, American sculptor, patron of the Arts, and art collector; founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City; noted for her Aztec Fountain at the Pan Union Building in Washington DC, the Fountain of El Dorado for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, and the Titanic Memorial in Washington DC, commissioned by the Women’s Titanic Memorial Association: ‘To the Brave Men who perished in the wreck of the Titanic April 15 1912 – They gave their lives that women and children might be saved.’
- January 9, 1892 – Eva Kelly Bowring born, rancher, and the first woman U.S. senator from Nebraska (Republican-1954), appointed to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Dwight Griswold. After her seven months as a senator, she returned to ranching, but served part-time on the Board of Parole for the Nebraska Department of Justice (1956-1964). After her death in 1985, the Bowring Ranch was donated to the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, and became Bowring Ranch State Historical Park.
- January 9, 1897 – Felisa Rincon De Gautier born, Puerto Rican pharmacist who was appointed as Mayor of San Juan in 1946, then elected and re-elected to the office until 1969, becoming the first woman to serve as the mayor of a capital city in the Americas. She created elder-care centers, established “Las Escuelas Maternales” (preschools which became the model for U.S. Head Start programs), distributed clothes and food to the disadvantaged, and encouraged women’s economic and political participation. She also renovated the city’s public healthcare system.
- January 9, 1908 – Simone de Beauvoir born, French existentialist philosopher, social theorist, author, and feminist; her treatise, The Second Sex, is a foundational tract of contemporary feminism; co-editor with Jean-Paul Sartre of the political journal, Les Temps moderns; also noted for novels, She Came to Stay, The Mandarins and The Blood of Others.
- January 9, 1921 – Ágnes Keleti born, Hungarian-Israeli Olympic and world champion artistic gymnast and coach. At age 101, she is currently the oldest living Olympic medalist. Keleti won multiple gold and silver medals in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, and in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. She also played cello professionally. Keleti emigrated to Israel in 1957, and coached the Israeli national gymnastics team well into the 1990s.
- January 9, 1936 – Anne Rivers Siddons born, American novelist; noted for her books about the American South; Peachtree Road, Heartbreak Hotel, The House Next Door, and Sweetwater Creek among many others.
- January 9, 1939 – Susannah York born as Susannah Fletcher, English actress, children’s author, and activist against nuclear weapons; remembered as the true love of Tom Jones, and for a wide range of character roles in films, television and on stage as she grew out of the “pastel beauty” roles. Noted for A Man for All Seasons; Oh! What a Lovely War; They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?; Images; The Maids; Conduct Unbecoming; Devices and Desires, and her final performances in 2010, while suffering from bone marrow cancer, in the Ronald Harwood play, Quartet. She died in January of 2011.
- January 9, 1940 – Barbara Buczek born, Polish composer and pianist; she belonged to the artistic association Grupa Krakowska; Buczek lectured at the Academy of Music in Krakow, and wrote articles on contemporary music.
- January 9, 1940 – Ruth Dreifuss born, Swiss Social Democratic politician; first woman President of the Swiss Confederation (1999), and previously: Secretary of the Swiss Trade Union (1982-1993); Canton of Geneva representative to the Swiss Federal Council (1993-2002), the second woman and first person of Jewish heritage elected to the council.
- January 9, 1941 – Joan Baez born, folk singer and songwriter, human/civil rights/ peace activist, founded Humanitas International Human Rights Committee (1979).
- January 9, 1942 – Judy Malloy born, American poet and innovator of online interactive and collaborative fiction websites; Visiting Lecturer at Princeton University in Social Media Poetics and Electronic Literature (2013-2014).
- January 9, 1954 – Philippa Gregory born in Kenya, English novelist; author of numerous historical novels, including the controversial best-seller The Other Boleyn Girl.
- January 9, 1955 – Michiko “Michi” Kakutani born, American literary critic; The New York Times literary critic/chief book critic (1983-2017). She won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism "for her passionate, intelligent writing on books and contemporary literature."
- January 9, 1959 – Rigoberta Menchú born, member of the K’iche’ people in Guatemala, feminist, political and human rights activist. She won the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize for her work for social justice and ethno-cultural reconciliation, and the 1998 Prince of Asturias Prize for improving the condition of women and the communities they serve. Menchú is a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador, and was the founder of Guatemala’s first indigenous political party, Winaq (the K’iche’ word for people). She ran for president of Guatemala, in 2007 and 2011, but only received 3% of the vote each time.
- January 9, 1971 – Angie Martinez born of Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Dominican heritage. Dubbed “the voice of New York” because of her popular afternoon radio show on WWPR-FM since 2014. She is also an actress and a rapper, known for her albums Up Close and Personal and Animal House.
- January 9, 2018 – In the UK, nine people were arrested in raids on several properties in northern England after a woman told police she had been raped, and further intelligence emerged that an unknown number of young women had been victims of sex trafficking over several months. Police believe victims were raped by multiple men after being driven to residential addresses in the town of Cleveland, and the surrounding North York Moors area, and were sometimes taken to other parts of the country to be further exploited. The assistant chief constable of Cleveland police, Jason Harwin, said: “Human trafficking, the exploitation of the most vulnerable in our communities by the most ruthless, will not be accepted. Our message is clear, to those who are victims in the case: there is hope. We are on your side; we can and will help you. We are here for you and we are stronger and more determined than your abusers.”
- January 9, 2020 – The Justice Department effectively ended an investigation into Hillary Clinton which has lasted over two years, without finding anything worth pursuing, according to a Washington Post report. The report cited current and former law enforcement officials. In November 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions assigned John Huber, the U.S. attorney in Utah, the job of examining concerns expressed by President Trump and his congressional allies that the FBI had failed to adequately investigate possible corruption during Clinton's tenure as secretary of state, and at the Clinton Foundation. The current and former officials said that Huber had nearly finished his work without finding anything significant, although his work would not be formally ended until June, 2020, when Donald Trump mocked Huber in a tweet, saying, “He was a garbage disposal unit for important documents & then, tap, tap, tap, just drag it along & run out of time.”
- January 9, 2021 – Senator Lisa Murkowski (Republican-Alaska) called for Donald Trump to step down, following attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump followers, trying to prevent the 2020 Electoral College vote won by Joe Biden from being confirmed by a joint session of Congress. "I want him to resign. I want him out," Murkowski said. "He needs to get out. He needs to do the good thing, but I don't think he's capable of doing a good thing." She blamed Trump for inciting his supporters to riot and break into the Capitol building, which led to five deaths. She argued Trump ordered them to fight. "How are they supposed to take that? It's an order from the president," she said. The Alaska senator joined top Democratic leadership in calling for Trump's exit.
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- January 10, 1480 – Archduchess Marguerite (Margaret) of Austria, daughter of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, and Mary, Duchess of Burgundy; Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands (1507-1515 and 1519-1530). After a broken engagement, and two short marriages, each ended by the death of her husband, she vowed at the age of 24 never to marry again. In 1506, she became the only woman to be elected by the representative assembly of the Franche-Comté (an eastern French region) as their ruler. In 1507, her father named her Governor of the Low Countries and guardian of her seven-year-old nephew, the future Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. She acted as intermediary between her father and her nephew’s subjects in the Netherlands, and negotiated the restoration of a treaty of commerce with England favorable to the Flemish cloth interests. After his majority in 1515, Charles rebelled against her influence, but he soon recognized her as one of his wisest advisers, and she became the only regent ever re-appointed indefinitely by the ruler who dismissed her. She was again governor of the Netherlands from 1519 until 1530. Her reign was a period of relative peace and prosperity for the Netherlands, but the Dutch were beginning to rebel against Roman Catholicism, and the first Protestant martyrs were burnt at the stake in 1523. In 1529, together with Louise of Savoy, she negotiated the Treaty of Cambrai, called the Ladies’ Peace. In November 1530, a maid broke a glass goblet, and a glass splinter lodged in Margaret’s foot. When the wound became gangrenous, her doctors strongly urged the amputation of her foot. She gave her consent for the operation, received the sacrament, and revised her will. Before the amputation could be performed, she died, apparently from an overdose of opium given to her in preparation for the operation, on December 1, 1530. She appointed Charles V as her universal and sole heir.
- January 10, 1827 – Amanda Nygren Cajander born, Finnish deaconess and pioneer in medical care in Finland. She married Doctor Anders Cajander at age 21, and had two children. But by 1856, her children and her husband had died, and she was left a 29-year-old widow. She went to the Evangelical Deaconess Institute in Saint Petersburg to train as a deaconess. When Aurora Karamsin, a wealthy Finnish philanthropist, decided to fund opening a deaconess institution in Helsinki, she asked Cajander to be its first principal. The institute began modestly in 1867, in the middle of a famine, with an orphanage, an asylum, and an eight-bed hospital, primarily to help women and children and care for the sick. In 1869, Cajander founded a larger children’s home. She died in 1871 at the age of 44.
- January 10, 1863 – Katharine Gibbs born, founded Katharine Gibbs Schools, the most famous and prestigious secretarial institution in U.S., insisted that, “Young women have to be trained beyond the technical to act as a personal representative, to display initiative, and to assume larger responsibilities.”
- January 10, 1898 – Katharine Burr Blodgett born, physicist and inventor, 1st woman research scientist for General Electric’s Schenectady, NY laboratory (1920), 1st woman awarded Ph.D. in Physics from University of Cambridge (1926), received eight U.S. patents, most famous for inventing low-reflectance “invisible” glass.
- January 10, 1900 – Violette Cordery born, English race car driver; set a long distance record at the 1926 Autodromo Nazionale Monza, Italy, co-driving a 19.6 hp Invicta for 10,000 miles (16,000 km) at 56.47 miles per hour (90.88 km/h); and averaged 70.7 mph (113.8 km/h) for 5,000 miles (8,000 km) at Autodrome de Linas-Montlhéry, Paris, becoming the first woman to win the Dewar Trophy of the Royal Automobile Club.
- January 10, 1903 – Barbara Hepworth born, English Modernist artist and sculptor. She was one of the few women artists of her generation to achieve international prominence. She was a leading figure in the colony of artists at St. Ives during WWII. Hepworth was awarded the Grand Prix at the 1959 São Paulo Art Biennial, and the Freedom of St Ives award in 1968 for her significant contributions to the town. She died at age 72 in St. Ives, in an accidental fire at her studio in 1975. There are two museums named for her: the Barbara Hepworth Museum in St. Ives, and the Hepworth Wakefield Museum in Wakefield, the place of her birth, in West Yorkshire.
- January 10, 1915 – Cynthia Freeman born as Bea Feinberg, American novelist; after ill-health forced her to give up her interior design business, she turned to writing to earn her living, specializing in multi-generational stories of Jewish families, centering on women protagonists; noted for A World Full of Strangers, Come Pour the Wine, and her best-selling No Time for Tears.
- January 10, 1917 – The Silent Sentinels, organized by Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party, begin their six-day-a-week vigil in front of the White House, wearing purple, white, and gold sashes, and holding banners addressed to Woodrow Wilson, “Mr. President – How long must women wait for liberty?” and “Mr. President – What will you do for Woman Suffrage?” The protest will continue until June 4, 1919, when the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is finally passed by both Houses and sent to the states for ratification. But before that, opponents of the suffragists will grab banners and destroy them, throw rotten fruit, and shout insults. Nearly 2,000 women participate in the protests during these 2 ½ years, and many of them will be harassed, arrested, and mistreated by local and federal authorities, including being subjected to violent forced-feedings to stop their hunger strikes in protest of their imprisonment, and even being chained to the bars, beaten and choked on the ‘Night of Terror.’ The sentences for “obstructing traffic” grow longer and longer, because the women refuse to pay bail, and insist on serving their sentences. Eventually, newspapers across the country print accounts of how the women are being brutalized, and support for the Suffrage Movement grows. In January 1919, President Wilson announces his support of the women’s suffrage amendment.
- January 10, 1920 – Rosella Hightower born, American ballerina of Choctaw heritage, one of the “Five Moons” – Native American ballerinas who reached international prominence; she danced with the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo and the American Ballet Theatre; after retiring from the stage, she founded the École supérieure de danse de Cannes, a leading European school.
- January 10, 1924 – Lumilla Chiriaeff born in Latvia, Canadian ballet dancer, choreographer of over 300 ballets for stage and television. Founder-Company Director of Les Ballets Chiriaeff, which became Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. After training in Berlin, she was confined during WWII in a Nazi labor camp until she escaped during a bombing raid, and was helped by the Red Cross to get to Switzerland. In 1952, she emigrated to Canada, where she settled in Montréal.
- January 10, 1931 – Rosalind Howells born in Grenada, Baroness Howells of St Davids; a Labour Life Peer of the House of Lords since 1999, and a race relations and social justice activist. Formerly the Director of the Greenwich Racial Equality Council (GLC), the first black woman to sit the GLC’s Training Board, and also the first woman member of the Court of Governors of the University of Greenwich. She was also the Vice Chair at the London Voluntary Services Council.
- January 10, 1938 – Elza Ibrahimova born, Azerbaijani composer, known for her songs "Yalan ha deyil" using Mammad Rahim’s poem as lyrics, and “Qurban vererdin” composed for a poem by Rafig Zeka. She was noted for using tango rhythm in many of her songs. She also composed a three-part concerto for fortepiano and orchestra, sonatas, quartets, and three operas. Ibrahimova was honored as a People’s Artist of the Republic of Azerbaijan in 2008. She died at age 74 in 2012, after a long illness.
- January 10, 1939 – Michaela Odone born, American journalist; co-developer of Lorenzo’s Oil, named for their son Lorenzo, who was diagnosed with adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD) at age five, and which some studies have shown may delay development of symptoms of the disease in asymptomatic patients.
- January 10, 1944 – Jeffrey Catherine Jones born as Jeffrey Durwood Jones, transgender American fantasy artist, with more than 150 covers for many different types of books to her credit, and full-page comics for National Lampoon, as well as venturing into fine art. Jones won the Hugo for Best Professional Artist in 1970, 1971, and 1972. In 1976, Jones was one of the founding artists of The Studio. In 1986, she was honored with the World Fantasy Award for Best Artist. In the 1990s, she moved away from commercial art, and concentrated on painting. She died at age 67, after suffering from severe emphysema, in 2011.
- January 10, 1959 – Dame Frances Walsh born, New Zealand screenwriter, film producer, and lyricist; she was a producer and co-author of the screenplays for The Lord of the Rings film trilogy with Peter Jackson, Philippa Boyens, and Stephen Sinclair (who has a credit only on The Two Towers). She won three Academy Awards in 2004, for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Song (“Into the West”) for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
- January 10, 1960 – Gurinder Chadha born in Kenya of Sikh Indian parents, Kenyan-English film director and screenwriter. She began her career at the BBC, first in radio, then moving to television news, and segued into making documentaries for the BBC, the British Film Institute, and Channel Four. By 1990, Chadha had founded her production company, Umbi Films. Her first independent film was a short subject, Nice Arrangement, about a British Asian wedding, which selected for the Cannes Film Festival Critic’s section in 1991. Her first feature film, Bhaji on the Beach, won numerous international awards including a BAFTA Nomination for Best British Film of 1994. It was the first feature film directed by a British Asian woman. In 2002, her best-known film, Bend It Like Beckham, became the highest grossing British-financed, British-distributed film, ever in the UK box-office, until it was surpassed by Slumdog Millionaire in 2008.
- January 10, 1961 – Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg born in Rome, Italian-American violinist, teacher, and author of Nadja: On My Way, an autobiography she wrote for young readers. In 1994, Salerno-Sonnenberg badly injured her left little finger while chopping onions as she prepared Christmas dinner for friends and family. Her fingertip was surgically reattached and took six months to heal. During that time, she refingered compositions so that she could play using only three fingers and continued to perform. In 2008, Salerno-Sonnenberg was selected as the Music Director of the New Century Chamber Orchestra under a three-year contract. After completing her first season with the orchestra, Salerno-Sonnenberg said: "I also have a solo career that I have to maintain—and I do. And I have a record label. I have three full-time jobs, and I don't know how long I can keep up this pace."
- January 10, 1962 – Kathryn S. McKinley born, American computer scientist, noted for research on compilers, runtime systems, and computer architecture; a Principal Researcher at Microsoft; currently, a Senior Research Scientist at Google; ACM Fellow (2008).
- January 10, 1970 – Alisa Marić born, Serbian chess player, FIDE Woman Grandmaster and International Master; elected as Serbian Minister of Youth and Sports (2012-2013).
- January 10, 1975 – Ugandan diplomat Bernadette Olowo becomes the first woman ambassador to Vatican City in over 900 years of Holy See history.
- January 10, 2010 – The Royal Institution of Great Britain, founded in 1799 by the leading scientists of the day, which has supported public engagement with science since its inception, is accused scapegoating, sexism, "injustice and skulduggery" over its treatment of Susan Greenfield, the high-profile neuroscientist who was suddenly removed as director of the institution on January 8. The RI said it had taken the decision because its "requirement for the functions of the role of director as currently defined has ceased to exist." But some members of the financially troubled institution have questioned the manner of Lady Greenfield's removal and the RI's ability to function without a well-known scientist at its head. Greenfield, who was filing a sexual discrimination claim, said that she could not comment (her case was later settled out of court). However, one RI member said that the Oxford scientist, age 59, had been unfairly blamed for poor financial decisions made by others. "The notion that Greenfield somehow overspent resources and that the RI is in trouble as a result is specious." He said it appeared that a trustee might have leaked incorrect material to the press. The member also said the membership was "outraged" over the way the chairman and trustees had behaved, adding: "There's been a lot of condescension, belittling and high-handedness, which reflects a rather brutal masculine attitude towards a vivacious woman. If Greenfield had been a man, these people would not have behaved [this] way. Greenfield has made vast improvements to what was a dusty old place and what we're seeing now are the remnants of that dust. This is an injustice." There were concerns that the RI was being led by its chief executive, Chris Rofe, rather than a scientist: "It seems absurd that a national treasure, dedicated to the democratisation of science, should now be headed by a CEO without a science background." Professor Lisa Jardine, a former member of the RI's governing council, said she did not believe the institution could function without a scientist in charge. "The post of director defines the RI and has done from [Michael] Faraday to Susan Greenfield," she said. "It has been always a charismatic scientist supported by a membership. If you remove the post of director … the RI does not exist any more."
- January 10, 2019 – Jayme Closs, age 13, escaped from her kidnapper, 88 days after he murdered her parents. After the killings, he bound her wrists and ankles using duct tape and dragged her out of her house, and into the trunk of his car, then took her to a remote house, 70 miles from her home in Barron, Wisconsin. Closs said he thought she was too afraid of him to attempt to escape, so he didn’t put any special locks on the doors, but forced her under the bed and boxed her in with his belongings before leaving the house. On this day, she escaped from the house, wearing a pair of her kidnapper’s shoes, and found a woman walking her dog, who took her to a neighbor’s house, and called the police. The man was arrested quickly, and Closs was released from the hospital to the custody of her aunt. Hormel, the parent company of the Jennie-O store where her parents worked, announced that they were giving $25,000 of the reward money they offered to Closs for rescuing herself.
- January 10, 2020 – When Samira Ahmed has won her equal pay claim against the BBC in a landmark case, lawyers said it could leave the broadcaster facing a bill running into the millions for similar claims by other female staff. An employment tribunal unanimously concluded that the BBC had failed to provide convincing evidence that the pay gap was for reasons other than gender discrimination, although the BBC continues to dispute this. Ahmed said she was glad the case was resolved after years of dispute with the broadcaster. She said: “I love working for the BBC. No woman wants to have to take action against their own employer.” The National Union of Journalists’ general secretary, Michelle Stanistreet, who backed Ahmed’s case, said there were about 20 other cases involving claims of unequal pay at the BBC heading to tribunal, while another 70 cases remained unresolved. But she said BBC executives had shown a new willingness to resolve outstanding cases after Ahmed’s tribunal. Stanistreet said: “Since the hearing I met with the BBC and I pressed them to use this window of opportunity to think: ‘Actually we need to put effort into resolving these outstanding cases, not putting ourselves through the self-harm of another tribunal like Samira’s.’ Some of them have already been satisfactorily resolved. But there are still more to sort out.” The 40-page tribunal judgment was damning of the broadcaster’s argument that Ahmed’s job as presenter of Newswatch was significantly different to Vine’s as a presenter of Points of View, concluding there were only minor differences in the work the two presenters did. In a withering assessment, they wrote: “Jeremy Vine read the script from the autocue. He read it in the tone in which it was written. If it told him to roll his eyes, he did. It did not require any particular skill or experience to do that.”
- January 10, 2021 – Following its historic decision to legalize abortion, the government of Argentina announced it will drop criminal charges against women accused of having an abortion. The announcement offers hope to the mostly poor and marginalized women facing criminal sanctions. But lingering problems such as obstetric violence and sexism in the justice system show the struggle for reproductive justice is not over, according to campaigners. The new law, passed on December 30, 2020, allows abortion for any reason during the first 14 weeks of pregnancy, making Argentina the largest country in Latin America to broadly allow the procedure. It is unclear how many women will have their cases dismissed as a result of the new law. One recent report – by Argentine human rights group Cels, abortion rights campaigners and San Martín University Centre – identified 1,532 abortion cases in the past eight years that could potentially be covered. But not all provinces replied to the researchers’ request for information, and other campaigners say the total is probably substantially higher. “All those women who have been criminalized ... will have the benefit that their cases will be dismissed, because there’s a retroactive application of the most favorable criminal law,” said Argentine minister for women, gender and diversity, Elizabeth Gómez Alcorta. The Cels report identified several women serving lengthy jail sentences who were charged with such crimes as aggravated homicide after experiencing obstetric problems such as stillbirths and miscarriages late in their pregnancies. Most of these women were extremely poor, and women’s rights campaigners are calling for reevaluation of their cases.
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- January 11th was first feast day of the Ancient Roman Carmentalia, honoring Carmenta, goddess of childbirth and prophecy, patron of midwives, chiefly observed by women. The first feast day is related to the original sacred grove of Carmenta beneath the Palatine Hill. The second feast day, on January 15th, is believed to have started when Numa Pompilius, the legendary second king of Rome (753-673 BC), supposedly founded a second sacred grove for Carmenta beneath the Capitoline Hill. She chanted her prophecies, so her Roman name is derived from carmina, which means songs in Latin.
- January 11, 1055 – Theodora Porphyrogenita becomes sole empress regnant of the Byzantine Empire, the last of the Macedonian line, after years of alternating exile and waxing and waning amounts of power and influence as co-ruler with her tempestuous and jealous sister Zoe and Zoe’s assorted husbands.
- January 11, 1650 – Diana Glauber born, painter of the Dutch Golden Age, whose career was cut short when she lost her sight; no works of hers are known to survive, but an inventory of the period showing the art works at Schloss Salzdahlum, the summer palace of Anthony Ulrich, the Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, lists a series of five paintings representing the five senses under her name. Her brothers were the painters Johannes Glauber and Jan Gotlief.
- January 11, 1885 – Alice Paul born, suffrage leader and attorney, founded National Woman’s Party (1916); key strategist in the long-fought campaign for the 19th Amendment, known for her innovative nonviolent strategies and political sophistication. Paul initiated, and along with Lucy Burns and others, strategized events such as the Woman Suffrage Procession and the Silent Sentinels. After the successful campaign for woman suffrage, Paul became the champion of the Equal Rights Amendment for over 50 years, which remains unratified to this day. She worked successfully with Pauli Murray for the inclusion of women as a group protected against discrimination in the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.
- January 11, 1893 – Ellinor Aiki born, Estonian painter; noted for portraits and landscapes.
- January 11, 1899 – Eva LeGallienne born, legendary performer, producer, and director; founder and head of the Civic Repertory Theatre (1926-1933), which presented classics and notable plays in translation at affordable ticket prices, introducing American audiences to Anton Chekhov and Henrik Ibsen.
- January 11, 1911 – Nora Heysen born, Australian artist; first woman to win the prestigious Archibald Prize in 1938 for portraiture, and first Australian woman appointed as an official war artist, with the rank of captain, to depict the efforts of Australian women in WWII.
- January 11, 1912 – The Lawrence Textile workers ‘Bread and Roses’ Strike, led largely by women, begins – after an injunction against “loitering” in front of the mills designed to prevent strikers from picketing, they form the first moving picket lines in the U.S.
- January 11, 1921 – Juanita M. Kreps born, American economist and government official; first woman appointed as U.S. Secretary of Commerce (1977-1979), and the fourth woman to hold a cabinet-level position.
- January 11, 1931 – Betty Churcher born, Australian painter, historian, and curator; director of the National Gallery of Australia (1990-1997).
- January 11, 1931 – Mary Rodgers born, American Broadway musical composer and children’s author; Once Upon a Mattress.
- January 11, 1935 – Amelia Earhart makes the first solo flight from Hawaii to North America, landing at the airport in Oakland, California, after 18 hours.
- January 11, 1936 – Eva Hesse born in Germany, American sculptor known for her pioneering work in latex, fiberglass, and plastics. She was on the leading edge of the postminimal movement in the 1960s; her Jewish parents sent her and her older sister to the Netherlands aboard one of the last Kindertransport trains leaving Germany in 1938, but the family was reunited in England, then emigrated to America in 1939. Hesse was diagnosed in 1969 with a brain tumor, and endured three operations, but died in 1970 at age 34.
- January 11, 1938 – In Limerick, Maine, Frances Moulton becomes the first U.S. woman president of a national bank, the Limerick National Bank in Maine.
- January 11, 1945 – Christine Kaufmann born, German-American actress, memoirist, author of several books about beauty and health, and founder of a successful cosmetics line. She won a Golden Globe as New Star of the Year for her performance in the 1961 film Town Without Pity. She died of leukemia at age 72 in 2017.
- January 11, 1952 – Diana Gabaldon born, American author; best known for her Outlander series.
- January 11, 1972 – Amanda Peet born, American actress, author, and spokeswoman for Every Child by Two, an advocacy group for childhood vaccination. Peet has also spoken publically about her struggles with ADHD and postpartum depression. She is the co-author of Dear Santa, Love, Rachel Rosenstein.
- January 11, 1985 – Lucy Knisley born, American illustrator and comic artist; noted for her self-illustrated travel journal French Milk, and Relish: My Life in the Kitchen; Displacement; and An Age of License.
- January 11, 2017 – The first International Parity at Work Day is launched to raise awareness of the need for workplace diversity, strengthening workplaces by including workers of all genders, ages, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and physical abilities. The World Economic Forum estimates it will take another 170 years to reach full global economic parity, but the newly formed Parity Pioneers Movement is committed to organizational diversity as a long-term strategy to increase business resilience.
- January 11, 2019 – Air pollution is as bad for pregnant women as smoking in raising the risk of miscarriage, according to research published in the journal Fertility and Sterility, conducted by the University of Utah with other research teams in urban areas around the U.S. They said the finding was upsetting and that toxic air must be cut to protect the health of the next generation. Air pollution is already known to harm foetuses by increasing the risk of premature birth and low birth weight. Recent research has also found pollution particles in placentas. The latest study is the first to assess the impact of short-term exposure to air pollution. It found that raised levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution that are commonplace around the world increased the risk of losing a pregnancy by 16%. “It’s pretty profound,” said Dr Matthew Fuller, at the University of Utah’s department of emergency medicine and one of the research team. “If you compare that increase in risk to other studies on environmental effects on the foetus, it’s akin to tobacco smoke in first trimester pregnancy loss.” NO2 is produced by fuel burning, particularly in diesel vehicles. A 2020 report from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) included a warning that smoke from the wildfires on the West Coast was especially hazardous for people with heart or lung diseases, older adults, children, and pregnant women, as it can cause premature births, or babies born with low birth weight.
- January 11, 2021 – Media leaks are revealing some of the findings of a judicial commission of investigation into Ireland’s mother and baby homes, including shocking death rates and callousness in Magdalene asylums, Catholic homes for unwed mothers that doubled as orphanages and adoption agencies. The 3,000-page report on the five-year investigation estimates that 9,000 children died in 18 institutions between 1922 and 1998, when the last of the homes was closed. The infant mortality rate is said to have been double the national rate, underlining the impact of neglect, malnutrition, and disease. Policies of both the religious institutions and the government have also impeded survivors from tracing each other. Ireland denies adopted people the legal right to their own information and files. The commission’s report is understood to chronicle many of the lies and obfuscations of priests, nuns, and officials. “It’s a crucial moment. I’m sorry it’s taken so long to come out,” said Anne Harris, 70, who gave birth to a son in an institution in County Cork in 1970. “Irish society was quite rigid and judgmental about children born out of wedlock. These huge institutions were where women were just put away out of sight.” Joan Burton, a former deputy prime minister who was born into such a home in 1949, said the investigation’s findings were a landmark in documenting a system that risks being forgotten in a liberalising country no longer beholden to the Catholic church. “The report will reveal, particularly to a new generation of younger people, what Ireland once did to women who had the audacity to love outside of marriage and to bear children who had to be ‘given up’,” she wrote in the Irish Independent. “It will give us as a society an opportunity to ask why this form of brutality was tolerated for so long.”
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- January 12, 1673 – Rosalba Carriera born, successful Venetian Rococo painter, noted for portrait miniatures, beginning with snuff box lids, and pastel work; made an 'Accademico di merito' (the title for non-Roman members) by the Roman Accademia di San Luca.
- January 12, 1724 – Frances Brooke born, English novelist, essayist, playwright, and translator; she spent time in Quebec, Canada, where her husband was serving as a military chaplain, and wrote The History of Emily Montague there, believed to be the first novel written in Canada, but it was published in England upon her return.
- January 12, 1799 – Priscilla Falkner Bury born, English botanist and illustrator; noted for Drawings of Lilies, and the large folio edition A Selection of Hexandrian Plants; her work was admired by John James Audubon.
- January 12, 1820 – Caroline Severance born, early suffragist, social reformer, and women’s clubs pioneer; co-founder of the American Woman Suffrage Association (1869). She was the first woman registered to vote in California (1911).
- January 12, 1874 – Laura Adams Armer born, American writer, photographer, and artist. Her book Waterless Mountain won the 1932 Newbery Award. Adams Armer’s photographs of San Francisco’s Chinatown, and extensive photos of the lives and culture of the Navajo and Hopi people, are now part of museum collections in the San Francisco area, and Santa Fe, New Mexico.
- January 12, 1881 – Mary Gawthorpe born, British suffragette, socialist, trade unionist, teacher, and editor; member of the National Union of Teachers, Women’s Labour League, and the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). She was arrested several times at WSPU protests, and suffered beatings by police more than once. Gawthorpe was an editor for the radical periodical The Freewoman: A Weekly Feminist Review, which discussed topics such as women's wage work, housework, motherhood, the suffrage movement, and feminist literature, before she emigrated to the U.S in 1916. In New York City, she became active in the American suffrage movement, and later in the trade union movement, becoming an official of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America union. She chronicled her early activism in her autobiography, Up Hill to Holloway, published in 1962.
- January 12, 1884 – “Texas” Guinan born, American entertainer-producer, “The Queen of the West,” an early woman emcee who opened a speakeasy in New York called the 300 Club during Prohibition; credited with coining “butter and egg men” and "give the little ladies a great big hand." She greeted her patrons with “Hello, suckers!”
- January 12, 1885 – The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, commonly known as The National Trust, is co-founded by English social reformer Octavia Hill, with Sir Robert Hunter and Hardwicke Rawnsley, to “promote the permanent preservation for the benefit of the Nation of lands and tenements (including buildings) of beauty or historic interest” in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The National Trust Act of 1907 gave it statutory powers. It protects both wild land in places like the Lake District and the Peak District, as well as historic houses and estates of titled families, and homes of notable people, such as Jane Austen’s house in Chawton where she wrote her novels, and the childhood homes of Paul McCartney and John Lennon.
- January 12, 1910 – Luise Rainer born in the German Empire, German-American-British stage actress and film star. She started her acting career in Germany at age 16, working for Austria's leading stage director, Max Reinhardt, in his Vienna theatre ensemble, and in German-language films. She was “discovered” by MGM talent scouts, and signed to a three-year contract in 1935. She won the 1937 Oscar for Best Actress for her second Hollywood film, The Great Ziegfeld, then won the Best Actress award in 1938 for The Good Earth, the first person to win back-to-back Academy Awards. After a string of forgettable parts, and battles with Louis B. Mayer over the mediocre scripts she was offered, she went to Europe to raise funds for children who were victims of the Spanish Civil War. She made one last film for MGM, then left Hollywood. She returned to the stage in England, but left in 1940 to appear onstage in Washington DC and New York. Attempts to revive her film career were not successful, but she made some appearances on television in the UK and the U.S. Rainer died at her London home in 2014 at the age of 104.
- January 12, 1914 – Mieko Kamiya born, Japanese psychiatrist who treated leprosy patients at Nagadhima Aiseien Sanatorium; she also translated a number of philosophical works into Japanese, including Marcus Aurelius: Meditations, and books by Michel Foucault, Virginia Woolf, and Khalil Gibran. Noted for her book, Ikigai Ni Tsuite (The Meaning of Life), based on her experiences with leprosy patients.
- January 12, 1915 – The U.S. House of Representatives rejects expanding the right to vote to include women. The Susan B. Anthony amendment was debated for over 10 hours in the House of Representatives before falling far short of the two-thirds majority needed — the vote was 174 for and 204 against. Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, president of the National Suffrage Association, said, “I am not gratified, but the vote was better than I had expected.” Suffragists were aware that they did not yet possess the support necessary to get the amendment ratified, but the vote brought the cause greater national attention, including a front-page article in the New York Times. By December 1915, petitions for suffrage with thousands of signatures were arriving in Washington DC from across the country.
- January 12, 1916 – Ruth Rogan Benerito born, American chemist, a pioneer in development of wash and wear and stain resistant fabrics. Earlier, she had investigated fat emulsions, and the transport of fat in animals. For the Office of the Surgeon General, she developed an intravenous fat emulsion for intravenous feeding to help supply necessary calories for long term patients. Benerito also investigated reaction epoxies. Her findings have been used in the textile industry, but also have applications to paper, film, and epoxy plastic manufacture, and in the use of epoxy compounds to preserve wood. Benerito was granted over 50 patents. Her research has resulted in the development of cotton fabrics that are comfortable, wrinkle-free, stain resistant, “drip-dry” and better able to retard flames.
- January 12, 1916 – Mary Baldwin Wilson born, Baroness Wilson of Rievaulx, British poet; married to Harold Wilson, Prime Minister of the UK in the 1960s and 1970s. Noted for her collections, Selected Poems, and New Poems.
- January 12, 1928 – Ruth Alston Brown born, American singer-songwriter and musicians’ rights activist; dubbed “Queen of R&B,” she recorded a series of hit songs for Atlantic Records in the 1950s, including “So Long” and “Teardrops from My Eyes.” Atlantic Records became known as “the house that Ruth built” a play on the popular nickname for the old Yankee Stadium. In the 1970s and 1980s, she used her influence to press for musicians’ rights to royalties and better contracts, which led to the establishment of the Rhythm and Blues Foundation. Brown died at age 78 in 2006 following a heart attack. In 2017, she was posthumously inducted into the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.
- January 12, 1930 – Jennifer Johnston born, Irish novelist; The Old Jest, set during the Irish War of Independence, won the 1979 Whitbread Book Award; The Captains and the Kings won the Author’s Club First Novel Award (1973).
- January 12, 1932 – Hattie Wyatt Caraway (Democrat –Arkansas 1931-1945) became the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate, the first woman to preside over the Senate, and the first woman to chair a committee – the Senate Committee on Enrolled Bills. She was originally appointed fill to her husband’s place after his death in 1931, and won a special election in January 1932 to finish the term, but it was assumed that she would step down to make way for a man to take over. When she announced her candidacy, the state party gave her no support, but Senator Huey Long of Louisiana campaigned with her, and she received nearly twice as many votes as her closest opponent in the primary, then went on to win the general election. She cast her votes for New Deal measures which would benefit farmers and veterans, and for flood control, but was opposed to the Roosevelt administration’s anti-lynching bill. In 1943, Caraway was the first woman in either house of Congress to co-sponsor the Equal Rights Amendment.
- January 12, 1935 – Teresa del Conde Pontones born, Mexican art historian, biographer, and critic; a Fellow of the Academia des Artes, columnist for La Jornada; former director of Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City.
- January 12, 1936 – Jennifer Hilton born, Metropolitan Police of London Commander who was awarded the Queen’s Police Medal in the 1989 Birthday Honours; now Baroness Hilton of Eggardon, life peer and Member of the House of Lords since 1991.
- January 12, 1941 – Dame Fiona Caldicott born, British psychiatrist and psychotherapist; Chair of the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust, and a past President of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. She was the first woman president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (1993–1996) and its first woman dean (1990–1993). Served as chair of the National Information Governance Board for Health and Social Care (2011-2013).
- January 12, 1944 – Cynthia Robinson born, American trumpeter and vocalist with Sly and the Family Stone, the first woman trumpeter in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
- January 12, 1946 – Hazel Cosgrove born, Lady Cosgrove, Scottish lawyer and judge; first woman Sheriff of Glasgow and Strathkelvin; first woman appointed as a Senator of the College of Justice; served as a judge on Scotland’s Supreme Courts (1996-2006); Deputy Chair of the Boundary Commission for Scotland (1997-2006).
- January 12, 1947 – Sally Hamwee born, Baroness Hamwee, British Liberal Democrat politician and spokesperson; Life Peer and Member of the House of Lords since 1991; Member of the London Assembly (2000-2008), and its chair (2002-2007).
- January 12, 1948 – Sipuel v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. At the urging of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), twenty-one-year-old Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher agreed to seek admission to the University of Oklahoma's law school in order to challenge Oklahoma's segregation laws and achieve her lifelong ambition of becoming a lawyer. Her application in 1946 for admission to the University of Oklahoma College of Law was rejected, and she was informed it was solely because Oklahoma statutes prohibited whites and blacks from attending classes together, and prohibited black persons from attending state universities. The laws also made it a misdemeanor to instruct or attend classes comprised of mixed races. Oklahoma did provide funding for black students who were accepted at schools outside the state. With Thurgood Marshall and others as her attorneys, she filed suit in 1946. She lost her case in the county district court and in the Oklahoma Supreme Court, but her appeal was taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously that Oklahoma must provide Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher with the same opportunities for securing a legal education as it provided to other citizens of Oklahoma. The case was remanded to the Cleveland County District Court to carry out the ruling. Following the Supreme Court's favorable ruling, the Oklahoma Legislature, rather than admit Fisher to the Oklahoma University law school – or close the law school to both black and white students – decided to create a separate law school exclusively for her to attend. “Langston University School of Law” was thrown together in five days and was set up in the State Capitol's Senate rooms. Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher refused to attend this new school of law, and her lawyers filed a motion in the Cleveland County District Court contending that Langston's law school did not afford the advantages of a legal education to blacks substantially equal to the education whites received at OU's law school. This inequality, they argued, entitled Fisher to be admitted to the University of Oklahoma College of Law. However, the Cleveland court ruled against her, finding that the two state law schools were "equal." The Oklahoma Supreme Court, predictably, upheld the finding. After this second adverse ruling, Fisher's lawyers announced their intention to again appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. However, Oklahoma Attorney General Mac Q. Williamson declined to return to Washington, D.C., and face the same nine Supreme Court justices in order to argue that Langston's law school was equal to OU's law school. So on June 18, 1949, more than three years after Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher first applied for admission to the University of Oklahoma College of Law, she was finally admitted. “Langston University School of Law” closed twelve days later. Her autobiography, A Matter of Black and White, was published in 1996.
- January 12, 1950 – Dorrit Moussaieff born in Israel, jewelry designer, and First Lady of Iceland (2003-2006).
- January 12, 1950 – Sheila Jackson Lee born, American politician; U.S. Congresswoman (Democrat-Texas) since 1995. Houston city council member (1990-1995). She has been a vocal critic of the Tea Party political group, and a supporter of LGBTQ rights.
- January 12, 1953 – Mary Harron born, Canadian filmmaker and screenwriter; noted as co-author and director of American Psycho, The Notorious Bettie Page, and the TV series Alias Grace, winning the 2018 Canadian Screen Award for Best Direction of a Limited Series.
- January 12, 1958 – Christiane Amanpour born, British-Iranian journalist and television host; Chief International Anchor for CNN, and host of CNN’s interview program Amanpour, as well as Amanpour & Company on PBS since 2018, which replaced the Charlie Rose Show after allegations of sexual harassment were made against Rose.
- January 12, 1969 – Margaret Nagle born, screenwriter, television producer, and human rights activist; winner of three Writers Guild of America Awards, in 2015 for The Good Lie, in 2014 for body of work, and in 2011 for Best New Show for Boardwalk Empire.
- January 12, 1971 – The Harrisburg Seven, a group of religious anti-war activists, including former nun Elizabeth McAlister and Mary Cain Scoblick, the wife of a former Catholic priest, are indicted on charges of conspiracy to kidnap National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, and plotting to blow up steam tunnels under Washington DC. Librarian Zoia Horn was jailed for 20 days for refusing to testify for the prosecution on the grounds that her forced testimony against Boyd Douglas, a prisoner on a work-study program at her library, would threaten intellectual and academic freedom. She was the first U.S. librarian to be jailed for refusing to share information as a matter of conscience. The trial resulted in a hung jury, and the defendants were freed.
- January 12, 1972 – Priyanka Gandhi Vadra born, Indian politician; General Secretary of the All India Congress Committee since 2019, and trustee of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, which focuses on literacy, health, and empowerment of the underprivileged, as well as natural resource management.
- January 12, 1985 – Issa Rae born, African-American actress, writer, director, producer, and web series creator; creator of Awkward Black Girl.
- January 12, 2019 – Rahaf Al-Qunun, an 18-year-old Saudi woman arrived in Canada after being granted asylum to avoid returning to Saudi Arabia. Al-Qunun fled from her allegedly abusive family while on a trip to Kuwait and flew to Thailand, where she barricaded herself in an airport hotel room while launching a social media campaign pleading for asylum. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Al-Qunun would be welcomed to his country as a refugee. She was met at the airport in Toronto by Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, who dubbed Al-Qunun "a very brave new Canadian."
- January 12, 2020 – Kimia Alizadeh, the only Iranian woman to win an Olympic medal – a bronze in Taekwondo at the 2016 Summer Games in Rio – announced she intended to leave the Islamic republic, in a blistering online statement in which she describes herself as “one of the millions of oppressed women in Iran.” She criticised the mandatory wearing of the hijab, and accused officials in Iran of sexism and mistreatment. “Whatever they said, I wore,” Alizadeh wrote in the statement. “Every sentence they ordered, I repeated.” She described the decision to leave Iran as difficult, but necessary.
- January 12, 2021 – As a child, Miho Imada promised herself she would never perform “women’s work” to support her family’s sake brewery. She saw how her mother juggled looking after five children with cooking three meals a day for groups of visiting seasonal workers, and devoted what little time she had left to doing the accounts. “I never saw my mother sleep, and she never seemed to catch a cold,” Imada said. “She was always working. I thought ‘there’s no way I’m going to do that.’” Instead, Miho Imada became one of a tiny number of female tôji, or master brewers, who are challenging centuries of tradition and winning recognition far beyond Japan. The small batches of award-winning premium sake produced by Imada Shuzô in Akitsu, a fishing town overlooking the Inland Sea in rural Hiroshima prefecture, have attracted the attention of sake lovers in the US and Europe. Imada, 59, appears in the 2019 documentary Kampai! Sake Sisters, and last year joined the Hong Kong democracy activist Agnes Chow and Sanna Marin, Finland’s prime minister, on the BBC’s list of 100 influential women. she and other female tôji are taking the production of Japan’s traditional tipple back to its ancient roots, when according to folklore, shrine maidens made a primitive “mouth-chewed” version of the drink as an offering to the Shinto gods. But by the time sake was being mass produced in the Edo period of 1603 to 1868, the industry was dominated by men. Male brewers shunned women, it is said, not least because they risked invoking the wrath of jealous female sake deities. Of the 1,200 master brewers in Japan today, only 20 or 30 are women, Imada said. “When I became a tôji 25 years ago, there were only five of us, so there’s definitely been an improvement, but not a particularly dramatic one.”
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- January 13, 1338 – Siege of Dunbar Castle: ‘Black Agnes’ Randolph, Countess of Dunbar and March, was known for her dark complexion, and became renowned for her heroic defence of Dunbar Castle in East Lothian against an English siege led by William Montagu, 1st Earl of Salisbury, which began on January 13, 1338, and lasted until June 10, 1338, during the Second Scottish War of Independence (1331-1341). Her husband, Patrick Dunbar, the 9th Earl of March, was away fighting, when an English force of 20,000 laid siege to Dunbar Castle, but Lady Agnes refused to surrender. Legend says she declared, “Of Scotland’s King I haud my house, I pay him meat and fee, And I will keep my gude auld house, while my house will keep me.” Salisbury’s army began the siege using a gigantic siege tower called a Sow to hurl boulders and lead shot at the ramparts. Black Agnes set one of her ladies-in-waiting to dusting off the ramparts with her handkerchief, and called out that Salisbury should “take good care of his sow, for she would soon cast her pigs, (meaning his men), within the fortress.” She then ordered that one of the hurled boulders be thrown down from the battlements unto the Sow, which was crushed to pieces. When one of the Scottish archers struck an English soldier standing next to Salisbury, the earl is said to have cried out, “There comes one of my lady’s tire pins; Agnes’s love shafts go straight to the heart.” Unable to make progress by siege, Salisbury turned to craft. He bribed the Scotsman who guarded the principal entrance, advising him to leave the gate unlocked, or to leave it in such a manner that the English could easily break in. However, the Scotsman, though he took the Englishman’s money, reported the stratagem to Agnes, so she was ready for the English when they made entry. Although Salisbury was in the lead, one of his men pushed past him just at the moment when Agnes’s men lowered the portcullis, separating him from the others. Agnes, of course, had meant to trap Salisbury, but she moved from stratagem to taunt, hollering at the earl, “Farewell, Montagu, I intended that you should have supped with us, and assist us in defending the Castle against the English.” After John Randolph, 3rd Earl of Moray, captured Agnes’ brother, the English threw a rope around his neck and threatened to hang him if Agnes did not surrender the castle. However, she responded that his death would only benefit her, as she would inherit his earldom. (She was not actually in line for the earldom, so either she was taking a gamble with her brother’s life, or the story came later.) As a last resort, Salisbury decided to isolate the castle from the roads and any communication with the outside world, trying to starve out the Countess and her garrison, but Ramsay of Dalhousie, who had justly earned a reputation for being a constant thorn in the English king’s side, got wind of what the English were trying and moved from Edinburgh to the coast with forty men. Appropriating some boats, Ramsay and his company approached the castle by sea and entered the postern next to the sea. Charging out of the castle, the Scotsmen surprised Salisbury’s advance guard and pushed them all the way back to their camp. After five months, Salisbury gave up and lifted the siege, but the triumph of a Scotswoman over an English army lives on in a ballad, which puts these words in Salisbury’s mouth: “Cam I early, cam I late, I found Agnes at the gate.”
- January 13, 1610 – Maria Anna of Austria born, married Maximillian I, Elector of Hanover, then became co-regent for her son Ferdinand Maria after his father’s death in 1651. She was responsible for the Department of Justice, and was a non-voting member of the Privy Council until Ferdinand reached his majority in 1654. She remained one of his close advisors until her death in 1665.
- January 13, 1810 – Ernestine Rose born in Poland, American Jewish free thinker, atheist, feminist, and abolitionist; by age 14, she had renounced all Jewish laws and customs that relegated women to an inferior status. When she was 16, she inherited a significant amount of property, but without consulting her, her father arranged for her to marry a man his own age, and signed over her inheritance as the dowry. She took her inheritance claim to a Polish court, where she won a legal endorsement of it. She left Poland the following year, having to leave most of her inheritance to her father, and moved to Berlin, then the Netherlands. She next spent time in Paris before moving to England, where she married reformer and silversmith William Rose in 1836. They immigrated to New York, where she became a leader and an intellectual force in the women’s rights movement, campaigning against the law that deprived married women of control over the wages they earned, or any property that was theirs before they married. New York became the first state to pass the Married Women’s Property Act. She also fought for the abolition of slavery, and a ban on the manufacture of alcoholic beverages. In 1869, she was a co-founder, with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, of the National Woman Suffrage Association, aiming at passage of a constitutional amendment to give women the right to vote.
- January 13, 1850 – Charlotte E. Ray born, first woman African-American lawyer in U.S.; first woman admitted to the bar in Washington DC, and one of the first women to be granted permission to argue cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.
- January 13, 1864 – Toshiko Kishida born, one of the first Japanese feminists, who wrote under the pen name Shōen. Kishida grew up during the Meiji-Taishō period (1868-1926), a period when Japan was opening up to new ideas, and reformers were calling for “new rights and freedoms. Kishida was one of the women reformers campaigning for increasing the status of Japanese women and girls, with greater opportunities. The feminists used the image of the “wise wife, wise mother” as a symbol of the new Japanese woman, a good citizen who was educated and took part in social and political affairs. In 1879, her talents in classical calligraphy earned her a position at the imperial court as a tutor attending the Empress, but she soon decided the court was "far from the real world" and was a "symbol of the concubine system which was an outrage to women.” Kishida left the court in 1882, embarking on a national lecture tour sponsored by the Jiyūtō (Liberal Party). She also joined the Freedom and People's Rights Movement as a speaker, and traveled with the group to various rural areas, educating and presenting the group's critique of the Meiji government's practices and calling for greater participation and opportunities for social citizenship. Her importance to the movement was solidified in April 1882, when she gave a speech titled "The Way of Women" at the inauguration of the Osaka Provisional Political Speech Event. She was noted daily in regional newspapers for her public speaking meetings, her speech titles including "The Government as the Force over Men, and Men as the Force over Women" (May 1882), 'Women Cannot But Combine 'the Rigid and the Supple' [gōjū]", and "To Endure What Need Not Be Endured, and to Worry about What Need Not Be a Concern: These Are Not The Duties of Women", reflecting her desire to address women's status in society. Kishida urged women to become educated, as a basis for the promotion of equal rights for women and men. "I hope in the future there will be some recognition of the fact that the first requirement for marriage is education," she wrote. After her 1883 speech, "Daughters in Boxes" she was "arrested, tried, and fined for having made a political speech without a permit" which was necessary under Japanese law at the time. The "Daughters in Boxes" speech criticized the family system in Japan and the problems it raised for young Japanese girls. She acknowledged that the system was a cultural fixture, and that many parents did not understand the harm it could cause for daughters by restricting them. Kishida recognized Japanese parents did not mean to restrict their daughters' freedom. Rather, they were blinded by a need to teach certain values in order to fit into Japanese culture and society. She described the “boxes” that Japanese daughters grew up in. The first box is one in which parents hid their daughters physically. The girls were not allowed to leave their rooms, and any elements belonging to the outside world were blocked out. The second box concerned the obedience of Japanese daughters. In this box, "parents refuse to recognize their responsibility to their daughter, and teach her naught." These daughters are expected to "obey their [parent’s] every word without complaint." But a third box, in which daughters were taught ancient knowledge from wise and holy men of the past could empower women. She described the box she wanted to see in Japanese families, which would have no walls and be open so occupants could go wherever the feet might take them, and stretch their arms as wide they wished. Kishida's speech challenged the cultural norms of Japanese society, and cemented the place of women and women's movement in Japan's history. In 1884, she married a political activist, but they both contracted tuberculosis on a trip to Italy, which ended their active participation in politics, but she continued to write as Shōen. Her husband died in 1899, and Kishida died at age 37 in 1901.
- January 13, 1866 – Rebecca Rosenthal Judah born in Kentucky, suffragist, charter member of the Louisville chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women, serving as the chapter’s president (1896-1930). The Louisville chapter joined the Kentucky Federation of Woman’s Clubs in 1906, and supported the suffrage movement, as well as providing twice-weekly classes at a large department store to teach arithmetic and spelling to the younger female employees, and equipped a kindergarten at the “Home of the Innocents,” where both Christian and Jewish children attended. She was also involved with charitable organizations like the Neighborhood House, the Consumers' League of Kentucky, the Child Labor Association, Fresh Air Home, Hebrew Relief Association, and the Travelers' Aid Society of Louisville. In 1902 she became the treasurer of the National Council of Jewish Women. She was on the committee (1912-1920) which organized the Kentucky Equal Rights Association’s annual conventions. Rosenthal Judah died in 1932 at age 66.
- January 13, 1879 – British athlete Ada Anderson, a pedestrianist (competitive walker), completed a record-breaking 2700 quarter miles in 2700 quarter hours at the Mozart Gardens in Brooklyn, New York, for which she earned $8,000.00 USD (worth over $210,000 in today’s dollars).
- January 13, 1900 – Gertrude M. Cox born, American statistician who was a pioneer in the development of modern statistical methods. In 1940, she was the first woman to receive a professional appointment at North Carolina State University, as the head of the newly established Department of Experimental Statistics. Even after her official retirement, she continued to promote the development of statistical programs with work in Thailand and Egypt. Cox co-authored (with William G. Cochran) the classic book, Experimental Designs (1950). She stressed that before beginning research, the outline of the data analysis plan should be drawn up. This approach avoids afterwards choosing analysis to give preconceived desired results.
- January 13, 1913 – Delta Sigma Theta, the largest Black women’s sorority, is founded by 22 collegiate women at Howard University in Washington DC.
- January 13, 1917 – Edna Hibel born, artist and colorist, the first American woman to win the Leonardo da Vinci World Award of Arts. Her "Golden Bridge" and "Peace Through Wisdom" exhibits traveled in the U.S., China, Russia, and Yugoslavia. Honored for many contributions to children’s and medical charities.
- January 13, 1921 – Dachine Rainer born as Sylvia Newman in New York City; American-English writer, poet, and anarchist; she moved to London in 1961; author of Outside Time, A Room at the Inn, and The Uncomfortable Inn.
- January 13, 1925 – Gwen Verdon born, American dancer and actress; winner of four Tony Awards for her performances in Broadway musicals. She was also an uncredited choreographer's assistant and specialty dance coach for theater and film. As a toddler, she suffered from rickets, which left her legs so badly misshapen she was called "Gimpy" by other children and spent her early years in orthopedic boots and rigid leg braces. At age three, her mother enrolled her in dance classes. Further ballet training strengthened her legs and improved her carriage. Verdon was a mental health-care advocate; later in life, she openly spoke about the positive effects of mental-health counseling. Along with teaching dance as a form of therapy, she sat on the board of directors for the New York Postgraduate Center for Mental Health, and actively raised funds to support mental health-care research. Verdon died of a heart attack at age 75 in October, 2000. That night, all the marquee lights on Broadway dimmed in tribute to her.
- January 13, 1926 – Carolyn Gold Heilbrun born, American feminist, author, and academic; she was the first woman tenured professor at Columbia University, in the English Department. She also published popular mystery novels, many featuring English professor Kate Fansler, under the pen name Amanda Cross. She took early retirement in 1992, saying, "When I spoke up for women's issues, I was made to feel unwelcome in my own department, kept off crucial committees, ridiculed, ignored ... In life, as in fiction, women who speak out usually end up punished or dead. I’m lucky to escape with my pension ...”
- January 13, 1926 – Melba Liston born, self-taught jazz trombonist; first woman trombonist to play in big bands in the 1940s; member of Dizzy Gillespie’s Middle East tour (1956). She recorded, taught, and performed in Women’s Jazz Festivals.
- January 13, 1938 – Anna Home born, English children’s television producer for the BBC; her career spanned from Play School in the 1960s to her last project, Teletubbies, before her retirement in 1997.
- January 13, 1945 – Joy Chant born, British fantasy author; winner of Mythopoeic Fantasy Awards for Red Moon and Black Mountain, and When Voiha Wakes.
- January 13, 1953 – Silvana Gallardo born, American film and television actress, acting coach, and writer. She was the executive producer and director of 2009’s Fading to Zero, a feature docudrama on the life and work of Brooklyn Poet Laureate Ken Siegelman. She died at age 58 in 2012.
- January 13, 1955 – Dame Anne Pringle born, British diplomat; Ambassador to the Czech Republic (2001-2004) and to Russia (2008-2011).
- January 13, 1957 – Claudia Emerson born, American poet; winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Poetry Prize for Late Wife; Poet Laureate of Virginia (2008-2010). She was the poetry editor for the Greensboro Review, and a contributing editor for the literary magazine Shenandoah. Emerson died in 2014 from colon cancer at age 57.
- January 13, 1957 – Lorrie Moore born, American fiction writer; noted for humorous and poignant short stories; she won the 1998 O. Henry Award for her short story "People Like That Are the Only People Here."
- January 13, 1959 – Winnie Byanyima born, Ugandan aeronautical engineer, politician, and diplomat; Executive Director of Oxfam International since 2013; Director of the Gender Team in the Bureau for Development Policy at the UN Development Programme (2006-2013); the first Ugandan woman to earn a degree in aeronautical engineering, at the University of Manchester, and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering at Cranfield University. She went to work as a flight engineer for Uganda Airlines, but joined the National Resistance Army during the Ugandan Bush War (1981-1986), then became Uganda’s Ambassador to France (1989-1994), and a Member of the Ugandan Parliament (1994-2004).
- January 13, 1961 – Julia Louis-Dreyfus born, American actress, comedian, and producer; best known for her performances in the comedy TV series Seinfeld (1989-1998) and The New Adventures of Old Christine (2006-2010). She has won eleven Emmy Awards, eight for acting and three for producing. She has supported the presidential campaigns of Al Gore, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, and was critical of Donald Trump. She campaigned against the Keystone XL pipeline, and raised millions of dollars for Heal the Bay, the Natural Resource Defense Council, and the Trust for Public Land. She also worked for the successful passage of Proposition O, which allocated US$500 million for cleaning up the Los Angeles water supply.
- January 13, 1970 – Shonda Rhimes born, American television producer, screenwriter, and author; she was creator, executive producer and head writer of the television series Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice, and Scandal, and the executive producer on How to Get Away with Murder, and For the People.
- January 13, 1975 – Mailis Reps born, Estonian Centre Party politician; served as Minister of Education (2002-2003, 2005-2007, and 2016-2020). She fought for more funding to education, oversaw preparation of a new general curriculum, and approved provision of free lunches to pupils. She served as a member of Estonia’s parliament, the Riigikogu (2003-2005). She is a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and on the council’s Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, and on the Committee on the Election of Judges to the European Court of Human Rights.
- January 13, 1979 – Katy Brand born, English actress, comedian, and writer, known for her television series Katy Brand’s Big Ass Show. Her big break as a comedian came when she performed her solo stand-up act the Edinburgh Fringe in 2005. She published her debut novel Brenda Monk is Funny in 2014.
- January 13, 2013 – Alice Pyne died after a six year battle with the cancer. When the 17-year-old British teen put a “bucket list” on her blog of things she wanted to do after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2011, it went viral. She achieved most of the wishes on her list, including campaigning to increase the number of bone marrow donors in the UK, and raising over £100,000 for charity. She won the Pride of Britain Teenager of Courage award in 2012 for her efforts. Pyne was also able to show her beloved dog Mabel in a dog show, and stayed in the Chocolate Room at the Alton Towers Resort. Comedian David Walliams posted on his Twitter page: "I am so sad about the passing of Alice Pyne, who I met through the Pride of Britain Awards. What a beautiful and courageous girl."
- January 13, 2020 – Taraneh Alidoosti, one of Iran’s most popular actresses, bluntly criticised the government in Tehran in a post on Instagram, telling her almost six million followers, “I fought this dream for a long time and didn’t want to accept it. We are not citizens. We never were. We are captives.” Her post comes amid reports that Iranian authorities fired live ammunition to disperse protesters in the nation’s capital, wounding several people. Alidoosti is best known outside Iran for starring in The Salesman, which was nominated in 2017 for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language Film category, but she boycotted the awards ceremony in protest over the Trump administration’s blanket visa bans on Iranians.
- January 13, 2021 – In the UK, a Trades Union Congress survey of 50,000 workers revealed that 71% of women who asked to be furloughed for childcare reasons were denied during a time that schools and childcare were closed. TUC general secretary, Frances O’Grady, said the government’s lack of support for working parents was causing huge financial hardship and stress – and hitting low-paid mums and single parents hardest. “Just like in the first lockdown, mums are shouldering the majority of childcare,” she said. “Tens of thousands of mums have told us they are despairing. It’s neither possible nor sustainable for them to work as normal, while looking after their children and supervising schoolwork.” Since April 2020, a job retention scheme has allowed bosses to furlough parents who can’t work due to a lack of childcare, but the survey found that 78% of working mothers were never offered furlough. The TUC is calling for a temporary legal right to furlough for parents and carers, along with 10 days’ paid carers leave, a right to flexible work, an increase in sick pay and access to the self-employment income support scheme (SEISS) for newly self-employed parents. “Making staff take weeks of unpaid leave isn’t the answer,” said O’Grady. “Bosses must do the right thing and offer maximum flexibility to mums and dads who can’t work because of childcare. And as a last resort, parents must have a temporary right to be furloughed where their boss will not agree.”
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- January 14, 1273 – Joan I of Navarre born, Queen Regnant of Navarre, Countess of Champagne (1274-1305), and Queen Consort of France (1305). Though she was Queen Regnant of Navarre, her marriage at the age of 11 to Philip the Fair, who became Philip IV, King of France in 1285, meant that she never spent time in Navarre, and it was ruled by French governors appointed by her husband, who were unpopular in Navarre. She was much more active as countess of Champagne, since it was not a separate kingdom, but part of France, and she had more latitude to act as its ruling vassal under the king. On 1297, it was Joan who raised and led an army to defeat the Count of Bar when he rebelled against her and invaded Champagne. She and her escort brought the Count to prison before she rejoined her husband. She also acted directly against Bishop Guichard of Troyes, whom she accused of stealing funds by fraud from both Champagne and her mother, Blanche of Artois. Joan gave birth to seven children, four of whom lived to adulthood, the others dying at ages four, seven and eleven. Joan died in 1305, probably either because of a miscarriage, or in childbirth, at the age of 32. Bishop Guichard was arrested in 1308, accused of killing Joan by “witchcraft,” but he was released in 1313.
- January 14, 1507 – Catherine of Austria born, Queen consort of Portugal (1525-1557) and regent during the minority of her grandson, King Sebastian (1557-1562). Catherine was very concerned about the education of her family, creating a substantial library, and establishing a kind of salon in the court. She brought a number of women scholars into her household, including the humanists Joana Vaz and Públia Hortênsia de Castro, and the poet Luisa Sigea de Velasco. Joana Vaz was responsible for tutoring Catherine's daughter, Princess Maria, as well as Catherine's niece, also called Maria, who became a scholar in her own right. Catherine had one of the earliest and finest Chinese porcelain collections in Europe. She also collected ‘exotica’ including fossilised sharks' teeth, a snake's head encased in gold, heart-shaped jasper stones supposed to stop bleeding, a coral branch used as a protector against evil spirits, bezoar stones, and a “unicorn's horn” (a narwhal tusk). After the death of her husband in 1557, she was challenged by her daughter-in-law and niece, Joan of Austria, over her role as regent for her grandchild, the infant King Sebastian. Mediation by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V resolved the issue in favor of his sister Catherine over his daughter Joan, who was needed in Spain in the absence of Philip II.
- January 14, 1841 – Berthe Morisot born, French painter and printmaker; one of “les trois grandes dames” of Impressionism with Marie Bracquemond and Mary Cassatt. In 1890, Morisot wrote in a notebook about her struggles to be taken seriously as an artist: "I don't think there has ever been a man who treated a woman as an equal and that's all I would have asked for, for I know I'm worth as much as they." She always exhibited her work under her maiden name, instead of as the wife of Eugène Manet, or under a pseudonym. Morisot’s work found an audience when the private dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel, bought 22 of her paintings in the 1870s. She died in 1895, at age 54, from pneumonia contracted while nursing her daughter Julie, who survived the illness, but became an orphan at the age of 16.
- January 14, 1862 – Carrie Derick born, Canadian botanist and geneticist, first woman professor at a Canadian university. She became an assistant professor in the Botany Department at McGill University in 1905 – at one-third the salary of her male counterparts. In 1909, when the chair of the department died, she assumed the role of department chair for three years, while McGill searched for a new department chair, but never considered her for the position. Instead, she was appointed as professor of morphological botany in 1912. Morphological botany was not Derick's research expertise, and this new position did not come with a pay rise, or a seat on the faculty. She was told by the McGill University president that this was a 'courtesy title' and she was not actually a professor, and the new botany department chair assigned Derick work suitable for a demonstrator, not a professor. Derick went on to found McGill University's Genetics department. She created the Evolution and Genetics course (the first of its kind in Canada) and published a number of academic publications on botany. She was one of the few women to be listed in the American Men of Science (1910). Due to poor health, Derick retired in 1929. McGill University awarded her the honorary title of "professor emerita," making her the first woman professor emeritus in Canada. She was a feminist leader, fighting for women's right to education, the vote, and work, and co-founder with Maude Abbott of the National Council of Women of Canada. She died at age 79 in 1941.
- January 14, 1900 – Marion Martin born, elected to Maine House of Representatives, (1930-1934), Maine Senate (1934-1938), the first woman to head the Maine Department of Labor and Industry (1947-1962), where she worked for a minimum living wage, industrial safety, and child labor laws.
- January 14, 1901 – Bebe Daniels born, American actress, singer, dancer, writer and producer. She began her career as a child in Hollywood during the silent film era, became a star in musicals such as Rio Rita, and later was a radio star in Britain. Over the course of her 50-year career, Daniels appeared in 230 films. She was subjected to years of stalking by a delusional man who believed that Daniels had married him in Mexico in 1925. He was committed to a mental hospital in 1932, but escaped and send dozens of threatening letters to Daniels before being caught and again institutionalized. He was released, and confronted her again. There was a lengthy trial, and he was again committed to a psychiatric facility, “for an indefinite period.” Daniels, her husband Ben Lyon, and their children, moved to London, where she and Lyon co-starred in radio shows. During WWII, they worked for the BBC in Hi Gang!, a comedy show that was Lyon’s idea, with most of the dialogue written by Daniels. They remained in England through the Blitz, came back to the U.S. after the war, but returned to the UK in 1948, where they starred with their children on a radio show called Life with the Lyons (1951-1961). Daniels suffered a severe stroke in 1963, then a second stroke in 1970, and died at age 70 in 1971 of cerebral hemorrhage.
- January 14, 1905 – Emily Hahn born, American journalist, author, biographer, and feminist; her love of travel and animals greatly influenced her work, a significant chronicle of Asia and Africa in the 1930s and 1940s for Western readers. Her books include China to Me, No Hurry to Get Home, and The Soong Sisters.
- January 14, 1912 – Tillie Olsen born, American writer, union organizer, and feminist; Tell Me a Riddle won the 1961 O. Henry Award for Best American Short Story. Her I Want You Women Up North to Know exposed the terrible working conditions of women and girls in Texas who embroidered little girls’ dresses that were sold in major department stores like Macy’s, Wannamaker’s, Gimbel’s, and Marshal Field.
- January 14, 1922 – Diana McConnel Wellesley born, later Duchess of Wellington; WWII British intelligence officer, who foiled a bomb plot aimed at her wedding at St. George’s Cathedral on January 28, 1944; she didn’t tell her groom of the near-miss, and he assumed they had a police escort because she was the daughter of a general, and he was the heir to the Dukedom.
- January 14, 1924 – Carole Cook born Mildred Cook, American film and television actress who was mentored by Lucille Ball. Ball suggested Cook change her first name to Carole, after Carole Lombard. Lucille Ball was matron of honor at Cook’s wedding in 1964 to actor Tom Troupe. Cook also appeared on Broadway in 42nd Street, Romantic Comedy, and Hello, Dolly! She is a longtime supporter of AIDS organizations, and an outspoken critic of Donald Trump. In 2018, she was criticized for quipping “Where’s John Wilkes Booth when you need him?” when referring to Trump.
- January 14, 1925 – Moscelyne Larkin born, one of the “Five Moons” Native American ballerinas from Oklahoma. She danced with the original Ballet Russe, and the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. She and her husband settled in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where they founded the Tulsa Ballet and its associated school in 1956. It became a major regional company in the American Southwest, and made its New York City debut in 1983.
- January 14, 1927 – Zuzana Růžičková born, Czech harpsichordist of Jewish heritage; between 1965 and 1975, she became the first harpsichord player to record the complete keyboard works of Johann Sebastian Bach. As a teenager, she was imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camps at Terezin and Auschwitz, then transported to the Bergen-Belsen death camp, but it was liberated in April, 1945, and she survived. When she and her husband, Czech composer Viktor Kalabis, refused to join the Czechoslovak Communist Party in 1950s, they faced political persecution. After they began to get recognition outside of Czechoslovakia, they were invited to study in Paris, but were not allowed to travel abroad together. She was allowed to travel without her husband because she was highly paid for performances across Europe, but most of the foreign currency she earned was confiscated by Czech authorities. She was not allowed to teach music to Czech students at home, and her participation in the Czech Philharmonic was restricted because of her Jewish background. After the death of Joseph Stalin, some of the travel restrictions were eased, but the family members of Růžičková and Kalabis still in Czechoslovakia kept them from defecting. In 1962, she co-founded the Prague Chamber Soloists with conductor Václav Neumann. After the Prague Spring of 1968, the Czech government forced her to publically accept state-sponsored awards as propaganda for the regime. During the Velvet Revolution in November, 1989, she joined in the anti-government protests, and went on strike. When the Communist regime was overthrown, she finally became a full Professor at the Academy of Music, and established a harpsichord class at the Music Academy of Bratislava. She and Viktor Kalabis were married for 54 years, until his death in 2006.
- January 14, 1943 – Shannon Lucid born, American biochemist and NASA astronaut, who set the records for longest stay in space by an American, and by a woman, on a mission aboard the Mir space station. She was the only American woman to serve aboard Mir. In 1976, when NASA announced that it would begin accepting women into the space program, Lucid immediately applied. Her first shuttle flight was in 1985 on the Discovery, followed by the Atlantis in 1989 and 1991, where she conducted a variety of biomedical experiments. In 1993, she became the first woman to travel into space on four separate occasions on the Columbia, setting a record for the most total flight time accumulated by a female astronaut on the shuttle (838 hours, 54 minutes). On Mir, she performed experiments, mostly on the effects of longterm space flight on the human body.
- January 14, 1943 – Holland Taylor born, American actress; noted for researching, writing, and producing her one-woman show, Ann: An Affectionate Portrait of Ann Richards, which played in 2011-2012 at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, and on Broadway in 2013. Holland was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Play for her performance. In a 2015 interview, she revealed she was in a serious relationship with a woman, and her partner, Sarah Paulson, later confirmed their relationship. Holland is a long-time supporter of Aids for AIDS in Los Angeles, serving on their Honorary Board and appearing in their annual fundraiser, Best in Drag Show.
- January 14, 1944 – Nina Totenberg born, American legal affairs correspondent for National Public Radio (NPR), primarily reporting on the U.S Supreme Court; panelist on Inside Washington (1992-2013); honored seven times by the American Bar Association for excellence in legal reporting; recipient of the first-ever Toni House Award for body of work by the American Judicature Society; she was the first radio journalist named as Broadcaster of the Year by the National Press Foundation. Her reporting on Anita Hill’s testimony during the Clarence Thomas hearings became part of the Jewish Women’s Archive’s online exhibit Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution.
- January 14, 1945 – Maina Gielgud born, British ballet dancer and administrator; a principal artist with the Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet (1976-1978), and Première Danseuse of the Ballet Classique de France (1963-1967). Gielgud was also a frequent guest artist with other companies. After her retirement from the stage, she became artistic director of the Australian Ballet (1983-1996), and then director of the Royal Danish Ballet (1997-1999). Since 1999, she has been coaching, and staging works as a freelancer for companies around the world.
- January 14, 1949 – Mary Robison born, American novelist and short story writer; her novel, Why Did I Ever, won the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction.
- January 14, 1952 – Maureen Dowd born, American columnist for the New York Times since 1995, noted for her acerbic wit, and for bashing politicians on both the Left and the Right.
- January 14, 1957 – Anchee Min born in Shanghai; Chinese-American author and memoirist; noted for Red Azalea and The Cooked Seed: A Memoir, and six historical novels, including The Last Empress, based on the life of Empress Dowager Cixi.
- January 14, 1966 – Nadia Maftouni born, Iranian academic, philosopher, author, and artist; best known for her extensive research on the Islamic philosophers al-Farabi, Avicenna ibn Sina, and Shahāb añ-Dĩn, as well as her work on Jurisprudence and Islamic History. She is an associate professor at the University of Tehran, and a Senior Research Scholar at Yale Law School.
- January 14, 1967 – Emily Watson born, English stage, film, and television actress. She began her career on stage, and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1992. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her debut film role as Bess McNeil in Breaking the Waves (1996) and for her role as Jacqueline du Pré in Hilary and Jackie (1998). Among her other films are Angela’s Ashes, Gosford Park, Miss Potter, The Theory of Everything, and the 2018 version of The Happy Prince. She and her husband, actor Jack Waters, co-wrote a film script called Mood Indigo, which has been optioned by Capitol Films. Watson is a supporter of the children's charity the NSPCC. In 2004, she was inducted into the society's hall of fame for spearheading the successful campaign to appoint a Children's Commissioner for England. Receiving her award in the crowded House of Commons, she spoke out against the possibility that the Children's Commissioner become a figurehead with little real power. She is also one of the patrons of the London children's charity Scene & Heard.
- January 14, 1972 – Queen Margrethe II of Denmark ascends the throne, the first Queen to rule Denmark since 1412, and the first Danish monarch not named Frederick or Christian since 1513.
- January 14, 1979 – Karen Elson born, English singer-songwriter; founder member of Citizens Band. In September 2012, she was featured in a campaign called "30 Songs / 30 Days" to support Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, a multi-platform media project inspired by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's book.
- January 14, 1985 – Michelle Wu born, American lawyer and Democratic politician; first Asian American woman to serve as a member of the Boston City Council (2014-2021), and as council president (2016-2018); elected as mayor of Boston in 2021 with 62.4% of the vote, becoming the first woman, first person of color, and first Asian American to be directly elected as Boston’s mayor. In 2010, Wu had worked in the Office of Administration and Finance at Boston City Hall for Mayor Thomas Menino’s chief-of-staff Mitch Weiss, before going on to Harvard Law School. She was one of Elizabeth Warren’s students, who became her mentor. Wu worked on Warren’s 2012 successful campaign against incumbent Senator Scott Brown, and again on Warren’s 2021 U.S. Senate re-election campaign.
- January 14, 1993 – In Hargeisa, Somalia, five women accused and convicted of adultery were publicly stoned to death by cheerful villagers shortly after evening prayers. UN officials who stood by and witnessed the stoning feared for their lives if they tried to interfere.
- January 14, 2020 – British whistleblower Maggie Oliver, a former Greater Manchester detective constable in charge of investigating child sexual exploitation, resigned in 2012 after 15 years on the force, and went public with claims that victims’ reports of rape and sexual abuse were not being recorded by Manchester police officers. She said the force had spent years trying to cover up its failures. Operation Augusta, set up to investigate child sexual exploitation, was shut down prematurely partly because senior officers had prioritised solving burglaries and car crime. A new report in 2020, which was revealed in national newspapers, showed that up to 52 children may have been victims of a sexual exploitation ring in Manchester, which Oliver said this confirmed her assertions, but “what we need is action and not just from GMP, this is a national issue. Multiple rapes of vulnerable young children – 11- and 12-year-olds – deserve action and those who should take that action are senior police officers. This needs to come from the top of government, they need to be forced to address it properly.” In December 2020, a report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) criticised GMP for failing to report over 80,000 crimes in the first half of 2020.
- January 14, 2021 – In the UK, a six-part television series based on the real-life story of Noor Inayat Khan, an Indian Muslim woman who was an agent of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) in Nazi-occupied France during WWII, has been announced. Freida Pinto, who starred in the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire, has been cast Noor, and is also an executive producer on the project. Pinto commented: “Sending women to the frontline is controversial even now … Sending a Sufi mystic, who won’t use a gun, daughter of a long-haired Indian guru who preaches love and peace – ridiculous! But Noor thrives, not in spite of her differences, but because of them … It’s fabulous, in terms of diversity, to find proper, wonderful stories that take you there without contrivance. She was an amazing character. I can’t believe her story’s never been told by film-makers.”
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- January 15, 1559 – Elizabeth I is crowned Queen of England in London’s Westminster Abbey.
- January 15, 1803 – Marjorie Fleming born, Scottish poet and author; noted for her journal, which was a child’s eye view of life in 19th century Scotland. She died in 1811, a month prior to her 9th birthday.
- January 15, 1805 – Louise-Angelique Bertin born, French composer and poet. Most of her subsequent works were vocal works, a piano trio, some chamber symphonies, 12 cantatas and some string quartets. Her opera, Le Loup-garou, was produced at the Opéra-Comique in 1827. Her later compositions include twelve cantatas, six piano ballades, five chamber symphonies, a few string quartets, and many vocal selections. She also published two volumes of poetry, Les Glanes, which won a prize from the Académie française, and Nouvelles Glanes. Bertin died in 1877 at age 72.
- January 15, 1811 – Abigail Kelley Foster born, American abolitionist, feminist orator, and reform lecturer. She was secretary (1835-1837) of the Lynn Female Anti-Slavery Society, and one of the co-founders with William Lloyd Garrison of the New England Non-Resistance Society, a peace group that opposed war and the death penalty, and favored dissolution of the union with Southern slave states instead of war. In 1838, she made her first public speech at the second Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women in Philadelphia, and later, her first speech to a mixed audience of men and women, after resigning her teaching position. She began a stormy career as a reform lecturer, denounced regularly from pulpits as “immoral” for daring to speak on a public platform, especially before mixed-gender audiences. Her almost ceaseless lecturing took her as far west as Indiana and Michigan, and her travels were marked not only by personal abuse and sometimes even violence, but also by frequent hardship. In 1845 she married Stephen S. Foster, a companion on the abolitionist lecture circuit. They continued to travel and lecture together until 1861, although after 1847 Abigail Foster spent much of each year at their Worcester, Massachusetts, farm. During the 1850s she added appeals for temperance and women’s rights to her addresses. She was outspokenly anti-clerical, which added to the ire against her. After the U.S. Civil War, ill-health curtailed her travel and speaking engagements, but she made a fund-raising tour of New England on behalf of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1870. On three occasions in the 1870s, she and her husband refused to pay taxes on their farm on the grounds that she had been taxed without representation, because as a woman she was denied the vote. On each occasion the farm was bought by friends at public auction, and then returned to them.
- January 15, 1836 – Constance Faunt Le Roy Runcie born, American pianist-composer, lecturer, and author. She promoted women’s literary clubs in the Midwest; noted for her non-fiction work The Burning Question, and for her hymns, as well as compositions for orchestra and chamber ensemble.
- January 15, 1842 – Mary MacKillop born, co-founder with Julian Tenison Wood of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart (the Josephites), religious sisters who established schools and welfare institutions throughout Australia and New Zealand, mainly to educate the rural poor; she was canonized as the first Australian Roman Catholic saint in 2010.
- January 15, 1850 – Sofia Kovalevskaya born, first Russian woman mathematician, and one of the first woman editors of a scientific journal. At university, she could only attend lectures unofficially, since women were not allowed to matriculate at Heidelberg. Nevertheless, by 1889, she became the first woman full professor in Europe. She made valuable contributions to the theory of differential equations. At the age of 41, while still at the peak of her mathematical ability and renown, Kovalevskaya died of influenza complicated by pneumonia.
- January 15, 1878 – Johanna Müller-Herrmann born, Austrian composer; noted for lieder, and for an oratorio, Lied der Erinnerung: In Memoriam, to a text by Walt Whitman, which requires a large orchestra, a chorus, and several solo voices.
- January 15, 1879 – Mazo de la Roche born, Canadian novelist, short story writer, and playwright; known for her Jalna series of 16 novels, which became hugely popular.
- January 15, 1892 – Jane Hoey born, Bureau of Public Assistance director, for the Social Security Board (1936-1953). She helped states develop assistance programs, especially mothers’ aid programs, and bequeathed millions to Trinity College, and Columbia University’s School of Social Work.
- January 15, 1894 – Ecaterina Teodoroiu born, Romanian heroine of WWI; she was the guide of a patrol of scouts and guides of Cercetașii României, the Romanian Scouting movement. Many Scouts helped to transport the wounded from the front, and were often killed during air attacks. Teodoroiu became a nurse, but soon insisted on becoming a frontline soldier after her brother, a Sergeant in the Romanian army, was killed. The Romanian Royal family supported her resolve because while she was still a nurse, she had joined with civilians and reserve soldiers in a fight to repulse the attack of a Bavarian company of the German Army at Târgu Jiu in Romania’s Oltenia region, and they were impressed by her bravery. She is credited with saving her company from capture by the enemy using a ruse. She was captured in early November, 1916, but escaped by killing a German guard with a concealed revolver. Fighting near Filiasi, she was wounded in both legs and evacuated, then sent on to hospital in Bucharest. Released in January 1917, she joined an infantry regiment as a voluntary nurse, but soon was put in charge of a 25-man platoon. When her regiment was called up to the frontlines in August, General Ernest Broșteanu asked her to stay at the mobile hospital, but she firmly stated her desire to be allowed to stay with her platoon in the coming battle. She was killed on September 3, 1917, by machine gun fire while leading her platoon in a counter-attack. Her last words were recorded as “Forward, men, don’t give up, I’m still with you!” She was awarded Military Virtue Medal, first and second class, posthumously.
- January 15, 1898 – Irene Kuhn born, journalist and columnist who scooped the world when a tidal wave hit Honolulu in 1923; war correspondent for NBC radio (1940-1949) in the China-Burma-India Theater. She wrote a conservative nationally syndicated column.
- January 15, 1908 – The Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority is founded, the first Greek-letter organization established by African American college women.
- January 15, 1913 – Miriam Hyde born, Australian composer, pianist, and poet; she composed over 150 works for piano, including Sonata in G minor for piano, and Valley of Rocks; 50 songs; several other instrumental works; as well as several books of poetry.
- January 15, 1919 – Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, two of the most prominent socialists in Germany and co-founders of the anti-war Spartakusbund (Spartacus League), are tortured and murdered by the Freikorps (paramilitary militias) at the end of the Spartacist uprising.
- January 15, 1922 – Sylvia Lawler born, English geneticist, noted for her work on the rhesus blood-group system; and joined the world’s first department for the study of human genetics, Galton Laboratory, at University College, London. Lawler published A Genetical Study of the Gm Groups in Human Serum in 1960, and Human Blood Groups and Inheritance in 1963. Appointed as research scientist at the Institute of Cancer Research in London in 1960 and became the institute's first woman professor in 1980, and made major contributions to the development of malignant tissue-typing techniques, laying the scientific foundation for bone marrow transplantation. Founding member of the International Workshops on Chromosomes in Leukaemia, and also established the first national fetal tissue bank in the UK. The Royal Society of Medicine named their annual Sylvia Lawler Prizes for best scientific paper and best clinical paper in her honor.
- January 15, 1925 – Ruth Slenczynska born, American child prodigy, pianist, and author; made her Paris debut as a guest soloist with an orchestra at age 7; author of Music at Your Fingertips: Aspects of Pianoforte Technique.
- January 15, 1929 – Ida Lewis “Queen Ida” Guillory born, American accordion player, first woman accordion player to lead a Zydeco band.
- January 15, 1943 – Dame Margaret Beckett born, English metallurgist and Labour politician; Minister of State for Trade and Housing (2008-2009); first woman to serve as British Foreign Secretary (2006-2007); first woman Deputy Leader of the Labour Party (1992-1994).
- January 15, 1944 – Jenny Nimmo born, British author of children’s and fantasy books; The Magician Trilogy, which won a Smarties Book Prize, and Children of the Red King.
- January 15, 1947 – Andrea Martin born, Canadian-American comedian, actress, and writer; best known for her work in the television series SCTV, and her performances in the films Wag the Dog; My Big Fat Greek Wedding; and Little Italy. She has also two Tony Awards for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for My Favorite Year, and the 2013 revival of Pippin. Martin is a prominent spokesperson for the Children of Armenia Fund (COAF) and hosts their annual gala, as well as being an active member of Artists Against Racism.
- January 15, 1956 – Mayawati Das born, Indian politician; National President of the Bahujan Samaj Party since 2003; Member of Rajya Sabha (Parliament’s Upper House – 2012-2017); Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh four separate times: 2007-2012, 2002-2003, 1997-1997, and 1995-1995. In 1995, she was the first woman Dalit Chief minister in India, and the youngest to that time.
- January 15, 1971 – Regina King born, African American actress and director; she won the 2019 Oscar for best Supporting Actress in If Beale Could Talk, and won a 2020 Emmy for Lead Actress in a limited series for Watchmen. After directing several episodes of series television, she made her film directing debut with the Amazon original movie, One Night in Miami.
- January 15, 2017 – Loretta Lynch, in her final speech as the first African American U.S. Attorney General, commemorated Martin Luther King Day, saying that despite progress on civil rights "our work is not finished. I know that while our accomplishments make us proud, they must not make us complacent." Lynch made the remarks at Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church, where four black girls were killed in a 1963 Ku Klux Klan bombing. The church is in Birmingham's Civil Rights District, which Barack Obama named as a national monument in one of his final acts as U.S. President.
- January 15, 2020 – Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an academic with dual British and Australian citizenship who specializes in Middle East politics and Islamic studies, pleaded in a letter for the Australian government to secure her release from Iran’s notorious Evin prison, where she has been incarcerated, much of the time in solitary confinement, since September, 2018. She was arrested at Tehran airport by the intelligence arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards when she was about to board a flight to leave the country after attending an academic conference because she was flagged as “suspicious” by a fellow academic. She was tried and convicted in secret in 2019 on charges of espionage and sentenced to 10 years in prison. An appeal against her sentence failed. No charges against her were made public. Moore-Gilbert went on five separate hunger strikes as her only means of attracting attention to her plight. The Australian foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, said the Australian government was working “every day with our agencies here and with counterparts in Iran to … secure Dr Moore-Gilbert’s release.” A spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry said, “Iran will not submit to political games and propaganda” in response to media reports of diplomatic pressure. Jasmin Ramsey, communications director with the Centre for Human Rights in Iran, said, “Kylie’s case is unusual. She has been in prison for a long time, she’s been charged and sentenced, and then they threw out her appeal. It’s contrary to Iranian law to keep her in solitary. She should be moved to the women’s ward for political cases but that’s not happened ... She remains isolated and it is, as she described in her letter, a form of psychological torture.” Moore-Gilbert was finally released in a “prisoner swap” in November 2020, in exchange for three Iranian prisoners in Thailand, two of whom had been convicted in connection with the 2012 Bangkok bomb plot.
- January 15, 2021 – The Spotlight Initiative, a joint UN and European Union (EU) programme to eradicate violence against women and girls, organized a roundtable discussion between top officials of key UN agencies and Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed. Gender-based violence was described as a “clear and present danger” for millions of women and girls worldwide, and ways were proposed to end this “invisible emergency.” “Essentially, what it does is put all the SDGs [Sustainable Development Goals] at risk,” said Ms. Mohammed. “Because without 50 per cent of humanity being covered by this – whether it is ending poverty, access to education, or a decent job – all of it is in jeopardy.” Gender-based violence permeates all aspects of life, whether public or private, said Reem Alsalem, an independent UN human rights expert. It also begins early, in childhood, representing a “continuum” of violence. “That’s why I also ask myself whether we are really talking about an invisible emergency in the sense that it is quite visible for those who want to see it,” said Ms. Alsalem, who is the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women ... It’s a bit like the climate crisis. The evidence is there. We can see it, we can see the consequences.” Sima Bahous, the newly appointed UN Women Executive Director, said women are being victimized twice, “First, they experience the violence. Then they experience the lack of support services and justice that they are seeking. And, many times they find that even when reported, and even when they have access, the perpetrators are very seldom brought to justice.”
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- January 16, 1634 – Dorothe Engelbretsdatter born, Norway’s first recognized woman poet whose pen name was “Bergens Debora.” She is considered a proto-feminist for her defense of female creative power; her first book, a collection of verses, hymns and devotional pieces, Siælens Sang-Offer, was her most successful.
- January 16, 1837 – Ellen Russell Emerson born, American ethnologist, noted for her extensive examinations of Native American cultures, especially in comparison with other world cultures.
- January 16, 1882 – Margaret Wilson born, American novelist, short story writer, Presbyterian missionary in the Punjab region of India (1905-1910), and high school teacher; awarded the 1924 Pulitzer Prize for The Able McLaughlins. After her marriage to George Douglas Turner, a Scotsman she met in India, she moved to England. When he became warden of Dartmoor Prison, she wrote a non-fiction study on prison reform, The Crime of Punishment.
- January 16, 1893 – A coup d'état on the island of Oahu by foreign residents, aided by the unlawful invasion of the Kingdom of Hawaii by U.S. Marines, deposed Queen Liliʻuokalani. The insurgents established the Republic of Hawaii, but their ultimate goal was the annexation of the islands to the United States, which occurred in 1898.
- January 16, 1898 – Margaret Booth born, American film editor and executive producer, whose career stretched from editing silent films for D.W. Griffith beginning in 1915, to editing Greta Garbo pictures including Camille at MGM, to executive producer on The Slugger’s Wife in 1985 at age 87; received an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in Editing in 1978, and lived to be 104 years old.
- January 16, 1900 – Kiku Amino born, Japanese author and translator of English and Russian literature; recipient of the 1947 Women’s Literature Prize for Kin no kan (A Golden Coffin), the 1967 Yomiuri Prize and the Japan Academy of the Arts prize for Ichigo ichie (Once in a Lifetime).
- January 16, 1901 – Laura Riding born as Laura Reichenthal, American poet, critic, novelist, essayist, and short story writer. Her first poems were published in The Fugitive magazine (1922-1925). She published her first collection of poetry, The Close Chaplet, in 1926.
- January 16, 1918 – Nel Benschop born, Dutch Christian poet and teacher who became the best-selling poet in the Netherlands, after her first volume of poetry, Gouddraad uit vlas (Gold thread from flax) was published in 1967.
- January 16, 1927 – Estela Trambley born, teacher, playwright, pioneer in Latina literature, co- founder of Los Pobres, the 1st Hispanic Theater in El Paso, Sor Juana and Other Plays.
- January 16, 1930 – Mary Ann McMorrow born, American lawyer and first woman elected to the Illinois Supreme Court (1992) and its first woman Chief Justice (2002-2006); became a judge on the Illinois Appellate Court in 1985, and the first woman chair of the Executive Committee of the Appellate Court. In 1976, she was elected as a Judge of the Circuit Court. After practicing law (1953-1970?), she was appointed as Assistant State’s Attorney of Cook County, assigned to the Criminal Division, and was the first woman to prosecute felony cases in Cook County.
- January 16, 1932 – Dian Fossey born, zoologist, primatologist, and naturalist notable for her years of extensive study of mountain gorilla groups in Rwanda, in central Africa. In 1963, she met Louis and Mary Leakey, who encouraged her initial interest. With additional encouragement from Jane Goodall, she set up and directed (1967-1980) the Karisoke Research Center, Rwanda. Living a solitary life among the gorillas, she learned their habits, and gradually gained their acceptance. She wrote Gorillas in the Mist (1983) to raise public awareness of the threats to the gorillas from poachers and loss of habitat. In 1985, Fossey’s mutilated body, hacked by machete, was found near the centre. Poachers, whose devastating attacks on the gorillas she had tried to stop, were suspected of her murder, though her murder remains unsolved.
- January 16, 1933 – Susan Sontag born, intellectual, critic, filmmaker, and writer; noted for On Photography, Against Interpretation, and essays, journals, and diaries.
- January 16, 1938 – Marina Vaizey born, Lady Vaizey, Anglo-American art critic and author based in the UK; noted for biographies of painters.
- January 16, 1944 – Jill Tarter born as Jill Cornell, American astronomer known for her work on the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence); Chair Emeritus for SETI Research and former director of the Center for SETI Research; recipient of Lifetime Achievement Award from Women in Aerospace, two Public Service Medals from NASA, Chabot Observatory’s Person of the Year award (1997), and the Tesla Award of Technology (2001). An AAAS Fellow since 2002 and a California Academy of Sciences Fellow since 2003.
- January 16, 1947 – Elaine Murphy born, Baroness Murphy, British independent politician, physician, psychiatrist, and academic with a PhD in Social History, she has been a Crossbencher in the House of Lords since 2004. Murphy has published works about 18th and 19th century workhouses and madhouses, and is an honorary associate of the National Secular Society, which supports separation of church and state, and challenges religious privilege.
- January 16, 1948 – Ruth Reichl born, American chef, food writer, television series host, and former editor of Gourmet magazine.
- January 16, 1950 – Debbie Allen born, African American choreographer, director, producer, dancer, and actress; best known for her work on the television series Fame (1982-1987).
- January 16, 1952 – Julie Anne Peters born, American author of young adult fiction, often featuring LGBT characters; Luna (2004) was the first mainstream release YA novel with a transgender character.
- January 16, 1958 – Lena Ek born, Swedish lawyer and politician; Minister for the Environment (2011-2014); Member of the European Parliament (2004-2011), on the European Parliament's Committee on Industry, Research and Energy and the delegation to the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly. She was a Member of the Riksdag (Swedish parliament, 1998-2004). Ek is a member of the Centre Party, part of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.
- January 16, 1959 – Lisa Milroy born, Canadian artist; won the 1989 John Moores Painting Prize.
- January 16, 1968 – Rebecca Stead born, American author of children’s and young adult fiction; winner of the 2010 Newbery Medal for When You Reach Me.
- January 16, 2006 – Ellen Johnson Sirleaf sworn in as Liberia’s first woman president. She is the first African woman elected as a head of state.
- January 16, 2018 – During the four-day sentencing hearing of former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, nearly 90 women are expected to testify about the sexual abuse to which he subjected them. Nassar pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual assault, but the judge in the case is allowing any of his more than 140 accusers speak if they ask. The first accuser to speak was not one of the dozens of gymnasts who have accused him of abuse, but a family friend who said Nassar molested her at his house, causing a family rift when her parents didn't believe her. Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles said she, too, was one of Nassar's victims. Her teammates McKayla Maroney, Aly Raisman, and Gabby Douglas had previously disclosed that they were sexually abused by Nassar. The incidents dated back as far as 1992, and several of his victims had reported his misconduct to USA Gymnastics, but the organization took no action against him until 2015. Nassar had previously pled guilty to child pornography charges, for which he was sentenced to 60 years in federal prison, and to seven counts of sexual assault in Michigan, where he was sentenced to 175 years in state prison.
- January 16, 2020 – Evelyn Yang, wife of Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, revealed in a television interview that she has been inspired by people she met on the campaign trail to go public about being sexually assaulted by her doctor when she was pregnant with her first child. Yang said her OB-GYN, Robert Hadden, abused her in his office, touching her inappropriately in an unnecessary examination after telling her she might need a cesarean section. "I knew it was wrong. I knew I was being assaulted," she said. Yang said changed doctors, but told nobody about what happened until she learned another woman had accused the same doctor of sexual abuse. Now she and 31 other women are suing Hadden and the hospital system. In September, 2020, Hadden was indicted on six federal sexual abuse counts.
- January 16, 2021 – Marlène Schiappa, Minister of State for Gender Equality and the Fight against Discrimination in France, said in a speech: “For generations, we have been nominating men just because they are men.” She listed her two top priorities: “…The issue of sexual and reproductive rights seems to me to be paramount. I think it's very complicated for a woman to be able to live her life freely if she doesn't have control over her own body. Secondly, the fight against gender-based and sexual violence … it is difficult to fight for equal pay if women fear physical harm in the street, when they travel, and even when they go home.”
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Feminist Squids Sink Sea-Bed Sexual Harassment
Female market squids discourage unwanted
male attention by flashing a pair of fake testicles.