“I am not afraid to be a pioneer. When
a door is ajar, you need to open it fully.
And once you are in that room, you need
to see what other doors there might be
and where they might lead.”
– Gurinder Chadha, director
of Bend It Like Beckham
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.
WOW2 is a four-times-a-month sister blog to This Week in the War on Women.
“I have great respect for the past.
If you don't know where you've come
from, you don't know where you're
going. I have respect for the past, but
I'm a person of the moment. I'm here,
and I do my best to be completely
centered at the place I'm at, then
I go forward to the next place.”
– Maya Angelou, author of
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
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“History is no longer just a chronicle
of kings and statesmen, of people who
wielded power, but of ordinary women
and men engaged in manifold tasks.
Women's history is an assertion
that women have a history.”
– Toshiko Kishida, Japanese
author and feminist
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The purpose of WOW2 is to learn about and honor women of achievement, including many who’ve been ignored or marginalized in most of the history books.
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.
WOW2 began as a once-a-month post, then as more and more trailblazing women were added to the lists, it expanded until it became a four-times-a-month post. The lists became so long that I’m switching to posting only a few of these trailblazers — for those who want to see the glorious full and longer list of amazing women for this week, click:
www.dailykos.com/…
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, many thanks to libera nos, intrepid Assistant Editor of WOW2. Any remaining mistakes are either mine, or uncaught computer glitches in transferring the data from his emails to DK5. And much thanks to wow2lib, WOW2’s Librarian Emeritus.
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 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; at age 46, she was a widow with no income, two sons to support, and only a high school education. In 1911, she founded Katharine Gibbs Schools, which became the most famous and prestigious secretarial institution in the U.S. She was CEO of three schools by 1918, at a time when a Harvard Medical School doctor said that higher education could cause the uterus to atrophy. Her motto was “Hold to your purpose,” and she insisted, “Young women have to be trained beyond the technical to act as a personal representative, to display initiative, and to assume larger responsibilities.” Among Gibbs graduates who flourished there was a bank president, a college president, a U.S. ambassador, as well as CIA operatives, lawyers, writers, graphic designers, and professionals in many other fields.
- January 10, 1917 – The Silent Sentinels, organized by Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party, begin their six-day-a-week vigils in all weathers 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 protests 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 cell 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, 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, 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 (2-11-2017); since 2017, she’s been a Senior Research Scientist at Google. She was an Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) fellow in 2008, and served on the ACM selection committee (2016-2020, Chair 2018), and on the Computing Research Association (CRA - 2009-2021) board. She established the Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP), which evaluates the effectiveness of programs to increase the diversity of computer science researchers. She has led and coordinated hundreds of volunteers to positively impact the lives of thousands of women and minority computer science undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and Ph.D. researchers.
- 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, 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 of 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, 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, 2022 – Maya Angelou became the first Black woman ever to appear on a U.S. quarter, when a coin featuring the late poet and activist’s image went into circulation on this day. The quarter features an image of Angelou with her arms uplifted, a bird in flight and a rising sun behind her, with a portrait of George Washington on the “heads” side. The US Mint said the image of Angelou was “inspired by her poetry and symbolic of the way she lived.”
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- 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 group protected against discrimination in the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.
- 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, 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.
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- January 12, 1820 – Caroline Severance born, early suffragist, pacifist, social reformer, and women’s clubs pioneer; a co-founder of the free Religious Association with Lucretia Mott (1867); of the American Woman Suffrage Association with Lucy Stone (1869); and the Women’s International Peace Association (1871). She was the first woman registered to vote in California (1911).
- 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, 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, 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, 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, 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, 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 – 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, 1969 – Margaret Nagle born, screenwriter, television producer, and human rights activist; winner of three Writers Guild of America Awards: in 2011 for Best New Show for Boardwalk Empire, in 2014 for her body of work, and in 2015 for the “based on real events” drama The Good Lie.
- 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, 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, 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 the first woman to be granted permission to argue cases in front of the District of Columbia Supreme Court. Martha Gadley, a poor black woman, was one of her early clients. She lived in fear of her husband, who became violent when drunk. One night, he used an ax to rip up the planks of the bedroom floor, trying to force her through to the room below. She filed for divorce in 1875, but the law then did not recognize domestic violence as grounds for divorce, and her petition was denied. Charlotte Ray took her case, and appealed to the District of Columbia Supreme Court, winning a divorce decree for her client. But Ray was unable to attract enough clients to make a living as an attorney in Washington, and became a teacher in Brooklyn NY. She participated in the National Woman Suffrage Association’s 1876 New York Convention, and was active in the National Association of Colored Women. She died of a bronchitis at age 60 on January 4, 1911.
- 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, 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 the analysis to give preconceived desired results.
- 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, 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, 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. She was detained by Islamic Republic authorities for her support of the protests against the government in December 2022, but an international outcry led by many famous members of the global entertainment industry was immediately launched. On January 4, 2023, she was released after posting bail, reported to be the equivalent of over $24,000 USD.
- 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, 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, 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, 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 the group 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, 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, 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, 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, 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, 1864 – Frances Benjamin Johnston born, one of the first American women to be a photojournalist and a professional photographer; her mother, Frances Antoinette Benjamin Johnston, was one of the first women to become a political journalist, for The Baltimore Sun.
- 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, 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, 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, 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, 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, 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 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. She and 31 other women sued the doctor and the hospital system. In September, 2020, he was also 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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Sources
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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.
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For those of you who want to dive deeper,
the rest of the list of this week’s Women
Trailblazers and Events in Women’s History
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