WOW2 is a twice-monthly sister blog to This Week in the War on Women. This edition covers women and events from February 1 through through February 14.
February is Black History Month, and there are a number of exceptional black women here.
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.
These trailblazers have a lot to teach us about persistence in the face of overwhelming odds. I hope you will find reclaiming our past as much of an inspiration as I do.
This Week in the War on Women
will post soon, so be sure to go there next and catch up
on the latest dispatches from the frontlines
Early February – Women Trailblazers and Events in OUR History
- February 1, 1857 – Lucy Wheelock born, pioneer in kindergarten education and teacher training, founded Wheelock College
- February 1, 1862 – Julia Ward Howe’s “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” is first published in the Atlantic Monthly
- February 1, 1866 – Agda Meyerson born, Swedish nursing pioneer, lecturer and advocate for improving the wages, education and working conditions of nurses; worked for the Swedish Red Cross (1898-1907); first deputy chair of the Swedish Nursing Association in 1910
- February 1, 1878 – Hattie Wyatt Caraway born, first woman elected to the U.S. Senate (1932, D-AR), first woman to preside over Senate (1943)
- February 1, 1898 – Leila A. Denmark born, pioneering American pediatrician and medical researcher; co-developer of the pertussis vaccine (aka whooping cough), for which she receives the 1935 Fisher Award; she is the world’s oldest practicing pediatrician when she retires at age 103, after 73 years of practicing medicine
- February 1, 1910 – Ursula Nordstrom born, children’s book editor at Harper & Brothers, director of Department of Books for Boys and Girls (1940) where she edited landmark books, including Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight, Moon, E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree, and Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are
- February 1, 1918 – Muriel Spark born, Scottish playwright and poet; The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
- February 1, 1921 – Renata Tebaldi born, Italian spinto soprano
- February 1, 1921 – Patricia Robins born, British author of children’s books, historic novels and fiction series; during WWII, was a Women’s Auxiliary Air Force officer using her knowledge of German, acquired as a student in Switzerland and Germany; then tracked Nazi bombers with Britain’s early radar system; Frost in the Sun, trilogies Women of Fire Saga and The Rochford Trilogy
- February 1, 1930 – Ruth Ross born, magazine editor, left her job as assisstant editor at Newsweek to be the first editor-in-chief of “Essence” (1970), a magazine aimed at 18-to-40-year old African-American women, which included articles by leading African-American scholars and writers; however fears of advertising losses because some content was controversial caused her removal; also a founding member of Black Perspective, support group for black journalists and advocate for inclusion of African-American viewpoints in ‘mainstream’ media
Debut issue of Essence magazine in 1970
- February 1, 1936 – Azie Taylor Morton born, first African American and eighth woman appointed as U.S. Treasurer (1977-1981); also served on President Kennedy’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity
- February 1, 1939 – Ekaternina Maximova born, Soviet Bolshoi ballet star (1958-1980), named a People’s Artist of the USSSR in 1973
- February 1, 1947 – Jessica Savitch born, American TV journalist; one of the first women to anchor an evening network news broadcast alone, on NBC Nightly News; original host of the PBS public affairs documentary program Frontline until she was killed an automobile accident in October 1983
- February 1, 1967 – Meg Cabot born, American young adult author and screenwriter; The Princess Diaries; has teamed with the Make-A-Wish Foundation to mentor seriously ill children, and held a Tiara Auction to benefit the New York Public Library’s teen programs
- February 1, 1972 – Leymah Roberta Gbowee born, Liberian leader of grassroots women’s peace movement which helped end 2nd Liberian Civil War, 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winner
- February 1, 1978 – First postage stamp to honor a black woman, Harriet Tubman, is issued in Washington, DC.
- February 1, 1998 – Lillian E. Fishburne becomes the first female African American Rear Admiral in the U.S. Navy
- February 1, 2009 – The first cabinet of Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir is formed in Iceland, making her the country’s first woman prime minister, and the world’s first openly LGBT woman head of state
- February 2, 1576 – Alix Le Clerc born, who became Mother Teresa of Jesus, French foundress and first prioress of the Canonesses of St. Augustine of the Congregation of Our Lady, a Catholic religious order founded to provide free education for girls, especially those living in poverty; she offered members of the order a choice: they could either take public vows as canonesses, wearing the religious habit and observing full monastic enclosure, or they could take private vows as daughters of the congregation, and be free to leave the monastery for works of charity or on business for the order; Mother Teresa of Jesus was beatified by Pope Pius XII in 1947; currently, there are missions and related offshoots in 43 countries; the work has expanded to include human rights advocacy, and assistance to migrants
- February 2, 1841 – Sarah Ann Hackett Stevenson born, American MD, first woman member of the American Medical Association
- February 2, 1897 – Gertrude Blanch born in Russia, American mathematician, and pioneer in numerical analysis and computation;
Gertrude Blanch
mathematical leader of the Mathematical Tables Project (MTP) from its inauguration, started during the Great Depression by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1938, which kept 450 clerks working on tabulating higher mathematical functions (their results were later published in 28 volumes by Columbia University Press); MTP clerks also did calculations for a variety of war-related projects during WWII, and continued after the war, with a much smaller group, until 1948; in 1947, her career was temporarily hampered by FBI suspicions that she was secretly a communist. Their ‘evidence’ was tenuous at best, including comments on her never having married or had children. In a remarkable showdown, the diminutive fifty-year-old mathematician demanded, and won, a hearing which cleared her name; went on to work for the Institute for Numerical Analysis at UCLA and the Aerospace Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base; a founder of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
- February 2, 1900 – Elena Sánchez Valenzuela born, one of Mexico’s first silent film stars, who also directed a documentary for the Mexican government, and campaigned successfully for the Filmoteca Nacional (Mexican National Film Library), founded in 1942 to collect and preserve the work of Mexican filmmakers; also an ardent feminist and suffragist, who participated in the 1947 Primer Congreso Interamericano de Mujeres (First Inter-American Congress of Women), called together by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF)
- February 2, 1901 – United States Army Nurse Corps established as a permanent organization
- February 2, 1922 – Sylvia Beach publishes Ulysses by James Joyce in Paris
Sylvia Beach with James Joyce in the entry to her bookstore, Shakespeare & Co, in Paris
- February 2, 1923 – Liz Smith born, American columnist and author; co-founder of wowOwow.com, a website for women
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- February 2, 1929 – Věra Chytilová born, avant-garde Czech filmmaker, whose films were banned by the Czechoslovak government in the 1960s; noted for Sedmikrásky (Daisies, 1966), and Ovoce stromů rajských jíme (Fruit of Paradise, 1969)
- February 2, 1931 – Judith Viorst born, journalist and author; Forever Fifty, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
- February 2, 1939 – Mary-Dell Chilton born, American chemist, inventor and one of the founders of modern plant biotechnology; with collaborators, produced the first genetically modified plants; member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences
- February 2, 1949 – Yasuko Namba born, Japanese mountain climber; oldest woman, at 47, to complete the Seven Summits, and to climb Mount Everest; she and seven others were caught in a blizzard on Everest during their descent in 1996, and all of them died
- February 2, 1950 – Libby Purves born, British radio presenter, journalist and author; Adventures Under Sail, Holy Smoke, Mother Country
- February 2, 1963 – Eva Cassidy born, American vocalist-guitarist, almost unknown until her recordings were played on BBC Radio 2, after her death at age 33 from melanoma
- February 2, 2009 – Hillary Rodham Clinton is sworn in as the U.S Secretary of State
- February 3, 1821 – Elizabeth Blackwell born, first fully woman to graduate from medical school and earn a medical degree in the U.S. (1849), co-founder with her sister Emily of 1st medical school for women and the NY Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children, which also serves as a nursing training facility, sending a number of nurses to Dorothea Dix while she was Superintendent of Army Nurses during the Civil War; abolitionist and women’s rights activist
- February 3, 1847 – Caroline Lengefeld von Wolzogen born, German author best known for the novel Agnes von Lilien, originally published anonymously, and for Schillers Leben (Schiller’s Life) in 1830, the first biography of Friedrich Schiller to be published (Schiller was her brother-in-law, so she had extensive access to his letters and papers)
- February 3, 1874 – Gertrude Stein born, Ex-pat American author, modern art critic and influential collector, famous for her phrase, “A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose”
- February 3, 1900 – Mabel Mercer born, influential English-American cabaret singer (a young Frank Sinatra went to shows to hear her phrasing of lyrics)
- February 3, 1909 – Simone Weil born, French philosopher, labor activist, and mystic; in spite of frail health, she spent a year working factory jobs to better understand the laborers she organized. Escaped France during WWII German occupation, worked in London for the French resistance, refusing to eat more than rations of resistance agents in France, she died of malnutrition and tuberculosis at age 34
- February 3, 1930 – Gillian Ayres born, English abstract painter
Antony and Cleopatra, by Gilliam Ayers
- February 3, 1936 – Elizabeth Peer born, American pioneering journalist; worked for Newsweek from 1958 to 1984, starting as a copy girl, promoted to writer in 1962, then dispatched to Paris in 1964 as the magazine’s first female foreign correspondent; later worked in their Washington DC bureau, then as Paris bureau chief, and in 1977, as Newsweek’s first woman war correspondent, covering the Ethio-Solmali War, but was seriously injured there, and never fully recovered, leaving her in constant pain; after Newsweek notified her in 1984 that she was being fired, she committed suicide
- February 3, 1995 – Space shuttle Discovery blasts off with a woman, USAF Lt. Col. Eileen Collins, in the pilot’s seat for the first time
- February 3, 2003 – The first ‘National Wear Red Day’ is started by the American Heart Association as part of its ongoing educational efforts about the risks of heart disease and stroke facing American women
- February 3, 2016 – National Women Physicians Day is launched on Elizabeth Blackwell’s birthday by the Physician Mother Group (PMG) a support group for women doctors to collaborate and support each other as they face the challenge of balancing their medical and family commitments
- February 4, 1865 – Lila Valentine born, Southern suffrage leader, introduced kindergartens and vocational training into public education in Virginia, recognized health needs with the Visiting Nurse Association fighting tuberculosis, supported the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia and the National American Woman Suffrage Association, after visiting England and realizing that many health issues required women’s voices, made 100 speeches in Virginia
- February 4, 1899 – Virginia M. Alexander born, African-American physician, obstetrician and gynecologist; in spite of financial hardship, graduated in three years from the University of Pennsylvania; applied to the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, with the second highest application score, and received a scholarship from a WWI veteran’s mother which helped with her expenses; although she faced racial prejudice and discrimination, she graduated, then was turned down for an internship by many hospitals because of her race and gender; Kansas City General Hospital reversed its policy of not allowing women, so she and another woman were accepted there; after completing her internship, she went back to Philadelphia, and began a private practice, then opened the Aspirant Health Home in 1931, which provided health services to poor members of the black community in North Philadelphia, offsetting the costs with income from her private practice, and sharing medical responsibilities with her colleague Helen O. Davis; in 1937, she got a master’s degree in Public Health, the first black student to attend the Yale School of Public Health; during WWII worked for the U.S. Department of Health; after the war, worked at local Philadelphia hospitals, taught classes at Howard University, and later at the Women’s Medical College Hospital
- February 4, 1913 – Rosa Parks born; her arrest for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, sparked a bus boycott, eventually leading to a Supreme Court decision that expanded Brown v. Board of Education decision to segregation on buses as a denial of equal protection and due process of the 14th Amendment
- February 4, 1918 – Ida Lupino born in England, emigrated to Hollywood in 1930’s, actress, director and producer; made movies dealing with social issues, bigamy, polio, unwed mothers, and rape over 40 years before topics were widely discussed publicly; first woman to direct a film noir, The Hitch-Hiker, in 1953; and the only woman to direct episodes (one uncredited) of the original Twilight Zone series; one of the first producers to use product placement to help offset the cost of her movies
- February 4, 1921 – Betty Friedan born, author and activist, her book, The Feminine Mystique (1963), helped launch Feminism’s “Second Wave,” named and co-founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966, and was its first president
- February 4, 1943 – Wanda Rutkiewicz born, Polish mountain climber; first woman to successful climb K2; she had reached the summit on eight of the fourteen ‘eight-thousanders’ on her list of mountains to conquer before she went missing on Kanchenjunga; there is no evidence to show whether she reached the summit or not; her body hasn’t been found
- February 4, 1952 – Jenny Shipley born, New Zealand’s first woman Prime Minister (1997-1999)
- February 4, 1960 – Siobhan Dowd born, British writer; died of breast cancer in 2007, but her last completed book, Bog Child, won the 2009 Carnegie Medal for best British juvenile book posthumously
- February 5, 1626 – Marie de Rabutin-Chantal born, marquise de Sévigné, noted for her wit and vivid descriptions in her voluminous correspondence, especially with her daughter; an orphan from the age of seven, she received a good education from her uncle, Christophe de Coulanges, abbé of Livry, who was instrumental in making terms for her marriage which kept most of her fortune separate from her philandering and expensive husband, Henri, marquis de Sévigné, who was killed in a duel over his mistress when Marie was 24 years old; she never remarried, and wrote about 1500 letters to her daughter about Parisian society and the events of the day
- February 5, 1848 – Belle Starr born, American outlaw
- February 5, 1903 – Joan Whitney Payson born, American businesswoman and philanthropist, co-founder of NY Mets baseball franchise
- February 5, 1905 – Mirra Komaroysky born in Russia, fled to the U.S., studied effect of male unemployment in families and conflicts in women’s lives, wrote Women in the Modern World (1953), predating Betty Friedan by 10 years
- February 5, 1909 – Grażyna Bacewicz born, Polish composer-violinist; won gold medal at 1965 International Competition for Composers in Brussels for Violin Concerto No. 7
- February 5, 1914 – Hazel Smith born, Mississippi journalist, first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing (1954). Although a segregationist, she supported the rule of law, writing society must follow the law on integration, which led her to bankruptcy and extreme poverty
- February 5, 1919 – Mary Pickford with Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith launch United Artists
Mary Pickford on left, with director Frances Marion
- February 5, 1939 – Jane Bryant Quinn born, American financial journalist and author; Making the Most of Your Money; adviser on the development of Quicken Financial Planner
- February 5, 1947 – Mary L. Cleave born, American engineer and NASA astronaut; Associate Administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (2004-2007)
- February 5, 1959 – Jennifer M. Granholm born in Canada, American Democratic politician; Attorney General of Michigan (1999-2003) and Governor of Michigan (2003-2011)
- February 6, 1577 – Beatrice Cenci born, victim of ongoing incestuous assault by her father Francesco, who beat the rest of the family; she reports him to authorities, but they do nothing, so she, her mother and two brothers plot his murder, but carry it out so ineptly they are quickly arrested, tried, found guilty and all but the youngest son are executed, his entire inheritance going to the Pope’s family while he is condemned to life at forced labor. Beatrice became a heroine to Rome’s common people for her courage in reporting her father, seen as symbol of resistance against an arrogant aristocracy
Beatrice Cenci in prison, painted by Achille Leonardi - 19th century
- February 6, 1842 – Mary Rudge born, English chess master, first woman accepted as a member of the Bristol Chess Club; winner of first Women’s International Chess Congress (1897) ); in a simultaneous display, world champion Emmanuel Lasker concedes his unfinished game against her when he runs out of time because he would have lost against best play; her highest rating: 2146
- February 6, 1866 – Annie Warburton Goodrich born, American nurse and educator, chief nursing inspector for US Army hospitals, organized the US Army School of Nursing, first Dean of Yale School of Nursing
- February 6, 1887 – Florence Luscomb born, architect and reformer, first woman graduate from MIT (1909), gave 222 speeches for woman suffrage in 14 weeks, learned to drive and repair her party’s touring car, sold copies of “The Woman’s Journal,” outdoorswoman, joined ACLU in 1919, helped to derail anti-communism crusade in Massachusetts, NAACP official (1948), ardent Vietnam War opponent
- February 6, 1913 – Mary Leakey born, British paleoanthropologist, flint point authority, scientific illustrator, discoverer of fossils, including the first Proconsul africanus skull, also Australopithecus boisei, Homo habilis, and early human footprints, proving humans were bipedal 3.6 million years ago
- February 6, 1918 – The Representation of the People Act 1918 grants British women over the age of 30 the right to vote if they “were either a member or married to a member of the Local Government Register, a property owner, or a graduate voting in a University constituency.” Because over 700,000 British men were killed in WWI, this meant that the women who qualified under the act became 43% of the electorate
- February 6, 1937 – Kuma Elizabeth Ohi becomes the first Japanese American woman lawyer when she receives her degree from John Marshall Law School in Chicago IL
- February 6, 1942 – Sarah Brady born, American gun control activist
- February 6, 1987 – Justice Mary Gaudron becomes the first woman to be appointed to the High Court of Australia
- February 6, 2000 – Foreign Minister Tarja Halonen is elected as Finland’s first woman president
Obasanjo
- February 6, 2003 – The first International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation is sponsored by the United Nations, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the global movement Every Woman, Every Child; Stella Obasanjo, Nigerian First Lady and spokesperson for the campaign, announces the Zero Tolerance effort at the Inter-African Committee (IAC) Conference on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children
- February 7, 1102 – Matilda (also called Maude) born, Holy Roman Empress by marriage; designated by her father, King Henry I of England, as his heir after her brother, William Adelin, dies in the White Ship disaster in 1120; she will ultimately lose a war for the succession, termed ‘The Anarchy’ to her cousin Stephen of Blois
- February 7, 1867 – Laura Ingalls Wilder born, American author of Little House on the Prairie series
- February 7, 1907 – The ‘Mud March,’ the first large procession organized by National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) in the UK. Over 3,000 women representing more than 40 organizations, from textile workers to titled ladies, trudged through London’s wet, cold and very muddy streets from Hyde Park to Exeter Hall, for a public meeting advocating suffrage. NUWSS leader Millicent Fawcett said, “The London weather did its worst against us; mud, mud, mud, was its prominent feature, and it was known among us afterwards as the ‘mud march.'” In spite of the weather, thousands of spectators line the route, and parade coverage carried by newspapers and magazines all over Europe and in the U.S. By 1913, the UK’s last suffrage march had 40,000 participants
- February 7, 1918 – Ruth Sager born, scientist, University of Chicago graduate, worked on corn genetic research in plants, studied cancer research after 1975, became Harvard Medical School professor of cellular genetics and chief of Cancer Genetics Division
- February 7, 1950 – Karen Joy Fowler born, American author of scifi/fantasy/ literary fiction; The Jane Austen Book Club; 2010 World Fantasy Award for What I Didn’t See, and Other Stories
- February 7, 1963 – Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper born, American Naval officer and NASA astronaut; recipient of two Navy Commendation Medals
- February 7, 1969 – Diane Crump becomes the first woman jockey at a major U.S. racetrack, Hialeah
- February 7, 1979 – Tawakkol Abdel-Salam Karman born, Yemeni journalist and human rights activist; founder-leader of “Women Journalists Without Chains”; co-recipient of 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, the first Arab woman, first person from Yemen, and second-youngest Nobel Laureate
- February 7, 1983 – Elizabeth Dole sworn in as first woman Secretary of Transportation
- February 7, 1987 – National Girls & Women in Sports Day is founded in remembrance of Olympic volleyball player, Flo Hyman, who died at age 31 from a dime-sized weak spot in her aorta, not discovered until the autopsy after her sudden death; also celebrates the success of Title IX in expanding access to sports for girls and women, by the NGWSD coalition: Women’s Sports Foundation; National Women’s Law Center; The President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition; and girls inc.
- February 8, 1850 – Kate Chopin born, pseudonym of Katherine O’Flaherty, pioneering American feminist and lesbian writer; her novel, The Awakening, depicts women’s conflicts between marriage-motherhood and their own desires seriously
- February 8, 1879 – Maud Slye born, pathologist, received American Medical Association gold medal, American Radiological Society honor for cancer research. Developed new care and breeding regimens for lab mice – so devoted to her mice that she cared for them personally, buying their food with her own money when times were lean, and taking them to conferences with her. Her work was critical in establishing that genetics play a part in some forms of cancer. Also a historian of women in science.
- February 8, 1911 – Elizabeth Bishop born, writer and painter, Library of Congress Consultant in Poetry 1949-50, won Pulitzer Prize in 1956 for Poems: North & South/A Cold Spring; she struggled with depression, alcoholism and asthma; best-known work is Geography III
- February 8, 1920 – Swiss men vote against woman's suffrage. Swiss women did not get to vote in federal elections until 1971
- February 8, 1958 – Karine Chemla born, French historian; noted for research on Chinese mathematics and 19th century French geometry
- February 8, 1958 – Marina Silva born, Brazilian politician and environmentalist; Spokesperson of Sustainability Network since 2015; Senator from Acre (2008-2011); Minister of the Environment (2003-2008)
- February 8, 1986 – Oprah Winfrey becomes the first African American woman to host a nationally syndicated talk show
- February 9, 1819 – Lydia Estes Pinkham born, abolitionist and businesswoman, best known for her commercially successful “women’s tonic”
- February 9, 1849 – Laura Clay born, anti-slavery and woman’s rights advocate, president of Kentucky Woman Suffrage Association (1881) and Kentucky Equal Rights Association, popular lecturer for suffrage but states’ rights position led her to oppose 19th amendment in Tennessee in 1920. Her name was placed into nomination for U.S. presidency at 1920 Democratic National Convention
- February 9, 1854 – Arletta Jacobs born, Dutch physician, a leader of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance and an ardent pacifist, who went on a world speaking tour, meeting with feminists and pacifists around the world; first woman to officially attend a Dutch University and first woman physician in the Netherlands; a birth control advocate who set up the Netherlands’ first family planning centre, as a free clinic for poor women and prostitutes, also teaching hygiene, maternal care and childcare courses; advocated for social justice and labor rights, including breaks for women working 10 hour days on their feet in shops
- February 9, 1864 – Miina Härma born, Estonian woman composer and organist; Tuljak is one of her most popular pieces, with lyrics by K.F. Karlson
- February 9, 1865 – Mrs. Patrick Campbell born, notable English actor-manager, who made frequent appearances in plays by Shakespeare and Shaw – her sharp wit enlivened the letters she exchanged with Shaw
- February 9, 1874 – Amy Lowell born, American poet, posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926 for What’s A Clock
- February 9, 1911 – Bessie Stringfield born, “Motorcycle Queen of Miami”, 1st African-American woman solo rider across US, WWII US Army dispatch motorcycle rider
- February 9, 1941 – Sheila Kuehl born, teen actress, lawyer, gay rights activist, and politician; first openly gay legislator in the California State Assembly (1994-2000) and first woman named California Speaker pro Tempore; California State Senator (2000-2008); on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors since 2014
- February 9, 1944 – Alice Walker born, writer, first African-American woman to win Pulitzer Prize for fiction, for The Color Purple (1983)
- February 9, 1945 – Carol Wood born, American mathematician who researched mathematical logic, model-theoretic algebra and theory of deferentially closed fields; President of the Association for Women in Mathematics (1991-1993); served on board of trustees for the American Mathematical Society (2002-2007)
- February 9, 1947 – Carla Del Ponte born, prosecuting attorney and ambassador, Swiss attorney general (1994-1999); prosecutor for the International Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda (1999-2008); Switzerland’s Ambassador to Argentina (2008-2011)
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February 9, 1954 – Jo Duffy born, comic book editor and writer; noted for her work for DC Comics and Marvel Comics, and several graphic novels
- February 9, 1960 – Peggy A. Whitson born, American biochemist, and NASA astronaut; first woman NASA Chief of the Astronaut Office (2009-2012); first woman commander of the International Space Station; holds women’s record for number of days in space, a total of 665 days accrued
- February 10, 1842 – Agnes Mary Clerke born, Irish astronomer and author; wrote biographies of famous scientists for the 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica; A Popular History of Astronomy during the Nineteenth Century is her best known work
- February 10, 1870 – The first U.S. branch of the YWCA is founded in New York City, Philanthropist Grace Hoadley Dodge was the New York YWCA’s 1st president, and Mabel Cratty was 1st general secretary; they initiate typewriter and sewing machine instruction for women, and the first employment bureau for women
- February 10, 1881 – Pauline Brunius born, Swedish actress and director, managing director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre (1938-1948)
- February 10, 1883 – Edith Clarke born, orphaned at 12, she used her inheritance to study mathematics and astronomy at Vassar College, graduating in 1908. After a teaching job, and working as a “computer” for George Campbell at AT&T, in 1918 she went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the following year she becomes the first woman to earn an M.S. in electrical engineering from MIT. Unable to find work as an engineer because no one would hire a woman, she returns to “computing” but as a supervisor, and in her spare time, invents the Clarke Calculator which solves line equations involving hyperbolic functions ten times faster than previous methods – patents it in 1925. First woman to: deliver a paper at the American Institute of Electrical Engineers; win the AIEE Best National Paper Prize (1941); write an influential textbook in the field of power engineering, Circuit Analysis of A-C Power Systems; first woman professor of electrical engineering in the U.S.(1947), at University of Texas at Austin; first female Fellow of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers
- February 10, 1890 – Fanya Kaplan born in what is now Ukraine; arrested at 16 for taking part in a Socialist Revolutionaries’ bomb plot and sentenced to life at the katorga (hard-labor prison camps); in Siberia, she is stripped naked and severely caned, loses her sight (partially restored later); released after the February Revolution in 1917, but suffering from continuous headaches and bouts of blindness; becomes disillusioned with Lenin, considers him "a traitor to the Revolution" and attempts to assassinate him on August 30, 1918, wounding but not killing him; his health is impaired, leading to the series of strokes which eventually killed him in 1924. Her only statement: “My name is Fanya Kaplan. Today I shot Lenin. I did it on my own. I will not say from whom I obtained my revolver. I will give no details. I had resolved to kill Lenin long ago. I consider him a traitor to the Revolution. I was exiled to Akatui for participating in an assassination attempt against a Tsarist official in Kiev. I spent 11 years at hard labour. After the Revolution, I was freed. I favoured the Constituent Assembly and am still for it.” She is executed on September 3, 1918
- February 10, 1901 – Stella Adler born, acting coach; her family fled Russia in 1892 when Yiddish plays were prohibited; she debuted in 1922 in NY; developed 2-year curriculum at NY/L.A. Stella Adler Acting Studios, Marlin Brando and Robert De Nero are graduates
- February 10, 1907 – Grace Hamilton born, Atlanta Urban League Executive Director (1943-1960); first African-American in Deep South state government, elected to Georgia General Assembly 1966-1984; credited with Andrew Young’s 1980 victory in Georgia Congressional election
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February 10, 1927 – Leontyne Price born, American lirico spinto soprano, one of the first African Americans to be a leading artist at the Metropolitan Opera; Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964); won 19 Grammy Awards
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February 10, 1939 – Adrienne Clarkson born in Hong Kong, Canadian journalist and politician; Governor General of Canada (1999-2005)
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February 10, 1939 – Roberta Flack born, American singer-songwriter; holds solo artist record for Grammy Award for Record of the Year wins in consecutive years, 1973 and 1974
- February 10, 1944 – Frances Lappe Moore born, American vegetarian author, Diet for a Small Planet
- February 10, 1945 – Delma S. Arrigoitia born, Puerto Rican historian, author, biographer and lawyer; first person at the University of Puerto Rico to earn a masters in the field of history; after getting her doctorate at Fordham University, she helped develop UPR’s graduate school for history
- February 10, 1957 – Katherine Freese born, German astrophysicist, noted for work on theoretical cosmology at interface of particle physics and astrophysics, and dark matter; Director of Nordita, the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics since 2014
- February 11, 1802 – Lydia Maria Child born, abolitionist, women's rights and Native American rights activist, novelist, journalist, and opponent of American expansionism; remembered for her poem, “Over the River and Through the Wood” which became the lyrics for the song
- February 11, 1855 – Ellen Day Hale born, American Impressionist painter, printmaker and author of History of Art: A Study of the Lives of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, and Albrecht Dürer; mentored the next generation of New England women artists
Self-Portrait by Ellen Day Hale
- February 11, 1860 – Rachilde born as Marguerite Vallette-Eymery, French symbolist novelist and playwright, the most prominent literary woman associated with the French Decadent Movement; Monsieur Vénus
- February 11, 1869 – Else Lasker-Schüler born, Jewish German poet and playwright, one of the few women affiliated with the Expressionist movement; fled Nazi Germany; lived the rest of her life in Jerusalem
- February 11, 1872 – Hannah Mitchell born, English suffragette, socialist and pacifist. After WWII, elected to Manchester City Council and worked as a magistrate
- February 11, 1900 – Ellen J. Broe born, Danish nurse and administrator; after many years of education and experience abroad, she returned to Denmark and helped establish educational and training initiatives, including drafting minimum curriculum requirements for nursing students; member of the International Council of Nurses (CCN); received the 1961 Florence Nightingale Medal
- February 11, 1916 – Emma Goldman is arrested for lecturing on birth control
- February 11, 1925 – Virginia E. Johnson born, American psychologist of Masters and Johnson, pioneers in the study of human sexuality
- February 11, 1925 – Aki Kurose born, interned in 1942, American Friends Service Committee funded her college work, anti-war projects; treated cancer victims of Hiroshima, taught peace education in Seattle schools where she used Martin Luther King’s nonviolent example
- February 11, 1934 – Mary Quant born, English-Welsh fashion designer and 1960s Mod icon
- February 11, 1939 – Jane Yolen born, American author, sci-fi/fantasy; The Devil’s Arithmetic
- February 11, 1944 – Joy Williams born, American author and essayist; The Quick and the Dead, The Changeling
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- February 11, 1962 – Tammy Baldwin born, American politician; U.S. Senator (D-WI, since 2013); U.S. Representative (D-WI, 1999-2013); first woman elected to Congress from Wisconsin, and first openly gay U.S. Senator in history; member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus; outspoken advocate of single-payer, government-run universal healthcare
- February 11, 1975 – Margaret Thatcher is elected leader of the opposition Conservative Party, the first woman to head a major party in Britain
- February 11, 1989 – Reverend Barbara Harris becomes the first woman bishop of the American Episcopal Church and in Anglican Communion worldwide
- February 11, 2004 – The city of San Francisco, California begins issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in response to a directive from Mayor Gavin Newsom. The first license is for lesbian activists Del Martin, 83, and Phyllis Lyon, 79
- February 11, 2015 – In Turkey, a university student is murdered – stabbed, bludgeoned, and her body partially burned – after she uses pepper spray to resist an attempted rape by a bus driver, sparking nationwide protests and public outcry over violence against women
- February 12, 1554 – A year after claiming the throne of England for nine days, Lady Jane Grey is beheaded for treason
- February 12, 1831 – Myra Colby Bradwell born, editor, publisher and suffragist-political activist, founds the Chicago Legal News; after studying law in her husband’s law office, she denied admission to the Illinois bar because she’s a woman, and as a married woman, she is not legally allowed to enter into contacts; her case goes all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the justice's decision is 8-1 in favor of the state of Illinois; eventually granted a state license to practice law, after she works tirelessly to change laws that discriminate against women
- February 12, 1855 – Fannie Barrier Williams born, African American educator, political and women’s rights advocate
- February 12, 1870 – Utah Territorial Legislature passes a bill allowing women to vote
- February 12, 1881 – Anna Pavlova born, Russian prima ballerina, a principal artist of Imperial Russian Ballet, Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes
- February 12, 1884 – Alice Roosevelt Longworth born, American writer, eldest child of Theodore Roosevelt and his first wife, Alice Lee, who died two days after her birth; fiercely independent, non-conformist who smoked in public, rode unchaperoned in cars with men, stayed out late, placed bets with bookies, and kept a pet snake; noted for her autobiography, Crowded Hours, and her sharp wit
- February 12, 1884 – Marie Vassilieff born, Russian Empire painter who moved to Paris and became part of the Montparnasse artistic community
- February 12, 1909 – The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded. Charter members include Ida Wells-Barnett, Mary Church Terrell, Anna Garlin Spencer, and Mary White Ovington
- February 12, 1915 – Olivia Hooker born; after her application to join the U.S. Navy’s WAVES is rejected because she was black, she becomed the first African American woman to join the Coast Guard, becoming a SPAR, the Coast Guard’s Women’s Reserve during WWII (1945-1946), and a Yeoman, Second Class; after the war, she earned her degree as a psychologist, and was an associate professor at Fordham University; a founding member of the American Psychological Association’s Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Division
Olivia Hooker — older, and in her Coast Guard uniform during WWII
- February 12, 1926 – Joan Mitchell born, abstract expressionist painter, very large canvasses with animals, her poetry also included nature and animals subjects.
- February 12, 1934 – Anne Krueger born, American economist, former World Bank Chief Economist, 1st deputy managing director of International Monetary Fund, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies
- February 12, 1938 – Judy Blume born, award-winning American author of primarily Young Adult books; Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
- February 12, 1948 – Nancy Leftenant-Colon becomes the first black woman accepted in the regular U.S. Army nursing corps
- February 12, 1983 – Two hundred Pakistani women protest in Lahore against military dictator Zia-ul-Haq’s proposed Law of Evidence, which declares that the testimony of two women in a lawsuit is equal to the testimony of one man; the women, carrying only petitions to the Lahore High Court, are tear-gassed, baton-charged and thrown into jail, but are ultimately successful in repealing the Law of Evidence and the infamous Hudood Ordinance (bringing back stoning, lashing and amputation as punishments and making adultery and fornication criminal offences, with no distinction between rape and consensual sex, so rape victims jailed for fornication or adultery), in 2006 by the Women’s Protection Bill
- February 13, 1879 – Sarojini Naidu born, Indian author, poet, activist and politician, first woman President of Indian National Congress
- February 13, 1881 – Eleanor Farjeon born, English author, poet and biographer; noted for lyrics to the hymn “Morning Has Broken” and the Martin Pippin series for children
- February 13, 1891 – Kate Roberts born, one of the foremost Welsh-language authors, and a leading Welsh Nationalist; with her husband founded and ran the Welsh-language weekly Y Faner (The Banner - from 1935 to 1956)
- February 13, 1906 – Pauline Frederick born, journalist, 1st woman network radio correspondent (1939), 1st woman to moderate a presidential debate (1976)
- February 13, 1920 – Eileen Farrell born, American operatic soprano, at the Metropolitan Opera (1960-1966)
- February 13, 1926 – Fay Ajzenberg-Selove born, American nuclear physicist, known for experimental work on nuclear spectroscopy of light elements; recipient of the 2007 National Medal of Science
- February 13, 1943 – Elaine Pagels born, biblical scholar, author, Princeton professor of religion, known for work on Nag Hammadi manuscripts, won a National Book Award for The Ghostic Gospels; also wrote Adam, Eve and the Serpent: Sex and Politics in Early Christianity
- February 13, 1943 – 1st women to sign up for non-clerical duties enlist in Marine Corps Women’s Reserve at Camp Lejune, North Carolina, inducted into specialties ranging from cooks to transport personnel and mechanics. One-third of the women served in aviation-related fields. Almost 18,000 women went through training at Camp Lejune, but the entire women’s reserve was discharged in March 1946
- February 13, 1946 – Dame Janet V. Finch born, British sociologist and academic administrator; Vic Chancellor and Professor of Social Relations at Keele University; named DBE in 2008 Birthday Honours for services to social science
- February 13, 1964 – Ylva Johannson born, Swedish politician; Swedish Minister for Employment since 2014
- February 14, 1838 – Margaret E. Knight born, American inventor, including a machine to fold and glue paper bags with flat bottoms
- February 14, 1847 – Anna Howard Shaw born, woman suffrage leader, exceptionally fine orator, licensed as Methodist Protestant minister in 1880, graduated as M.D. in 1886, organizer with Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association 1888-92, lectured in every state, beloved president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (1904-15), awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for her work during World War I
- February 14, 1870 – Esther Hobart Morris, suffragist, begins tenure as first female U.S. Justice of the Peace. Appointed after previous Justice resigned in protest over Wyoming’s December 1869 passage of a women’s suffrage amendment to the state constitution!
- February 14, 1871 – Marion Mahoney Griffin born, American architect and artist, designer for Frank Lloyd Wright of murals, mosaics, furniture, leaded glass, and lighting fixtures, as his primary delineator, her drawings were instrumental in enhancing Wright's early reputation
- February 14, 1890 – Nina Hamnett born, Welsh artist and writer, expert on sea chanteys; in 1914, she became part of the Montparnasse artists’ group in Paris, living a flamboyantly unconventional, openly bisexual life, becoming known as the ‘Queen of Bohemia’ and returning to England in 1917, joining the Fitzrovia Bohemian set in London; published a tale of Bohemian life, Laughing Torso, in 1932
- February 14, 1891 – Katherine Stinson born; at 16, she started learning to fly, and became the 4th licensed U.S. woman pilot in 1912; first woman to “loop the loop” (1915); first woman to fly in Asia, drawing crowd of 25,000 to watch in Tokyo
- February 14, 1898 – Angela Bambace, union organizer; in 1956, she became the first Italian-American immigrant to serve as a Vice President of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union and a member of the General Executive Board
- February 14, 1904 – Jessie O’Connor born, journalist, reported textile strikes in North Carolina and coal strikes in Harland Co., Kentucky, helped those accused of communism, Vietnam anti-war opposition, and anti-Reagan protests
- February 14, 1914 – Nancy Love born, pilot, ferried planes to Canada during World War II as Commander of the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS) 1940-42, group later absorbed into WASPs
- February 14, 1920 – The League of Women Voters is founded in the U.S. by Carrie Chapman Catt, and Maude Wood Park becomes its first president
- February 14, 1941 – Donna Shalala born, Secretary of Health and Human Services (1993-2001), awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008; University of Miami President (2001-2015)
- February 14, 1952 – Sushma Swaraj born, Indian politician and lawyer, India’s second woman to be Minister of External Affairs (currently, since 2014); elected seven times as a Member of Parliament; noted as one of India’s “best loved” politicians by the Wall Street Journal
- February 14, 1955 – Carol Kalish born, American writer, editor and comic book executive; VP of New Product Development at marvel Comics (1981-1991); won the 1991 Inkpot Award; died at age 36 from a brain aneurysm
- February 14, 1956 – Katharina Fritsch born, German sculptor, noted for installations and sculptures which present familiar objects in jarring ways, including a true-to-scale sculpture of an elephant and a circle of black polyester rats standing over 8 feet high
‘Rattenkonig’ (Rat King) by Katharina Fritsch
- February 14, 1959 – Renée Fleming born, American opera singer, a lyric soprano; 4-time Grammy winner; awarded a National Medal of Arts in 2012
- February 14, 1973 – Annalisa Buffa born, Italian mathematician, known for numerical analysis and partial differential equations; Director at the Istituto di matematica applicata e tecnologie informatiche "E. Magenes" (IMATI) of the CNR (National Research Council) in Pavia (2013-2016)
- February 14, 1977 – Anna Erschler born in Russia, mathematician working in France on geometric group theory and probability theory; received the 2001 Möbius Prize
SOURCES:
www.nwhp.org/...
http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/important-dates-us-womens-history
www.historyplace.com/...
A Book of Days for the Literary Year, edited by Neal T. Jones (1984)
The Music Lover’s Birthday Book, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1987)
