_________________________________
- December 17, 1884 – Alison Uttley born as Alice Jane Taylor, prolific English author, mostly of children’s books, noted for her Little Grey Rabbit series, and a pioneering time slip children’s novel, A Traveller in Time
- December 17, 1928 – Marilyn Beck, American print journalist, syndicated columnist and author; her 1960 interview with serial kidnapper-rapist Caryl Chessman on death row at San Quentin shortly before his execution helped launch her early career; in 1970, she was named as Sheila Graham’s successor, covering Hollywood for the North American Newspaper Alliance; her column moved to the New York Times in 1972
- December 17, 1966 – Kristiina Ojuland born, Estonian politician; Estonian member of the European Parliament (2009-2014); Estonian Minister of Foreign Affairs (2002-2005)
___________________________
- December 18, 1941 – Joan Wallach Scott born, American historian and author, authority on modern French history, but has also made contributions in gender history and intellectual history; Professor Emerita in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Her 1986 foundational article “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis” was published in the American Historical Review, is one of the most widely read and cited articles by English-speaking historians in the field of gender history; her books include Gender and the Politics of History, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Men, and The Glassworkers of Carmaux: French Craftsmen and Political Action in a Nineteenth Century City. She is a founding editor of the journal History of the Present, and has been honored with several awards, including the American Historical Association’s Herbert Baxter Adams Prize, and the Hans Sigrist Award for Outstanding Research in Gender Studies
- December 18, 1970 – Divorce becomes legal in Italy
___________________________
- December 19, 1587 – Duchess Dorothea Sophia of Saxe-Altenburg born, elected Princess-Abbess of Quedlinburg, a position of prestige and influence, in 1618, with the approval of Holy Roman Emperor Matthias. Unlike her predecessors, Princess-Abbess Dorothea Sophia frequently had disagreements with John George I, Elector of Saxony. Dorothea Sophia prohibited her clergy to deny absolution to a person who made a genuine and contrite confession. However, if the same parishioner repeated the sin, they were to face increasingly severe chastisement and, finally, a referral to the consistory (a church disciplinary body). She proscribed that these parishioners would not be able to serve as godparents, nor be buried according to tradition or within consecrated ground. She also took measures to prevent secret engagements, declaring that every engagement had to be witnessed by three men and publicly announced
- December 19, 1831 – Bernice Pauahi Pākī born, became Ke Ali’i (Princess) Pauahi Bishop of the Royal Family of the Kingdom of Hawaii, well-known philanthropist. At her death, her estate was the largest private landownership in the Hawaiian Islands, about 9% of Hawaii’s total area. The revenues from her estate were designated to fund the Kamehameha Schools, established in 1887 according to the instructions in Pauahi’s will
- December 19, 1924 – Cicely Tyson born, American actress and civil rights activist; noted for Sounder (1972), The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974), and The Help (2011); 2016 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom
- December 19, 1928 – Eve Bunting born in Northern Ireland, prolific American author; noted for Coffin on a Case, which won the 1993 Edgar Award for Best Juvenile from the Mystery Writers of America, and for Terrible Things, her allegory for children about the Holocaust
- December 19, 1959 – Lisa Wilkinson born, Australian television journalist and presenter; host of the Network Ten news-current affairs and interview show The Project
- December 19, 1968 – Kristina Keneally born, Australian Labor politician; Senator for New South Wales since February, 2018; Premier of New South Wales, and Leader of the Labor Party in New South Wales (2009-2011); Member of the New South Wales Parliament for Heffron (2003-2012)
- December 19, 1972 – Alyssa Milano born, American actress and liberal activist; in the late 1980s, he spent six hours making friendship bracelets with Ryan White, a schoolboy ostracized for having AIDS, and appeared with him on the Phil Donahue Show, kissing him to show she would not catch the disease from casual contact with him; she had been a national spokesperson and U.S Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF, a supporter of PETA and the inaugural Ambassador for the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases, to which she has donated $250,000 USD to help mobilize resources toward controlling and eliminating these diseases, and has raised over $75,000 for Charity: water, a nonprofit which funds potable drinking water projects in developing nations. She has been an outspoken critic of the Trump Adminstration, has been active in get-out-the vote efforts, and helped relaunch the #MeToo Movement in 2017 with a post on her Twitter account encouraging survivors to post #metoo as a status update to show the prevalence of sexual harassment and sex crimes against women
- December 19, 2012 – Park Geun-hye is elected, the first woman president of South Korea
___________________________
- December 20, 1812 – Laura M. Hawley Thurston born, American poet and educator who used the pen name Viola; many of her poems were published in the Louisville Journal; after graduating from Brace’s Female Seminary, she taught in Connecticut and Pennsylvania before becoming the assistant to John Brace at her alma mater, until 1837, when she was hired as the principle of the Academy at New Albany, Indiana. She married in 1839, and resigned her position at the Academy, but continued to be a frequent contributor to western newspapers as “Viola,” and earned a growing reputation as an outstanding writer. But in 1842, she died at the age of 30
- December 20, 1929 – Polly Welts Kaufman born, American historian, teacher and activist for equality, noted for her many books on women’s history, including National Parks and the Woman’s Voice, Women Teachers On the Frontier, and Apron Full of Gold. After graduating from Brown University in 1951, she was asked in her interview for a high school teaching job in Rhode Island if she was married or going to be married, then told to look elsewhere for employment when she said “Yes.” Kaufman was a civil rights activist for school desegregation, and ran a program insuring that for the first time, over 100 public schools had books by African American authors and books on black history. She taught women’s history for over 20 years, at the University of Massachusetts Boston and at the University of Southern Maine
- December 20, 1933 – Jean Carnahan born, American Democratic politician; Senator from Missouri (2001-2002), appointed to fill her husband’s Senate seat after his death, the first woman U.S. Senator for Missouri
- December 20, 1951 – Kate Atkinson born, English author; her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, won the 1995 Whitbread First Novel Award and the Book of the Year Prize; Life After Life, winner of the 2013 Costa Novel Award, and A God in Ruins, which won the 2015 Costa Novel Award; also noted for her Jackson Brodie private detective series
- December 20, 1951 – Nuala O’Loan born, Baroness O’Loan; Northern Irish public servant and columnist; member of the House of Lords as of 2009; the first Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland (1999-2007); she is a columnist with The Irish Catholic weekly newspaper
- December 20, 1972 – Sarah Jones born, British Labour politician; Member of Parliament for Croydon Central since 2017; she was previously head of campaigns at the housing charity Shelter
___________________________
- December 21, 1879 – World premiere of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark – with a tacked-on “happy” ending
- December 21, 1884 – María Cadilla Colón de Martínez born, Puerto Rican writer, educator, women’s rights activist, and one of the first Puerto Rican women to earn a doctorate, from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, in 1933; taught history and literature at the University of Puerto Rico, and collected Puerto Rico’s folklore; wrote La Campesina de Puerto Rico (The Farmwoman of Puerto Rico) and Hitos de la Raza (Milestones of the Race)
- December 21, 1905 – Käte Fenchel born, German Jewish mathematician, noted for her work on Non-abelian groups; because of gender discrimination, she was not allowed at first to study pure mathematics at the University of Bern, and had to enroll in mathematics education classes. When Adolf Hitler came to power, she lost her job. Newly married to Werner Fenchel, another mathematician and also a Jew, she fled with him to Denmark, and when the Nazis invaded there, to Sweden. They returned to Denmark after the war
- December 21, 1960 – Sherry Rehman born, Pakistani politician and diplomat; since 2015, representative of Sindh in the Senate of Pakistan; Pakistani Ambassador to the U.S. (2011-2013); Member of the National Assembly of Pakistan (2007-2011)
___________________________
- December 22, 1944 – Dame Mary Archer born, British chemist and scientist, who specialized in solar power conversion; chair of the British National Energy Foundation (1988-2000); president of the UK Solar Energy Society (UK-ISES)
- December 22, 1952 – Sandra Kalniete born, Latvian politician and diplomat, Member of the European Parliament for Latvia since 2009; European Commissioner for Agriculture and Fisheries (2004); Latvian Minister of Foreign Affairs (2002-2004)
- December 22, 1957 – Carole James born, Canadian politician and public administrator; Deputy Premier of British Columbia since 2017; Member of the British Columbia Legislative Assembly for Victoria-Beacon Hill since 2005; Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia (2005-2011); Leader of the British Columbia New Democratic Party (2003-2011)
___________________________
- December 23, 1815 – The novel Emma by Jane Austen is first published
- December 23, 1900 – Marie Bell born as Marie-Jeanne Bellon, French classical tragedian, comic actor and stage director. She was the director of the Théâtre du Gymnase in Paris from 1962 until her death in 1985, and this theatre now bears her name. During the German Occupation of France (1940–1944), she participated in the French resistance as one of nine directors of the Front national du theatre
- December 23, 1943 – Queen Silvia of Sweden born; in 2011 she became the longest-serving queen in Swedish history; noted for establishing Mentor International in 1994 in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO) in the fields of international youth development and prevention of substance abuse. Co-founder of the World Childhood Foundation in 1999, inspired by her work as Patron of the first World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children held in Stockholm. She has also been involved in the Global Child Forum, and founded Stiftelsen Silviahemmet in 1996 as part of her efforts to help dementia sufferers. Silviahemmet offers nurses training and entire unit training certification, combined with broad-based training in practical dementia care for different categories of staff involved with providing care
- December 23, 1989 – Liis Koger born, Estonian painter and poet; she had her first major solo exhibition of her paintings in 2012 at Camponeschi in Rome, Italy
- December 23, 2014 – A three-judge panel of the federal Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a North Carolina abortion law is unconstitutional. The 2011 law required all women seeking abortion to first undergo ultrasounds, with the fetal image displayed and described to them in detail by a doctor. In the 37-page opinion, the panel wrote, “The First Amendment not only protects against prohibitions of speech, but also against regulations that compel speech.” The law “forces physicians to say things they otherwise would not say. Moreover, the statement compelled here is ideological; it conveys a particular opinion. The state freely admits that the purpose … is to convince women seeking abortions to change their minds or reassess their decisions.”
___________________________
- December 24, 1906 – Anna Neethling Pohl born, South African actress, film producer and the first woman broadcaster for the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC); she helped to found the Cape Afrikaans Theatrical Society, the volksteater in Pretoria and the National Drama Organisation; she also wrote under the pen names Niehausvor and Wynand du Preez, and translated seven of Shakespeare’s dramas into Afrikaans
- December 24, 1927 – Mary Higgins Clark born, American author of suspense and mystery novels
- December 24, 1943 – Tarja Halonen born, Finnish Social Democratic politician; first woman elected as President of Finland (2000-2012); Minister of Foreign Affairs (1995-2000); Minister of Justice (1990-1991); Member of Parliament for Helsinki (1979-2000)
- December 24, 1954 – Helen M. Jones born, British Labour politician; Chair of the Petitions Committee since 2015; Vice-Chamberlain of the Household (2009-2010); Member of Parliament for Warrington North since 1997
- December 24, 1961 – Mary Barra born, Chair and CEO of General Motors Company since 2014; the first woman CEO of a major global automaker; GM Executive Vice President of Global Product Development (2011-2014); Vice President in various departments (2008-2011)
- December 24, 1973 – Stephenie Meyer born, American novelist and film producer, best known for her Twilight fantasy vampire series
___________________________
- December 25, 1771 – Dorothy Wordsworth born, English author, poet and diarist; sister of William Wordsworth; noted for her diaries and Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland, published in 1874, and Grasmere Journal, published posthumously, which was taken from diaries of her life in the Lake District, where she lived with her brother and his family
- December 25, 1878 – Noël, Countess of Rothes, born, noted as a prolific philanthropist, especially for the Red Cross, as a nurse for wounded soldiers who turned her home into a hospital during WWI, and as a woman suffrage supporter. But she is best remembered for helping to maintain order and morale aboard her lifeboat during the 1912 Titanic disaster. She took a turn at the tiller, steering the boat clear of the sinking liner, then encouraged the other survivors, including a young woman whose husband went down with the ship, with her calm decisiveness and comforting words, while helping to row the lifeboat. She and the other survivors sang “Pull for the Shore” and “Lead Kindly Light” when the Carpathia, the ship which rescued them, was sighted. She then cared for the rescued women and children from steerage aboard the Carpathia, but shunned reporters who labeled her a heroine, giving the all credit to the cool head and skill of Seaman Jones, who was in charge of their lifeboat, and the other women aboard. She gave an inscribed silver pocket watch to Seaman Jones as thanks, and they wrote to each other for her Christmas Day birthday until her death in 1956
- December 25, 1886 – Malak Hifni Nasif born, Egyptian feminist and writer. After graduating in 1903 at the top of her class from the Saniyyah Teacher Training College, she taught in the Girls Section of the Abbas Primary School, but was forced to quit when she married in 1907 because of an Egyptian law forbidding married women work as teachers. She began writing under the pen name Bahithat al-Badiya, and soon found out that her husband already had a wife and children which he had told her nothing about before their marriage. Unable to get a divorce, she stayed on as his second wife until her death, but her writing became full of observations about the status of women in Egypt, and she corresponded extensively with women writers. She also wrote rebuttals to some of the writings of major male writers involved the growing nationalist political movement who wanted reforms for Egyptian men, but not for women. She was however opposed to unveiling, advocated by most of the other women’s rights activists of the time. She mostly wrote about making major reforms in the marital rights of Egyptian women, including ending polygamy, raising the minimum age for women to marry to at least age 16, and advocating for women to have the right to divorce their husbands. She was also concerned with better education for women, which she believed must not be in missionary schools, but in public schools controlled by Egyptians, which included the history and culture of Egypt in the curriculum
- December 25, 1889 – Lila Bell Wallace born, American magazine publisher and philanthropist; co-founder in 1922 of Reader’s Digest with her husband. She gave an estimated $60 million USD to various charities in her lifetime
- December 25, 1911 – Louise Bourgeois born in Paris, French-American artist best known for her large-scale sculpture and installation art, but she was also a painter and printmaker; her work is somewhat related to both Surrealism and Feminist art, but is not considered as fully part of either school
- December 25, 1921 – Zaib-un-Nissa Hamidullah (Bengali: জেবুন্নেসা হামিদুল্লাহ)born, Pakistani author, journalist, publisher, poet and feminist; a pioneer of Pakistani literature and journalism in English, and in women’s rights in Pakistan. Before independence, she was the first Muslim woman to write a column in an Indian newspaper. After independence, she became Pakistan’s first English-language woman columnist, writing for the Karachi daily newspaper Dawn, as well as a pioneering woman editor, publisher and political commentator when she founded Pakistan’s first glossy social magazine, the Mirror. She was also the first Pakistani woman included in press delegations sent to other countries. She was a founding member of the Pakistani Working Women’s Association and the Karachi branch of Business and Professional Women’s Foundation. In 1957, her magazine was banned for six months because of her outspoken editorials critizing the harsh regime of Major-General Iskander Mirza. After refusing to publicly apologise to get the ban lifted, she appealed to the Supreme Court of Pakistan, which found in her favour, holding the ban order illegal and unconstitutional, making her the first woman journalist to win a case in the Pakistani Supreme Court
- December 25, 1929 – Christine Miller Jones born, American Democratic politician and teacher; member of the Maryland House of Delegates and served on the Economic Matters Committee (1982-1994); chaired the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland (1991-1992); Assistant majority floor leader in 1994; died from injuries and burns a week after being rescued from a house fire in 2013
- December 25, 1935 – Jeanne Hopkins Lucas born, first African American woman elected to the North Carolina state Senate where she was originally appointed to finish out the term of Senator Ralph Hunt in 1993, and then was re-elected six times, serving in leadership positions like Majority Whip and Senior Chair of the Appropriations on Education and Higher Education Committee
- December 25, 1942 – Barbara Follett born, British Labour politician and literary agent-business manager; Parliamentary Undersecretary, Department for Communities and Local Government (2009-2010); Undersecretary of State for Equality (2007-2008); Undersecretary of State for Department for Work and Pensions (2007); Minister for the East of England, Regional Affairs (2007-2010); Member of Parliament for Stevenage (1997-2010); she left politics in 2010 to take over as CEO of the Follett Office, and literary agent for her husband, author Ken Follett
- December 25, 1945 – Eve Pollard born Evelyn Pollack, Lady Lloyd, English author, journalist and editor; second woman editor of a UK national newspaper, at the Sunday Mirror (1987-1991), and the Sunday Express (1991-1994); in 1985, launch editor-in-chief of ELLE magazine in the U.S.; published books include Jackie, a biography of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and her novels Splash, Best of Enemies and Unfinished Business
- December 25, 1948 – Kay S. Hymowitz born, American nonfiction author, and contributor to the Wall Street Journal; books include Liberation’s children: parents and kids in a postmodern age, and Marriage and caste in America: separate and unequal families in a post-marital age
- December 25, 1961 – Íngrid Betancourt born, Colombian Oxygen Green Party politician, and anti-corruption activist, with dual Columbian and French citizenship; Senator of Colombia (1998-2002); Member of the Chamber of Representatives of Colombia (1994-1998). She was kidnapped by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in February 2002 while campaigning for the Colombian presidency as a Green, and was rescued by Colombian security forces six and a half years later in July 2008, along with 14 other hostages (three U.S. citizens, and 11 Colombian policemen and soldiers)
___________________________
- December 26, 1526 – Rose Lok Hickham born, English memoirist and Protestant exile; she worked for her husband and one of her brothers, who were mercers (dealers in textiles, especially silk and other fine materials) in partnership together. Her father had been King Henry VIII’s mercer. But when Catholic Mary I came to the throne in 1553, Rose’s husband and brother were imprisoned as ‘religious heretics’ but were later released to house arrest, and eventually freed. The Hickhams went into exile in Antwerp, but Rose returned to England after Queen Mary’s death. At the age of 84, she wrote an account of her parents, and of the events during her life up to the year 1558
- December 26,1918 – Dame Olga Lopes-Seale born in Guyana, social and community volunteer in Barbados, and radio broadcaster in both countries; she worked as a broadcaster for Radio Demerara in Guyana, then for Barbados Rediffusion Services, and was actively involved with the Needy Children’s Fund in Barbados
- December 26, 1948 – Candy Crowley born, American news anchor and political correspondent; she began her career at the Washington DC radio station WASH-FM, became a news anchor for Mutual Broadcasting, and then the Associated Press White House Correspondent. In 1987, she moved to CNN, hosting Inside Politics, and became anchor of the Sunday morning political talk show, State of the Union (2010-2014). She was the moderator for the second debate between President Barak Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney in 2012. In 2015, Crowley became a fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics
- December 26, 1964 – Elizabeth Kostova born, American author, best known for her first novel, The Historian, a historical fantasy thriller, for which she won the 2005 Quill Award for Debut Author of the Year
___________________________
- December 27, 1797 – Manuela Sáenz born, Ecuadorian revolutionary; she left her husband to join Simón Bolívar, who led the fight against Spain to liberate the Spanish Empire in South America, now the republics of Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Panama. In choosing the revolution and its charismatic leader over her marriage to a rich husband, she said, “Marriage pledges one to nothing.”
- December 27, 1924 – Jean Bartik born, American computer scientist and engineer; one of the original programmers for the ENIAC computer; studied mathematics in school then began work at the University of Pennsylvania, first manually calculating ballistics trajectories, then using ENIAC to do so. She and her colleagues developed and codified many of the fundamentals of programming while working on the ENIAC, since it was the first computer of its kind. After her work on ENIAC, Bartik went on to work on BINAC and UNIVAC, and spent time at a variety of technical companies as a writer, manager, engineer and programmer
- December 27, 1927 – Audrey Wagner born, All-American Girls Professional Baseball League outfielder (1943-1949), and All Star player for the National Girls Baseball League of Chicago (1950-1953). Wagner later earned a Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Illinois, and became an obstetrician and gynecologist; she earned a private pilot’s license, and also served on the Crescent City city council in Northern California. She was killed in a small plane accident in Wyoming at the age of 56
- December 27, 1954 – Mandie Fletcher born, British television and film director; noted for directing series episodes and the 2016 film of Absolutely Fabulous
- December 27, 1966 – Marianne Elliott born, British theatre director; currently working with Elliott & Harper Productions since 2017; has worked at the National Theatre (2002-2017), where her production of Saint Joan won the 2008 Olivier Award for Best Revival, and at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester (1995-2005), where she also served as the theatre’s artistic director (1998-2005)
- December 27, 1971 – Savannah Guthrie born in Australia, Australian-American attorney and broadcast journalist; co-anchor on NBC’s Today show since 2012; NBC News White House correspondent (2008-2010), legal analyst and trial reporter (2007-2008)
- December 27, 1982 – Erin E. Stead born, American children’s book illustrator; winner of the 2011 Caldecott Medal for A Sick Day for Amos McGee
- December 27, 2007 – Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto is assassinated in Rawalpindi by a gunman, who fired three shots at her, then detonated a suicide vest packed with ball bearings, which also killed twenty people in the crowd
___________________________
- December 28, 1789 – Catharine Maria Sedgwick born, American novelist and short story writer who earned her living with her pen; noted for her spirited heroines, and her promotion of the idea of American mothers as custodians and transmitters of republican ideals, civic virtue and patriotism; advocated for the education of women, but only in order to make them better mothers and wives; her books include Hope Leslie, which urged religious tolerance and fair treatment for American Indians
- December 28, 1816 – Elizabeth Packard born, advocate for women’s rights and for those wrongly committed to insane asylums. In 1839, her parents pressured her into an arranged marriage with a minister 14 years her senior, and they had six children. In 1860, her husband had her committed to the Jacksonville Insane Asylum in Illinois because she disagreed with him on religion, how to raise their children and on the issue of slavery. She spent three years denying she was insane before her older children were able to pressure the authorities into releasing her, but her husband locked her in the nursery of their home and nailed the windows shut. She managed to get a letter out to her friend Sarah Haslett, who gave it to Judge Charles Starr. Judge Starr issued a writ of habeas corpus, and after hearing the couple’s conflicting statements, scheduled a jury trial to determine her sanity. At the trial of Packard v. Packard, her husband’s family members testified that she argued with him, and had tried to withdraw from his congregation. The State Hospital records stating that her condition was incurable were entered into evidence. Her lawyers called neighbors who were not members of his congregation as witnesses to testify that they had never seen her exhibit any signs of insanity. The last witness was Dr. Duncanson, a physician and theologian who had interviewed her, and testified that he did not agree with some of her religious beliefs, but “I do not call people insane because they differ with me. I pronounce her a sane woman and wish we had a nation of such women.” The jury returned a verdict in her favor after only seven minutes of deliberation, and the Judge issued an order that she should not be confined. But when Elizabeth Packard returned to the family home, she found that the night before her release, her husband had rented their home to another family, sold her furniture, and had taken her money, notes, wardrobe, and children, leaving the state for Boston MA. She appealed to both the Supreme Courts in Chicago and Boston, but had no legal recourse, as married women in these states at the time had no legal rights to their property or children. In 1869, after legislation was passed in Massachusetts granting married women property and child custody rights, her husband ceded custody of the children back to her. The Packards never divorced, but remained separated for the rest of their lives. She founded the Anti-Insane Asylum Society, and published several books, including Marital Power Exemplified, or Three Years Imprisonment for Religious Belief. In 1867, Illinois passed a Bill for the Protection of Personal Liberty which guaranteed that all people accused of insanity, including women accused by their husbands, had the right to a public hearing
- December 28, 1882 – Lili Elbe born as Einar Magnus Wegener, Danish painter, and a pioneering transgender woman, who underwent sex reassignment surgery in 1930, but died from complications caused by an attempted uterus transplant in 1931. In a letter to a friend months before her death, she wrote, “That I, Lili, am vital and have a right to life I have proved by living for 14 months. It may be said that 14 months is not much, but they seem to me like a whole and happy human life.”
- December 28, 1930 – Mariam A. Aleem born, Egyptian artist, academic, graphic designer and illustrator; at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Alexandria, she first taught in (1957-1968), then became head of, the Printmaking Department (1968-1975), and was promoted to head of the Design Department (1985-1990)
- December 28, 1943 – Dame Joan Ruddock born, Welsh British Labour politician; appointed as a Privy Councellor in 2010; Minister of State for Energy (2009-2010); MP for Lewisham Deptford (1987-2015)
- December 28, 1952 – Bridget Prentice born, British Labour politician; Member of the Labour Party Electoral Commission since 2014; MP for Lewisham East (1992-2010)
- December 28, 1954 – Gayle King born, American television journalist; co-anchor of CBS This Morning since 2012, and editor-at-large for O, The Oprah Magazine
___________________________
- December 29, 1943 – Molly Bang born, American illustrator; noted for children’s books illustrations, three-time runner-up for the Caldecott Medal
- December 29, 1958 – Nancy J. Currie born, American engineer, U.S. Army officer and flight instructor, NASA astronaut on four space shuttle missions, and academic in the Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering at Texas A&M
- December 29, 1959 – Paula Poundstone born, American stand-up comic, author, interviewer and commentator; (2017); author of There Is Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say and The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness; National Spokesperson for the American Library Association's "United for Libraries" since 2007
- December 29, 1987 – Juliana Huxtable born, American artist, performer, author and poet; co-founder of the new York-based nightlife project Shock Value; author of Mucus in My Pineal Gland, and co-author with Hannah Black of Life
___________________________
- December 30, 1913 – Elyne Mitchell born, Australian author; noted for her Silver Brumby series of children’s novels, and non-fiction books about Australia’s natural wonders and history, including: Speak to the Earth, Light Horse: The Story of Australia’s Mounted Troops, and Discoverers of the Snowy Mountains
- December 30, 1919 – The Middle Temple, one of the four Inns of Court in London, admits its first female bar student, Helena Normanton, after the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 receives Royal Assent and becomes law on December 23, 1919. The act amended all laws that prevented ‘persons’ by sex or marriage “from the exercise of any public function, or from being appointed to or holding any civil or judicial office or post, or from entering into or assuming or carrying on any civil profession or vocation, or for admission to any incorporated society….” It also said “a person shall not be exempted by sex or marriage from the liability to serve as a juror.” Women over age 30 who met minimum property requirements got the right to vote in 1918, but universal suffrage for women over age 21 didn’t come until 1928
- December 30, 1924 – Yvonne Brill born, Canadian-American propulsion engineer; developed rocket and jet propulsion systems, much of her work for NASA; awarded U.S. National Medal of Technology in 2010
- December 30, 1959 – Tracey Ullman, English-American television, stage, and film performer, screenwriter-producer-director, and author; The animated TV series, The Simpsons, was originally a spin-off from The Tracey Ullman Show
- December 30, 1969 – Kersti Kaljulaid born, Estonian politician and state official; since 1916, the first woman, and youngest elected, President of Estonia; Estonia’s representative in the European Court of Auditors (2004-2016)
- December 30, 1972 – Dita Indah Sari born, Indonesian trade unionist, civil and human rights activist; sentenced to 5 years in prison in 1996, charged with sedition. Amnesty International named her a prisoner of conscience. After her release in 1999 she was elected Chairperson by the Congress of the National Front for Indonesian Workers Struggle (FNPBI). She was awarded the 2001 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership. In 2002 she refused a $50,000 human rights award from Reebok to protest what she considers the company's poor record on the issue of workers rights. She is the leader of the PRD, a socialist party within the broader Papernas alliance
___________________________
- December 31, 1914 – Mary Logan Reddick born, African-American neuroembryologist; noted for work on embryo chick blastoderm, transplanting tissues, nerve cell differentiation and time-lapse microscopy; first woman biology instructor at Morehouse College in 1939; she was a full professor and chair of the biology department at the University of Atlanta (1953- 1966)
- December 31, 1919 – Recy Taylor born, black American sharecropper. When she was a 24-year-old wife and mother walking home from church with two friends on the evening of September 3, 1944, she was abducted and raped by six white men armed with guns and knives. After she reported the crime, white vigilantes set her porch on fire. The story was widely covered in the black press, and the NAACP sent Rosa Parks, later famed for refusing to give up her seat on the bus, as an investigator. In spite of a national outcry among African-Americans, including prominent black leaders like W.E.B. Dubois, two all-white-male grand juries refused to indict the men, even though one of them admitted to having sex with her, but claimed the men had paid her. In 2010, historian Danielle L. McGuire published her doctoral dissertation, “At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance — a New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power.” Her account of Recy Taylor’s story prompted the Alabama Legislature to issue an official apology to Mrs. Taylor in 2011, calling the failure to prosecute her attackers “morally abhorrent and repugnant.”
- December 31, 1919 – Carmen Contreras-Bozak born in Puerto Rico, first Hispanic American to serve in the U.S. Women’s Army Corp (WAC) and one of the first to go overseas, working as an interpreter and also transmitting encoded messages (1942-1945)
___________________________