Welcome to WOW2!
WOW2 is a twice-monthly sister blog to This Week in the War on Women. This edition covers women and events from March 17 through through March 31.
March is National Women’s History Month, and it’s crammed with historic events and scores of trailblazing women.
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
has posted, so be sure to go there next and catch up
on the latest dispatches from the frontlines:
www.dailykos.com/...
Note: All images and audios are below the person or event to which they refer
Late March – Women Trailblazers and Events in OUR History
- March 17, 1665 – Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre born, French harpsichord player and composer
- March 17, 1820 – Jean Ingelow born, English poet, novelist and children’s author; Mopsa the Fairy
- March 17, 1846 – Kate Greenaway born, English author and illustrator; sometimes used the pseudonym ‘Orris’
- March 17, 1849 – Cornelia M. Clapp born, notable American zoologist-marine biologist; earned the first and second Ph.B.s awarded to an American woman, at the University of Chicago; did studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole; as an instructor, whose students learned by doing and going out of doors, she influenced generations of students, and encouraged many young women to pursue careers in science; The Lateral Line System of Batrachus Tau
- March 17, 1870 – Wellesley College is incorporated by the Massachusetts legislature under its original name, Wellesley Female Seminary
- March 17, 1873 – Margaret Bondfield born, British Labour politician and feminist, first woman Cabinet minister in the United Kingdom, one of the first three women to be Labour Members of Parliament
- March 17, 1896 – Helen Lynd born, sociologist, studied life in Muncie, Indiana, for 18 months (1924-25) with husband Robert, their book “Middletown” was a best-seller tracing decline of community spirit as the town faced industrial growth. She taught at Sarah Lawrence College for almost 40 years
- March 17, 1899 – Radie Britain born, American pianist, author and composer; she won the 1930 Juilliard National Publication Prize
- March 17, 1902 – Alice Greenough born, carried mail at age 15, joined a Wild West show, became a professional rodeo rider in 1921 and earned about $12,000 yearly, toured Australia and Spain as well as the U.S.
- March 17, 1910 – Camp Fire Girls is established as the first interracial, non-sectarian American organization for girls, founded primarily by Luther Gulick and Charlotte Vetter Gulick, and Charlotte Alien Farnsworth
- March 17, 1933 – Myrlie Evers-Williams born, American journalist and activist, Chair of the NAACP (1995-1998); fought for 30 years to bring her husband’s killer to justice, after two all-white juries failed to convict; the first woman and first layperson to deliver the invocation at a presidential inauguration, for President Obama’s second inaugural
- March 17, 1933 – Penelope Lively born, British author of fiction for adults and children; winner of a Booker Prize and a Carnegie Medal
- March 17, 1937 – Galina Samsove born in the USSR, a principle dancer for the London Festival Ballet (1964-1973); noted for her performances of Prokofiev’s Cinderella
Galina Samsove with Desmond Kelly
- March 17, 1955 – Cynthia A. McKinney born, African American politician and activist; first black woman elected to represent Georgia in the U.S. House (D-GA 1993-1997 and 2005-2007); left the Democratic Party in 2008 to join the U.S. Green Party
- March 17, 1969 – Golda Meir, whose father moved their family to Milwaukee from the Ukraine when she was 8 years old, becomes the first female Prime Minister of Israel
- March 18, 1634 – Madame de La Fayette born, French author, wrote La Princesse de Clèves, one of the earliest French historical novels
- March 18, 1863 – Salisbury Bread Riot: 50 women, wives of Confederate soldiers, attack stores with axes for selling food at higher than government prices in Salisbury NC; the “Female Raid” nets the women 23 barrels of flour, and quantities of molasses and salt; as more married men go off to war, farm production drops, and women struggle to feed their families; the Confederacy having made little provision to assist the families is noted in newspaper coverage and editorials; no charges are filed against the women
- March 18, 1870 – Agnes Sime Baxter born, Canadian mathematician; in 1891, along with her bachelor’s degree from Dalhousie University, she received the Sir William Young Medal for highest standing in mathematics and mathematical physics; and completed her master’s degree in 1892, then held a fellowship at Cornell University (1892-1894); she became the second Canadian woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics
- March 18, 1891 – Margaret Culkin Banning born, besting-selling novelist, Catholic moralist, but advocate for women to have work of their own in addition to their family responsibilities; The First Woman, Women for Defense and The Women of the Family
- March 18, 1891 – Alice Cullen born, Scottish Labour Party MP; first Roman Catholic woman MP in the UK (1948-1969), for Glasgow Gorbals district
- March 18, 1904 – Margaret Tucker born, Aboriginal rights activist, a founding member of the Australian Aborigines’ League, founder of the United Council of Aboriginal and Islander Women; first indigenous appointee to the Victorian Aborigines Welfare Board; author of If Everybody Cared
- March 18, 1922 – The first Bat Mitzvah, for Judith Kaplan, daughter of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, is held in the U.S.
- March 18, 1933 – Unita Z. Blackwell born, civil rights activist and politician; project director for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) for voter registration drives; in 1965, she files suit, Blackwell v. Issaquena County Board of Education, after a principal suspended over 300 black children, including her son, for wearing SNCC pins which showed black and white hands clasping; in the suit, she also asked that the school district desegregate their schools per Brown v. Board of Education in 1954; the U.S. District Court rules that students wearing the pins was disruptive, but also rules the school district must desegregate; the ruling is upheld on appeal, leading to one of the first desegregation plans in Mississippi; in 1976, Blackwell is elected Mayor of Mayerville, Mississippi, and holds the office until 2001, first African American woman mayor in the state of Mississippi
- March 18, 1942 – Kathleen Collins born, African American playwright, civil rights activist, and pioneering director of films centered on black stories, including Losing Ground, the first feature-length drama directed by a black American woman, which won First Prize at the Figueroa International Film Festival in Portugal, but was unable to get large-scale exhibition in the U.S.; thanks to the efforts of her daughter, Collins’ Losing Ground was restored and re-issued in 2015, and had its first theatrical release at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in NY City
- March 18, 1950 – Linda Partridge born, British geneticist whose field is the biology and genetics of aging and age-related diseases; founding director of the Max Planck Institute for the Biology of Aging; a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1996, and elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2004
- March 18, 1964 – Bonnie Blair born, speed skater, one of the most successful Winter Olympians in U.S. history, 5-time gold medalist
- March 18, 1970 – Queen Latifah born as Dana Owens, American rapper, singer-songwriter, actress and producer, long considered one of hip-hops pioneering feminists, and recipient of two NAACP Image Awards
- March 18, 1979 – American feminist Kate Millet travels in Iran with Canadian journalist Sophie Keir, concerned for the rights of Iranian women, and representing the Committee for Artistic and Intellectual Freedom (an organization Millet helped found seven years earlier). Under the Ayatollah Khomeini, the government has abolished coeducational schools, revoked a law allowing wives to divorce their husbands, and warned working women to return to the veil in public or lose their jobs. “I was there as a friend,” Millet explains. “There was never a question of me organizing anything. I don’t even speak Farsi.” On March 8, a small rally planned for International Women’s Day at the gates of Tehran University unexpectedly attracts thousands of women, surging into the streets. More demonstrations follow, one filling Tehran’s Freedom Square with 20,000 women; some men try to attack the women with knives and acid, while other men link arms struggling to form a protective barrier. Iranian authorities arrest Millet and Keir on March 17, refusing to say what charges against them are, and holding them overnight under armed guard at the immigration center, awaiting deportation. On March 18, they are put on a plane, but not told where they were going. After takeoff, their passports are returned, but stamped as barred from entering Iran again. The flight’s destination turned out to be Paris. The largest women’s uprising in Iran’s history had been swiftly crushed by the post-revolutionary regime
- March 19, 1800 – Sara Miriam Peale born, American portrait painter, painted primarily politicians and military figures
- March 19, 1844 – Minna Canth born, Finnish feminist and social reform author and playwright; honored in Finland on her birthday since 2007, which is now the country’s Social Equality Day
- March 19, 1859 – Ellen Gates Starr born, American social reformer, co-founded Hull House with Jane Addams
- March 19, 1861 – Dame Nellie Melba born, Australian operatic soprano, teacher at the Melbourne Conservatorium, first Australian internationally recognized as a classical musician
- March 19, 1879 – Nancy Astor born in America, English politician; first woman in the British House of Commons
- March 19, 1881 – Edith Nourse Rogers born, American politician, first woman elected to the U.S. Congress from Massachusetts. In her 35 years in the House, she was an advocate for veterans, sponsoring the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 (AKA the G.I. Bill), the 1942 bill that created the Women’s Army Auxiliary (WAAC), and the 1943 bill that created the Women’s Army Corps (WAC)
- March 19, 1882 – Minnie Fisher Cunningham born, the first woman to get a pharmacy degree from the University of Texas Medical Branch; in 1901, she discovered that the less-educated men working next to her made twice the pay she did, and “that made a suffragist out of me.” She was a founding member of the Women’s National Democratic Club; active in politics at both the state level in Texas and the national level; a gifted coalition builder and effective speaker for suffrage, she also campaigned for legislation to lower infant mortality, to recognize married women’s citizenship as separate from their husband’s, for prison reform, and for enriched flour to help improve nutrition for the poor. She was a founding member and first executive secretary of the League of Women Voters, and served on the Democratic National Committee at the invitation of Eleanor Roosevelt – FDR nicknamed her ‘Minnie Fish’
- March 19, 1903 – Ruth Ella Moore born, American bacteriologist, first African-American woman to gain a PhD in a natural science; Howard University head of the Department of Bacteriology; worked on tuberculosis, immunology, and African-American blood types
- March 19, 1907 – Elizabeth Maconchy born, English composer of Irish heritage
- March 19, 1930 – White women win voting rights in South Africa, after a campaign originally started by women reformers crusading against alcohol
- March 19, 1930 – Lorraine Hansberry born, influential American playwright; A Raisin in the Sun was the first play by a black woman to be produced on Broadway, directed by Lloyd Richards, the first black director to have a show on Broadway
- March 19, 1932 – Elena Poniatowska born in France, Mexican author and journalist; first woman to win Mexico’s Premio Nacional de Periodismo (National Journalism Prize), and numerous other awards, including the 2006 International Women's Media Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award
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March 19, 1941 – Nora Ephron born, American author, journalist, director, producer, and screenwriter; Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, and Sleepless in Seattle
- March 19, 1946 – Nederlandse Vereniging voor Seksuele Hervorming (NVSH), the Dutch Society for Sexual Reform, is founded, a birth control organization which becomes the only source of condoms in the Netherlands. It gains 220,000 members and runs over 60 birth control clinics at its height. When contraceptives become legal in the country in 1970, the society’s membership drops to only a few hundred by 2008
- March 19, 1952 – Lillian Hellman sends her letter to the U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities in which she refuses to testify against friends and associates, saying “I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.”
- March 19, 1954 – Jill Abramson born, author, journalist, first woman to be Executive Editor of the New York Times
- March 19, 1966 – Jodi Picoult born, American author and feminist; advocate for literary gender parity, and advisory board member of Vida: Women in the Literary Arts; also campaigns against the death penalty; co-founder of the Trumbull Hall Troupe (theatre for kids); My Sister's Keeper, The Tenth Circle, Change of Heart
- March 19, 2008 – Certified Nurses Day is created by a collaboration of the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) and the American Nurses Association (ANA); now an official National Day by Congressional proclamation
- March 20, 1612 – Anne Bradstreet born in England, American Puritan poet, the first writer in the British North American Colonies to be published; she had a better education than most women of the time, and became a well-read scholar, but met criticism for her writing (especially after her brother-in-law sent her work to be published without her knowledge) as being an unsuitable occupation for women; Puritan ideology declares women vastly inferior to men
- March 20, 1845 – Lucy Myers Wright Mitchell born, American author and art historian, two-volume A History of Ancient Sculpture
- March 20, 1852 – Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, published, and becomes the best-selling novel of the 19th century
- March 20, 1879 – Maud Menten born, Canadian physician and biochemist, known for the Michaelis-Menten equation
- March 20, 1894 – Amalie S. Colquhoun born, Australian landscape and portrait painter, large-scale stained glass designer; taught at the Working Men’s College in Melbourne and the Melbourne Technical College; finalist for the 1949 Archibald Prize
View Through the Boathouse, by Amalie S. Colquhoun
- March 20, 1900 – Amelia Chopitea Villa born, Bolivia's first woman physician and its first graduate in the field of pediatrics, becoming a surgeon specializing in gynecology and pediatrics; represented Bolivia at the 1929 Congress of the Association internationale des femmes-médecins (Medical Women's International Association) in Paris; her sister Ella is Bolivia’s second woman doctor
- March 20, 1915 – ‘Sister’ Rosetta Tharpe born, American singer-songwriter -guitarist with cross-over appeal in gospel, jazz, blues and pop, “the original soul sister”
- March 20, 1918 – Marian McPartland born in England, English-American jazz pianist, composer and founder of Halcyon Records; honored in 2004 with a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award
- March 20, 1920 – Rosemary Timperley born, British author, best known for her ghost stories
- March 20, 1920 – Pamela Harriman born, devoted herself to Democratic Party politics and fund raising after death of husband Averell; first woman to be named U.S. Ambassador to France (1993)
- March 20, 1935 – Bettye Washington Greene born, first African American woman chemist to work as professional at the Dow Chemical Company, researching latex and polymers; there are several patents under her name
- March 20, 1937 – Lois Lowry born, American author of over 30 children’s books; 1990 Newbery Medal for Number the Stars and 1994 Newbery Medal for The Giver
- March 20, 1940 – Mary Ellen Mark born, American photographer and photojournalist; noted for her published collections, Streetwise and Ward 81; honored with the World Photography Organisation’s Outstanding Contribution Photography Award
Ram Prakash Singh and elephant Shyama, Great Golden Circus, Ahmedabad, India — photo by Mary Ellen Mark
- March 20, 1954 – Liana Kanelli born, Greek journalist, columnist, TV news anchor and Communist Party politician; Greek Parliament Member for Athens since 2000
- March 20, 1955 – Nina Kiriki Hoffman born, American scifi-fantasy-horror author; The Thread That Binds the Bones won the 1993 Bram Stoker Award for First Novel; her short story “Trophy Wives” won the 2008 Nebula Award for Best Short Story
- March 20, 1956 – Catherine M. Ashton born, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, British Labour politician; First Vice President of the European Commission (2010-2014); inaugural High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (2009-2014); European Commissioner for Trade (2008-2009); Leader of the House of Lords/Lord President of the Council (2007-2008)
- March 20, 1959 – Mary Roach born, American non-fiction and popular science author of such titles as Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War; Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex; Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
- March 20, 1961 – Sara Wheeler born, British travel author and biographer; noted for accounts of the polar regions; first woman writer-in residence for the U.S. National Science Foundation at the South Pole; Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica is her account of spending 7 months in Antarctica; wrote biography of Polar explorer Apsley Cherry-Gerrard, member of the ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition; elected as a Royal Society of Literature Fellow (1999)
- March 20, 1985 – Libby Riddles wins the 1,135-mile Anchorage-to-Nome dog race becoming the first woman to win the Iditarod
- March 20, 1991 – U.S. Supreme Court rules unanimously that employers cannot exclude women from jobs where exposure to toxic chemicals could potentially damage a fetus
- March 21, 1474 – Angela Merici born, Italian founder of the secular Company of Saint Ursula (‘Angelines’) in 1535, consecrated Catholic women dedicated to the education of girls and care of the sick and needy; canonized as a Roman Catholic saint in 1807
- March 21, 1752 – Mary Dixon Kies born, American inventor, who receives one of the first patents given to a woman in May, 1809, for a new technique of weaving straw with silk and thread to make hats, which is signed by President James Madison
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March 21, 1857 – Alice Henry born, Australian suffragist, journalist and trade unionist who becomes a leader in the American Women's Trade Union League
- March 21, 1868 – The Sorosis Club for Professional Women is formed in New York City by Jane Cunningham Crolyn after she was not allowed to join the male-only New York Press Club; the new organization is open to professional and wealthy women, not to women are wage-earners
- March 21, 1887 – Clarice Beckett born, Australian Tonalist painter
Untitled painting by Clarice Beckett
- March 21, 1897 – Martha Foley born, creates “Story” magazine in 1932 with her husband Whit Burnett; also edits annual, “The Best American Short Stories” (1941-77), which includes entries by Eudora Welty, Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike and other well-known writers
- March 21, 1905 – Phyllis McGinley born, American poet and author; recipient of 1961 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry
- March 21, 1942 – Amina Claudine Myers, American singer-songwriter, composer and arranger
- March 21, 1943 – Cornelia Fort born, pilot in the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, becomes first American female pilot to die during active duty
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March 21, 1962 – Rosie O’Donnell born, American comedian, author, TV producer, and lesbian rights activist; host of The Rosie O’Donnell Show (1996-2002), which won five Emmys for Outstanding Talk Show
- March 21, 1986 – Debi Thomas becomes first African American woman to win the World Figure Skating Championship
- March 22, 1855 – Dorothy Tennant born, Lady Stanley, British Victorian neoclassicist painter and author of several books, some which she also illustrated; noted for London Street Arabs (1890); married to explorer Henry Morton Stanley, and edited his autobiography
Street Arabs at Play (1890) by Dorothy Tennant
- March 22, 1882 – The Edmunds Anti-Polygamy Act of 1882 is signed into law by President Chester Arthur, making polygamy a felony; also prohibits "bigamous" or "unlawful cohabitation" making them misdemeanors
- March 22, 1883 – Jessie Sampter born, American educator, poet and activist; leading educator for Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America; advocate for pacifism, Zionism, social justice and assisting Yemenite Jews, especially women and girls
- March 22, 1899 – Ruth Page born, American ballerina and choreographer, began ballet lessons very late, at age 20 in 1919; first American to be accepted into the Ballets Russes; noted choreographer of Frankie and Johnny (1938), The Merry Widow, and Billy Sunday; combined opera and ballet in a school for young dancers
- March 22, 1901 – Greta Kempton born in Austria, American painter; official White House portraits of Bess and Harry Truman
Bess Truman, by Greta Kempton
- March 22, 1902 – Madeleine Milhaud born, French opera librettist and actress; fled France with her husband and children during WWII when the Germans invaded, and stayed in America until 1946; lives to age 105
- March 22, 1909 – Gabrielle Roy born, highly regarded French Canadian author and novelist; Bonheur d'occasion (published in English as The Tin Flute) won the 1947 Prix Femina, and the Royal Society of Canada’s Lorne Pierce Medal; other translated works include Streets of Riches, The Fragile Lights of Earth, and Children of My Heart
- March 22, 1912 – Agnes B. Martin born, in Canada, American abstract expressionist painter; awarded a 1998 National Medal of Arts
Agnes Martin, by Mildred Tolbert
- March 22, 1920 – Dame Fanny Waterman born, British pianist; founder, chair and Artistic Director of the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition
- March 22, 1920 – Katsuko Saruhashi born, Japanese geochemist, pioneer in measuring carbon dioxide levels in seawater, showing the evidence in seawater and the atmosphere of the dangers of radioactive fallout; after graduating from the Imperial Women’s College of Science in 1943, she went to work in the Geochemical Laboratory of the Meteorological Research Institute; in 1950, she began studying CO2 levels in seawater, having to develop her own measuring techniques for this new study; after the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests in 1954, the Japanese government asked the Geochemical Laboratory to analyze and monitor radioactivity in seawater and rainfall; Sarushashi's study showed the radioactivity reached Japan in 18 months, and traces spread throughout the Pacific by 1969; her research was some of the earliest showing that the effects of fallout could spread over the entire globe, not just the immediate area of the blast; by the 1970s, she was studying acid rain
- March 22, 1934 – Sheila Morag Clark Cameron CBE QC born, Dean of the Arches and Official Principal of the Arches Court of Canterbury (the senior ecclesiastical judge of the Church of England, 2000-2009), since 1983, Vicar-General of Canterbury
- March 22, 1946 – Rivka Golani born, Israeli viola player and composer
- March 22, 1963 – Deborah Bull born, English ballet dancer, article author and broadcaster; founder of the Artists’ Development Initiative, which opens resources and expertise of the Royal Opera House to small-scale companies and independent artists; Creative Director of ROH2 at the Royal Opera House (2002-2008); promoted to Creative Director of the Royal Opera House (2008-2012)
- March 22, 1966 – Pia Cayetano born, Filipino lawyer and politician; the youngest woman elected to the Senate in the Philippines (2004-2016); advocate for the rights of women and children; noted for pushing passage of the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012; serving as a Representative and as Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Philippines, since 2016
- March 22, 1972 – U.S. Congress sends the Equal Rights Amendment to the states for ratification; it is ratified by 35 states, but falls three states short of the required 2/3 majority in order to be ratified
- March 22, 2011 – Former President of Israel Moshe Katsav is sentenced to seven years in prison, two years probation and payment of compensation to his victims on charges of rape, indecent assault, sexual harassment and obstruction of justice. President Shimon Peres says "this is a sad day but everyone is equal before the law"
- March 23, 1838 – Marie Adam-Doerrer born, Swiss women's rights activist and unionist; trained as a goldsmith but working more often as a washerwoman, she joins the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland after losing her savings in a bank crash; co-founder of the Bernese Women Workers' Association (Arbeiterinnenverein), and the Bernese Women Day Laborers' Association (Tagelöhnerinnenverein)
- March 23, 1842 – Susan Jane Cunningham born, American mathematician and astronomer; one of Maria Mitchell’s students in mathematics and astronomy at Vassar College, she is instrumental in the founding of Swarthmore College, becoming the first professor of its mathematics and astronomy departments, from 1869 until she retired in 1906, and Chair of the Mathematics Department (1888-1906); one of the first six women to join the New York Mathematical Society; Swarthmore’s Cunningham Observatory, now the Cunningham Building, is named in her honor
- March 23, 1857 – Fannie Farmer born, author of a famous cookbook, The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook, which for the first time included specific ingredient measurements that would become standardized cooking practice
- March 23, 1882 – Amalie ‘Emmy’ Noether born, German-Jewish mathematician, made landmark contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics. Noether’s Theorem explains connection between symmetry and conservation laws. Completed her dissertation in 1907, but women were excluded from academic positions, so she worked for 7 years without pay at the Mathematical Institute of Erlangen. In 1915, David Hilbert invited her to join the University of Göttingen world-renowned mathematics department, but the philosophical faculty objected, and she spent 4 years lecturing under Hilbert's name. Her habilitation was finally approved in 1919, then the rank of Privatdozent. In 1933, when Nazi government dismissed Jews from university positions, she moved to the U.S. to take a position at Bryn Mawr College, funded by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. Also lectured at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, but said she was not welcomed at the "men's university, where nothing female is admitted."
- March 23, 1895 – Encarnacion A. Alzona born, pioneering Filipino historian, scholar and suffragist; first woman in the Philippines to earn a Ph.D.; Even though the Philippines was an American colony when U.S. women won the right to vote in 1920, Filipino women were not accorded the vote; Alzona became a leader in the struggle for women’s suffrage, helping to make it a goal of the Philippine Association of University Women when she became the organization’s president in 1928; author of A History of Education in the Philippines 1565-1930, The Filipino Woman: Her Social, Economic and Political Status (1565-1933) and several biographies of notable Filipino women; in 1985, she was honored with the rank of National Scientist of the Philippines, the nation’s highest award to its scientists, for her achievements in the fields of social science and history
- March 23, 1897 – Margaret Farrar born, joined the New York World newspaper in 1921 with responsibility to make the crossword puzzle mistake-free; also edited Simon & Schuster puzzle books for 60 years, became crossword editor for the New York Times in February 1942
- March 23, 1905 – Joan Crawford born, legendary film star, from 1928’s “Our Dancing Daughters,” to “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” in 1962; was Pepsi-Cola’s spokesperson, and first woman appointed to Pepsi-Cola’s board of directors (1959-73), when her husband, board chair Alfred Steele, died
- March 23, 1908 – Dominique De Menil born, collector of modern art, medieval art and tribal artifacts, escaped Paris with her children and settled in Houston around 1942; strong supporter of civil rights, created Carter-Menil Human Rights Foundation with former President Jimmy Carter
Dominique De Menil preparing a Max Ernst exhibition
- March 23, 1912 – Eleanor F. Cameron born in Canada, Canadian-American children’s author; The Court of the Stone Children won the 1974 National Book Award for Children’s Literature
- March 23, 1917 – Virginia Woolf establishes the Hogarth Press with her husband, Leonard Woolf — early publisher of translations of Freud and Russian authors like Dostoyevsky
- March 23, 1918 – Helene Hale born, Hawaii politician, first woman in Hawaii elected as an Executive Officer (forerunner of mayor); at age 82, she won a seat as a Democrat in the Hawaii House of Representatives, and served six years representing the 4th district in the legislature before retiring in 2006 following a stroke. Ralph Bunche was her uncle
- March 23, 1924 – Bette Nesmith Graham born, invented Liquid Paper correction fluid which became an office staple, created two foundations to support women’s businesses and art
- March 23, 1924 – Olga Kennard born, British scientist in the field of crystallography; Director of the Cambridge Chrystallographic Date Centre (1965-1997); Fellow of the Royal Society since 1987
- March 23, 1947 – Elizabeth Ann Scarborough born, American scifi/fantasy author; The Healer’s War won a 1989 Nebula Ward; co-author with Anne McCaffrey of the Petaybee, Acorna and Barque Cat series
- March 23, 1948 – Marie Malavoy born, French Canadian politician; Member of the National Assembly of Quebec (1994-1998 and 2006-2014); Minister of Education (2012-2014)
- March 23, 2011 – U.S. Ambassador to the UN Eileen Chamberlain calls on the UN Human Rights Council to fight discrimination against gays and lesbians: “Human rights are the inalienable right of every person, no matter who they are or who they love”
- March 24, 1820 – Fanny Crosby born, although blinded in infancy, she becomes an American missionary, poet, author, lyricist and composer, who creates over 8,000 hymns and gospel songs including “Blessed Assurance”; one of the first women to speak before Congress, reciting a poem in support of education for the blind in 1843
- March 24, 1826 – Matilda Joslyn Gage born, suffragist, women’s rights and Native American rights activist, historian, founding member of the National Woman Suffrage Association
- March 24, 1827 – Candace Thurber Wheeler, American interior and textile designer, instrumental in opening interior design to women, development of art classes for women, and the formation of Decorative Art societies across the country
- March 24, 1890 – Agnes Macphail born, Canadian progressive politician, newspaper correspondent and columnist; first woman to be elected to the Canadian House of Commons (1921-1940); a strong voice for rural issues, penal reform for women prisoners, senior pensions and workers’ rights; sponsor of the first equal-pay legislation in Ontario; advocate for more women in politics: "Most women think politics aren't lady-like. Well, I'm no lady. I'm a human being."
- March 24, 1897 – Linda Chase born, principal dancer, danced in American Ballet Theatre roles of Sleeping Beauty and Giselle (1937-38), performed with Anthony Tutor and Agnes De Mille, joined Ballet Theater in 1940 which became the American Ballet Theatre
- March 24, 1899 – Dorothy Constance Stratton born, educator and director of SPARS, the United States Coast Guard Women’s Reserve during WWII
- March 24, 1905 – Pura Santillan-Castrence born, essayist, newspaper columnist, feminist and diplomat, one of the first women in the Philippines to gain prominence writing in the English language; served as Chief of the Translation Section of the Philippine Ministry of Foreign Affairs during the WWII Japanese occupation of the country; after the war, she worked in the Philippine embassy in Bonn, West Germany, and then became the Assistant Secretary for Cultural Affairs
- March 24, 1912 – Dorothy Height born, served over 40 years as President of the National Council of Negro Women, honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1994) and the Congressional Gold Medal (2004)
- March 24, 1920 – Mary Stolz born, American author, primarily of books for children and young adults; 1962 and 1966 Newbery Honors for Belling the Tiger and The Noonday Friends
- March 24, 1921 – The 1921 Women's Olympiad begins in Monte Carlo, first international women's sports event. Since women were being excluded from international sports competitions, Alice Milliat of France founded the Federation Feminine Sportive de France in 1917. She went on to organize the 1921 games; five nations took part – France, Great Britain, Italy, Norway and Switzerland, competing in ten track and field events, and several other sports. The IOC objected to FSFI’s use of the word ‘Olympiad’ in the title of their championships. FSFI agreed to drop the word in exchange for the IOC holding ten events for women in the 1928 Olympic Games, but the IOC only included five women’s events in the 1928 games
- March 24, 1922 – Onna White born, dancer and choreographer, nominated for 8 Tony Awards, and recipient of an Academy Honorary Award for choreography in the 1968 film version of the musical Oliver!
- March 24, 1935 – Carol Kaye born, American bass player, one of the most prolific bass guitarists in history with an estimated 10,000 recording sessions
- March 24, 1949 – Tabitha King born, American sci-fi/fantasy/horror author and literacy advocate
- March 24, 1953 – Anita L. Allen born, African American Professor of Law and Vice Provost for Faculty at University of Pennsylvania Law School; senior fellow in former bioethics department of UP’s Perelman School of Medicine; collaborating faculty member in Africana studies and women’s studies; served on 2010 Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues
- March 25, 1347 – Catherine of Siena born, Italian tertiary (associate) of the Dominican Order, Scholastic philosopher, theologian and mystic; canonized in 1461, declared the patron saint of Rome in 1866; one of the most influential writers in Catholicism, the first of only four women to be declared a doctor of the Church
- March 25, 1855 – Olive Schreiner born, South African author, feminist, and anti-war campaigner; noted for her novels, The Story of an African Farm and From Man to Man or Perhaps Only (published posthumously, with notes on her uncompleted ending)
- March 25, 1881 – Mary G. Webb born, English Romantic novelist and poet, most of her is set in Shropshire, where she was born and grew up
- March 25, 1911 – Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City, the kills 146 garment workers, 123 of them women and girls. On the 8th through the 10th floors of the building, the doors to the exits and stairwells had been locked by the employers to prevent workers taking unauthorized breaks or stealing. Frances Perkins, who would become the first woman appointed to the U.S. Cabinet as Secretary of Labor, was a witness: “People had just begun to jump as we got there. They had been holding on until that time, standing in the windowsills, being crowded by other behind them, the fire pressing closer and closer, the smoke closer and closer. They began to jump. The window was too crowded and they would jump and they hit the sidewalk. Every one of them was killed, everybody who jumped was killed.” Already an advocate for women’s rights and ending child labor, Perkins dedicated herself from that day forward to the enacting of expanded factory investigations, reducing the work week for women to 48 hours and championing minimum wage and unemployment insurance laws. She works tirelessly to put an end to child labor and institute safety regulations for adult workers
- March 25, 1920 – Usha Mehta born, Indian freedom fighter and follower of Gandhi, noted for organizing the Congress Radio, and underground radio station, which moved constantly during the Quit India Movement in 1942; she spoke the first words broadcast: "This is the Congress radio calling on [a wavelength of] 42.34 meters from somewhere in India." The Indian Government conferred the Padma Vibhushan on her in 1998, the nation’s second-highest civilian award
- March 25, 1925 – Flannery O’Connor born, American author, won the 1972 National Book Award for Fiction for her short story collection
- March 25, 1932 – Penelope Gilliatt born, British author, screenwriter, and critic
- March 25, 1934 – Gloria Steinem born, American journalist, feminist and women’s rights activist: founding editor of Ms. Magazine, helped found National Women’s Political Caucus, the Women’s Action Alliance, and the Coalition of Labor Union Women
- March 25, 1939 – Toni Cade Bambara born, challenged masculine assumptions in black radical discourse of the Sixties, her short fiction “Gorilla, My Love” (1972) won the Black Rose Award, and “The Salt Eaters” (1981) won the Langston Hughes Society Award
- March 25, 1939 – D.C. (Dorothy) Fontana born, American TV script writer, story editor and author, notable for her work on original Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation, but also wrote episodes of several TV Westerns, including Bonanza and The Big Valley
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March 25, 1942 – Aretha Franklin born, American singer-songwriter and pianist, one of the best selling female artists of all time (over 75 million records), recipient of 18 Grammy Awards, inductee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the UK Music Hall of Fame and the GMA Gospel Music Hall of Fame
- March 25, 1949 – Lillian Elaine Fishburne born, first African American woman to hold the rank of Rear Admiral in the United States Navy
- March 25, 1953 – Vesna Pusić born, Croatian sociologist and politician; President of the Croatian People’s Party (2000-2008 and 2013-2016); First Deputy Prime Minister of Croatia (2012-2016), Minister of Foreign and European Affairs (2011-2016); advocate for women’s and LGBT rights; Croatia nominated her as the official Croatian candidate for UN Secretary-General in 2016, but she withdrew her nomination after receiving 11 ‘discourage’ votes in the first informal straw poll of the 15-member UN Security Council; all nine of the UN Secretaries-General to date have been men
- March 25, 1958 – Lorna Brown born, Canadian artist, former director and curator of Artspeak, an artist-run centre in Vancouver, and author of essays, reviews and exhibition catalogs
- March 25, 1958 – Susie Bright born, American feminist author, journalist, editor, publisher; regarded as a “sex-positive” feminist (sex-positive feminism runs counter to anti- pornography/prostitution feminism in espousing sexual freedom as an essential component of women’s freedom); co-founder and editor of the first woman-produced sex-magazine On Our Backs, “entertainment for the adventurous lesbian” (1984-1991); founder of Herotica, a women’s erotica book series
- March 25, 1958 – Sisy Chen born, Taiwanese politician and TV political commentator; worked for the Taiwan Relations Center’s office of the UN in the early 1990s; independent member of the Legislative Yuan (2002-2005); host of Qie Ma Chen Wen Qian, which focuses on exposing problems with Taiwan’s democratic system
- March 25, 1963 – Karen Bruce born, British choreographer and director in theatre and television; won an Olivier Choreography Award for a 2004 London production of Pacific Overtures
- March 26, 1633 – Mary Beale born, English Baroque portrait painter, one of the first British women to earn a living as painter, she was the breadwinner for her family; the daughter of a church rector, many of her subjects were clergymen, including John Tillotson, who went on to become Archbishop of Canterbury; her book Observations, though never published, is one of the first instructional books written by a woman
Self-Portrait by Mary Beale
- March 26, 1873 – Dorothea Bleek born in South Africa, German anthropologist, philogist and author; studied the Bush people; Mantis and His Hunter and Bushman Dictionary
- March 26, 1876 – Kate Richards O’Hare born, American socialist, editor, orator and activist; arrested in 1919 and sentenced to 5 years in prison after giving an anti-war speech during WWI; she is pardoned in 1920
- March 26, 1888 – Elsa Brändström born, Swedish nurse, philanthropist and aid worker, known as the “Angel of Siberia” by German and Austrian prisoners of war in Russia during WWI
- March 26, 1900 – Maria Autsch born, German Trinitarian Sister known as Angela Maria of the Heart of Jesus, the ‘Angel of Auschwitz’; arrested by the Nazis for saying Hitler is a calamity for Europe; after anti-Hitler sentiments were discovered in her diary, she was sent to the women’s camp at Ravensbruck in 1940, then moved to Auschwitz in 1942, where she befriended Margarita Schwalbova, a Jewish doctor, and took care of her and other inmates who were sick, often giving them a share of her rations; in 1943, she was moved to Birkenau where she worked in the infirmary until she was killed during an Allied bombing raid in 1944
- March 26, 1913 – Jacqueline de Romilly born, French philologist, author, and scholar, of Jewish ancestry, is prohibited from teaching during the occupation of France by the Vichy government, later first woman nominated to the Collège de France, second woman in the Académie française; known for work on culture and language of Ancient Greece
- March 26, 1925 – Vesta Roy born, Republican politician; first woman to serve as President of the New Hampshire Senate (1982) and as Acting Governor of the state (December 1982, during Governor Hugh Gallen’s illness); served in the Royal Canadian Airforce during WWII, named as a Leading Air Woman; member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives (1972-1973) and as a NH state senator (1978-1986)
- March 26, 1926 – Toni Carabillo born, women’s issues activist, National Organization for Women (1968-87), co-authored the “Feminist Chronicles 1953-1993”
- March 26, 1930 – Sandra Day O’Connor born, American lawyer, Republican politician and judge; first woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court (1981-2006); first woman Majority Leader in the Arizona state Senate (serving as a senator for three different districts 1969-1975); served as a Judge of the Maricopa County Superior Court (1975-1979) and the Arizona Court of Appeals (1979-1981)
- March 26, 1940 – Nancy Pelosi born, first woman Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives (2007-09), Democratic California representative from 1987 to present
- March 26, 1942 – First female prisoners arrive at Auschwitz in German-occupied Poland, from Ravensbruck in Germany and Pored in Slovakia
- March 26, 1944 – Diana Ross born, American singer, record producer and actress, founding member of The Supremes, inductee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
March 26, 1953 – Elaine Chao born in Taiwan, American Republican politician, became first Asian-American woman appointed to the President’s cabinet, as U.S Secretary of Labor (2001-2009); Director of the Peace Corps (1991-1992); U.S. Deputy Secretary of Transportation (1989-1991); currently U.S. Secretary of Transportation, appointed by Trump in January, 2017, for no fixed term
Married to Mitch McConnell, but still one of the very few Trump appointees with the experience to fulfill the duties of office
- March 26, 1954 – Dorothy Porter born, Australian poet; her innovative poem-novel, The Monkey's Mask, revitalized the publication of Australian poetry
- March 26, 1974 – Gaura Devi leads a group of 27 women of Reni village of the Garhwal Himalayas, to prevent the cutting of trees. They resort to hugging the trees to protect them and give rise to the Chipko Movement in India
- March 26, 1992 – Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson is sentenced to six years in prison for raping a Miss Black America contestant
- March 27, 1724 – Jane Colden, American botanist, called the "first botanist of her sex in her country" by Asa Gray, leading American botanist and Harvard professor; excluded from botanical publications, her untitled manuscript describing the flora of the New York area contains 340 ink drawings of different species compiled between 1753 and 1758
- March 27, 1734 – Lady Diana Beauclerk born, English artist, illustrator and designer of bas-reliefs for Josiah Wedgwood’s company
- March 27, 1824 – Virginia Louisa Minor, American suffragist, co-founded Woman’s Suffrage Association of Missouri; basing her claim on the 14th Amendment, like Susan B. Anthony and others, which grants citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States" including former slaves, she tries to register to vote in 1872; when she is turned away, she and her husband, an attorney who completely supports her cause, file suit against the state of Missouri, which they lose, but the case is widely reported in the newspapers, bringing more attention to the woman’s suffrage campaign
- March 27, 1862 – Jelena Dimitrijević born, Serbian short story writer, novelist, poet, traveller, social worker, feminist and polyglot; author of novel Nove (New Women), numerous travel books, and studies of Muslim women from 1881-1898, including gaining access to a Turkish harem
- March 27, 1862 – Dorothea Fairbridge born, South African author of histories and novels; co-founder of the Guild of Loyal Women, a charitable organization which made sure relatives of British soldiers killed in South Africa were contacted, and their graves properly marked and recorded
- March 27, 1866 – Minerva Hamilton Hoyt born, American pioneer in conserving California desert areas, by exhibiting desert plants at lectures she gives across the country, beginning at the 1928 Garden Club of America show in NY City, and lobbying the state of California to create three state parks: Joshua Tree, Death Valley and Anza-Borrego; as the founder of the International Desert Conservation League, she also persuades the Mexican government to set aside 10,000 acres for cactus preservation; in 1936, she moves the Roosevelt administration to designate over 800,000 acres as the Joshua Tree National Park; in 2013, the U.S. Board of Geographic Names designates Mount Minerva Hoyt, which stands within the park, in her honor
Joshua Tree National Park — inset: Minerva Hoyt
- March 27, 1866 – President Andrew Johnson vetoes the Civil Rights Act of 1866, but his veto is overridden by Congress and the bill passes into law on April 9; it is the first U.S. federal law to define citizenship and affirm that all citizens are equally protected by the law, mainly intended to protect the civil rights of persons of African descent born in or brought to America, in the wake of the American Civil War, a precursor to the 14th Amendment – the words ‘persons’ and ‘citizens’ would not include women of any color for some time to come
- March 27, 1868 – Patty Smith Hill born, America composer, teacher and advocate for nursery schools, co-author, with her sister Mildred Hill, of the tune "Happy Birthday to You"
- March 27, 1897 – Effa Manley born, co-owner and manager with husband Abe of the Negro League baseball team the Brooklyn Eagles (1935-46), supported integration working with the NAACP, worked hard to get Negro League players included in the Baseball Hall of Fame
- March 27, 1904 – "Mother" Jones, Union organizer, self-styled ‘hellraiser’ and public speaker, is ordered by Colorado state authorities to leave the state, accused of stirring up striking coal miners
- March 27, 1905 – Elsie MacGill born, Canadian engineer, world’s first female aircraft designer; a second-generation feminist, daughter of Helen Gregory McGill, noted women’s rights advocate and one of Canada’s first women judges, she served on the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada (1967-1970)
- March 27, 1922 – Margaret (Meg) Stacey, sociologist, pioneer in study of gendered social divisions, University of Warwick Women’s Studies Department Chair, won Fawcett Prize as co-author of Women, Power And Politics (1981), active in Women in Black, a peace workers' movement
- March 27, 1924 – Sarah Vaughan born, world renowned American jazz singer and pianist known as the “Divine One”
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March 27, 1948 – Billie Holliday appears at her sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall, just 11 days after she leaves prison, sentenced on drug charges
- March 28, 1873 – Anne Douglas Sedgwick born in America, British author, New York Times best-selling author; two of her novels were made into films, Tante and The Little French Girl
- March 28, 1886 – Clara Lemlich born, labor organizer, leader of the Uprising of 20,000, the strike of shirtwaist workers in New York’s garment industry in 1909
- March 28, 1895 – Ángela Ruiz Robles born, Spanish teacher and inventor; wanting to lighten the weight of textbooks carried by her students, she made a device out of a series of text and illustrations on reels, all under a sheet of magnifying glass with a light for reading in the dark, with spoken descriptions of each topic, the mechanical precursor to the electronic book
- March 28, 1904 – Isabel Cuchí Coll born, journalist and author, director of the "Sociedad de Autores Puertorriqueños" (Society of Puerto Rican Authors)
- March 28, 1906 – Dorothy Knowles born in South African, British academic and expert on French theatre; French Drama of Inter-War Years 1918-39
- March 28, 1912 – Marina Raskova born, Russian navigator, instrumental in the formation of combat regiments of women who were pilots, support staff and engineers
- March 28, 1922 – Grace Hartigan born, American Abstract Expressionist painter of the NY School
Grace Hartigan - LIFE Magazine May 1957
- March 28, 1927 – Vina Mazumdar born, Indian academic, feminist and women’s rights activist, pioneer in women’s studies programs in India
- March 28, 1944 – Astrid Lindgren begins writing Pippi Longstocking
- March 28, 1959 – Laura Chinchilla born, Costa Rican politician; first woman President of Costa Rica (2010-2014); Vice President and Minister of Justice (2006-2008); National Assembly Deputy for San José (2002-2006)
- March 28, 1968 – Iris Chang born, daughter of Taiwanese emigrants, American journalist and historical nonfiction author; Thread of the Silkworm, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II and The Chinese in America
- March 28, 1970 – Jennifer Weiner born, American screenwriter, television producer, homorist and novelist; In Her Shoes; vocal critic of gender bias in both the publishing industry and the media
- March 29, 1843 – Frances Wisebart Jacobs born, American charity organizer; on 1887, co-founder with four clergymen of the Charity Organization Society in Denver CO which will become the United Way of America, which joined with United Way International in 2009 to become United Way Worldwide, the world’s largest privately-funded nonprofit
Stained glass window at Colorado State House
- March 29, 1852 – Ohio makes it illegal for children under 18 and women to work more than a 10-hour workday
- March 29, 1885 – Frances Bolton born, created endowment to build a school of nursing at Western Reserve in 1933 after working with the Visiting Nurse Association and seeing the homes of the desperately poor, helped remove color lines in nursing, as Ohio Congresswoman worked for racial equality and equal pay, but not the ERA
- March 29, 1903 – Vera Micheles Dean born, American political scientist, head of research for the Foreign Policy Association
- March 29, 1912 – Hanna Reitsch, born German pilot, awarded the Iron Cross First Class and the Luftwaffe Pilot/Observer Badge during WWII
- March 29, 1918 – Pearl Bailey born, jazz and blues singer, sang with Cab Calloway (1945), starred in movies; received a 1969 USO award for her WWII tour entertaining U.S troops; was a goodwill ambassador for United Nations (1979), and awarded a 1988 Presidential Medal of Freedom
- March 29, 1923 – Betty Binns Fletcher born, American lawyer and judge; federal judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (1979- 2012); one of the first women to become a partner in a major U.S law form, and the second woman appointed to the Ninth Circuit bench, by President Jimmy Carter; writes liberal opinions on employment discrimination, environmental protection and the death penalty; when her son is nominated for a judgeship on the Ninth Circuit, Conservative Republicans, led by Orrin Hatch (R-UT), claim a mother and son serving on the same court violates a 1911 federal anti-nepotism law; Judge Fletcher agrees to accept senior status in order clear the way for her son’s confirmation, which means she serves only part time, only cases in her home city, Seattle, and does not handle death penalty cases – and her original seat is filled by a Republican
Historic Moment: Judge Betty Binns Fletcher, center, on first U.S. all-woman judicial panel with Judge Dorothy Wright Nelson and Judge Judith N. Keep
- March 29, 1928– Joan Kelly born, set up a Master of Arts Program in Women’s History at Sarah Lawrence with Gerda Lerner, advanced feminist scholarship by calling for a “doubled vision” to resolve conflicts inherent in the desire for female inclusion under male dominance
- March 29, 1929 – Sheila Kitzinger born, British social anthropologist, pregnancy and childbirth author; natural childbirth and breastfeeding advocate; National Childbirth Trust board member; taught MA in midwifery at the University of West London, and lectured on the social anthropology of birth of breastfeeding; The Good Birth Guide, The Politics of Birth, and Rediscovering Birth
- March 29, 1936 – Judith Guest born, American novelist and screenwriter; Ordinary People, Second Heaven, and The Tarnished Eye
- March 29, 1940 – Astrud Gilberto born, Brazilian singer-songwriter
- March 29, 1944 – Lynne Segal born in Australia, British-based socialist feminist, academic and author; co-author of the influential 1979 book Beyond the Fragments, advocating broader alliances among trade unionists, feminists and leftist political groups, and author of Is the Future Female? and Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men; member of the Virago (publishing) Advisory Board (1984-1993)
- March 29, 1949 – Pauline Marois born, public servant and politician; leader of the Parti Québécois (2007–2014), and Premier of Quebec (2012–2014); chief of staff for the Ministry of State for the Status of Women (1979–1981), promoted to Minister when her former boss left (1981-1982)
- March 29, 1957 – Elizabeth Hand born, American scifi/fantasy writer and novelist; co-creator of DC Comics series Anima; Waking the Moon (1994) won the Tiptree Award and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award; The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon won the 2011 World Fantasy Award for Best Novella
- March 29, 1964 – Catherine Cortez Masto born, American attorney and Democratic politician; became the first woman and first Latina U.S. Senator from Nevada in 2017; Attorney General of Nevada (2007-2015)
- March 29, 1971 – Lara Logan born, South African media journalist and war correspondent; Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent for CBS News since 2006
- March 29, 1993 – Catherine Callbeck becomes Premier of Prince Edward Island, the first woman to win a general election for a premiership of a Canadian province
- March 30, 1820 – Anna Sewell born, English author, known for her novel Black Beauty, which inspired anti-animal cruelty legislation
- March 30, 1863 – Mary Calkins born, philosopher and psychologist, first woman president of the American Psychological Association
- March 30, 1864 – Helen Abbot Merrill born, mathematician, professor and textbook author, earned Ph.D. from Yale in 1903 with a thesis "On Solutions of Differential Equations which possess an Oscillation Theorem" – Wellesley Mathematics Department professor/chair (1915-32), executive council and then VP of Mathematical Association of America
- March 30, 1882 – Melanie Klein born in Austria, British psychoanalyst, devised new techniques for working with children
- March 30, 1902 – Brooke Astor born, American author and philanthropist
- March 30, 1950 – Janet Browne born, British science historian, noted for work on 19th century biology and a two-volume biography of Charles Darwin; currently Aramont Professor of History of Science at Harvard University
- March 30, 1951 – Tina Monzon-Palma born, Filipina broadcast journalist and news anchor; led a public service campaign against child abuse (1997-1998); currently anchor of The World Tonight, an evening news program
- March 30, 1956 – Shahka Sherkat born, Persian pioneer of the Iranian Women’s Rights movement and feminist author; founder-publisher of Zanan (Women) magazine, considered the most influential women’s journal after the Iranian revolution; frequently in hot water with the Iranian government, she was sentenced to four months in prison for attending the 2000 Iran After the Elections Conference in Berlin; honored in 2005 with the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) Courage in Journalism Award
- March 30, 1957 – Marie-Christine Kounja born, Chadian diplomat and first published Chadian woman author; First Secretary at the Chadian Embassy in Nigeria
- March 30, 1957 – Martina Cole born, British crime novelist, noted for strong women characters and gritty realism; her first book, Dangerous Lady, was made into a highly-rated four-part TV mini-series
- March 30, 2006 – American reporter Jill Carroll, a freelancer for The Christian Science Monitor, is released after 82-days as a hostage in Iraq
- March 31, 1425 – Bianca Maria Visconti, Duchess of Milan, active in the administration of the Duchy, known as a “warrior woman” for her defense of Cremona against the Venetians
Marriage of Francesco Sforza and Bianca Maria Visconti - 1464
- March 31, 1776 – Abigail Adams writes to her husband John who is helping to frame the Declaration of Independence and cautions: “...remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.”
- March 31, 1823 – Mary Chesnut born, South Carolina American Civil War diarist; notable for her attention to detail, and portrait of South culture, including white planters’ fathering mixed-race children with slave women; daughter of a plantation family, she married James Chesnut, a politician who became an aide to Jefferson Davis during the war, enabling her to be an eyewitness to a number of important wartime events
- March 31, 1833 – Mary Abigail Dodge born as Gail Hamilton, American author, noted for promotion of women’s equality in education and occupation
- March 31, 1888 – National Council of Women of the U.S. is organized by Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Julia Ward Howe, and Sojourner Truth, among others, the oldest non-sectarian women’s organization in the U.S.
- March 31, 1889 – Muriel Hazel Wright born, Choctaw Indian, teacher, historian, author, editor of The Chronicles of Oklahoma, quarterly journal of the Oklahoma Historical Society (1955-73), co-authored 4-volume history of Oklahoma, textbooks of Oklahoma history, and A Guide to the Indian Tribes of Oklahoma(1951)
- March 31, 1913 – Etta Baker born, American singer and Piedmont blues guitarist
- March 31, 1914 – Maria Lange born as Dagmar Lange, Swedish crime fiction author, one of the first mystery writers in the Swedish language, whose 40 detective novels helped make the genre popular in Sweden
- March 31, 1920 – Deborah Cavendish born, Duchess of Devonshire, sister of Nancy and Jessica Mitford; primarily non-fiction author, many of them about seat of the Duke of Devonshire, Chatsworth House, and its history
Duchess of Devonshire feeding her chickens — perhaps send-up of “a day in the life”?
- March 31, 1929 – Liz Claiborne born in Belgium, American fashion designer, first woman to be to found and serve as CEO of a Fortune 500 company
- March 31, 1934 – Kamala Suraiyya born, Indian author in Malayalam of short stories and her autobiography, while publishing poetry in English, usually under pen names; syndicated columnist who often wrote on women’s issues and politics
- March 31, 1935 – Judith Rossner born, American novelist; Looking for Mr. Goodbar
- March 31, 1936 – Marge Piercy born, American poet, novelist, anthology editor and social activist; associate of the Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP)
- March 31, 1938 – Sheila Dikshit born, Indian politician, serves as Chief Minister of Delhi (1998–2013)
- March 31, 1950 – Alison McCartney born, pathologist. When she was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer, she worked to establish the 1st support groups in Britain for women cancer patients - profiled in a television documentary 'Alive and Kicking'
- March 31, 1950 – Sandra Morgen born, American feminist anthropologist; director of the University of Oregon Center for the Study of Women in Society
- March 31, 1969 – Nyamko Sabuni born in Burundi, Swedish politician, member of the Liberal People’s Party; Minister for Gender Equality (2006-2013), the first person of African descent to be appointed as a Minister ; her outspoken opinions on genital mutilation, honor killings, against wearing of the hijab by girls under 15 and statement that praying five times a day “limited opportunities” for Muslims brought accusations of Islamophobia
- March 31, 1983 – Marsha Norman's 'night, Mother premieres in NYC
- March 31, 1988 – Toni Morrison awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Literature for her novel Beloved
- March 31, 2009 – International Transgender Day of Visibility is launched by Transgender activist Rachel Crandall of Michigan, now spearheaded by Trans Student Educational Resources
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