WOW2 is a thrice-monthly sister blog to This Week in the War on Women. This edition covers women and events from September 22 through September 30.
The next WOW2, for Early October,
will post on Saturday, October 10.
The purpose of WOW2 is to learn about and honor women of achievement, including many who’ve been ignored or marginalized in most of the history books, and to mark moments in women’s history. It also serves as a reference archive of women’s history. There are so many more phenomenal women than I ever dreamed of finding, and all too often their stories are almost unknown, even to feminists and scholars.
THIS WEEK IN THE WAR ON WOMEN
will post soon, so be sure to go there and catch up
on the latest dispatches from the frontlines.
Many thanks to libera nos, intrepid Assistant Editor and STEM Researcher of WOW2. Any remaining mistakes are either mine, or uncaught computer glitches in transferring the data from his emails to DK5. And much thanks to wow2lib, WOW2’s Librarian Emeritus.
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.
Late September’s Trailblazing Women and Events in Our History
Note: All images and audios are below the person or event to which they refer
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- September 22, 1515 – Anne of Cleves born, briefly fourth wife of Henry VIII, their marriage is annulled after six months, but she manages to keep her head on her shoulders, receives a generous settlement and remains in England; she and Catherine Parr are Henry VIII’s only wives who outlive him.
- September 22, 1601 – Anne of Austria born, Spanish princess and Austrian archduchess of the House of Habsburg; became queen of France when she was married by proxy to King Louis XIII. They were both 14 years old. Louis ignored his bride, and his mother, Marie de’ Medici, continued to conduct herself as queen of France, and held on to her considerable political power. Anne buffered herself among her Spanish ladies-in-waiting, and failed to improve her French. In 1617, Louis rebelled against his mother’s influence with the help of Charles d'Albert, Duke of Luynes, and had his mother’s favorite, the 1st Marquis d’Ancre, assassinated. Anne’s Spanish ladies-in-waiting were sent back to Spain, and Louis finally began to pay attention to her. But after a series of stillbirths, he became aloof again. When the Duke of Luynes died, he turned to Cardinal Richelieu are his chief advisor. Richelieu set Louis against the Habsburgs, who surrounded France on two fronts, which further estranged the royal couple. The queen was drawn into political opposition to Richelieu. Her household was purged, her trusted ladies-in-waiting and officials replaced by those loyal to Richelieu. In 1635, France declared war in Spain, cutting the queen off from her family, except for secret and dangerous correspondence through the Spanish embassies in Paris and Brussels. Finally, in 1638, at the age of 37, Anne gave birth to a son, Louis XIV, and 15 months later, gave birth to a second son, Philippe 1, Duke of Orleans. Both of her sons were placed under the supervision of the royal governess Françoise de Lansac, who was disliked by Anne and loyal to the king and the cardinal. When Louis died in 1643, Anne was named as regent, despite the king’s attempts to prevent it. She was able to get the Parlement de Paris revoke the will of the late king, which would have limited her powers. Their 4-year-old son was crowned King Louis XIV of France, and she served as regent, but shared much of the power with Cardinal Mazarin, until Louis reached his majority in 1651. She still had much influence with her son even after he became king. The French war with Spain ended in 1659 with the Treaty of the Pyrenees. Louis married Anne’s niece Maria Theresa of Spain in 1660. Anne retired to the convent of Val-de-Grâce, where she died of breast cancer at age 64 in 1666.
- September 22, 1656 – In Patuxent, Maryland, Judith Catchpole, an indentured maidservant, was accused of murdering her child as well as acts of witchcraft. The man making the accusations was also an indentured servant, a fellow passenger on the ship which had brought them to the American colonies. He also claimed she had cut the throat of another woman passenger, and stabbed a seaman in the back, all while the rest of the passengers were asleep. Her accuser died after telling the other passengers his story. For a woman to murder her child was considered such a crime against womanhood that the General Provincial Court impaneled an all-female jury, so that Catchpole would be judged by a jury of her peers. The evidence presented against her did not account for how she was able to hide a pregnancy, or give birth to a child, aboard a small crowded ship with no one but her accuser being the wiser, and the accusation that after slitting the woman's throat, she sewed it back up before the woman awoke, and that she had rubbed grease on the back of the fatally wounded seaman and he came back to life, seemed even more unlikely. Catchpole stated with conviction she had never been pregnant, and the married women on the jury were called upon to examine her. They concluded that she had not given birth recently, if ever, so therefore she could not have committed infanticide. The rest of her testimony was also believed, and she was acquitted.
- September 22, 1692 – Martha Corey and 7 other convicted "witches" hanged in Salem, Massachusetts. 11 people -- mostly women – had already been hanged as witches accused by young girls.
- September 22, 1762 – Elizabeth Simcoe born in England, English artist and diarist; married John Graves Simcoe, and went with him to colonial Canada, where he was the first Lt. Governor of Upper Canada. She painted over 500 watercolours of the town of York, Upper Canada, and her diary is a valuable record of the life of early colonists in Ontario.
- September 22, 1868 – Louise C. McKinney born, one of Canada’s ‘Famous Five’ in the Persons Case (Edwards v. A.G. of Canada), which decided that women were included in the term ‘persons’ in the British North America Act, giving them the same rights under the act as men. McKinney was the first woman sworn into the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, and the first woman elected to a legislature, not only in Canada, but in the entire British Empire. She fought for women’s property rights and education, for temperance, and for government ownership of grain elevators and flour mills. The ‘Five’ and the Persons Case have been recognized as being of ‘National Historic Significance’ by the Canadian Government; in 2009, the Canadian Legislature voted to name all of the ‘Famous Five’ as Canada’s first “honorary senators.”
- September 22, 1880 – Christabel Pankhurst born, English suffragette, co-founder with her mother Emmeline Pankhurst of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) and director of their militant action from exile in France (1912-1913), but she publicly supported Britain during WWI. Though she had earned a law degree in 1906 from the University of Manchester, and received honours on her LL.B. exam, she was not allowed to practice law because of her gender.
- September 22, 1891 – Alma Thomas born, African-American Expressionist painter and art educator; part of the Washington Color School, a visual art movement started in Washington DC; in 1924, she was the first graduate from Howard University’s Fine Arts Department; taught at Shaw Junior High School (1924-1960), where she started a community arts program. In 1934, she earned a Master’s in Art Education from Columbia University.
- September 22, 1894 – Elisabeth Rethberg born as Lisbeth Sättler, German soprano and international opera star; she began her career at the Dresden Opera. Rethberg made her debut at New York’s Metropolitan Opera debut as Aida in Giuseppe Verdi’s opera in 1922, a role for which she became noted, then performed at the Met for 20 seasons. She also made multiple appearances at London’s Royal Opera House, the Salzburg Festival, and Milan’s La Scala. She retired from the stage in 1942.
- September 22, 1895 – Babette Deutsch born, American poet, critic, translator, and novelist. She also taught at the New School for Social Research and Columbia University, where one of her students was Lawrence Ferlinghetti. She made well-regarded translations of poems by Boris Pasternak and Rainer Maria Rilke, and with her husband, Avraham Yarmolinsky, translated Eugene Puskin’s Eugene Onegin. The first collection of her poetry, Banners, published in 1919, was followed by nine additional collections. She published four novels, which are out-of-print, four books about poetry, and edited Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1967).
- September 22, 1899 – Elsie Allen born, Native American Pomo basket weaver from the Northern California Cloverdale Rancheria of Pomo Indians of California. The women in her family were accomplished basketweavers, and her mother Annie founded the Pomo Indian Women’s Club to promote traditional Pomo basketry, but she also convinced Elsie to break with tradition and keep her baskets to show future basketmakers instead of burning or burying them. As interest within the tribe in basketry waned, she began teaching anyone who was interested in learning her technique, and using non-traditional materials, causing controversy within the tribe. One of her last students was her niece, Susan Billy. Allan also worked with linguist Abraham M. Halpern to document the Southern Pomo language.
- September 22, 1905 – Ellen Church born, first woman hired as an airline stewardess; a registered pilot and a registered nurse, she is turned down by Boeing Air Transport as a pilot, but hired her in 1930 as head stewardess, recruiting seven others for a three-month trial period. Boeing requirements: must be RNs, under age 25, less than 5’4” tall, and under 115 pounds, also expected to help haul luggage, and with pushing the aircraft into the hangar. The pay for women of that time was good: $125 a month.
- September 22, 1908 – Esphyr Slobodkina born in Russia, Russian-American artist, author, and illustrator, whose family immigrated to the U.S. in 1928. She is best known for her classic children’s picture book Caps for Sale. Slobodkina was also a notable avant garde artist, sculptor, and feminist. In 2000, at age 91, she established the Slobodkina Foundation, dedicated to the conservation, preservation, and exhibition of art, and to encourage others to follow her example and pursue their dreams.
- September 22, 1913 – Lillian Chestney born, American painter and illustrator of children’s books and classic comic books.
- September 22, 1924 – Rosamunde Pilcher born, British author of historical romance novels, also used pen name Jane Fraser. During WWII, she served with the Women’s Royal Naval Service (1943-1946). Noted for The Shell Seekers, Coming Home, and Winter Solstice.
- September 22, 1931 – Fay Weldon born, English author, essayist, feminist, and playwright; best known for her novel The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, and for writing the first episode of Upstairs, Downstairs. While studying psychology and economics at the University of St. Andrews in the early 1950s, she recalls taking classes with moral philosopher Malcolm Knox, who “spoke exclusively to the male students, maintaining that women were incapable of moral judgment or objectivity.”
- September 22, 1939 – Deborah Lavin born, South African historian and academic, working in the UK for most of her career; lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast and the University of Witwatersrand; Senior Associate of St Antony’s College, Oxford. Principle of Trevelyan College at Durham University (1979-1995), and co-director of Durham’s Research Institute for the Study of Change (1980-1995); President of the Durham University Howland Trust (1995-1997); co-author of South African Memories: Scraps of History.
- September 22, 1939 – Junko Tabei born, Japanese mountaineer; she was the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest, and the first woman to ascend all Seven Summits, the highest peaks on every continent.
- September 22, 1940 – Anna Karina born as Hanne Bayer in Denmark, Danish-French film actress, director, and writer. She appeared in several films by French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard in the 1960s. In 1972, she set up her own production company to produce her directorial debut, Vivre ensemble, which was screened in the Critics’ Week lineup at the 26th Cannes Film Festival. Karina also directed the French-Canadian film Victoria, and she has several written novels in French, including Vivre ensemble and Golden City.
- September 22, 1942 – Candida Lycett Green born, British writer, editor, columnist, and co-founder of the satirical magazine, Private Eye; many of her books are about the English countryside, including English Cottages, The Dangerous Edge of Things, and Unwrecked England.
- September 22, 1947 – “Jane Roe” Norma McCorvey born, plaintiff in the landmark Roe v. Wade case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the banning of abortion by individual states was unconstitutional. In her 1994 autobiography, I Am Roe, she wrote about her sexual orientation and relationship with her long-time partner, Connie Gonzales. After becoming an Evangelical Christian, she expressed regrets for her part in Roe v. Wade, and became an anti-abortion activist. But shortly before her death, she said her anti-abortion activism was all an act: “I took their money and they'd put me out in front of the cameras and tell me what to say.” She added, "If a young woman wants to have an abortion, that's no skin off my ass. That’s why they call it choice."
- September 22, 1947 – Jo Beverly born in England as Mary Dunn, English-Canadian author of historical romance novels, noted for medieval romances and her Malloren series.
- September 22, 1949 – Businessman Hilary A. Bufton Junior founds the Business Women’s Association with three unnamed businesswomen (oh, the irony.) Bufton wrote: “It was my feeling all women were seeking and deserved equal business opportunities . . . They had gained tremendous business knowledge during World War II, through necessity, and I felt a new organization for all businesswomen was needed.”
- September 22, 1952 – Gloria Borger born, American journalist, columnist, and chief political analyst at CNN; previously an anchor at CNBC, and a correspondent for CBS News.
- September 22, 1953 – Ségolène Royal born, French Socialist politician; French Minister of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy (2014-2017); President of the Poitou-Charentes Regional Council (2004- 2014); Member of the National Assembly for Deux-Sévres (2002-2007); first woman in France nominated by a major party as a presidential candidate, in 2007.
- September 22, 1958 – Beth Catlin born, autistic savant; her hobby is making and sending birthday cards to people she has met. She is able to remember the names, birthdates and addresses of 3,834 people so far; no card has ever been returned for a mistaken address.
- September 22, 1961 – Diane Lemieux born, French Canadian politician, lawyer, and feminist; dubbed “the lioness of Bourget” — advocate for women’s rights and sexual assault victims. Member of the Assemblée nationale du Québec (Quebec National Assembly, 1998-2007); president of the Conseil du statut de la femme (Quebec Council for the Status of Women/CSF, 1996-1998); recipient of Québec’s 1991 Prix de la Justice award.
- September 22, 1961 – Bonnie Hunt born, American comedian, actress, director, producer, writer, and television host. She created, produced, wrote, and starred in The Building (1993), Bonnie (1995-1996), and Life with Bonnie (2002-2004), and hosted The Bonnie Hunt Show (2008-2010).
- September 22, 1966 – Ruth Jones born, Welsh actress, writer, and producer. Co-writer and co-star of the BBC sitcom Gavin & Stacy (2007-2010, 2019). She was awarded the BAFTA Cymru Sian Phillips Special Recognition Award in 2009.
- September 22, 1969 – Sue Perkins born, English comedian, writer, radio broadcaster, actress and television presenter. Known for her partnership with Mel Giedroyc as the comedic duo Mel and Sue, hosts of The Great British Bake Off, and lunchtime programmes on British public television’s Channel 4. She was one of the many writers for the long-running BBC series Absolutely Fabulous. Beginning in 2007, Perkins appeared on a series on Supersizers programmes, in which she and food critic Giles Coren spent a few days wearing historically correct clothing and eating typical meals served during different periods of history, beginning with Edwardian Supersize Me, and ranging from surviving on WWII rations to splendid Elizabethan feasts. In 2013, she wrote and starred in a six-part comedy series, Heading Out, about a veterinarian who has never told her aging parents she is gay.
- September 22, 1970 – Gladys Berejiklian born to Armenian immigrants, Australian politician, Premier of New South Wales and New South Wales Liberal Party Leader since 2017; Liberal Party Deputy Leader (2014-2017); Member of the New South Wales Parliament for Willoughby (2003-2017).
- September 22, 1971 – Elizabeth Bear born as Sarah Bear Wishnevsky, American speculative fiction author; 2005 John W. Campbell Best New Writer Award; 2006 Locus Award for Best First Novel, Hammered/Scardown/ Worldwired ; 2008 Hugo Award for Best Short Story, “Tideline”; and 2009 Hugo Award for Best Novelette for Shoggoths in Bloom.
- September 22, 1983 – U.S. Congress passes joint resolution acknowledging American Business Women’s Day in honor the founding of the Business Women’s Association (now the American Business Women’s Association) on September 22, 1949.
- September 22, 2019 – President Gianni Infantino of FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football) said women will finally be allowed into Tehran’s Azadi (“Freedom”) stadium to watch the World Cup qualifier match on October 10, which was FIFA’s deadline by which “women have to be allowed into football stadiums in Iran for all football matches.” However, Iranian authorities have capped the number of women who can attend at 4,600 out of a stadium capacity of 100,000 seats. The effective 5% quota on seats for women contravenes FIFA’s constitution, statutes, and its human rights policy. Iran is the only country in the world to ban women from attending sports events held in stadiums. Iranian women and girls have defied the ban for years by disguising themselves as men to attend games, but those who are caught have been detained, arrested, beaten, jailed, and abused. Human Rights Watch has declared that Iran’s plan to cap the number of women is discriminatory, deceptive, and dangerous. There are also no women’s restrooms at the Azadi stadium, and the Football Federation of the Islamic Republic of Iran (FFIRI) has rejected adding them, citing “budgetary issues.” Maryam Shojaei, who is the sister of the Iranian football team’s captain, said, “FIFA should earmark funds to build women’s restrooms to ensure the inclusion of everyone. The leagues are more frequent and important than World Cup matches, and FIFA must give them a deadline for club league matches so that families can go together to watch the games.”
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- September 23, 1598 – Eleonora Gonzaga, Princess of Mantua born; as a child, she was educated by her aunt, Margherita Gonzaga, in languages, history, music, painting, and devout Catholicism. She became the second Holy Roman Empress, German Queen, and Queen consort of Hungary and Bohemia by her marriage to the widowed Ferdinand II in 1622; noted for her influence in making the court in Vienna one of the centers of European Baroque music, and for her support of the Counter-Reformation. She was a benefactor of the brotherhood which arranged for the burial of homeless people, and a patron of musicians and dancers, particularly those who came to the court from her native Italy.
- September 23, 1740 – Empress Go-Sakuramachi born, the last of eight women to rule Japan as Empress regnant (1762-1771) according to the traditional order of succession.
- September 23, 1823 – Sara Jane Clarke Lippincott born, better known as by her pen-name Grace Greenwood; American author, poet, journalist and advocate for abolition and women’s rights; first woman reporter on the payroll of the New York Times; one of the first women in the Congressional press galleries.
- September 23, 1838 – Victoria Claflin Woodhull born; first woman candidate to run for U.S. president in 1872, three years after Wyoming gave women the vote, but 48 years before the 19th Amendment finally made it a constitutional right for women.
- September 23, 1838 – Helen Almira Shafer born, professor of mathematics and president of Wellesley College (1887-1894).
- September 23, 1851 – Ellen Hayes born, American mathematician and astronomer; after graduating from Oberlin College in 1878, she was hired by Wellesley College (1879-1916), becoming head of the mathematics department in 1888, then head of the new applied mathematics department in 1897 (some accounts say she was removed as head of the mathematics department because she was unpopular with the college’s trustees). Also active in astronomy, she determined the orbit of the asteroid 267 Tirzah, discovered in 1887 by Auguste Charlois. Hayes was a controversial professor because she questioned the Bible in front of students, wore utilitarian clothes, and graded rigorously. In spite of her tough grades, she had a loyal following of students. She was an ardent suffragist and Socialist, supporter of the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike, and later of Sacco and Vanzetti. The trustees withheld the Emeritus title on her retirement. Hayes was also outspoken in blaming the under-representation of women in mathematics and the sciences on social pressure, including the emphasis on ‘feminine’ appearance, the lack of employment opportunities for women in these fields, and schools which allowed female students to opt out of math and science courses. She was one of the first six women elected as members of the New York Mathematical Society in 1891. In 1912, as the Socialist Party candidate for Massachusetts Secretary of State, she was also the first woman in the state to run for statewide office. She lost, but garnered more votes than any other candidate on the Socialist slate, even though no women could vote for her. In 1929, she moved to the state of New York to teach at the Vineyard Shore Labor School for women workers. She died in 1930 at the age of 79.
- September 23, 1853 – Princess Marie Elisabeth of Saxe-Meiningen, noted as a musician and composer; one of her best-known works is Romanze in F Major for clarinet and piano; one of Marie Elisabeth’s music teachers was Johannes Brahms.
- September 23, 1863 – Mary Church Terrell born, African American author, teacher, and activist; first black woman appointed to Washington DC’s school board; founding member of the NAACP; first president of the National Association of Colored Women.
- September 23, 1865 – Emma Orczy born in Hungary, Baroness Orczy, English novelist and painter, author of The Scarlet Pimpernel.
- September 23, 1865 – Suzanne Valadon born, French painter and artists’ model; the first woman painter admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, in 1894. Her large oils exhibited at the Salon de la Nationale that year are among the earliest examples of a woman artist using the male as an object of desire. The first person to buy drawings from her was Edgar Degas, who introduced her to other collectors. Also notable for her studies of the female nude, portraits of women, and landscapes.
- September 23, 1899 – Louise Nevelson born, sculptor, Russian immigrant; she taught in the Works Progress Administration (1943), and created massive steel works combining cubism and expressionism, and monumental monochromatic wall pieces.
- September 23, 1907 – Anne Desclos born, French journalist and author, used pen-names Dominique Aury and Pauline Réage; author of Histoire d’O (The Story of O).
- September 23, 1917 – Asima Chatterjee, Indian organist chemist; the first woman to receive a Doctorate of Science from an Indian university; Chatterjee noted for research on vinca alkaloids, developing drugs and treatments for epilepsy, malaria and cancer. She also published a large volume of work on medicinal plants of the Indian subcontinent. Chatterjee was the first woman to be elected as the General President of the Indian Science Congress Association
- September 23, 1942 – Sila María Calderón born, Puerto Rican Popular Democratic Party politician and public servant; first woman elected as Governor of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (2001-2005); Mayor of San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico (1996-2000); Secretary of State (1986-1988?); Chief of Staff (1985). She earned a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Puerto Rico in 1972.
- September 23, 1946 – Genista McIntosh born, Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall; British arts consultant, theatre executive and Labour politician. After working in various positions at the Royal Shakespeare Company (1972-1990), she became Executive Director of the Royal National Theatre (1990-1996), then spent 5 months as Chief Executive of the Royal Opera House (resigned due to ill health), and returned to the Royal National Theatre for 1997-2002. Made a Life Peer in 1999; she gave her maiden speech in the House of Lords in November 1999.
- September 23, 1946 – Anne Wheeler born, Canadian director, producer and screenwriter; she made her first film for the Film Board of Canada, 1981’s A War Story; 4-time nominee for the Genie Award for Best Achievement in Direction for her films Loyalties, Cowboys Don’t Cry, Bye Bye Blues, and Suddenly Naked. Her television miniseries, The Sleep Room, won Gemini awards for best television film and best direction. Wheeler was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1995.
- September 23, 1949 – Floella Benjamin born in Trinidad, Baroness Benjamin of Beckenham; her father emigrated to the UK, then brought his children over in 1960 when she was 11 years old; Trinidadian-British TV presenter, actress, author, and founder and chief executive of Floella Benjamin Productions Ltd., which produced television programmes (1987-2014). As the chair of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), she was made an Officer of the British Empire in 2001. In 2008, she was appointed as Deputy Lieutenant of Greater London. In 2010 she was appointed a Liberal Democrat Life Peer.
- September 23, 1954 – Cherie Booth Blair born, British barrister and lecturer; became Queen’s Counsel in 1995, and a Recorder (permanent part-time judge) in 1999 in the County Court and Crown Court. She specialises in employment, discrimination and public law; she is married to Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister (1997- 2007).
- September 23, 1959 – Karen Pierce born, British diplomat; Permanent Representative of the UK to the United Nations since March 2018; British Ambassador to Kabul (2015-2016); UK Representative to the UN in Geneva (2012-2015); Foreign and Commonwealth Director for South Asia and Afghanistan (2009-2012); Acting President of the UN Security Council (2007-2008); Deputy Representative of the UK to the UN (2006-2009).
- September 23, 1962 – Deborah Orr born, Scottish journalist and columnist, has worked for City Limits, New Statesman, The Guardian and The Independent; she is a vocal critic of the National Health Service treatment of homeless and disadvantaged people, but blames much of it on inadequate funding, and also calls the prison service “a series of riots waiting to happen.”
- September 23, 1963 – Michiru Yamane born, Japanese pianist and composer for video games, best known for her work on the games Bloodlines and Symphony of the Night in the Castlevania series, and more recently, Skullgirls.
- September 23, 1964 – Katie Mitchell born, English theatre director; member of the theatre company Classics on a Shoestring; has mounted productions for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and staged operas for the Salzburg Festival and the Royal Opera House; former associate director of the Royal Court Theatre; appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2009.
- September 23, 1967 – Hilary Andersson born, British journalist for the BBC since 1991; served as Lagos correspondent (1996-1999), Jerusalem correspondent (1999-2001) and Africa correspondent (2001-2005).
- September 23, 1999 – Celebrate Bisexuality Day is started at the International Lesbian and Gay Association conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, by U.S. activists from Maine, Florida, and Texas.
- September 23, 2019 – The Trump Administration joined with 19 nations, including Saudi Arabia and Russia to declare, “There is no international right to an abortion” at the United Nations General Assembly, rejecting the use of the term “sexual and reproductive health and rights” used throughout U.N. Documents, in particular within the international Sustainable Development Goals. The Netherlands delivered a responsive joint statement on behalf of 58 countries rejecting the administration’s position and stressing "the need to uphold the full range of sexual and reproductive rights." Many country representatives, along with civil society advocacy groups, said the Trump Administration’s campaign to persuade other countries to form a new coalition in support of these regressive policies put "unfair pressure on poor countries" which are dependent on U.S. aid. According to the National Institutes of Health, every year, worldwide, about 42 million women with unintended pregnancies choose abortion, and nearly half of these procedures, 20 million, are unsafe. Some 68,000 women die of unsafe abortion annually, making it one of the leading causes of maternal mortality (13%). Of the women who survive unsafe abortion, 5 million will suffer long-term health complications.
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- September 24, 1812 – Mary Ann Browne, British poet and writer of musical scores of the Romantic Era; noted for Mont Blanc, Ada, The Birthday Gift, and Sacred Poetry.
- September 24, 1825 – Frances Watkins Harper as a free woman, African-American abolitionist, lecturer, poet and author; she published her first book of poetry at age 20, and became the first American black woman to publish a short story, “Two Offers,” in the Anglo-African in 1859. Her novel Iola Leroy, published in 1892, was widely praised. She was part of the Underground Railroad in the 1850s, and was a public speaker for the American Anti-Slavery Society, and an advocate for woman suffrage and prohibition. In 1894, she was a co-founder of the National Association of Colored Women, and served as its first vice president.
- September 24, 1825 – Bhikaiji Cama born, Indian independence activist; she received a better-than-average education, and showed a flair for languages. At age 24, she married Rustom Cama, a pro-British lawyer who aspired to enter politics. It was not a happy marriage, and she spent her time on social and philanthropic projects. When famine and then plague hit, she volunteered as part of a team working out of the Grant Medical College to nurse the sick, then contracted the disease herself, but survived in a much weakened state. She left India in 1902 for medical treatment in London, where she met Shyamji Krishna Varma, an Indian nationalist well known for his fiery speeches in Hyde Park. Through him she became private secretary to Dadabhai Naoroji, president of the British Committee of the Indian National Congress, and supported the founding of the Indian Home Rule Society in 1905. She then went to Paris, and co-founded the Paris Indian Society. She wrote and distributed revolutionary articles for pro-nationalist weekly papers, which were smuggled into India. In 1907, she spoke about famine in India at the Socialist Congress in Stuttgart, Germany, and appealed for human rights, and autonomy for her country, unfurling a “flag of Indian Independence” she made, based in the 1906 Calcutta Flag. In 1909, Scotland Yard arrested several key activists living in Great Britain, and requested Cama’s extradition from France, but the French government refused to cooperate. The British government then seized Cama’s inheritance. Inspired by the campaign for women’s suffrage in Britain, in 1910 she spoke in Cairo, asking, “I see here the representatives of only half the population of Egypt. May I ask where is the other half? Sons of Egypt, where are the daughters of Egypt? Where are your mothers and sisters? Your wives and daughters?” However, she believed that India must first become independent, and then women could work for their rights. With the outbreak of WWI in 1914, the members of the Paris India Society were scattered, and some of them were deported. Cama, in poor health, was allowed to stay in Bordeaux, on condition that she report weekly to local police. She remained in exile in Europe until 1935, when she was paralysed by a stroke and gravely ill. She petitioned the British government to be allowed to return to India, but had to renounce seditious activities before she was allowed to leave. Cama arrived in Bombay in November 1935, and died in August 1936.
- September 24, 1873 – María de las Mercedes Adam de Aróstegui born, Cuban composer and pianist who worked mostly in Spain, and often gave concerts with Pablo Casals.
- September 24, 1890 – Woodruff Manifesto: Under pressure from the U.S government, Wilford Woodruff, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, issues an “authoritative and binding” statement renouncing plural marriage. It had no effect on the status of already existing plural marriages. Abraham "Owen" Woodruff, Wilford Woodruff’s son, already married to Helen May Winters, contracted a secretive second marriage to Avery Clark after the manifesto was proclaimed.
- September 24, 1898 – Charlotte Moore Sitterly born, American astronomer and astrophysicist; organized, analyzed, and published definitive books on the solar spectrum and spectral line multiplets. She worked as a human computer at the Princeton University Observatory after graduating from Swarthmore College in 1920. At the observatory, she collaborated with Professor Henry Norris Russell researching binary stars, stellar mass, and the classification of stars based on their spectra. They co-published the results of their five years of work at Princeton extensively. She then became part of a team at the Mount Wilson Observatory working on solar spectroscopy, identifying chemical elements in the Sun. Unable to study at Princeton because they did not accept women, she earned a Ph.D. in astronomy in 1931 from the University of California, Berkeley. Moore then returned to Princeton to continue her work with Russell, but as a research assistant. She identified technetium in sunlight, the first example of technetium naturally existing. In 1937, she married Bancroft W. Sitterly, a physics professor, but continued to publish under her maiden name. She was also honored in 1937 with the Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy. From 1945 to 1989, she worked for both the National Bureau of Standards, which published her tables of atomic spectra and energy levels, and the Naval Research Laboratory. In 1949, she was the first woman elected as an associate of Great Britain’s Royal Astronomical Society, and in 1961, received the Federal Woman’s Award. She continued her research until her death in 1990 at the age of 91.
- September 24, 1901 – Alexandra Adler born, Austrian neurologist who emigrated to the U.S in 1935; she conducted a study in 1937 with Tracy Jackson Putnam on the brain of a multiple sclerosis victim. Illustrations from the study are frequently used in medical literature. Her detailed studies on 500 survivors of the 1942 fire at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston is noted as some of the earliest research on posttraumatic stress disorder. Adler discovered that many of the survivors suffered from unsettled grief, particular changes in personality such as guilt and diminished vitality, and an increase in sleep disturbances and anxiety.
- September 24, 1902 – Cheryl Crawford born, legendary Broadway independent theater producer and director; co-founder with Harold Clurman and Lee Strasberg of the Group Theatre in 1931; her successes include Porgy and Bess, and Brigadoon.
- September 24, 1914 – Esther Eng born, Cantonese-American film director; first woman director of Chinese-language films in the U.S., recognized as a pioneer who crossed boundaries of race, gender, language, and culture; at 19, she became a film producer when her father and his business partners formed a film production company; she began in 1936 as co-producer on the film Heartache, directed by Frank Tang. In 1937, she started directing with National Heroine, about a woman pilot fighting for her country, then Ten Thousand Lovers, Storm of Envy and It’s A Women’s World which had an all female cast showcasing 36 women in different professions, and Golden Gate Girl. After making several other films, she went into the restaurant business in New York in 1950. Most of her films have been lost, except for Golden Gate Girl and one other she co-directed, only shooting the exterior scenes.
- September 24, 1916 – Ruth Leach Amonette born, American business executive and educator. In 1943, she became the first woman executive and first woman vice president at IBM, at the age of 27, one of the very few high-ranking women in corporate America. She had graduated from University of California, Berkeley with a degree in political science in 1937. In 1939, she was hired to work at San Francisco’s Golden Gate International Exposition, demonstrating IBM typewriters. IBM then sent her for training in service system work, and she was assigned to their Atlanta Georgia office. In 1940, she became a teacher for IBM’s Department of Education in Endicott New York, training women from all over the country in selling IBM products. Amonette was promoted to IBM Secretary of Education three months later. She became an IBM Vice President in 1943. In 1947, she contracted tuberculosis, and had to take a medical leave, but returned to work the same year. In addition to her work at IBM, she served on several boards, including the Camp Fire Girls, the New York Public Library, and the American Association of University Women. She retired in 1953 at the age of 37, and got married in 1954. She was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame in 1996. Her memoir, Among Equals, was published in 1999, the year that she died.
- September 24, 1931 – Elizabeth Blackadder born, Scottish painter and printmaker; first woman to be elected to both the Royal Scottish Academy and the Royal Academy, noted for still lifes and landscapes, and her very detailed later work, often featuring flowers and cats. Her artwork was selected for a Royal Mail stamp, and she appointed in 2001 as Her Majesty’s Painter and Limner in Scotland.
- September 24, 1938 – Valentina Grizodubova, Marina Raskova and Paulina Ossipenko leave Moscow, flying nonstop to Siberia, setting an international women’s record for straight-line distance.
- September 24, 1946 – Maria Teresa Ruiz born, Chilean astronomer; the first woman to earn a PhD in astrophysics at Princeton University, and the first Chilean woman to be awarded Chile’s National Prize for Exact Sciences, in 1997. Fellow of the Academy of Sciences since 1998.
- September 24, 1949 – Baleka Mbete born, South African politician; current Speaker of the National Assembly of South Africa since 2014; Deputy President of South Africa (2008-2009); Chair of the African National Congress (ANC – 2007-2017); she was in exile from South Africa from 1976 to 1990, working for the ANC in other African countries. When she returned to South Africa, she was elected the secretary-general of the ANC Women’s League (1991-1993), then as an MP for the ANC in 1994, and appointed chair of the ANC parliamentary caucus (1995-1996), and was Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly (1996-2004). Mbete also on Presidential Panel of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the ANC National Executive Committee, and the Pan-African Parliament.
- September 24, 1962 – Nia Vardalos born in Canada, Canadian-American screenwriter, actress and producer of Greek descent; her biggest hit film, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, was based on a one-woman play she wrote and starred in. She made her directorial debut with the independent feature film I Hate Valentine’s Day, and co-produced and starred in My Life in Ruins, the first U.S. production allowed to film at the Acropolis in Athens.
- September 24, 1967 – Noreena Hertz born, English economist, academic, author and host of the British radio programme MegaHertz: London calling; since 2009, Professor and chair of Globalisation, Sustainability and Finance at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University; author of The Silent Takeover: Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy, IOU: The Debt Threat and Generation K.
- September 24, 1965 – Affirmative Action: President Lyndon Johnson issues Executive Order 11246 in order to remedy discrimination in employment by the federal government or by federal contractors.
- September 24, 1969 – Shamim Sarif born in London to Indian parents who emigrated to the UK from South Africa; British novelist and filmmaker; author of novels The World Unseen, I Can’t Think Straight, and Despite the Falling Snow, also writing and directing their feature film adaptations; she is openly lesbian and describes I Can’t Think Straight as semi-autobiographical; in 2015 she and her long-time partner, producer Hanan Kattan, married at the Chelsea Registry Office.
- September 24, 1985 – Eleanor Catton born in Canada, New Zealand novelist and short story writer; noted for The Rehearsal, which won a 2009 Orange Prize, and Luminaries, which won the high-profile Man Booker Prize (for best original English-language novel) in 2013, making her the youngest author, at age 28, ever to win the Booker.
- September 24, 2015 – In the U.S., Senate Democrats blocked a Republican-sponsored spending bill aiming to avert a government shutdown because of a provision that would have shut off federal funding for Planned Parenthood for a year. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Republican-Kentucky) promptly filed a new bill funding federal agencies past the October 1 shutdown date, through December 11. The new legislation does not cut off Planned Parenthood, and could be brought to a vote as soon as the following week. In 2019, Planned Parenthood made the difficult decision to withdrawn from the federal Title X family planning program because of new Trump administration rules that prohibit Title X grantees from providing or referring patients for abortion, except in cases of rape, incest, or medical emergency. Alexis McGill Johnson of Planned Parenthood said, "The impact of the Trump administration's gag rule will reverberate across the country." Planned Parenthood is the largest single provider of reproductive health services, sex education, contraceptives, abortion, cancer screening, and testing for sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV, in the U.S. For millions of low-income Americans, both women and men, it is the only affordable source of basic healthcare.
- September 24, 2020 – A new report from the International Rescue Committee shows that real progress has been made in women’s rights since Hillary Clinton declared in 1995 at the 4th World Conference for Women, “. . . women’s right are human rights.” In the 25 years since, there’s been a 110% increase in women serving in national parliaments; a 49% increase in women appointed as government ministers; a 38% decrease overall in maternal deaths worldwide; an 18% increase in female literacy, compared to an 8% increase in male literacy. On the down side, a record number of women have been forced to flee their homes – at least 13 million women are refugees, and Covid-19 may keep half of all refugee girls out of school; 46% of Afghan women have experienced gender-based violence; while 43% of girls in Nigeria, and 40% of Ethiopian girls, are still subject to child marriage.
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- September 25, 1758 – Josepha Auernhammer born, Austrian composer, Violin and Piano Sonata. She studied with Mozart, who dedicated his Violin Sonatas K. 296 and K. 376–80 to her in 1781. After her marriage in 1786, she continued to participate in concerts in private venues and at the Burgtheater in Vienna, and was the first to perform the Piano Concerto in C major, Op 15 by Ludwig van Beethoven. Most of her compositions are for the piano.
- September 25, 1828 — Mutinous officers attempt to assassinate Simón Bolívar in Bogotá, but he is aided in escaping by his lover, Doña Manuela Sáenz, an Ecuadorian revolutionary and women’s rights activist.
- September 25, 1844 – Sarah Bernhardt born, legendary French actress, manager, artistic director, and star of the Théâtre de la Renaissance in Paris (1893-1899); first to impose a rule that ladies in the audience must remove their hats to avoid blocking the view of others.
- September 25, 1847 – Lavinia “Vinnie” Ream Hoxie born, American sculptor, her best-known work is the Lincoln statue in U.S. Capitol Rotunda. Ream was one of the first women to be employed by the federal government, as a clerk in the dead letter office of the U.S. Post Office (1862-1866) during the American Civil War. At the age of 17, in 1863, she began studying sculpture with Clark Mills. In 1864, President Lincoln agreed to model for her in the morning for five months, and she sculpted a bust of the president. Ream became the youngest artist and first woman to receive a commission as an artist from the U.S. government, for her statue of Abraham Lincoln.
- September 25, 1886 – May Godfrey Sutton born, tennis champion, the first American to win a singles title at Wimbledon.
- September 25, 1906 – Phyllis Pearsall born, British portrait painter and mapmaker; she founded the Geographer’s A-Z Map Company in 1936, which produced popular detailed and indexed maps of London, because she frequently became lost when going to first appointments with new subjects. During WWII, selling maps was forbidden so she went to work for the Ministry of Information, and after the war, she had to have the new edition of A-Z maps printed in Amsterdam because of paper shortages in Great Britain. In 1966, she turned the Geographers’ A-Z Map Co. into a trust, ensuring it could never be bought out, and securing the future of the company and its employees. Through her donation of her shares to the trust, she was able to include her standards in the company’s statutes. Pearsall was active in the company, and painted prolifically, until her death from cancer in 1996, just a month before her 90th birthday.
- September 25, 1908 – Jacqueline Audry born, French director; known for Le bonheur conjugal (1965), Bitter Fruit (1967), and La garçonne (1957).
- September 25, 1911 – Lilian Masediba Ngoyi born, South African anti-apartheid activist; first woman elected to the executive committee of the African National Congress; also helped launch the Federation of South African Women. From 1945 to 1956, she worked as a machinist at a textile mill. In 1952, she joined the ANC Women’s League, and became the league’s president in 1953. In 1956, she was one of the leaders of the march of 20,000 women to the Union Buildings of Pretoria to protest against the apartheid government requiring women to carry passbooks as part of the pass laws. She was arrested, spent 71 days in solitary confinement, and was for a period of 15 years placed under severe bans and restrictions that confined her to her home in Soweto.
- September 25, 1916 – Jessica M. Anderson born, Australian novelist-short story writer; during WWII, she worked as a fruit picker in the Australian Women’s Land Army. She published her first novel, An Ordinary Lunacy, at age 47, in 1968. Anderson won the Miles Franklin Literary Award for Tirra Lirra by the River in 1978, and in 1981 for The Impersonators. She died at the age of 93 in 2010.
- September 25, 1929 – Barbara Walters born, American broadcast journalist, author, and TV personality; first woman to co-anchor on a network evening news program, on ABC.
- September 25, 1937 – Mary Allen Wilkes born, computer programmer, logic designer, and attorney; she worked on the LINC computer in the 1960s, now considered the first minicomputer, and a forerunner to the PC. In 1972, she left the computer field to attend Harvard Law School, and became a trial lawyer in 1975, both in private practice and as head of the Economic Crime and Consumer Protection Division of the Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts. Wilkes taught in the Trial Advocacy Program at the Harvard Law School (1983-2011), and also was a judge for the school’s first- and second-year Ames (moot court) competition. In 2001, she became an arbitrator for the American Arbitration Association, primarily on cases involving computer science and information technology.
- September 25, 1941 – Vivien Stern born, Baroness Stern of Vauxhall; crossbench (independent) member of the House of Lords, appointed as a Life Peer in 1999; Secretary General of Penal Reform International (1989-2006); Director of NACRO, a national social justice charity in England and Wales (1977-1996); lecturer in education (1970-1977). Author of Bricks of Shame: Britain’s prisons, and a patron of the Prisoners’ Education Trust.
- September 25, 1942 – The War Labor Board in Washington DC ordered equal pay for U.S. women doing jobs essential to the war effort that all the men drafted or joining the military had left.
- September 25, 1944 – Doris Okada Matsui born, American Democratic politician; U.S. Representative from California since March, 2005, originally elected to take her husband’s seat after his death from cancer in January, 2005. She was born in a WWII internment camp for Japanese Americans in Arizona, but her family returned to California after the war. Matsui was a volunteer for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, and then served on his transition team. She was appointed as deputy special assistant to the president and deputy director of public liaison (1993-1998), then to the board of Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in 2000. She is pro-labor, pro-choice and pro-gay rights, and opposes any move to privatize Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
- September 25, 1945 – Kathleen Brown born, American attorney and Democratic politician; Treasurer of the state of California (1991-1995); Los Angeles Board of Public Works (1987-1989); Los Angeles City Board of Education (1975-1983). She is a partner in a partner in the law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips.
- September 25, 1948 – Mimi Kennedy born, American actress and activist; best known for playing Dharma’s mother Abby on the TV sitcom Dharma & Greg; chair of the board of Progressive Democrats for America, a charter member of Artists United to Win Without War, and an advocate for human rights, the environment, and labor.
- September 25, 1952 – bell hooks born as Gloria Jean Watkins, American author, feminist, and social activist; she has published over 30 books addressing race, class, capitalism, and gender; known for Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, and We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity.
- September 25, 1952 – Cherrie Moraga born, Chicana writer, poet, feminist activist, essayist and playwright; founding member of the social justice group La Red Xican Indigena, fighting for education, Indigenous and cultural rights; notable for This Bridge Called My Back (editor), and Heroes and Saints.
- September 25, 1955 – Luanne Rice born, American novelist; noted for The Lemon Orchard, Little Night, The Silver Boat and Beach Girls. Rice is an environmental activist, and an advocate for families affected by domestic violence.
- September 25, 1962 – Cathy Sarrai born as Kalthoum Sarrai in Tunisia, French television anchor and presenter, and author of three books, including an autobiography. She died of cancer in 2010 at age 47.
- September 25, 1964 – Rebecca Gablé born, German author of historical fiction and detective novels; Der König der purpurnen Stadt (The King of the Purple City).
- September 25, 1969 – Catharine Zeta-Jones born in Wales, Film star and actress, known for The Mask of Zorro, Traffic, Chicago, and Intolerable Cruelty. In 2010, she was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for her film and humanitarian work. She is a patron of Swansea's Longfields Day Centre for the disabled, has raised funds for AIDS patients in Africa, is a supporter of the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children and the Noah's Ark Appeal, and an ambassador of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Zeta-Jones has spoken openly about her struggles with bipolar II disorder and depression.
- September 25, 1973 – Jenny Chapman born, British Labour Party politician; Member of Parliament for Darlington since 2010.
- September 25, 1981 – Sandra Day O’Connor is sworn in as the first woman U.S. Supreme Court justice.
- September 25, 1996 – The last of the Magdalene asylums closes in Ireland; also called Magdalene “laundries.” They were run mostly by religious orders of the Roman Catholic Church. Beginning in the 18th century, they housed "fallen women." An estimated 30,000 women and girls were confined in them, and made to do unpaid laundry work, in the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1993, scandal erupted after a mass grave containing 155 corpses was discovered on the grounds of one of the convents involved. A long investigation revealed abundant evidence of abusive practices. The Irish government issued a state apology in 2013, and set up a ₤50 million compensation scheme for the survivors, to which the Catholic Church has refused to contribute.
- September 25, 2018 – Bill Cosby sentenced to three to ten years in prison for aggravated sexual assault. In August, 2020, his lawyers filed an appeal seeking a new trial, arguing that it was "fundamentally unfair" that the judge at his 2018 sexual assault trial allowed Cosby's deposition from a civil lawsuit to be used against him, and also argued that testimony from five accusers about sexual incidents that occurred years earlier had improperly prejudiced the jury against Cosby at the trial.
- September 25, 2019 – Just days after Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador sent the nation’s Congreso de la Unión a bill that would grant amnesty to women serving prison terms for abortion, lawmakers in the state of Oaxaca approved a bill to decriminalize abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Oaxaca is the second region of the country, after Mexico City, to permit abortions. Pro-choice activist Pilar Muriedas declared, “The victory is not only for Oaxaca — the law, yes — but it means this gives hope to the other states where women who decide to have an abortion . . . are punished.”
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- September 26, 1820 – Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar born in British India, Bengali polymath who was a key figure in the Bengal Renaissance; philosopher, writer, translator, publisher, reformer and philanthropist. Vidyasagar significantly simplified and modernized the Bengali alphabet and prose. He was a champion of uplifting the status of women, and campaigned for the Hindu Widows Remarriage Act, passed in 1856, which legalized the remarriage of Hindu widows. Many of the widows were child brides who had been the third or fourth wives of elderly men. Sometimes these marriages had never been consummated, but all widows were expected to be resigned to living chastely and austerely. In practice, many of them faced near-starvation, hard labour, and effectively were under ‘house arrest.’ Often, young widows escaped and became prostitutes. The act upheld the legitimacy of any children from a second marriage, and also provided legal safeguards against loss of some forms of inheritance when a widow remarried, but she had to renounce her claim on any inheritance from her deceased husband when she married again.
- September 26, 1865 – Dame Mary Russell, Duchess of Bedford born, British pilot who set a record in 1929 flying 10,000 miles round trip between the U.K and India in 8 days; she also was an ornithologist, interested in bird migration. Russell founded four hospitals in Woburn and Woburn Abbey, and worked as a nurse and radiographer from 1914 through the 1930s; member of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, which used tax resistance to protest the exclusion of British women from the right to vote. Her journal, A Bird-Watcher's Diary, was privately published after her death.
- September 26, 1875 – Mary Elisabeth Dreier born into a financially secure family, she devoted herself to social and civic reform, and was an advocate for working women and woman suffrage. She joined the New York Women’s Trade Union League, a coalition of working women and middle to upper class women founded in 1903 to help working women organize and to educate the public about their working conditions. She was the group’s president (1906-1914). During the 1909 New York Shirtwaist Strike, she and other better-off NYWTUL members marched to City Hall to demand an end to abuse of the striking workers by New York police, and she was arrested during a demonstration. Dreier served on the New York State Factory Investigating Commission (1911-1915), and on the New York City Board of Education (1915). In 1917, she chaired the New York State Committee on Women in Industry of the Advisory Commission of the Council of National Defense, but after WWI, she was on the executive committee of the New York Council for Limitation of Armaments (1921-1927).
- September 26, 1876 – Edith Abbott born, economist, educator, author, and a pioneer in making social work a profession. She was a leading activist in social reform with the ideals that humanitarianism needed to be embedded in education. Abbott implemented a social work studies program through the graduate level. Though she was met with resistance on her work with social reform at the University of Chicago, she ultimately was successful and was elected as the school's dean in 1924, making her the first woman dean in the United States. Her innovations made the Chicago curriculum years ahead of other institutions. Abbott was also an early advocate for social security legislation. She was the author of Public Assistance - American Principles and Policies, published in 1940.
- September 26, 1877 – Bertha De Vriese born, Belgian doctor. Girls in Belgium were not allowed even secondary education until 1864, and could not go on to higher education until 1876. In 1890, they were finally allowed to attend medical school, but only if they had a completion certificate for secondary schooling, or passed an equivalency test. De Vriese was home schooled, so she studied for and passed the equivalency test in 1893. She was the first woman admitted to the medical school at Ghent University, first woman to do research there, and first woman to graduate, summa cum laude, with a diploma for medicine, obstetrics and gynecology in 1900. She was awarded 95 out of 100 points and a gold medal for a paper on blood vessels which she submitted for a university competition. After further studies abroad, she returned to Ghent in 1903, and applied for a position in the university’s lab, where she underwent a two-year training program as an assistant, and applied for an extension to complete her training, but was denied, in spite of glowing recommendations, ending her hopes for a career in research. After working in the pediatric ward at Ghent’s Bijloke Hospital, De Vriese opened a private pediatric clinic; she later became the Bijloke children’s ward director, and a public school medical inspector.
- September 26, 1893 – Freda Kirchwey born, prolific political journalist, editor/owner of The Nation, advocate for birth control in 1920s, active member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).
- September 26, 1900 – Suzanne Belperron born, influential French jewelry designer, head of the Herz-Belperron company.
- September 26, 1919 – Matilde Camus born, Spanish poet and non-fiction author, who wrote mainly about historical subjects.
- September 26, 1937 – Bessie Smith, American blues singer, is fatally injured in a car crash, and dies the following morning.
- September 26, 1942 – Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa born, American scholar of Chicana cultural theory, feminist theory, and queer theory; her book, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, is loosely based on her life growing up on the Mexican-Texas border.
- September 26, 1945 – Louise Beaudoin born, French Canadian Parti Québécois politician; Member of the National Assembly of Quebec, for Rosemont (2008-2012), and for Chambly (1994-2003); decorated as a commandeur of the Légion d'honneur in 2004.
- September 26, 1946 – Andrea Dworkin born, controversial American author and radical feminist who campaigned against pornography and prostitution, which she viewed as linked to violence against women; Woman Hating; Right-Wing Women; Pornography: Men Possessing Women; and Intercourse.
- September 26, 1946 – Louise “Weezie” Simonson born, American comic book writer and editor; honored with the Inkpot Award for Outstanding Achievement in Comic Arts in 1992.
- September 26, 1946 – Claudette Werleigh born, lawyer, and civil servant; advocate for adult literacy, and helped organize humanitarian relief programs; Director at the Life & Peace Institute in Uppsala, Sweden (1999-2007); first woman Prime Minister of Haiti (1995-1996); Minister of Foreign Affairs and Religions (1994-1995).
- September 26, 1949 – Jane Smiley born, American novelist; won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for her novel A Thousand Acres.
- September 26, 1949 – Minette Walters born, English crime and historical fiction author; noted for The Ice House, which won the 1992 John Creasey Award for best first novel from the Crime Writers’ Association, The Sculptress, which won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America, and The Scold’s Bride, winner of the CWA Gold Dagger.
- September 26, 1961 – Marianne Mikko born, Estonian Social Democratic politician; Member of the Estonian Parliament since 2011, serving on the Committee on Political Affairs and Democracy; Member of the European Parliament (2004-2009), serving on the Committee on Culture and Education, and the Committee on Fisheries.
- September 26, 1971 – Representative Shirley Chisholm enters the Democratic presidential primaries, the first woman to run for the Democratic nomination, and the first black woman to run for President. Chisholm was also the first African-American woman elected to Congress (Democrat-New York, 1969-1983).
- September 26, 1973 – Captain Lorraine Potter, American Baptist minister, becomes the first woman U.S. Air Force chaplain.
- September 26, 1988 – Lily Singh born, Canadian comedian; host and producer of A Little Late with Lily Singh, becoming only the second woman to host an American TV network late night talk show after Cynthia Garrett’s short-lived Later. She is also reported to be one of the highest-earning You Tube stars, and starred in the autobiographical-documentary film, A Trip to Unicorn Island. Author of the best-selling book, How to be a Bawse: A Guide to Conquering Life.
- September 26, 2007 – The first World Contraception Day is supported by the World Health Organization (WHO) and numerous women’s health organizations, including Planned Parenthood.
- September 26, 2017 – Saudi Arabia announced that it will lift a longstanding ban against women driving, which had become the focus of criticism over the treatment of Saudi women by the conservative Muslim monarchy, but the ban was actually lifted in June, 2018. Women’s rights and human rights groups have pushed for the lifting of the ban, and some women activists had been jailed for defying the ban, and for campaigning against restrictive guardianship laws under which women have a similar legal status to minor children. Supporters of the prohibition claimed the prohibition was appropriate in a country under Shariah law, and that letting women drive would lead to promiscuity and the destruction of the family. Saudi leaders expressed hope that the new policy would help more women enter the workplace, since they will no longer need to spend a substantial amount of their salaries paying a male driver. However, in the lead up to lifting the driving ban, Saudi Arabia arrested at least a dozen leading women's rights activists, and accused them of undermining national security and “having contacts with foreign parties.” Among those detained, 28-year-old Loujain al-Hathloul, was previously arrested for driving in 2014. That year she was held for more than 70 days. Al-Hathloul was arrested again in May 2018. Another prominent activist arrested was Aziza al-Yousef, a retired computer science professor, formerly at Riyadh's King Saud University.
- September 26, 2018 – Padma Lakshmi, American author, actress, activist, and host of Top Chef, was sexually assaulted when she was seven years old, and raped when she was a teenager by a man in his 20s that she had dated. “I understand why women keep silent,” she wrote in an opinion piece for the New York Times. ““These experiences have affected me and my ability to trust. It took me decades to talk about this with intimate partners and a therapist. I think if I had at the time named what happened to me as rape – and told others – I might have suffered less. Looking back, I now think I let my rapist off the hook and I let my 16-year-old self down.” She wrote the piece in response Donald Trump, who questioned why Christine Blasey Ford did not immediately report what had happened if her allegations against Brett Kavanaugh were true. “I understand why both women [Ford and another Kavanaugh accuser] would keep this information to themselves for so many years, without involving the police. For years I did the same thing . . . Now, 32 years after my rape, I am stating publicly what happened. I have nothing to gain by talking about this. But we all have a lot to lose if we put a time limit on telling the truth about sexual assault and if we hold on to the codes of silence that for generations have allowed men to hurt women with impunity.”
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- September 27, 1657 – Sophia Alekseyevna born, ruled as Regent of Russia (1682-1689) during the minority of her brother, Ivan V and half-brother Peter I. She forged alliances with Prince Vasily Golitsyn and other key members of the court, during a time when Muscovite upper-class women were confined to the upper-floor terem (women’s separate quarters), and had to wear veils in public, always accompanied by guards, and were kept away from any open involvement in politics. She was the only girl among her siblings who was educated by the tutor for her older brothers. When her brother, Tsar Feodor III died, Sophia unexpectedly acted in the interest of her sickly 16 year-old brother Ivan to prevent her 9-year-old half-brother Peter from bypassing Ivan and inheriting the throne, as her father was considering at the time of his death. The clans of her father’s two wives, Mara Miloslavskaya and Natalia Naryshkina, were both vying to see the son of their branch on the throne. State funerals were only attended by men, but she shocked the mourners at Feodor’s funeral by storming in and insisting on staying. Her Miroslavsky relatives backed Sophia as regent, and took advantage of an uprising by the Streltsy regiments in Moscow to spread rumors of corruption, and stir up rebels, who stormed the royal residence and killed several Naryshkin supporters, including two of Peter’s uncles. Mobs of the poor began looting in the streets of Moscow. Ivan was proclaimed as the “first” tsar, with Peter as a secondary co-ruler, and Sophia as regent for them both. There was another attempt to usurp the throne, but it was put down. Prince Vasily Golitsyn became the diplomatic force behind the Eternal Peace Treaty of 1686 with Poland, and the 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk with China. But Peter and his faction became increasingly insistent on his rights, especially after Ivan’s first-born was a girl child. His Naryshkin relatives demanded after Peter married at age 17 that Sophia step down, and Ivan be demoted. Sophia was forced into exile in the Novodevichy convent, without the formality of taking the veil, and died in there in 1704 at the age of 46.
- September 27, 1861 – Corinne Roosevelt Robinson born, American writer, poet, and public speaker; sister of Theodore and aunt of Eleanor Roosevelt; first woman called on to second a nomination of a Presidential candidate of a major U.S. political party, at the 1920 Republican convention for Leonard Wood, but he lost the nomination to Warren G. Harding; she did not campaign for Hoover in 1932 and voted for FDR.
- September 27, 1871 – Grazia Deledda born, Italian author and poet, won the 1926 Nobel Prize for literature, the first Italian woman to receive the prize; noted for Chiaroscuro, and Canne al vento (Reeds in the Wind).
- September 27, 1874 – Myrtle Reed born, author, poet, journalist and philanthropist; noted for Lavender and Old Lace, which became a long-running play; Old Rose and Silver; and A Weaver of Dreams; she also published several cookbooks under the pen-name Olive Green.
- September 27, 1878 – Mary Emily Sinclair born, American mathematician; she earned her A.B. degree in 1900 from Oberlin College, and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. In 1908, she became the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Chicago. From 1907 to 1944, she taught at Oberlin College, as an instructor (1907-1908); associate professor (1908-1925); full professor (1925-1941); Department Chair (1939-1944); Clark Professor of Mathematics (1941-1944). During several sabbaticals, she continued her mathematical research, at University of Chicago, Cornell University, University of Rome, the Sorbonne, and the Institute for Advanced Study.
- September 27, 1886 – “Minnie” Vautrin born, American missionary in China for 28 years, and president of Ginling Women’s College. She saved lives of thousands of Chinese refugees, many of them women and girls, during the 1937 Japanese invasion of Nanjing, using documents issued by the Japanese Embassy proclaiming Ginling College as a refugee center in the Neutral Zone to prevent Japanese soldiers from entering the school’s campus. In the aftermath, Vautrin saw to the burial of the dead and the reception of newborn babies and was successful in tracing missing husbands and sons. Industrial or crafts classes were provided for women who had lost their husbands, so that they might support themselves. One hundred widows graduated under this program. In 1940, she returned to the U.S., suffering from severe stress. In May, 1941, she wrote in her journal, “Had I ten perfect lives, I would give them all for China” shortly before she committed suicide. Chinese historian Hu, Hua-Ling wrote an account of her heroism in American Goddess at the Rape of Nanjing.
- September 27, 1895 – Jennie Matyas born, labor organizer and educator; emigrated with her family from Hungarian Transylvania (1906); she enrolled black women in the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), and worked as an organizer and educational director of the ILGWU Pacific Coast office (1934-1941), organizing San Francisco women garment workers. Matyas was elected as a vice president and member of the ILGWU General Executive Board in 1944. She retired in 1961, went back to school and earned a teaching credential, then taught adult education at a community college. She died in 1988 at age 93.
- September 27, 1911 – Marcey Jacobson born, American photographer; a socialist and lesbian who did most of her best-known work in Mexico during the McCarthy era, photographing indigenous peoples of Southern Mexico.
- September 27, 1916 – Iyasu V is deposed as ruler of Ethiopia, and his aunt becomes Empress Zewditu (1916-1930), the first woman head of an internationally recognized state in 20th century Africa, and the last Empress regnant to date.
- September 27, 1928 – Margaret Rule born, British archaeologist, leader of the project to excavate and raise the Tudor warship Mary Rose in 1982.
- September 27, 1932 – Marcia Neugebauer born, American geophysicist; her work yielded the first direct measurements of the solar wind. During her long career at NASA, she also developed analytical instruments that orbited Earth, some set up on the moon by the Apollo astronauts, and others that flew by Halley's comet on the European Giotto mission. She had management positions at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and served as president of the American Geophysical Union (1994-1996). Neugebauer chaired the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Solar and Space Physics.
- September 27, 1939 – Carol Lynn Pearson born, American poet, author, screenwriter, and playwright. A fourth-generation member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, more commonly known as the Mormon Church, she is best known for her memoir, Goodbye, I Love You, about her marriage to Gerald Neils Pearson, a gay man who died of AIDS. They were both devout Mormons, and he told her while they were engaged that he had engaged in sexual relationships with men, but had left that ‘phase’ of his life behind. Mormon authorities assured the couple that marriage would turn him into a heterosexual, but after 12 years of marriage and four children, they separated and then divorced in 1978. When he was being diagnosed with AIDS in 1984, he returned to live with his ex-wife and children, and she cared for him until his death. Since then, Pearson has been an unofficial spokesperson for acceptance of gay people by their Mormon families, and for a stronger leadership role for women in the Mormon community.
- September 27, 1940 – Fatema Mernissi born, Moroccan sociologist, a pioneer of Islamic feminism, and author of Beyond the Veil (1975).
- September 27, 1953 – Diane Abbott born, British Labour politician, the first black woman to hold a seat in the House of Commons, serving as the Member of Parliament for Hackney North and Stoke Newington since 1987.
- September 27, 1953 – Mātā Amritānandamayī born, also known as ‘Amma’ (Mother); Indian Hindu spiritual leader, guru and humanitarian. “If the two wings of a bird are devotion and action, knowledge is its tail. Only with the help of all three can the bird soar into the heights." She stresses the importance of selfless service, the need for inter-religious harmony, for environmental protection, and of desegregating science and spirituality. She also regularly speaks on the importance of women's empowerment and gender equality.
- September 27, 1962 – Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring is published; in Sweden, their word for pesticides is changed to mean biocide because Carson argues that ‘insecticide’ is inaccurate as all living things are being poisoned through water and soil contamination.
- September 27, 1964 – Tracy Camp born, American computer scientist, noted for her wireless network research, and her leadership in broadening participation in computer science; an Association for Computing Machinery 2006 Distinguished Scientist, and named an ACM Fellow in 2012.
- September 27, 1966 – Stephanie D. Wilson born, American aerospace engineer and NASA astronaut; second African American woman in space.
- September 27, 1968 – Mari Kiviniemi born, Finnish politician, second woman Prime Minister of Finland (2010-2011); since 2014, Deputy Secretary General of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
- September 27, 1981 – Sophie Crumb born in the U.S., American-French comics artist who has lived most of her life in France since age 9. Best known for her Belly Button comix.
- September 27, 1988 – Aung San Suu Kyi co-founds National League for Democracy to fight dictatorship in Myanmar.
- September 27, 1991 – The Senate Judiciary Committee deadlocks, 7-7, on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court.
- September 27, 2009 – Voters in the German Federal elections re-elect Angela Merkel for a second term as Chancellor of Germany.
- September 27, 2019 – In India, five judges of the supreme court unanimously declared unconstitutional a colonial-era law that made having a sexual relationship with a woman without her husband’s consent a crime. It is also archaic, discriminatory, and deprived women of agency. The case, brought by an Indian businessman living in Italy, sought to have section 497 of the Indian penal code and another similar provision made gender neutral. But the court said the offence, which carried a prison sentence of up to five years, was arbitrary and needed to go. “It is time to say husband is not the master,” said the chief justice, Dipak Misra. He quoted John Stuart Mill: “Legal subordination of one sex over another is wrong in itself.” Indu Malhotra, one of two women among the 25 judges on the court, said: “The time when wives were invisible to the law, and lived in the shadows of their husbands, has long since gone by.”
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- September 28, 1839 – Frances Willard born, first U.S. woman college president, of her alma mater Evanston College for Ladies – when it merges with Northwestern University in 1871, she becomes Dean of Women, but resigns in 1874 to go on a lecture tour for the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, covering 30,000 miles in ten years, while heading the WCTU publications committee; elected WCTU president in 1879; supporter of the Suffrage cause, believing the WCTU could best reach its goals if women had the vote; during her tenure as president, WCTU membership grows to 150,000, making it the largest women’s organization of the time in the world.
- September 28, 1852 – Isis Pogson born, British astronomer and meteorologist; in 1860, her father became director of the Madras Observatory in India, and his wife and three youngest of their 11 children went with him. Isis was eight. When her mother died in 1869, she took over running the household, but also became her father’s assistant, then in 1873 she was raised to the post of computer (originally, ‘computers’ were human mathematical calculators) with a salary of 150 rupees, about what a cook or coach-man would make. She worked there for 25 years, also serving as the meteorological superintendent and reporter for the Madras government from 1881 until the observatory was closed in 1898, and she was given a pension of 250 rupees. In 1902, she married a captain in the Merchant Navy, and they moved back to England. Pogson was the first woman to be nominated for election in 1886 by her father as a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (a few women had been made honorary fellows before this). He had to withdraw her nomination when two attorneys declared that female fellows were illegal under the provisions of the society’s royal charter dating from 1831, which always referred to fellows as he. She finally did become a fellow when Oxford professor H.H. Turner nominated her in 1920, five years after the society received a Supplemental Charter in 1915 which opened up fellowships to women.
- September 28, 1856 – Kate Douglas Wiggin born, American children’s author, head of the first free kindergarten in California, in the San Francisco slums; uses the enormous success of her books to raise money for children’s charities by giving frequent public readings; best remembered for Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, and Mother Carey's Chickens.
- September 28, 1878 – Lilian Bland born, Anglo-Irish sports journalist, press photographer, and aviation pioneer; one of the first women in the world to design, build and fly her own aircraft, the Bland Mayfly. She was very unconventional. She smoked, wore trousers, and went hunting, shooting and fishing. She spent days on remote Scottish islands photographing seabirds, which helped spark her interest in flying. After her uncle sent her a postcard of the Blériot monoplane from Paris, she attended the first aviation meeting held in Blackpool in 1909. Bland decided to not only to learn how to fly, but to design and build her own plane. Another uncle, astronomer General William Smythe, lent her a house with a workshop. After some background reading on the Wright brothers, she built a flyable model biplane with a six foot wingspan, then built a full-scale glider with a wingspan of over 20 feet, with some help. For the load test, she recruited four Irish constables, and the glider successfully lifted them. A bicycle handlebar became the controls. She added a light 20 horsepower two-stroke engine, but the petrol tank wasn’t ready, so she improvised with an empty whisky bottle, and her deaf aunt’s ear trumpet. In August, 1910, Bland and the Mayfly made a first successful flight at Randalstown in Northern Ireland – a short hop off the ground, and flight for about a quarter mile. The plane’s very light construction would not allow for a larger engine, which limited it to short flights at very low altitude. She gave the air-frame to a boy’s gliding club, and sold the engine. Bland's flying had been a source of some concern to her father, who saw it as unsafe as well as unseemly for a young woman. Around the end of the year, he persuaded her to give up the Mayfly in exchange for buying her a Model T Ford motor car. By April 1911 she was running a car dealership in Belfast, Ireland, but in October 1912 gave up the business to marry her cousin Charles Loftus Bland, a lumberjack in British Columbia. He had returned to Ireland to propose to Lilian. The couple married on October 3, 1911, and soon emigrated to Canada where they built their own farm. They had their first and only child, in April 1913, but she died of tetanus in September 1929. The couple separated soon after, with Lilian moving back to England and Charles going on to marry his second wife, Mary (who was a cousin of both Lilian and Charles). In 1935, Bland settled in Kent, and became a gardener. She gambled her wages on the stock market in the hopes of getting more money. She also wrote a memoir about her life during this time, which is yet to be published. By the 1950s, Bland had retired to Cornwall. In 1971, at the age of 92, Bland was quoted by the Belfast Telegraph, saying that the only excitement left to her was gambling. She died soon after on May 11, 1971, at the age of 92.
- September 28, 1890 – Florence Violet McKenzie born, ‘Mrs. Mac’ – Australia’s first woman engineer and lifelong advocate for technical education for women. McKensie set up her own electrical contracting business in 1918, then apprenticed herself to it, in order to meet the requirements for a Diploma in Electrical Engineering at Sydney Technical College. She was the first Australian woman to take out an amateur radio operator’s license in 1922 and started The Wireless Weekly the same year. Her Wireless Shop became renowned among Sydney’s radio hobbyists and experimenters. In 1934, she founded the Electrical Association for Women, and wrote the first “all-electric” cookbook in 1936. McKenzie was the founder of the Women’s Emergency Signaling Corps (WESC),. She campaigned successfully for some of her trainees to be accepted into the Navy. In 1941, fourteen members of her civilian WESC became the first recruits for wireless telegraphy in the Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service (WRANS) at the Canberra Transmitting Station. Over the course of the war, over 3,000 women served in the WRANS. McKenzie trained countless men and women in wireless transmission and Morse Code during the war, and continued training men from the merchant navy, commercial airline pilots and anybody else who needed a “signaller’s ticket.” She ran the only school for wireless training in Sydney, and never charged tuition. She was appointed in 1950 as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for her work with WESC, and elected as a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Navigation in 1957.
- September 28, 1893 – Hilda Geiringer born, Austrian Jewish mathematician; she studied mathematics at the University of Vienna, earning a Ph.D. in 1917, then spent the next two years as an assistant editor on the Jahrbuch über die Fortschritte der Mathematik, a mathematics review journal. In 1921, she moved to Berlin to be an assistant at the Institute of Applied Mathematics to Richard von Mises, known for his work on statistics, probability theory, solid mechanics, fluid mechanics, aerodynamics and aeronautics. Also in 1921, she married Félix Pollaczek, another Austrian Jew, an engineer and mathematician. They had a daughter in 1922, but the marriage soon broke up. Geiringer continued working for von Mises, at the same time raising her child. Although trained as a pure mathematician, Geiringer moved towards applied mathematics to fit in with the work being undertaken at the Institute, working on statistics, probability theory, and the mathematical theory of plasticity. She submitted a thesis for her Habilitation to qualify as an instructor at the University of Berlin, but it was not immediately accepted. In 1933, Geiringer lost the right to teach at the university once the Civil Service Law came into effect two months after Adolf Hitler attained power. This law disqualified Jews from working as teachers, professors, judges, or other government positions. Geiringer left Germany after she was dismissed from the University of Berlin, and, with Magda, she went to Brussels, where she was appointed to the Institute of Mechanics and began to apply mathematics to the theory of vibrations. In 1934, she followed von Mises to Istanbul, and became a mathematics professor. While there, she became interested in Gregor Mendel studies of genetics. She did some of the pioneering theoretical work in molecular genetics, biotechnology and genetic engineering, but it was known to very few because she was publishing in Turkish journals. Following Atatürk’s death in 1938, Geiringer and her daughter went to Bryn Mawr College in the U.S., where she was appointed to a part-time lecturer position. In addition to her lecturing duties at Bryn Mawr College, Geiringer undertook, as part of the war effort, classified work for the United States National Research Council. During 1942, she gave an advanced summer course in mechanics at Brown University. She wrote up her outstanding series of lectures on the geometrical foundations of mechanics and, although they were never properly published, these were widely disseminated and used in the U.S. for many years. Though Brown University never offered Geiringer permanent employment, the university takes full birthplace credit for these “mimeographed notes.” She married Richard von Mises in 1943, leaving Bryn Mawr to take a permanent position as Professor and Chairman of the Mathematics Department at Wheaton College, but having leave on the weekends to be with von Mises, who was the Gordon McKay Professor of Aerodynamics and Applied Mathematics at Harvard University. She applied for positions at other New England Universities, but was discriminated against as a woman and a Jew. On June 23, 1939, Harvard University’s astronomy professor Harlow Shapley wrote on her behalf to Radcliffe College which operated as Harvard’s sister school. Though it drew instructors and other resources from Harvard, Radcliffe graduates were not granted Harvard degrees until 1963. Even though Geiringer was a better mathematician and a better teacher than Harvard could provide to the women at Radcliffe, Geiringer was never offered a position there. Her husband died in 1953, and Geiger, while still keeping her job at Wheaton, she accepted a temporary position as a Research Fellow to complete and edit von Mises’ unfinished work. In 1959, she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was also a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.
- September 28, 1900 – Isabel Pell born, American who was awarded the French Légion d’honneur for her four years during WWII with the Maquis (rural resistance fighters, often in the mountains), using the name “Fredericka.” She was captured by Italian soldiers and interned at Puget-Theniers, but smuggled out information until she was released. She disguised herself as a peasant, and continued working with the Maquis. In 1944, she led a group of American soldiers trapped by the enemy in the town of Tanaron to safety.
- September 28, 1913 – Vivian Fine born, American piano prodigy and composer of over 140 works during her 68 year career; member of Aaron Copeland’s Young Composers Group; The Women in the Garden; Alcestis.
- September 28, 1916 – Olga Lepeshinskaya, Soviet Prima Ballerina with the Bolshoi and the Kirov; member of the Communist Party, married to Soviet General Aleksei Antonov.
- September 28, 1937 – Alice Mahon born, British Labour Party MP for Halifax (1987-2005); trade unionist and member of the Socialist Campaign Group; activist for peace, women’s rights (especially abortion) and gay rights; resigned in 2009 from the Labour Party in protest of major changes in party policies, including shutting out dissenting voices within the party, Britain’s involvement in the disastrous “War on Terror,” and the party breaking a campaign promise not to privatize the Royal Mail.
- September 28, 1944 – Marcia Muller born, American mystery and thriller novelist; notable for her Sharon McCone private detective series. She was honored with the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master award in 2005.
- September 28, 1947 – Sheikh Hasina Wazed born, Bangladeshi politician, leader of the Bangladesh Awami League, Prime Minister of Bangladesh (1996-2001, and 2009 to present).
- September 28, 1947 – Rhonda Hughes born, American mathematician and academic; Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Bryn Mawr College since 2011; Chair of the Bryn Mawr Mathematics Department (1980-2011); co-founder of the EDGE Program (Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education) in 1998, a mentoring program to assist women in transitioning into graduate studies in mathematical sciences.
- September 28, 1954 – Margot Wallström born, Swedish Social Democratic politician; Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden and Minister of Foreign Affairs since 2014; UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict (2010-2012); she was vice president of the European Commission (2004-2010).
- September 28, 1955 – Mercy Manci born, South African Xhosa sangoma (traditional healers who are diviners – the herbalists are called inyanga) who was taught by her grandmother, and is an HIV activist. As a teenager, she was the victim of a bride kidnapping by a family who wanted to avoid the lengthy negotiations over the lobola (bride price). No longer a virgin, she could not go home, and the marriage became official when the kidnappers paid four cows. She has one daughter from this marriage. While her husband went to work in the mines, she studied nursing through a correspondence course. When he came home, her husband burned her books and destroyed the typewriter she bought. After he discovered she was taking contraceptives behind his back, he disowned her, to be sent back to her family, but she went to Johannesburg instead, and got a job as a Doctor’s assistant. She founded Nyangazeziswe (Healers of the Nation), an organisation dealing with African traditional healing and HIV. She gives workshops for other traditional healers in the Eastern Cape, but also internationally, focusing on preventing HIV by teaching how to use condoms and how HIV is transmitted.
- September 28, 1956 – Martha Fandiño Pinilla born in Columbia with Columbian and Italian dual citizenship, mathematician and author; noted for her work analyzing mathematical learning problems and the effectiveness of teaching methods.
- September 28, 2019 – ‘Go back to where you come from.” It’s a typical racist taunt, one that Donald Trump used against four Democratic congresswomen in July, 2019. BBC presenter Naga Munchetty discussed the issue with co-host Dan Walker on BBC Breakfast, and condemned the tweets as racist, expressing her anger at the racism she has faced. The BBC complaints unit generated a storm of controversy because it ruled that while it was “legitimate” for Munchetty to have “reflected her own experience of racism,” it was wrong “to comment critically” on the president’s “motive” or the “consequences” of his words. On this day, Kenan Malik defended Muchetty in an op-ed piece for the Observer, saying that she did not call Trump racist. She said she was “furious” that he “thinks it’s OK to skirt the lines by using language like that.” In addition, he pointed out that other BBC journalists have called the president racist, including the BBC’s New York correspondent, Nick Bryant, who tweeted about Trump’s “racial demagoguery.” Malik also questioned why it was legitimate to offer an opinion on the racist nature of the tweet, yet not appropriate to comment on the person tweeting. He said Munchetty, was not reporting on the topic but expressing her opinion, and concluded, “Ruling her comments inappropriate not only reins in the calling out of racism but makes it more difficult to draw the line between news and opinion.”
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- September 29, 1810 – Elizabeth Gaskell born, English author of Cranford, North and South, and Wives and Daughters; first biographer of Charlotte Brontë.
- September 29, 1848 – Caroline Yale born, American educator who revolutionized the teaching of the deaf; co-developer of the Northampton Vowel and Consonant Charts.
- September 29, 1882 – Lilias Armstrong born, English phonetician, reader at University College London, known for her work on English intonation, and pioneering studies of the phonetics and tone of Somali and Kikuyu; co-author with Ida C. Ward of Handbook of English Intonation, a classic which remained in print for over 50 years, and author of A Burmese Phonetic Reader, The Phonetic Structure of Somali and The Phonetic and Tonal Structure of Kikuyu.
- September 29, 1903 – Diana Vreeland born, noted columnist for Harper’s Bazaar (1936-1962), editor-in-chief of Vogue (1963-1971) and consultant to the NY Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute (1971-1989).
- September 29, 1927 – Barbara Mertz born, American Egyptologist, historian, and popular novelist under the pen names Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels; noted for her Amelia Peabody mystery series.
- September 29, 1939 – Molly Haskell born, American feminist theatre and film critic for the Village Voice in the 1960s, then for New York magazine and Vogue; known for her influential 1974 book, From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies, was revised and reissued in 1987.
- September 29, 1942 – Janet Powell born, Australian Democrats and Green party (after 2004) politician; Leader of the Australian Democrats (1990-1991); Senator for Victoria (1986-1993). She was an inaugural appointee to the Victorian Honour Role of Women in 2000 for “services to the community,” and made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2012. Powell died at the age of 71 in 2013.
- September 29, 1951 – Michelle Bachelet Jeria born, Chilean physician and politician, first woman elected as President of Chile — twice (2006-2010, and 2014-2018); UN High Commissioner for Human Rights since 2018.
- September 29, 1955 – Ann Bancroft born, American author, wilderness instructor and explorer, teacher and public speaker; first woman to cross both the North and South Poles, and has been on a source-to-sea expedition on the Ganges River, and the first east-west crossing of Greenland. Bancroft is an openly gay advocate for LGBT rights. Inducted into the U.S. National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2005.
- September 29, 1955 – Gwen Ifill born, American journalist, television newscaster, political analyst, and author; first African American woman to host a nationally televised public affairs program in the U.S., Washington Week in Review, and was the co-managing editor of the PBS NewsHour with Judy Woodruff. Ifill was awarded the Women in Film and Video Women of Vision Award in 2000. She wrote the best-selling book, The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama, published in 2009.
- September 29, 1961 – Julia E. Gillard born, Australian Labor Party politician, Prime Minister of Australia (2010-2013), the first Australian woman to hold the positions of Deputy Prime Minister, Prime Minister and leader of a major party; leader of the Labor Party (2010-2013); Deputy Prime Minister (2007-2010); member of the House of Representatives (1998-2007).
- September 29, 1961 – Stephanie Miller born, American comedian and host of the liberal talk radio program, The Stephanie Miller Show, since 2004.
- September 29, 1977 – Eva Shain became the first woman to officiate at a heavyweight title boxing match. About 70 million people watched as Muhammad Ali defeated Ernie Shavers on NBC-TV and kept his title.
- September 29, 1988 – Stacy Allison becomes the first American woman to reach the summit of Mt. Everest.
- September 29, 1989 – Fatima Lodhi born, Pakistani social activist against Colorism, the prejudice and discrimination against people with darker skin while viewing lighter skin as a standard of attractiveness, especially in women; she launched a campaign with the slogan 'Dark Is Divine' which has garnered international attention.
- September 29, 2019 – Cardiologist Dr. Sonya Babu-Narayan warned, “Heart attacks have never been more treatable. Yet women are dying needlessly because heart attacks are often seen as a man’s disease, and women don’t receive the same standard of treatment as men.” The British Heart Foundation, a leading charity, issued a report that inequalities at every stage lead to women being diagnosed late and not getting the prompt treatment and aftercare they need to survive a heart attack. Research funded by the foundation found more than 8,000 women who died between 2002 and 2013 in England and Wales because they did not receive the same standard of care as men. “Public understanding of women and heart attacks is beset by misperceptions. These are dangerous when they mean a woman doesn’t recognise the symptoms of her heart attack and delays seeking and receiving medical help,” the BHF report said. “Worldwide, coronary heart disease is the single biggest killer of women.” Women are 50% more likely to get a wrong diagnosis than a man, and are also less likely to be put on medication to prevent a second heart attack. The most common symptoms, for both men and women, are sudden central chest pain or discomfort in the chest that doesn’t go away, which can feel like pressure, tightness or squeezing. There may be pain that radiates down the left arm, or both arms, or to the neck, jaw, back or stomach. People can feel sick, sweaty, light-headed or short of breath.
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- September 30, 1814 – Lucinda Hinsdale Stone born, educator, feminist, advocate for suffrage and education for women, abolitionist, and literary club organizer. At Kalamazoo College, she was the head of the Ladies Department; she was inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame in 1983.
- September 30, 1832 – Ann Jarvis, American activist for public health education for women to reduce infant mortality and death from disease. She organized the women in the mothers’ clubs to learn and then teach others the importance of sanitation, and to arrange for communities to help families stricken by illness. In what became West Virginia after Virginia seceded from the Union, she urged club members to declare their neutrality, and aid both Union and Confederate soldiers. The women gave food and blankets to men on both sides, and nursed the sick when typhoid fever and measles broke out in the military camps. After the war, she and her club members hosted a ‘Mothers’ Friendship Day’ to bring families from both sides together in reconciliation. She is the mother who inspired Mother's Day (her daughter, Anna Marie Jarvis, was the founder of the Mother’s Day holiday in the U.S.).
- September 30, 1875 – Anne H. Martin born, suffragist, author, and pacifist; first head of the history department of the University of Nevada (1897-1901); president of the Nevada Equal Franchise Society in 1912, and organized a campaign over sparsely populated deserts that convinced male voters to enfranchise Nevada women on November 3, 1914. This success led to her representation of the national movement as a speaker and executive committee member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and the Congressional Union. Martin helped organize voting women in the West in 1916 to challenge Democrats. She was one of the Silent Sentinels, the National Woman's Party picketers for suffrage in front of the White House. On July 14, 1917, she was arrested and sentenced to Occoquan Workhouse, but was pardoned less than a week later by President Woodrow Wilson. Back in Nevada, Martin was the first woman to run for the U.S. Senate in 1918. She ran again in 1920, but lost both races.
- September 30, 1883 – Nora Stanton Blatch Barney born in England, American civil engineer, architect, suffragist, and peace activist; in 1905, she was one of the first American women to graduate with a civil engineering degree, and the first junior member of the Society of Civil Engineers. Right after college, she wrote a paper on the water supply of the District of Columbia, which became a reference for studies on the transport of solids in liquids for over 50 years. In 1908, she married Lee De Forest, inventor of the radio vacuum tube, for whom she worked as a laboratory assistant until 1909, when they separated (they divorced in 1912). She was the granddaughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
- September 30, 1897 – Charlotte Wolff born in Prussia, British physician and psychotherapist; her writings on sexology, especially lesbianism and bisexuality, were influential pioneering works in the field.
- September 30, 1901 – Thelma Terry born, American bassist, first woman instrumentalist to lead a notable jazz band, Thelma Terry and Her Playboys, in the 1920s and 1930s.
- September 30, 1929 – Carol Fenner born, American children’s author and illustrator; noted for Yolanda’s Genius; Gorilla-Gorilla; and The Skates of Uncle Edward, which awarded an honor from the Coretta Scott King Awards.
- September 30, 1929 – Leticia Ramos-Shahani born, Filipina diplomat and politician; President Pro Tempore of the Senate (1993-1996); Philippines Senator (1987-1998); UN Assistant Secretary-General for Social and Humanitarian Affairs (1985-1987); Secretary-General of the 1985 World Conference on the UN Decade of Women in Nairobi Kenya; Philippine Ambassador to Australia (1981-1985).
- September 30, 1940 – Claudia Falconer Card born, American ethics and social philosopher and academic; taught at the University of Wisconsin (1969- 2015), and was UW-Madison’s Emma Goldman Professor of Philosophy, with teaching affiliations in Women’s Studies, Jewish Studies, Environmental Studies and LGBT Studies; her published work is regarded as essential to the study of 20th century feminism.
- September 30, 1950 – Laura Esquivel born, Mexican novelist, screenwriter, and Morena Party politician; she served in the Chamber of Deputies (2012-2018); author of the bestseller Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate).
- September 30, 1960 – Julia Adamson born in Canada, British musician, composer, and founder-manager of Invisiblegirl Records and Invisible Girl Music Publishing.
- September 30, 1960 – Nicola Griffith born in England, British-American science fiction and mystery novelist, essayist, and short story writer; her first novel, Ammonite, won the 1993 James Tiptree, Jr and Lambda Awards, and Slow River won the 1997 Nebula Award for best novel.
- September 30, 1960 – Blanche Lincoln born, American Democratic politician; U.S. Senator from Arkansas (1999-2011); Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from the first district of Arkansas (1993-1997).
- September 30, 1967 – Emmanuelle Houdart born in Switzerland, but lived and worked in Paris, Swiss artist, illustrator, costume and textile designer, and author; contributor to French newspapers and magazines, including Libération and Le Monde.
- September 30, 1981 – Cecelia Ahearn born, Irish novelist whose books have sold over 25 million copies; noted for P.S. I Love You, and Where Rainbows End, which won the 2005 Corine Award; she was the co-creator of the TV series Samantha Who?, which starred Christina Applegate (2007-2009).
- September 30, 1985 – Téa Obreht born in Serbia, spent her childhood in Cyprus and Egypt; her family immigrated to the U.S. in 1997; Serbian-American novelist and short story writer; her debut novel, The Tiger’s Wife, won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction.
- September 30, 2015 – Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood, testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee that the secretly recorded videos which purported to show representatives of the organization negotiating to sell tissue from aborted fetuses were "outrageous . . . offensive and categorically untrue." The videos fueled a conservative Republican effort to block Planned Parenthood's $450 million in annual federal funding. Richards told the committee that Planned Parenthood's policies on the use of fetal tissue for medical research "indeed go beyond the requirements of the law." The so-called Center for Medical Progress, an anti-abortion group, had secretly recorded and then misleadingly edited the videos. Officials in twelve states initiated investigations into claims made by the videos, but none of them found Planned Parenthood clinics to have sold tissue for profit as alleged by CMP and other anti-abortion groups. An investigation by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee also found no evidence of wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood. In March 2017, Center for Medical Progress founder David Daleiden and member Sandra Merritt were charged with 15 felonies in the State of California – one for each of the people whom they had filmed without consent, and one for criminal conspiracy to invade privacy. In June 2017, all the invasion of privacy charges (but not the criminal conspiracy charge) were dismissed with leave to amend. The State of California re-filed amended charges, and the prosecution on fraud charges continued in May 2019, after the California Supreme Court rejected a petition to halt legal action.
- September 30, 2019 – Following a staff uprising, and enormous political and public pressure, BBC Director General Tony Hall emailed staff to announce he has overturned the decision to sanction BBC Breakfast host Naga Munchetty for her comment about Donald Trump’s tweet in July that four American women of color in the U.S. House of Representatives should “go home.” When asked by her co-host Dan Walker about Trump’s comment, Munchetty had responded, “Every time I have been told, as a woman of colour, to go back to where I came from, that was embedded in racism.”
- September 30, 2019 – Amal Clooney, the UK special envoy on media freedom, said “there is a glaring gap in the international system of protection when it comes to establishing facts in a cross-section of situations that require proper investigation” including the targeted state killings of human rights defenders and journalists such as Jamal Khashoggi. She also said the UN special rapporteur Agnès Callamard, who undertook the UN’s investigation into Khashoggi’s murder, “had been forced heroically to manage a large-scale investigation with ridiculously few resources.” Callamard’s report accused Saudi Arabia of premeditated murder, but she received no cooperation from Saudi Arabia in compiling her document. She found “every expert interviewed said it was inconceivable that an operation on this scale had been carried out without the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, being aware at a minimum of some sort of mission of a criminal nature directed at Khashoggi was being launched.” As the anniversary of Khashoggi’s murder approached, Callamard said her proposal for a standing UN investigatory mechanism that could act either in support of national actors undertaking investigations of targeted killings or establish an international inquiry was “meeting resistance from within the UN,” largely from leaders determined to defend national sovereignty. She proposed staging a UN session on media freedom at the G20 leaders summit in Riyadh next year. Callamard added, “World leaders have a duty to speak up against those that denigrate press freedom. I am not suggesting that they stop diplomatic relations, I am simply asking them to stand up or simply walk out when there is such a display of the violation of the values the UN stands for.”
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