February is Black History Month
“Sexism, like racism, goes with us
into the next century. I see class
warfare as overshadowing both.”
– Constance Baker Motley,
first Black woman appointed
to the federal judiciary, as a
U.S. district court judge
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WOW2 is a four-times-a-month sister blog
to This Week in the War on Women.
“The privilege of working with strong
women role models has been essential
to my career development and it’s crucial
to the development and advancement
of girls like my daughters … because so
many committed women from generations
past and present have done the heavy
lifting to pave the way and open the door
for us and those who will come after.”
– Ketanji Brown Jackson,
first African-American woman
appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court
________________
“There are many persons ready
to do what is right because in
their hearts they know it is right.
But they hesitate, waiting for
the other fellow to make the
first move – and he, in turn,
waits for you.”
― Marian Anderson,
in 1955, she was the first
Black woman to sing at New
York’s Metropolitan Opera
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The purpose of WOW2 is to learn about and honor women of achievement, including many who’ve been ignored or marginalized in most of the history books.
These trailblazers have a lot to teach us about persistence in the face of overwhelming odds. I hope you will find reclaiming our past as much of an inspiration as I do.
WOW2 began as a once-a-month post, then as more and more trailblazing women were added to the lists, it expanded until it became a four-times-a-month post. The lists became so long that I’m switching to posting only a selection of these amazing trailblazers — for those who want to see the glorious and much more complete list of outstanding women for this week, click:
www.dailykos.com/...
THIS WEEK IN THE WAR ON WOMEN
has posted, so be sure to go there next, and
catch up on the latest dispatches from the frontlines:
www.dailykos.com/...
Many, many thanks to libera nos, intrepid Assistant Editor of WOW2. Any remaining mistakes are either mine, or uncaught computer glitches in transferring the data from his emails to DK5. And much thanks to wow2lib, WOW2’s Librarian Emeritus.
Trailblazing Women and Events in Our History
Note: All images and audios are below the person or event to which they refer.
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- February 23, 1539 – Salima Sultan Begum born, fourth wife of the Mughal Emperor Akbar; highly educated, and known for her love of reading and extensive library. She became a senior-ranking wife, wielding much influence with both her husband and his son Jahangir, as well as being a political power in the Mughal court. She was also a poet, who wrote under the pen name Makhfi (Hidden One), which was later also used as a pen name by her great-great-granddaughter, Princess Zeb-un-Nissa.
- February 23, 1787 – Emma Hart Willard born, American educator and women’s right activist; founder of the first American school for secondary and higher education for women, the Troy Female Seminary, which taught girls mathematics, classical languages, history, geography and the sciences, as well offering training as teachers; now called Emma Willard School, a private college preparatory school for women.
- February 23, 1868 – Anna Hofman-Uddgren born, Swedish cabaret and music hall performer who later worked as a theatre director, and then became the first woman to direct a film in Sweden, the 1911 silent film, Stockholmsfrestelser. She also made silent film versions of August Strindberg’s Fadren (The Father) and Fröken Julie (Miss Julie) in 1912.
- February 23, 1879 – Agnes Arber born, British botanist and author; noted for her studies of comparative anatomy of plants, especially monocotyledons (flowering plants with embryos bearing a single seed leaf, called a cotyledon); her first book, Herbals: Their Origin and Evolution, became a standard text. She was the first woman botanist to be made a member of the Royal Society. Included among her later works are Water Plants: A Study of Aquatic Angiosperms, Monocotyledons, and The Gramineae: A Study of Cereal, Bamboo and Grass.
- February 23, 1889 – Musidora born as Jeanne Roques; French actress, silent film director, and screenwriter; she became a silent film star playing a vampire in the 10-part film serial, Les Vampires (1915-1916). She produced and directed ten films, but only Soleil et Ombre (Sun and Shadow – 1922) and La Terre des Taureaux (The Land of Bulls -1924) have survived. One of her lost films was La vagabonda (The Vagabond – 1924), which she co-wrote with Colette, based on the author’s novel of the same name.
- February 23, 1892 – Agnes Smedley born, American journalist and novelist; known for her semi-autobiographical novel Daughter of Earth, and her sympathetic reporting on the Chinese Communist forces during the Chinese Civil War (1927-1937, and resumed 1945-1949). She was also an advocate for women’s rights, birth control, and children’s welfare.
- February 23, 1901 – Ruth Rowland Nichols born, American aviation pioneer; the only woman pilot to simultaneously hold speed, altitude, and distance world records.
- February 23, 1915 – Nevada Bill AB-11, turning back the state’s residency requirements for divorce from one year to just six months, is signed into law by Governor Emmet Boyle, paving the way for Reno to become the “Divorce Capital of America,” a $5 million-a-year industry in the 1930s, after the residency requirement was lowered again in 1931, to a mere 6 weeks.
- February 23, 1923 – Irene Bishop Goggans born, African-American ethnographer, community historian, and scrapbook keeper. From 1940 to 2017, she collected into scrapbooks photographs, elder recollections, resident’s stories, and local newspaper articles about the black community in Milwaukee, WI.
- February 23, 1936 – Sylvia Chase born, American broadcast journalist; worked for CBS News as the writer and narrator for the radio show The American Woman, one of the earliest women reporters at CBS (1971-1977); moved to ABC in 1977, and was a correspondent for ABC’s 20/20 (1978-1985); after working as a news anchor at KRON in San Francisco (1985- 1990), she co-anchored Prime Time Live (1991-2001), then moved to PBS, working on Now with Bill Moyers (2002-2004) before she retired. Chase died at age 80 of cancer in 2019.
- February 23, 1950 – Rebecca Newberger Goldstein born, American philosopher and author; noted for the “mattering theory” introduced in her novel The Mind-Body Problem.
- February 23, 1954 – Rajani Thiranagama born, Tamil physician, human rights activist, and feminist; she and her sister Nirmala became involved as students with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). In 1982, while Rajani was in Britain at the Liverpool Medical School for postgraduate studies in anatomy, Nirmala was arrested under Sri Lanka’s Prevention of Terrorism Act during the civil war in which the Tamil insurgents were fighting for an independent Tamil state. Rajani launched an international campaign for her sister’s release. She joined human rights groups that were exposing the atrocities in Sri Lanka, and grassroots organizations campaigning for women’s rights and ending discrimination against Black people in Britain. Returning to Sri Lanka, she began to feel that all the violence was wrong, and began criticizing the narrow nationalism of the LTTE, and started collecting evidence of human rights violation and atrocities committed by the LTTE, the Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF), the Indian Peace Keeping Force, and the Sri Lankan government forces. She co-authored a book, The Broken Palmyra, documenting the violence in 1989. A few weeks after its publication, she was shot to death by a gunman while cycling home from work. The LTTE and the EPRLF have each been suspected of the killing.
- February 23, 1965 – Constance Baker Motley is elected as Manhattan Borough president, the highest elective office held by a black woman in a major American city up to that time. Motley had played a pivotal role in the fight to end racial segregation, putting her own safety at risk in one racial powder keg after another. She went on to be the first African American woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court, and the first black woman appointed to the federal judiciary. Federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson cited Constance Baker Motley as an influence on her own career in a speech accepting President Joe Biden's nomination to become an associate justice of the Supreme Court.
- February 23, 1969 – Martine Croxall born, British media journalist; she began her career at BBC radio in 1991, then became one of BBC television’s news presenters. She was the main BBC World News presenter on-camera continuously for two and half hours during the Paris attacks in November 2015 in which 130 people were killed, and 413 people were injured. Croxall was highly praised for her professionalism, and her skillful coordination of reports coming in live from correspondents at the scenes of the attacks, sorting through conflicting reports, and clarifying what was unsubstantiated, and what was confirmed.
- February 23, 2003 – Norah Jones wins 5 Grammy Awards for her album Come Away With Me, including Album of the Year and Song of the Year for “Don’t Know Why.” Jones tied Lauryn Hill and Alicia Keys for most Grammy Awards received by a female artist in one night.
- February 23, 2007 – Iraq’s security forces faced fresh allegations of brutal sexual assault after four soldiers were accused of raping a 50-year-old Sunni Turkoman woman, and attempting to rape her two daughters in the predominantly Turkoman city of Tal Afar on February 8. According to a video that aired on al-Jazeera, a woman named as Wajida Hamid Amin said soldiers burst into her home claiming to be looking for terrorists. "They asked me about some persons and I swore that I do not know them. They said: 'We will kill you...go and say goodbye to your children'," said the woman. The rape had been filmed by an officer on his mobile telephone. He did not take part in the attack, she added. Brigadier Nijm Abdullah al-Jubouri, the mayor of Tal Afar, said the soldiers had since confessed to raping the woman and her two daughters and were now awaiting trial. Sexual assault and humiliation were a widely used tool of the Ba'athist security forces under Saddam Hussein. This was the second allegation within days of sexual assault against Iraqi forces to surface. A 20-year-old Sunni woman alleged that she was raped by three policemen after being detained during a search of her house in Baghdad. That case set off a clash of claim and counterclaim between government officials and outraged Iraqi Sunnis who said it was proof that the Shia-dominated security were deliberately targeting them. The government claimed the woman had been inspected by US military doctors, who found no evidence of rape. But the furor in pro-Sunni media in Iraq shook prime minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shia-led administration. He fired his minister in charge of Sunni religious endowments in Iraq, who had blasted the government of which he was a part for not taking "this horrific crime" seriously.
- February 23, 2011 – The Obama administration said it would not defend the constitutionality of DOMA, the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, the federal law banning recognition of same-sex marriage.
- February 23, 2020 – In Queensland, Australia, a woman only identified as Dani was told in 2017 that there was a prima facie case against her former partner for threatening violence, but because there was “a low level of public interest” they would not bring a charge. What her former partner had done was splash petrol on her and then threaten to burn their house down, while she was in it. She took the rare step of hiring a barrister and prosecuting the criminal case herself. Her barrister, Clem van der Weegen, said the private prosecution and guilty plea should “deeply embarrass” the Queensland police. At a hearing in 2019, a Queensland magistrate’s court was told that officers had refused to cooperate with the case and had declined to make written witness statements. They eventually supplied statements after Dani’s legal team complained directly to the police commissioner, Katarina Carroll. Dani said she was warned the process would be costly and time-consuming but that she “could not allow [his] actions to define the rest of my life ... It has been over four years since I believed I was going to die at the hands of my partner. Every day I am faced with the challenge of living with post-traumatic stress disorder, the loss of who I was, how I was able to function in life and what I was able to achieve. [His] threat to set me alight has had a profound and irreversible effect on my life and the lives of my children. No woman, no victim should ever have to go to these lengths to seek justice. But I had heard so many harrowing accounts from DV survivors and so many instances of the Queensland police failing to take DV victims seriously, failing to bring criminal charges to make perpetrators accountable, and failing to keep women and children safe that I felt I really had no choice but to carry on.” In January 2020, the accused pleaded guilty to threatening violence. In doing so, the man admitted to details including that he splashed petrol on Dani and threatened to burn down the house. She was inside the house at the time. On this day, the man was sentenced to 130 hours community service and had no conviction recorded. Dani says her story highlights how women can be failed in domestic violence cases where the victim and offender give radically different versions of events. The man had previously pleaded guilty to a property offence – willful damage – that occurred on the same night, but was not charged in relation to his domestic violence.
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February 24, 1604 – Arcangela Tarabotti born as Elena Cassandra, Italian nun and writer; her health problems as a child caused her father to send her at the age of 11 to the Benedictine Convent of Sant’Anna. Monachization, placing a child in a monastery or convent, especially by force, was a common practice, often used to solve the problem of daughters deemed “unmarriageable.” It was a major theme in Tarabotti’s writings. She became Arcangela, taking her first vows at 16, and her final vows in 1623, when she was 19, making her monastic status permanent. During her early years in the cloister, Tarabotti was rebellious and outspoken, refusing to wear the religious habits or cut her hair until directly ordered to do so by Catholic Cardinal and Patriarch of Venice Federico Baldissera Cornaro. She wrote of Cardinal Cornaro, “He made me amend my vanities. I cut off my hair, but I did not uproot my emotions. I reformed my life, but my thoughts flourish rampantly, and just like my shorn hair, grow all the more." She wrote that living like a nun, she was “living a lie.” Most enclosed women lived isolated from the rest of society, prohibited by Canonical law from interacting with people outside the cloister. Tarabotti educated herself, reading and writing a great deal during her years in the convent. She also managed to circulate her works among an impressive network of correspondents who were writers, scientists, and political figures, in direct disobedience of Church officials. Tarabotti wrote at least seven works, and five were published during her lifetime. She frequently compared the number of women followers of Jesus in the New Testament with the increasing limitation of women’s roles within the Catholic Church, and argued that women should have more educational opportunities and larger roles in the church and in society. She is the only woman writer in Venice documented to have the patronage of Giovanni Francisco Loredan, founder of the Accademia degli Incogniti. Her Letters Familiar and Formal, when she had them published, show the extent of her network of powerful allies in Northern Italy and France, which probably helped protect her from retaliation for her outspoken criticisms of the church and society. Her text, Paternal Tyranny, scathing and deeply subversive for the day, was not published until two years after her death, and was added to the Index librorum prohibitorum, the banned books list of the Roman Catholic church, in 1661.
- February 24, 1827 – Lydia E. Becker born, pioneer in the British women’s suffrage movement; amateur in astronomy and botany who devised a method to dry plants so they retain their original colour, and advocate for including girls in scientific education, arguing for a national non-gendered education system. Becker founded the Manchester Women’s Suffrage Committee in 1867, the first group of its kind in England; in 1869, she was a leader in a successful campaign to secure the vote for women in municipal elections, and granting them inclusion on school boards; in 1870, she was one of four women elected to the Manchester School Board. She and Jessie Boucherett co-founded the Women’s Suffrage Journal (1870-1890), and Becker served as publisher. It became the most widely read British publication on women’s suffrage, carrying news of events affecting women’s lives, publishing speeches, the editors’ correspondence with supporters and opponents, and practical advice for activists, such as how to prepare a petition for presentation to the House of Commons. She differed from many other feminists, arguing more strenuously for the voting rights of unmarried women. Women connected to husbands and stable sources of income, Becker believed, were less desperately in need of the vote than widows and single women. This attitude made her a target of frequent ridicule in newspaper commentary and editorial cartoons.
- February 24, 1864 – Rebecca Lee Crumpler becomes the first black American woman to earn a medical degree, from New England Female Medical College; her Book of Medical Discourses may be the first medical publication by an African American.
- February 24, 1869 – Zara DuPont born, American suffragist and member of the wealthy DuPont family. In 1910, she worked unsuccessfully to include women's suffrage in the reformed state constitution of Ohio. In 1911, she joined the Cuyahoga Woman's Suffrage Association, going on the serve as the first Vice President of the Ohio Woman Suffrage Association. Du Pont worked with Florence Ellinwood Allen (the first U.S. woman to serve on a state supreme court) on the Ohio portion of Maud Wood Park’s national tour of U.S. colleges, which she began in 1900 to stir up support for suffrage among a new generation of women, resulting in the founding of the National College Equal Suffrage Association. DuPont was also a civil rights and trade union activist, specifically as a pro-labor shareholder activist at Bethlehem Steel and Montgomery Ward.
- February 24, 1877 – Ettie Annie Rout born in Tasmania, but raised in New Zealand from the age of seven. She was a social reformer who founded the WWI New Zealand Volunteer Sisterhood, women volunteers who went to Egypt, and later to France, to aid the ANZACs (Australian and New Zealand troops). When Rout discovered how wide-spread venereal disease was among the soldiers, and how ineffectual the military’s torturous after-sex treatment was, she launched a campaign in France to prevent sexually transmitted diseases, including inspecting French brothels and rating them for newly-arriving soldiers. She also put together a safe sex kit, which was distributed by the British and Australian Armies. By 1917, even the New Zealand Army, which had initially resisted her idea, made free distribution of her preventative kits compulsory. Ironically, this made Rout persona non grata in New Zealand, where she was made into such a scandalous figure that she was vilified in the press by the New Zealand Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and publishing her name became subject to a ₤100 fine. Even after the war was over, her 1922 book, Safe Marriage: A Return to Sanity, a manual of contraception and prophylactics for women, was banned in New Zealand. It was published in Australia, and in Britain, where it became a best-seller. The British Medical Journal tepidly recommended the book for medical men and women, warning that "many readers will disagree with the author's point of view, and some will feel grave misgivings about the effect of her teaching; but none can doubt the sincerity of her purpose." Ettie Rout was aware that she was ahead of her time. She knew author H.G. Wells, and they exchanged letters. She wrote to him in 1922 that "It's a mixed blessing to be born too soon." Following her only postwar return to New Zealand in 1936, Ettie Rout, suffering from malaria, died at age 59 from a self-administered overdose of quinine at Rarotonga in the Cook Islands.
- February 24, 1883 – Rosalie Gardiner Jones born in New York state, American suffragist who organized marches, including a march by over 200 women from Manhattan to Albany, over 160 miles in 13 days in December and January. She was dubbed “General” Jones, and also led 225 women on a march to Washington DC in February 1913.
- February 24, 1900 – Irmgard Bartenieff born, German-American dancer and physical therapist, leading pioneer of dance therapy.
- February 24, 1912 – Henrietta Szold founded Hadassah, the largest Jewish organization in American history, focus on healthcare and education in Israel and U.S.
- February 24, 1920 – Nancy Astor becomes the first woman to speak in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom following her election as a Member of Parliament (MP) three months earlier. Her topic was drastic drink reforms. “... you must remember that women have got a vote now and we mean to use it, and use it wisely, not for the benefit of any section of society, but for the benefit of the whole.”
- February 24, 1932 – Brazilian women win the right to vote. Although the right to vote was extended to all women in 1932, there were still barriers to their participation. The main obstacle was that the vote became compulsory only for men, which meant that married women would only be able to vote if their husbands gave them permission, since the civil code at that time stated that women should be authorized by their husbands or fathers to act outside of their imposed duties. So married women’s right to vote only became equal to men’s in 1945, when the vote became compulsory for both sexes.
- February 24, 1942 – Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak born, Indian literary scholar and feminist; founding member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society; noted for her essay, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Spivak was awarded the 2012 Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy for “speaking for the humanities against intellectual colonialism.”
- February 24, 1948 – Jayaram Jayalalithaa born, Indian AIADMK politician and film actress; served as the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu (1991-2016); general secretary (1989-2016) of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) party, a Dravidian people’s party based on the ideology of Periyar E.V. Ramasamy, whose goal was to eradicate the caste system; during the 1960s, she was dubbed “Queen of the Tamil Cinema” and appeared in 140 films.
- February 24, 1951 – Laimdota Straujuma born, Latvian politician and economist; the first woman Prime Minister of Latvia (2014-2016); Minister of Agriculture (2011-2014); Secretary of State of the Ministry for Regional Development and Local Government (2007-2010).
- February 24, 1952 – Judith Ortiz Cofer born, Puerto Rican American author; 1990 Pushcart Prize for “More Room”; she was the first Hispanic to win the O Henry Prize, for her story, “The Latin Deli.”
- February 24, 1954 – Aurora Levins Morales born, Puerto Rican Jewish American writer and poet; significant in Latina and Third World feminism, and other social justice movements, including advocating for people with disabilities. She lives with multiple disabilities and chronic illnesses, including epilepsy, several brain injuries, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, and multiple chemical sensitivities. After a stroke, she was wheelchair bound from 2007 to 2009, when she traveled to Cuba and underwent extensive treatment. Known for Medicine Stories: Essays for Radicals and Remedios: Stories of Earth and Iron from the History of Puertorriqueñas.
- February 24, 1956 – Judith Butler born, American philosopher, gender theorist and LGBTQ rights activist; her book, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, has had an impact on feminist and LGBT scholarship.
- February 24, 1959 – Beth Broderick born, American television, film and stage actress; noted for the one-woman show Bad Dates at the Chicago Northlight Theatre; co-author with Dennis Bailey of A Cup of Joe, Literatti, and Wonderland; played Zelda Spellman on Sabrina, the Teenage Witch; she also directed several episodes of the series.
- February 24, 1967 – Jocelyn Bell Burnell makes the first discovery of a pulsar, a rapidly rotating neutron star.
- February 24, 1982 – Stella Young born, Australian comedian, journalist, and disability rights activist. She was born with osteogenesis imperfecta, and used a wheelchair for most of her life. Young became an activist at the age of 14 when she audited the accessibility of the main street businesses of her hometown. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Public Relations and a diploma in Education in 2004, and worked as a secondary school teacher, then on public programs at the Melbourne Museum, before becoming the editor of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s online magazine Ramp Up. In a Ramp Up editorial in July 2012 she deconstructed society's habit of turning disabled people into what she called "inspiration porn." After she began appearing in comedy showcases, she made her festival debut at the 2014 Melbourne International Comedy Festival, and won Best Newcomer for her show Tales from the Crip. She was a member of the boards of the Ministerial Advisory Council for the Department of Victorian Communities, Victorian Disability Advisory Council, the Youth Disability Advocacy Service, and Women with Disabilities Victoria. She died at age 32 in 2014, and was posthumously inducted into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women for her work as a “journalist, comedian and fierce disability activist.”
- February 24, 2001 – In the UK, the Equal Pay Task Force (EPTF) set up in 2000 by the Equal Opportunities Commission, called for new legislation to update the 30-year-old Equal Pay Act, and for an end to the “taboo” that stops people from discussing what they earn with their colleagues. Women in the UK are still paid on average 20% less than men, but the gender wage gap for part-time workers is 45%. Dr Damien Grimshaw and Professor Jill Rubary of Manchester University's school of management, conducted a review of research for EPTF. They said they had proven beyond doubt that at least 50 per cent of all inequality in pay is down to discrimination. They have found evidence to suggest that in professions such as teaching, which were once dominated by men, the rates of pay can be actually seen to fall in proportion to the number of women moving into the work. As the female employee ratio goes up, the pay goes down. Their work also challenges previous claims by employers that women being paid less than men was due to their choices of occupation, especially in taking part-time work to fit around childcare. There is also proof that good employment practice earns dividends. A recent survey of the FTSE-100 companies showed that the quarter who have the most advanced policies on tackling discrimination and flexibility had shares, which on average, over a five-year period from 1993 had risen by 141 per cent as opposed to the FTSE average of 78 per cent.
- February 24, 2020 – Harvey Weinstein was found guilty of a criminal sex act in the first degree for forcing oral sex on the former Project Runway production assistant Miriam Haley in 2006, and of rape in the third degree of an unnamed woman in a New York hotel in 2013. The first count carries a minimum prison sentence of 5 years, and a maximum of up to 25 years, the second count carries a maximum sentence of 4 years in prison, and requires Weinstein to register as a sex offender. He was acquitted on the charge of predatory sexual assault, which carried a possible life sentence, and an alternative count of rape in the first degree. New York district attorney, Cyrus Vance, hailed the courage of the victims who had spoken out: “Weinstein with his manipulation, his resources, his attorneys, his publicists and his spies did everything he could to silence the survivors. But they wouldn’t be silenced, spoke from their hearts, and were heard.” Michelle Simpson Tuegel, an attorney representing victims of sexual assault, said she expected to see a wave of women coming forward with complaints against other sexual abusers. On March 11, 2020, Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison; 20 years for his conviction on first-degree sexual assault and 3 years for third-degree rape. In December, 2022, Weinstein was tried in Los Angeles, and found guilty of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, and sexual penetration by a foreign object. The charges were based on the account of a woman who accused Weinstein of attacking her in a Beverly Hills hotel room in 2013. He was sentenced in January 2023 to an additional 18 years in prison, and in February to an additional 16 years beyond that.
- February 24, 2021 – The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is struggling to help Yemeni women and girls after six years of relentless conflict have made Yemen the site of the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. More than 20 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance. The health system hangs together by a thread; only about half of all health facilities in Yemen are functional, and of those still operating, only 20 per cent provide maternal and child health services. A woman dies in childbirth every two hours, says UNFPA. Midwife Lena Al-Shurmani, remembers meeting Abia at Al Mawa Camp in Yemen’s Ibb Governorate. Abia was 15 years old and eight months pregnant. “I was very worried,” Ms. Al-Shurmani recalled. “She had a prolapsed uterus, and she was severely malnourished.” Abia –name changed for her privacy and protection – was worried, too. She was married off a little over a year ago, at age 14. “Since I got pregnant, I had been living in constant fear”, she told workers from the UN sexual and reproductive health agency UNFPA. “I heard of many girls in my village losing their lives and their babies giving birth at my age.” Escalating hostilities had forced her family to flee from the contested major southern city of Taizz, to the camp. There, Abia said, “we could not afford to travel to a hospital, and did we not know where we could find one.” Those concerns were well founded: When Abia went into labour, she began bleeding profusely. After she began to haemorrhage during labour, her husband rushed to find Ms. Al-Shurmani. The midwife arrived at Abia’s side around 2AM in the morning. “She lost consciousness many times during the delivery. I really feared for her life,” Ms. Al-Shurmani recalled. Fortunately, she was able to get the bleeding under control. Abia survived, and she delivered a healthy baby girl. She was one of the lucky ones. “I am very grateful to the midwife,” she said later. “She travelled far in the middle of the night to save my life and my baby.” Last year, despite the tremendous funding shortfall, UNFPA was able to reach three million people with life-saving reproductive health and women’s protection services. Those services are only possible through the extraordinary efforts of women like Ms. Al-Shurmani. Trained by UNFPA to identify and assist survivors of gender-based violence, she works on an outreach team providing health services, psychosocial care and other support. “My work targets the most vulnerable and poor displaced families who live in camps and spontaneous settlements, especially as they are unable to reach health services”, she explained. Her work is often grueling. “One of the main challenges I face is going out at night without a means of transportation, which forces me to walk with my companions on foot.” The job takes an emotional toll, as well. Ms. Al-Shurani has seen the vulnerabilities of women and girls increase dramatically. Child marriage rates are also rising as families struggle with poverty and insecurity. A recent UNFPA study across three governorates showed that one in five displaced girls, aged 10 to 19, were married. Among host communities, this number was one in eight. Some 350,000 women lost access to gender-based violence services in 2020, following the closure of 12 UNFPA-supported safe spaces. An estimated 6.1 million women and girls are in need of such services.
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- February 25, 1670 – Maria Winkelmann Kirch born, German astronomer, one of the first astronomers of her time to become famous, for her writings on the conjunction of the Sun with Saturn, Venus, and Jupiter in 1709 and 1712. She was educated by her uncle, astronomer Christoph Arnold, as his unofficial apprentice and later assistant. She married astronomer and mathematician Gottfried Kirch, who was appointed as Astronomer Royal to Frederick III of Prussia. He continued her education, and along with his sister, as a team, they made observations and calculations to produce calendars, and recorded weather information, both valuable to navigation. When she discovered the “Comet of 1702” during her nightly observations, her husband initially took credit for it, but eventually admitted that the discovery was hers. She was the first woman to discover a comet. After her husband’s death, she applied to the Royal Berlin Academy of Sciences, asking that she and her son Christfried be allowed to continue producing calendars. Kirch noted that during her husband’s illness, she had already been being doing the work required on her own. Gottfried Leibniz, mathematician and president of the academy, was the only supporter of Kirch’s petition, which was rejected because other academy members felt that having a woman produce its calendar would be an embarrassment. Instead, an inexperienced astronomer, Johann Heinrich Hoffmann, was appointed as the Astronomer Royal with the responsibility of producing the calendars.
- February 25, 1842 – Idawalley Zorada Lewis born, American lighthouse keeper, who takes over the Lime Rock Light after her parents die; she becomes the highest-paid lighthouse keeper in the U.S. – $750 a year – "in consideration of the remarkable services of Mrs. Wilson in the saving of lives." She makes her first rescue at the age of 12, and receives the Gold Lifesaving Medal from the U.S. Government in 1881 for rescuing two soldiers who fell through ice; makes her last rescue at age 63; she was dubbed “the Bravest Woman in America.” Lime Rock and the Lime Rock Lighthouse are renamed Ida Lewis Rock and Lighthouse, the only time a Light has been renamed for its keeper.
- February 25, 1871 – Lesya Ukrainka born as Larysa Kosach-Kvitka, Ukrainian author of poetry, plays, and essays; she is considered the foremost woman of Ukrainian literature. Her first collection of poetry, On the Wings of Songs, was published in 1893 but had to be produced in Western Ukraine, which was in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, then smuggled secretly into Kiev due to the oppressive rules of the Russian Empire, which banned Ukrainian literature.
- February 25, 1890 – Myra Hess born, notable British pianist, who organized Monday through Friday lunchtime concerts, and performed in 150 of them, at the National Gallery during the WWII London Blitz, when all the concert halls were blacked out at night to avoid becoming German bombing targets. In all, 824,152 people attended 1,968 concerts, held without fail for 6 ½ years, even if London was being bombed (the concert was simply moved to a safer room). Every artist was paid five guineas for their participation, no matter who they were. Since 2005, the National Gallery has hosted concerts for Dame Myra Hess Day on October 6, commemorating the original Hess concerts.
- February 25, 1896 – Ida Noddack born, German chemist; co-discoverer with Walter Noddack of the element rhenium; they also worked in photochemistry, on sensitizing coloring substances and the photochemistry of the human eye. She postulated the possibility of fission based on reports of Fermi’s 1934 observations of the neutron bombardment of uranium, five years before Otto Frisch first advanced his theoretical explanation of nuclear fission, which was accepted, but her earlier idea aroused no interest, and remained dormant, but is now regarded as one of the earliest expressions of the idea of nuclear fission.
- February 25, 1900 – Marina Yurlova born, Russian child soldier and author; at age 14, she became a soldier in the Russian army, joining the Reconnaissance Sotnia (100 horse squadron) of the 3rd Ekaterinodar Regiment. She started as a groom in Armenia, and then in 1915 began going on missions. She was shot in the leg while blasting bridges across the Araxes River near Yeredan, and after her recovery, trained as an auto mechanic to qualify as a military driver on the Eastern Front. She was wounded several more times, and was awarded the Russian Cross of Saint George for bravery three times. In 1922, she emigrated to the U.S., and became an American citizen in 1926. She published her autobiography as a trilogy: Cossack Girl; Russia, Farewell; and The Only Woman.
- February 25, 1906 – Mary Chase born, American playwright, best known for Harvey; Chase also worked as a feature writer for the Denver Times and Rocky Mountain News.
- February 25, 1908 – Mary Locke Petermann born, American cellular biochemist, she was the first person to isolate animal ribosomes, the molecular complexes which carry out protein synthesis. She was the first woman chemist on the staff of the physical chemistry department (1939-1945) at the University of Wisconsin, where she worked on analysis of antibody-antigen interactions, especially between diphtheria toxin and antitoxin. Her research on antibodies contributed to Rodney Porter’s determination of immunoglobulin structure, for which he received the 1972 Nobel Prize. In 1945, she took a position as a chemist at Memorial Hospital in New York City, studying the role of plasma proteins in metastasis, then in 1946 researched the role of nucleoproteins in cancer at the newly-formed Sloan-Kettering Institute for cancer research. Initially a Finney-Howell Foundation fellow, she was promoted to an associate member in 1960 and full member in 1963, Sloan-Kettering Institute's first female full member. She taught biochemistry at Cornell University and became the first woman full professor at Cornell University’s medical school. She was awarded the Sloan Award for cancer research in 1963, and the American Chemical Society’s Garvan Medal in 1966. Author of The Physical and Chemical Properties of Ribosomes, and about 100 papers.
- February 25, 1910 – Millicent Fenwick born, fashion editor, journalist, and Republican politician; served on New Jersey Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (1958-1974); Congresswoman (Republican-New Jersey, 1975-1983); served as U.S. Ambassador to the UN (1983-1987). She was a moderate Republican, and an outspoken supporter of civil and women’s rights; considered the inspiration for Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury character Lacey Davenport.
- February 25, 1922 – Molly Reilly born, the first Canadian woman pilot to reach the rank of captain, the first woman to become a Canadian corporate pilot, and the first woman to fly to the Arctic professionally. Her modifications to the Beechcraft Duke, a twin-engine fixed-wing plane with room for 5 passengers, were used to improve the aircraft. Over the course of her career, Reilly logged over 10,000 flight hours as a pilot-in-command — without a single accident. She was inducted into the Canadian Aviation Hall of Fame in 1974.
- February 25, 1952 – Inger Segelström born, Swedish Social Democratic Party politician; Member of the Swedish Parliament (1994-2004); Chair of the Swedish Social Democratic Women’s Federation (1995-2003). She is a former member of the European Parliament (2004-2009), where she sat on the EP’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs.
- February 25, 1968 – Oumou Sangaré born, Malian musician, singer, songwriter in the Wassoulou tradition, an ancient regional music of Mali, and women’s rights advocate. When her father took a second wife and abandoned her mother and his first family, she began singing on the streets of Bamako. At age five, in 1973, she won a singing competition, which led to her performing before an audience of thousands at Bamako’s Omnisport stadium. At 16, she went on tour with the percussion group Djoliba, touring in Europe and the Caribbean. When she returned home, she formed her own group, and recorded her first album, Moussoulou (Women), with Amadou Ba Guindo, a renowned maestro of Malian music. The album sold over 200,000 copies in Africa. Her songs often include social criticism, especially of women’s low status in Malian society. She has performed at the Melbourne Opera, Roskilde Festival, Gnaoua World Music Festival, WOMAD, Oslo World Music Festival, and the Opéra de la Monnaie. Sangaré was a goodwill ambassador for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and won a 2001 IMC-UNESCO International Music Prize. In 2017, she was honored with the Artist Award at WOMEX for her music and her advocacy for women’s rights.
- February 25, 1971 – Nova Peris born, Australian athlete and politician; Senator for the Northern Territory (2013-2016); she was the first Aboriginal Australian to win an Olympic gold medal, as a member of the Australian women’s hockey team at the 1996 Olympic Games. As a politician, she has campaigned for Aboriginal civil rights.
- February 25, 1975 – Chelsea Handler born, American comedian, writer television host, producer, and activist; noted for her observational and sketch comedy, her late-night talk show Chelsea Lately (2007-2014) on the E! network, and five NY Times best-selling books, including My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands and Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea. She is an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ and human rights.
- February 25, 1976 – Rashida Jones born, American actress, writer, and producer; member of the cast of the comedy series Parks and Recreation (2009-2015); Jones was the creator of Frenemy of the State, a comic book series, and co-wrote the screenplay based on the comic series. Since 2004, she has been on the board of Peace First, a nonprofit which teaches children to resolve conflict without violence, and has also given time to events for Stand Up to Cancer, and ONE: The Campaign to Make Poverty History. In 2007, she was the honorary chair of the annual Housing Works benefit, which fights homelessness in New York City. She campaigned in 2008 and 2012 for Barack Obama. She is the daughter of Quincy Jones and actress Peggy Lipton.
- February 25, 1986 – Corazon Aquino is sworn in as the first woman President of the Philippines, after Ferdinand Marcos flees the country.
- February 25, 1986 – Jameela Jamil born in London to an Indian father and Pakistani mother; English actress, radio presenter, writer, and activist for people with disabilities, and against fat shaming and fad diets. In 2015, she launched ‘Why Not People?’ which hosts entertainment events accessible to people with disabilities, aiming to increase awareness of accessibility issues. She was a presenter on the long-running BBC Radio 1 show, The Official Chart (2013-2015), and was a member of the cast of the American TV series, The Good Place (2016-2020).
- February 25, 2016 – A three-year independent investigation led by Dame Janet Smith, former High Court Judge, concluded that an "atmosphere of fear" at the BBC prevented the British network from stopping one of its stars, the late Jimmy Savile, from sexually abusing 72 victims, including children. Many of the BBC staff members interviewed for the inquiry did so only after being assured their names would not be published, as they still feared reprisals. "Celebrities were treated with kid gloves and were virtually untouchable," said Janet Smith. In October 2012, almost a year after Savile’s death, an ITV documentary examined claims of sexual abuse by Savile, which led to extensive media coverage, a substantial and rapidly growing body of witness statements and sexual abuse claims, and accusations against public bodies for covering up or failure of duty. Dame Janet Smith’s report did not recommend holding the BBC responsible, but did find that dozens of BBC employees had heard rumors about Savile, but did nothing.
- February 25, 2020 – Welsh pop singer Duffy, whose 2008 debut album Rockferry was hugely successful, made a statement revealing why she had retreated from the public eye after the release of her follow-up album Endlessly in 2010: “The truth is, and please trust me I am OK and safe now, I was raped and drugged and held captive over some days. Of course I survived. The recovery took time. There’s no light way to say it. But I can tell you in the last decade, the thousands and thousands of days I committed to wanting to feel the sunshine in my heart again, the sun does now shine.” Duffy, whose full name is Aimee Duffy, did not tell exactly when the attack happened, but added, “You wonder why I did not choose to use my voice to express my pain? I did not want to show the world the sadness in my eyes. I asked myself, how can I sing from the heart if it is broken? And slowly it unbroke.” She asked for privacy for her family.
- February 25, 2021 – Assume Nothing: A Story of Intimate Violence, an account by women’s rights activist and successful producer Tanya Selvaratnam about her year-long relationship with former New York state attorney Eric Schneiderman has been published. She first went public with accusations of intimate violence against Schneiderman in the New Yorker in May 2018. Three other women who had been involved with Schneiderman also came forward with disturbing accounts of subjugation. The attorney general, who had established a political platform as a civil rights advocate, including suing the convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein, stepped down. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, called for a special prosecutor to look into the allegations against Schneiderman, but after a six-month criminal investigation prosecutors concluded that while the accusations of abuse were credible, there were legal hurdles to bringing charges. Schneiderman denied the allegations. In her book, Selvaratnam describes “a fairytale that became a nightmare” and recounts the relationship in the context of Schneiderman’s “entrapment, isolation, control, demeaning, and abuse.” She alleges that Schneiderman would “slap me until I agreed to call him ‘Master’ or ‘Daddy’.” He recounted his fantasies of finding me somewhere far away to be his slave, his “brown girl.” She said she had convinced herself “that he would be my partner, maybe for life. If I wanted to keep him, I felt I had to let him dominate me.” Scared to come forward with her story, Selvaratnam writes that Schneiderman threatened to kill her if they broke up. Selvaratnam, who is also the author of The Big Lie, an examination of the work-family conflict many women face, said she “wrote her way out of the darkness” of the relationship. In coming forward, Selvaratnam hopes to “shift the perception of what a victim looks like ... Even fierce women – strong and independent – get abused. And there are so many people who can’t get out of abusive relationships because they don’t have the support and resources to do so. The pandemic has heightened the urgency of a domestic violence crisis because victims have been in lockdown with their abusers.” Selvaratna realized, “I wasn’t prepared for my path to intersect with an abuser, and I wasn’t prepared for the grooming, gaslighting and manipulation.” In her case, Selvaratnam said, her abuser was shielded by “powerful allies including his ex-wife, mediators, feminists. He fooled a lot of people, not just me. And a lot of people encouraged me to be in the relationship.”
- February 25, 2022 – President Joe Biden nominated Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, the first African-American woman to be nominated to the Supreme Court. She assumed office on June 30, 2022. She had previously served as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (2021-2022) and the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (2013-2021).
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- February 26, 1858 – Lavinia Lloyd Dock born, American nurse, educator, feminist, and social activist; founder of the American Red Cross Nursing Service; contributing editor to the American Journal of Nursing; author of a four-volume history of nursing and a pioneering nurse’s manual of drugs, which became the standard manual for many years.
- February 26, 1859 – Louise Bowen born, Chicago philanthropist, saved Hull House financially in 1935, funded the Woman’s Club building, demanded removal of health hazards from Pullman Company, obtained a minimum wage for women at International Harvester Company, and raised $12,000 for families of strikers.
- February 26, 1900 – Halina Konopacka born, Polish athlete, writer, and poet; the first Polish Olympic champion, winning the women’s discus throw at the 1928 Olympic Games. She wrote her first book of poetry, Któregoś dnia (Some Day), in 1929, and was a regular contributor to Polish literary publications. At the onset of WWII, she helped her husband, Ignacy Matuszewski, and Henryk Floyar-Rajchman, on a secret mission to evacuate the gold reserves, 75 tons of gold, of the Polish National Bank to France to help finance the Polish government-in-exile. After France surrendered to the Nazis in 1940, the couple sought refuge in the U.S., finally arriving by a circuitous route in 1941. Her husband died suddenly in New York in 1946, and she worked at a series of jobs before remarrying in 1949. Widowed a second time in 1959, she moved to Florida and took up painting. She died there in January, 1989. The Polish government posthumously awarded her the Silver Cross of Merit.
- February 26, 1908 – Leela Majumdar born, prolific Indian Bengali writer, scholar, and All India Radio producer. Her children’s play Bak Badh Pala won the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award from the Government of India in 1963.
- February 26, 1909 – Fanny Cradock born as Phyllis Pechey, English television chef, restaurant critic, and writer. She was co-author with her husband of the column "Bon Viveur" for The Daily Telegraph (1950-1955), which led to her variously named cookery shows for the BBC (1955-1975). Cradock wrote novels and children’s books under the pen name Frances Dale, and cook books as Fanny Cradock, several of them co-authored with John Cradock.
- February 26, 1915 – Elisabeth Eybers born, South African poet who mainly wrote in Afrikaans, although she translated some of her own poems, as well as those of other Afrikaans poets, into English. Noted for Die Ander Dors (The other thirst), and Kruis of Munt (Head or tail). She moved to Amsterdam in 1966, remaining there the rest of her life.
- February 26, 1921 – Wilma Heide born, educator and women’s studies pioneer, president of NOW (1971-1972), spearheaded sex discrimination charges against ATT.
- February 26, 1944 – First woman U.S. Navy captain: Sue Dauser of nurse corps is appointed. She became a Navy Nurse in 1917 during WWI, and went on to serve as Superintendent of the Navy Nurse Corps during WWII (1939-1945).
- February 26, 1947 – Sandie Shaw born, British pop singer who also acted on stage and wrote children’s books, then became a psychotherapist. She mentored younger performers, and sang the title song of the movie Made in Dagenham. In 2012, Shaw joined an Amnesty International campaign to end human rights abuses in Azerbaijan, and spoke out in support of independent journalists in Azerbaijan who were being persecuted by the government. She was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2017 Birthday Honours for her services to music.
- February 26, 1949 – Dame Emma Kirkby born, English soprano and world-renowned early music specialist, who made well over 100 recordings, including the Gothic Voices of sequences of Hildegard of Bingen, A Feather on the Breath of God (1981); and George Frideric Handel's Messiah, conducted by Christopher Hogwood (1980), which was named as one of the top 20 recordings of all time by BBC Music Magazine.
- February 26, 1950 – Helen Clark born, New Zealand politician, second woman to be Prime Minister of New Zealand (1999-2008). In 2009, she became the first woman to head the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and served until 2017. In 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) appointed Clark as co-chair with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of an independent panel reviewing the WHO's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and governments’ response to the outbreak. In the panel’s final report published in May 2021, they concluded that the pandemic could have been prevented if countries had taken a more proactive approach in February 2020; Clark said "so many countries chose to wait and see."
- February 26, 1958 – Susan Helms born, U.S Air Force Lt. General and NASA Astronaut, crew member on five Space Shuttle missions and lived aboard the International Space Station for over five months in 2001; with Jim Voss, she is the co-holder of the international record for longest spacewalk, 8 hours and 56 minutes.
- February 26, 1963 – Chase Masterson born as Christianne Carafano; American actress, singer, producer, and anti-bullying activist. Her first big role was on General Hospital (1994), followed by playing Leeta on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1995-1999). In 2003, she was the petitioner in Carafano v. Metrosplash.com, an online dating service, formerly Matchmaker.com, on which the man had created a fictitious dating profile that contained Masterson's home address, telephone number, four photographs of her, and a description of her that characterized her as licentious. As a result, she received a series of unwanted communications, including obscene telephone calls. When the matter was brought to the attention of Matchmaker.com, that service refused to remove the profile. Masterson then sued Matchmaker.com for defamation, invasion of privacy, misappropriation of the right of publicity and negligence. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled against Masterson, deciding the man who created the profile was responsible for it, and not Matchmaker.com. The court cited the Communications Decency Act, which states that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."Masterson released two commercial recordings: 2011's Yesterday Was a Lie and 2012's Burned With Desire. She was named Best Feature Film Producer of 2008 by the LA Femme Film Festival for her work as producer of the sci-fi film noire Yesterday Was a Lie. In 2013, Masterson, who experienced bullying herself while in school, co-founded the Pop Culture Hero Coalition, a non-profit organization speaking out against "bullying, racism, misogyny, cyber-bullying, LGBT-bullying, and other forms
of hate."
- February 26, 1974 – Lola Shoneyin born, Nigerian poet and author, known for her debut novel, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives, and her poetry collections, So All the Time I was Sitting on an Egg; Song of a River Bird; and For the Love of Flight. She runs the annual Aké Arts and Book Festival in Lagos.
- February 26, 1974 – Irina Vlah born, Moldovan politician; Governor of Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia since 2015; Member of Moldovan Parliament (2005-2009).
- February 26, 1976 – Nalini Anantharaman born, French mathematician; Professor at Université de Strasbourg since 2014; In 2018, she was awarded the Infosys Mathematical Sciences Prize for work on “Quantum Chaos.” She won the 2011 Salem Prize for her work on the Fourier Series; co-winner in 2012 of the Henri Poincaré Prize for mathematical physics for her work in “quantum chaos, dynamical systems and Schrödinger equation, including a remarkable advance in the problem of quantum unique ergodicity.” Also in 2011, she was honored with the Grand Prix Jacques Herbrand by the French Academy of Sciences.
- February 26, 1989 – Dita Přikrylová born, Czech software engineer, and founder of Czechitas, a non-profit organization based upon Girls Who Code, which provides technical education and networking possibilities for women and youth in information technologies. Přikrylová was the only Czech participant in the worldwide 2016 Young Transatlantic Innovation Leaders Initiative (YTILI) held by the U.S. Department of State, and the Global Entrepreneurship Summit. Best known for her focus in retraining women between ages 20 and 45 in coding and information technol0gy, and overcoming stereotypes and encouraging women and girls to move into IT careers. In 2016, she cofounded Powercoders, a Swiss-based non-profit which teaches refugees coding skills to improve their employment prospects, and was awarded the European Citizen's Prize by the European Parliament for her efforts to increase women's and girls' technical and digital literacy.
- February 26, 1998 – A Texas jury rejects an $11 million lawsuit by Texas cattlemen, blaming Oprah Winfrey for the price drop on beef after her on-air comment about mad-cow disease.
- February 26, 2019 – Delegates at a conference of the United Methodist Church, the second biggest U.S. Protestant denomination, voted to strengthen bans on same-sex marriage and ordination of LGBTQ clergy. Conservatives from the U.S. and overseas pushed through the so-called ‘Traditional Plan’ and defeated a rival proposal to let regional and local church bodies determine whether to adopt more gay-friendly policies. "The church in Africa would cease to exist" if the bans were eased, said the Rev. Jerry Kulah of Liberia. Council of Bishops President Kenneth H. Carter said he feared progressive churches would now leave the denomination. Former Methodist pastor Rebecca Wilson called the vote devastating. "As someone who left because I'm gay," she said, "I'm waiting for the church I love to stop bringing more hate."
- February 26, 2020 – UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for men everywhere to support women’s rights. In a speech to faculty and students at The New School in New York City, he declared, “Just as slavery and colonialism were a stain on previous centuries, women’s inequality should shame us all in the 21st. Because it is not only unacceptable; it is stupid. From the ridiculing of women as hysterical or hormonal, to the routine judgment of women based on their looks; from the myths and taboos that surround women’s natural bodily functions, to mansplaining and victim-blaming – misogyny is everywhere.” He pointed out that patriarchy also has an impact on men and boys, trapping them in rigid gender stereotypes, declaring that a systemic change is long overdue. “It is time to stop trying to change women, and start changing the systems that prevent them from achieving their potential. Our power structures have evolved gradually over thousands of years. One further evolution is long overdue. The 21st century must be the century of women’s equality,” he said. “We must urgently transform and redistribute power, if we are to safeguard our future and our planet. That is why all men should support women’s rights and gender equality. And that is why I am a proud feminist.”
- February 26, 2021 – At the Government Girls Science Secondary School in the Zamfara state of Nigeria, 279 students, girls between the ages of 10 and 17, were kidnapped by armed bandits. All the hostages were released by the bandits on March 2, 2021, but claims vary about the negotiation methods used by the Nigerian government in order to facilitate their release. Previously, on February 17, 2021, in Kagara, Nigeria, armed bandits had raided the Government Science College at 3 AM, killing one boy and kidnapping 27 other students, three members of the school staff, and 12 relatives of theirs. The kidnap victims were held for ransom, and the kidnappers insisted on negotiating with the parents. Those hostages were all released on February 27, 2021.
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- February 27, 1667 – Princess Ludwika Karolina Radziwiłł born, magnate Princess of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, who was a social reformer. She was orphaned as a child, and inherited considerable wealth from both her father and mother. Her guardianship was entrusted to her father's cousin (who would be her first father-in-law) Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg. She funded the printing of books in the Lithuanian language, and financially supported education. She established scholarships for Lithuanian students of theology in the universities of Königsberg, Frankfurt am Oder, and Berlin. Radziwiłł also financed the issue of a catechism and primer in the Lithuanian language used in primary schools. She married twice, first in 1681, but her first husband died just six years later, and they had no children. She married her second husband, who became Charles III Philip, Elector Palatine, and they had four children, but only their daughter Elisabeth survived beyond childhood.
- February 27, 1603 – The Ladies’ Mercury, a monthly journal, the first English magazine for women, begins publication. It was very short-lived, and its publisher, John Dunton, was far better known for the Athenian Mercury (1690-1697), the “parent” publication of the Ladies’ Mercury.
- February 27, 1847 – Ellen Terry born, British stage actress, leading Shakespearean actress of her day; after retiring from the stage, she gave lectures on Shakespeare’s woman and child characters, and the use of letters in his plays.
- February 27, 1854 – Elizabeth Almira Allen born, American teacher for 48 years, and the first woman president of the New Jersey Education Association. As an advocate for teachers’ pensions, Allen was instrumental in the passage by the New Jersey state legislature in 1896 of the first statewide teacher retirement law in the U.S. The bill provided for a half-pay annuity to teachers with at least 20 years of service who were no longer able to work, but it was a voluntary plan, with contributions taken from teacher salaries. Allen launched a campaign to enroll as many teachers as possible, and within three months, she and her team had enrolled over half of the state’s teachers. She served as the first secretary of the Teachers’ Retirement Fund.
- February 27, 1859 – Bertha Pappenheim born, Austrian-Jewish feminist and author (anonymously and as “P. Berthold”), became the director of an orphanage for Jewish girls, changing the curriculum from preparation for marriage to vocational training; founding member and first president of the Jüdischer Frauenbund (Jewish Women’s Association); translated Mary Wollstonecraft's "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" into German; advocate for women’s education and equal rights, and activist against the trafficking of women; co-founder of the Zentralwohlfahrtsstelle der Juden in Deutschland (Central Welfare Agency of German Jewry).
- February 27, 1869 – Alice Hamilton born, American pathologist, research scientist, and physician; the first woman appointed to the faculty of Harvard University, and a pioneer in the field of toxicology. She focused on occupational illnesses and the dangers of exposure to industrial metals and chemical compounds. In 1911, she was appointed as a special investigator for the U.S. Bureau of Labor, inspecting mines, mills, and smelters. She compiled statistics, beginning with lead, the poison most widely used by industry, which dramatically documented the high mortality and morbidity rates of exposed workers. She followed this by compiling statistics on aniline dyes, picric acid, arsenic, carbon monoxide, and many other industrial poisons and work hazards. Her work contributed greatly to the passage of workmen's compensation laws and to the development of safer working conditions. Hamilton was president of the National Consumers League (1944-1949). She was also an activist in social welfare reform and the peace movement, and a volunteer at Chicago's Hull House. She lived to be 101 years old.
- February 27, 1872 – Charlotte E. Ray becomes the first woman graduate from Howard University School of Law, and the first African American woman lawyer. Ray opened her own law office, advertising in a newspaper run by Frederick Douglass, but she practiced law for only a few years because prejudice against African Americans and women made her business unsustainable. Ray eventually moved to New York, where she became a teacher in Brooklyn. She was involved in the women's suffrage movement and was a member of the National Association of Colored Women.
- February 27, 1880 – Angelina Weld Grimké born in Boston to a white mother and Archibald Grimké, a half-white/half-black father who was the second African American to graduate from Harvard Law School. Her paternal grandfather was a wealthy slaveholder, but his sisters were the outspoken abolitionists Sarah and Angelina Grimké, who made sure that Archibald got an excellent education. Angelina Weld Grimké was an American journalist, teacher, poet, and playwright. Race was a major issue in her life, and she was one of the first American women of color to have a play she wrote publically performed. In 1902, Grimké began teaching English at the Armstrong Manual Training School, a black school in the segregated school system of Washington DC. In 1916, she moved to a teaching position at the Dunbar High School for black students, renowned for its academic excellence. One of her pupils was the future poet and playwright May Miller. During the summers, Grimké frequently attended supplemental classes at Harvard University. She wrote essays, short stories and poems which were published in The Crisis, the newspaper of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), edited by W. E. B. Du Bois, and the National Urban League’s Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life. They were also collected in anthologies of the Harlem Renaissance: The New Negro, Caroling Dusk, and Negro Poets and Their Poems. Her best-known poems include "The Eyes of My Regret," "At April," "Trees,” and "The Closing Door." Grimké wrote Rachel – originally titled Blessed Are the Barren, one of the first plays to protest lynching and racial violence. The three-act drama was written for the NAACP, which had called for new works to rally public opinion against D. W. Griffith's 1915 film, The Birth of a Nation. Her short story “Goldie” was based on the 1918 lynching in Georgia of Mary Turner, a married black woman who was the mother of two children and pregnant with a third when she was attacked and killed after protesting the lynching death of her husband.
- February 27, 1890 – Mabel Staupers born in Barbados,1917 graduate of Freedman’s Hospital of Nursing (now Howard University), led Harlem Committee of NY Tuberculosis and Health Association, organized health education, public lectures, free exams and dental care for school children, and fought, with help from Ohio Representative Frances Bolton, for full racial integration of U.S. Army and Navy nurses.
- February 27, 1897 – Marian Anderson born, African-American contralto, who achieved European fame prior to her American popularity, largely due to racial prejudice. In 1939, Howard University tried to hire the DAR’s Constitution Hall for a Marian Anderson concert, the only venue in Washington DC large enough to hold the expected crowd. The Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow a black performer to appear on their stage. Many DAR members resigned, including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who wrote about it in her weekly column, gaining world-wide attention. Supported by the First Lady and FDR, an open air concert in front of the Lincoln Memorial was arranged; Marian Anderson sang for an interracial crowd of 75,000 and a radio audience of millions, opening with “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.” In 1964, she began her final concert tour on the stage at Constitution Hall.
- February 27, 1907 – Mildred Bailey born as Mildred Rinker, Native American jazz singer, dubbed “The Queen of Swing.” She made several recordings, and three of her records reached #1 on the popular charts. She grew up on the Coeur d'Alene Reservation in Idaho, where her mother was an enrolled member. Her father played fiddle for square dances, her mother played the piano, and her brothers played instruments or sang. The family moved to Spokane, Washington when she was 13, where they often hosted musical gatherings on Saturday nights. She also accompanied her mother to traditional native ceremonies where she heard and practiced the traditional songs and lyrics that would later influence her unique singing voice. Her mother died of tuberculosis at age 36, and her father soon remarried. In 1924, the stepmother issued an ultimatum – her husband must choose either her or his children – he chose her, and Mildred at age 17 went to live with an aunt and uncle in Seattle. She and her aunt were in an auto accident which killed her aunt and left Mildred with serious physical and emotional scars. She got work as a sheet music demonstrator at Woolworth’s, married and divorced Ted Bailey, but kept his last name when she went on tour with a revue which brought her to California. She worked at a radio station and sang in a speakeasy. With the help of her second husband Benny Stafford, Bailey became an established blues and jazz singer on the U.S. west coast, and he introduced her to Bing Crosby, who in turn introduced her to Paul Whiteman. She sang with Whiteman’s band from 1929 to 1933. She had her first hit recording, “All of Me,” with Whiteman’s band in 1932, but left the band over salary disagreements. She made some recordings with the Dorsey Brothers, Benny Goodman’s studio band, and sang on radio shows. In 1933, she married her third husband, band leader Red Norvo, and she sang with his band, mostly in New York, until their divorce in 1942. She worked solo, singing in nightclubs, and on the radio. She had her own show (1944-1945) but she had diabetes and had to be hospitalized in 1938, 1943, and 1949. She went into semi-retirement in 1949, and was often in financial hardship. Bing Crosby bailed her out several times. She died of heart failure at age 44, in December, 1951.
- February 27, 1922 – U.S. Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision in Leser v. Garnett, upheld the principle that the 19th Amendment guarantees all American women the right to vote; attorney Oscar Leser had sued to have the names of two women, Cecilia Street Waters and Mary D. Randolph, removed from the voting rolls in Baltimore because the Maryland Constitution limited suffrage to men, and the Maryland legislature had refused to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. Justice Louis Brandeis wrote: “This amendment is in character and phraseology precisely similar to the Fifteenth. For each the same method of adoption was pursued. One cannot be valid and the other invalid. That the Fifteenth is valid, although rejected by six states, including Maryland, has been recognized and acted on for half a century.” The Supreme Court’s decision insured that the right to vote could actually be used by American women, as citizens of the United States, no matter what state they lived in.
- February 27, 1924 – Samella Sanders Lewis born, artist, and art historian; first African American woman to earn a degree in fine arts and art history; founder of Contemporary Crafts in 1969, the first black-owned art publishing house.
- February 27, 1930 – Joanne Woodward born, American actress, producer, stage director, and philanthropist. Woodward was nominated four times for Best Actress Oscars, and won in 1958 for The Three Faces of Eve. Co-founder with her husband Paul Newman of the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp in 1988, a non-profit residential summer camp, and year-round center providing free services to thousands of children with cancer and other serious conditions, and to their families. In 1994, she and her husband were jointly presented with the Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged by the Jefferson Awards of the American Institute for Public Service. She campaigned for Eugene McCarthy when he ran for president in 1968.
- February 27, 1932 – Elizabeth Taylor born in London, American movie star, Academy Award winning actress, and notable humanitarian; one of the first celebrities to be an HIV/AIDS activist, as a co-founder of the American Foundation for AIDS Research in 1985, and the founder of the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation in 1991. She was also a supporter of the Jewish National Fund, and on the board of trustees of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
- February 27, 1933 – Frances Perkins is appointed by Franklin Roosevelt as Secretary of Labor, making her the first woman in the U.S. Cabinet; she was a key figure in the making of FDR’s New Deal.
- February 27, 1936 – Sonia Johnson born, American feminist, activist, and writer; outspoken supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment and vocal critic of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) which led to her excommunication from the church. Born a fifth-generation Mormon, she began speaking in favor of the ERA in 1977, and co-founded Mormons for ERA. In 1978, she testified before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Property Rights. The church began disciplinary proceedings against Johnson after she delivered her speech "Patriarchal Panic: Sexual Politics in the Mormon Church" at a meeting of the American Psychological Association (APA) in New York City in September 1979, denouncing the nationwide lobbying efforts of the LDS church to prevent passage of the ERA. Her husband divorced her in October 1979. In December 1979, she was charged with hindering the LDS worldwide missionary program, damaging Mormon social programs, and teaching false doctrine, and was excommunicated. She ran in 1984 as the U.S. Citizens Party candidate for President, but only received 72,161 votes, which left her bitter and disillusioned. Among her books are From Housewife to Heretic, and Going Out of Our Minds: The Metaphysics of Liberation, in which she rejects all efforts to improve the lives of women through legislation and government, likening the male-dominated State to an abusive husband, alternately battering and rewarding women to keep them under control.
- February 27, 1940 – Dame Barbara Kelly born, Scottish civil activist; member of the Rural Development Council; chair of the Dumfries and Galloway Arts Festival; Convener (calls people together for meetings) of the Crichton Foundation; and chair of the Peter Pan Moat Brae Trust. The Crichton Foundation is a charitable trust which provides student funding for Crichton Campus where the University of Glasgow, University of West of Scotland, Open University, Crichton Carbon Centre, and Scotland’s Rural College all offer classes. The Peter Pan Moat Brae Trust maintains Moat Brae, the house and garden where J.M. Barrie played while attending Dumfries Academy, which he cited as the inspiration for his play and novel Peter Pan. Kelly has also served as a Chair of the Scottish Consumer Council and the Millennium Forest for Scotland Trust, and on the board of Scottish National Heritage.
- February 27, 1942 – Charlayne Hunter-Gault born, African American journalist and foreign correspondent for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service. In 1958, members of the Atlanta Committee for Cooperative Action (ACCA) searched for high-achieving African-American seniors who attended Atlanta high schools, to jump-start the integration of white universities in Georgia. They were searching for the best students so that universities would have no reason to reject them other than race. Hunter, along with Hamilton Holmes, were selected by the committee to integrate Georgia State College (later Georgia State University) in Atlanta. Hunter was more interested in attending the University of Georgia. They were both initially rejected by the university on the grounds that there was no more room in the dorms for incoming freshmen who were required to live there. That fall, Hunter received assistance from a Georgia tuition program on the basis that there were no black universities in the state offering a journalism program, and she enrolled at Wayne University in Michigan. Despite meeting the qualifications to transfer to the University of Georgia, she and Holmes were both rejected every quarter with the excuse that there was no room for them in the dorms, even though transfer students in similar situations were admitted. This led to a court case Holmes v. Danner, in which the registrar of the university, Walter Danner, was the defendant. After winning the case, Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter became the first African-American students to enroll in the University of Georgia in January 1961. Hunter graduated in 1963 with a B.A. in journalism.
- February 27, 1946 – Mary-Claire King born, American geneticist who was the first to show that breast cancer can be inherited due to mutations in the gene she called BRCA1. She studies human genetics and is particularly interested in genetic heterogeneity and complex traits. She explores the interaction of genetics and environmental influences and their effects on human conditions such as breast and ovarian cancer, inherited deafness, schizophrenia, HIV, systemic lupus erythematosus, and rheumatoid arthritis. She has been the American Cancer Society Professor of the Department of Genome Sciences and of Medical Genetics in the Department of Medicine at the University of Washington since 1995. King is also known for demonstrating that humans and chimpanzees are 99% genetically identical and for applying genomic sequencing to identify victims of human rights abuses. In 1984, in Argentina, she began working with Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo) on identifying children who had been stolen from their families and adopted illegally, without the consent of their mothers or other family members, under the military dictatorship during the Dirty War (1976–1983). She has received many awards, including the Lasker Award and the National Medal of Science.
- February 27, 1954 – JoAnn Falletta born, American conductor, and multiple Grammy Winner, serving as Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, Principal Guest Conductor of the Brevard Music Center, and Artistic Adviser of the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra. Gramophone Magazine named her one of the “Fifty Great Conductors,” past and present. Falletta makes frequent appearances as guest conductor with many of the world’s finest orchestras. She conducted the National Symphony for the 40th Anniversary of the Kennedy Center in 2021, and the world premiere of Libby Larson’s The Supreme Four, commemorating the first four women justices of the Supreme Court, as part of the Sunflower Festival honoring women in music.
- February 27, 1958 – Margaret Wood Hassan born, American attorney and Democratic politician; Governor of New Hampshire (2013-2017); and since 2017, U.S. Senator from New Hampshire. Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen, also a former New Hampshire governor, are the only two women in U.S. history to be elected both governor and U.S. senator.
- February 27, 1971 – Chelsea Clinton born, American author, journalist, and global heath advocate; daughter of Bill and Hillary Clinton; special correspondent for NBC News (2011-2014). She has written five books for children on getting involved in social issues and biographies of notable women in history, and co-authored with Devi Sridhar Governing Global Health: Who Runs the World and Why?, a scholarly book on global health policy. She also co-authored The Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience with her mother. Since 2011, she has served as vice chair of the Clinton Foundation, working on improving global health, and creating more opportunities for women.
- February 27, 1971 – The Mildredhuis opened in Arnhem, the first abortion clinic in the Netherlands. The funds to open the clinic were raised by the Foundation for Medically Responsible Pregnancy Interruption (Stimezo). At the time, abortions were technically illegal, but were tolerated if medical quality standards were met. Beginning in 1969, the left-wing feminist action group ‘Dolle Mina’ (‘Mad Mina,’ named for Wilhelmina Drucker, one of the first Dutch feminists) campaigned for the legalization of abortion. The Termination of Pregnancy Act was passed in 1984 in the Netherlands.
- February 27, 1998 – Britain's House of Lords agrees to give a monarch's first-born daughter the same claim to the throne as a first-born son, ending 1,000 years of male primogeniture.
- February 27, 2017 – Irene Clennell, who was born and grew up in Singapore, where her father had fought alongside British troops during WWII, arrived in London in 1988, and married John Clennell, a British citizen, in 1990. She was granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK, and the couple settled in County Durham. They have two children. But after spending long periods back in Singapore caring for her dying parents, her leave to remain lapsed (if the holder spends more than two years cumulatively out of the UK, the leave lapses). She made repeated attempts – in Singapore and back in the UK – to reapply for permission to live with her husband, which were all rejected. After over a month of detention in an immigration removal centre, she was deported to Singapore, without being allowed to say good-bye to her husband of 27 years, their two sons, or her two-year-old granddaughter. Clennell had only the clothes she was wearing, and £12 in her pocket. She was met at the airport by her sister, but the official in Singapore who was supposed to meet her didn’t show up. She stayed at her sister’s cramped apartment, where she had to sleep on the floor. Clennell spoke from Singapore, describing her ordeal, “It is a bloody disgrace; they treat me like a terrorist and anything else under the sun. They embarrass me in front of everybody, the only thing I did wrong was marry a British man and want to stay in the country with my kids and my husband. I have never done wrong to anybody; all I want is my family and this is what I get. The people who escorted me to the airport told me there would be someone to meet up with me but they did not do anything. The officers handed me a letter from the Home Office which says I have exhibited disruptive and violent behaviour. It also says my case is subject to orchestrated public protest.” Clennell had been moved from the North East of England detention centre to Dungavel in Scotland before being deported. The Scottish National Party called on UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd to provide answers, and said they had “very serious concerns about the manner of the deportation.” Joanna Cherry QC MP said, “This case is another example of the inability of the Home Office to take account of special or compassionate circumstances when required, and the human cost of the inflexibility of the UK’s immigration rules. This approach suggests relentless prioritising of the net migration target against a sensible and humane approach to individual cases.” Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary, said, “Tory anti-immigration policies have gone too far when a woman who is lawfully married, and has lived in the UK most of her adult life, is cruelly separated from her British husband and children. I will be taking this case up with the home secretary.” The Clennell family said they had been overwhelmed by the support of the public, who donated £50,000 to a fundraising page to help Irene fight her case. She used the funds to hire a lawyer, and applied again for a spousal visa. In August 2017, the Home Office approved a new visa for Clennell and allowed her to return to the UK.
- February 27, 2020 – An unidentified senior official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said HHS sent over a dozen workers, who had no proper training for infection control or appropriate protective gear, to receive the first Americans evacuated from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak. The workers were not tested for the virus, according to lawyers for the whistleblower, who oversaw workers at the Administration for Children and Families, a unit within HHS. She sought federal protection, alleging she was unfairly and improperly reassigned after raising concerns about the safety of these workers with HHS officials, including those within the office of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. She was told February 19 that if she did not accept the new position in 15 days (by March 5), she would be terminated. The whistleblower had decades of experience in the field, received two HHS department awards from Azar last year and received the highest performance evaluations, her lawyers said. The complaint was filed with the Office of the Special Counsel, an independent federal watchdog agency. The whistleblower's lawyers provided a copy of a redacted 24-page complaint to The Washington Post. A spokesman for the Office of the Special Counsel confirmed that it had received the complaint and an investigation had been opened. In December 2021, a letter to sent to President Biden by Special Counsel Henry J. Kerner confirmed that the investigation fully substantiated the whistleblower’s allegations.
- February 27, 2021 – Elisabeth Murdoch’s production company Sister funded a new London school designed to get young people from different backgrounds into the film industry. The Ghetto Film School, already running in two American cities, is designed to open up the world of filmmaking to a wider range of newcomers. Elisabeth Murdoch, who until six years ago ran the Shine production company inside her father Rupert Murdoch’s former 21st Century Fox business, has since moved away from the family’s interests, just as her younger brother James has done more recently. She set up Sister in 2019 with fellow founders Stacey Snider and Jane Featherstone and recent drama successes include Chernobyl, Giri/Haji and The Split. Chris Fry, an executive producer at Sister, said that the training school would tackle “a real problem in the industry” in Britain, where despite increased levels of discussion, leading production companies are dominated by white staff and family connections and unpaid internships continue to skew the intake. “There has been a lot of talk, but really it is about making it happen,” Fry said. The free school will be run by 21-year-old Tony Fernandes from Enfield, a graduate of a pilot project set up in 2017 who has since worked in Britain and America. “We don’t specifically pick young people who are BAME, the school becomes naturally diverse just by going to the right sort of place with the right criteria: teenagers with a strong visual storytelling instinct.”
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- February 28, 1797 – Mary Lyon born, American educator, founder of Wheaton Female Seminary (now Wheaton College) in Norton, Massachusetts, and the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (now Mount Holyoke College).
- February 28, 1882 – Geraldine Farrar born, American soprano and actress; she made a sensational debut at the Berlin Hofoper as Marguerite in Charles Gounod’s Faust in 1901, and appeared in different European venues until her debut at the NY Metropolitan Opera in Romeo et Juliette in 1906; sang the title role in the first Met production of Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, and remained at the Met until her retirement in 1922. Farrar made a number of recordings for the Victor Talking Machine Company, founded in 1901, which merged with RCA in 1929.
- February 28, 1897 – Ranavalona III, the last sovereign of the Kingdom of Madagascar, is exiled. She spent her reign, which began in 1883, resisting the colonial designs of France. Ranavalona tried to hold off colonization by strengthening trade and diplomatic relations with other foreign powers throughout her reign, but French attacks on coastal port towns and an assault on the capital city of Antananarivo led to the capture of the royal palace in 1895. She and her court were initially used as figureheads, but a popular resistance movement called the menalamba rebellion, and anti-French political intrigues at her court, caused the French to exile Ranavalona to the island of Réunion on this day, formally ending the sovereignty and political autonomy of the century-old kingdom. She, several members of her family, and their servants were later moved to a villa in Algiers. In spite of her repeated requests, Ranavalona was never allowed to return to Madagascar, and she died in Algiers of an embolism in 1917 at age 55.
- February 28, 1898 – Molly Picon born, Yiddish actor, entertained troops in the Pacific Theater during and just after World War II; renowned for performing somersaults and flips well into her seventies, wrote a one-woman show, “Hello, Molly” (1979), and an autobiography, Molly (1980).
- February 28, 1909 – Ketti Frings born as Katherine Hartley; American author, playwright, and screenwriter; she won the 1958 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her adaptation of Thomas Wolfe’s novel Look Homeward, Angel as a play which opened on Broadway in 1957; also known for her 1940 novel, Hold Back the Dawn.
- February 28, 1920 – Jadwiga Piłsudska born, Polish pilot, served in the British women’s Air Transport Auxiliary during WWII. In 1937, she began flying gliders and earned a glider pilot's license. In 1939, she graduated from secondary school and decided to study aircraft engineering at the Warsaw Polytechnic. But in September 1939, Poland was invaded by Germany, so she fled with her mother and elder sister to Lithuania, eventually arriving in Britain. In 1940, She resumed her studies, and graduated from Newnham College, Cambridge University in architecture. Later she acquired her aircraft pilot's license, and in July 1942, she joined the Air Transport Auxiliary. After the war, the Communists took over Poland, so she remained in England as a political émigré. Never accepting British citizenship, she used a Nansen passport, valid for all countries in the world, except Poland. In 1990, with the collapse of the Communist government, she returned to Poland and lived in Warsaw, where she died at the age of 94 in 2014.
- February 28, 1920 – Marjorie Sweeting born, British geomorphologist (studies landform history: cause/effect of terrestrial events on the ecology and local environment). She specializes in karst phenomena (underground streams that break onto the surface, then go back underground). After many years of field work, she published Karst Landforms, and Karst in China: its Geomorphology and Environment, one of the first comprehensive Western accounts of China’s karsts. Before her death from cancer at age 74 in 1994, Sweeting was acknowledged as an international expert on karst geomorphology, and also as a generous mentor for generations of undergraduate and graduate students. Among her many awards and honors, she was awarded the Gill Memorial Prize of the Royal Geographic Society in 1950. The Marjorie Sweeting Award was created by the British Society for Geomopholology in 2008.
- February 28, 1928 – Sylvia del Villard born, actress, dancer, choreographer, and Afro-Puerto Rican activist; director of Afro-Puerto Rican Affairs at the Puerto Rican Institute of Culture (1981-1988).
- February 28, 1941 – Alice May Brock born, American artist, author, and restaurateur, owner and operator in sequence of The Back Room, Take-Out Alice, and Alice's at Avaloch. The Back Room was immortalized as “Alice’s Restaurant” by Arlo Guthrie. She wrote The Alice’s Restaurant Cookbook, published in 1969.
- February 28, 1945 – Linda Preiss Rothschild born, American mathematician and academic; worked on polynomial factorization, partial differential equations, harmonic analysis, and the theory of several complex variables; fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2005.
- February 28, 1948 – Bernadette Peters born as Bernadette Lazzara, American Broadway actress and singer, winner of two Tony Awards and three Drama Desks Awards, who has also appeared in films and on television, and is a children’s book author. In 1999, she and Mary Tyler Moore co-founded Broadway Barks, a pet adoption charity which has an annual adopt-a-thon that has made over 2,000 adoptions possible. She also held a combined benefit concert for both Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and Broadway Barks in 2009 that raised $615,000 for the two charities.
- February 28, 1958 – Natalya Estemirova born, Russian newspaper correspondent, documentary filmmaker, and human rights activist who was a board member of the Russian human rights organization Memorial. She was abducted from her home in 2009, and found shot to death in a wooded area. The Sweden-based human rights organization Civil Rights Defenders named the Natalia Project after Estemirova. The Natalia Project is an alarm and positioning system for human rights defenders at risk. Estemirova’s murder remains officially unsolved.
- February 28, 2015 – In South Africa, Zephany Nurse, a daughter who had been kidnapped just three days after her birth was discovered after 17 years. The bereft parents, Morné and Celeste Nurse, never gave up hope of finding Zephany, their first-born child, and celebrated 17 birthdays without her. The girl grew up just a couple of miles away with a different name and a different family, never suspecting they were not her real parents. But in January, 2015, her biological sister, Cassidy Nurse, began attending the same school, and soon fellow pupils noticed a startling resemblance between them. When Morné Nurse saw the two girls together, she contacted the police. DNA tests confirmed that Zephany was the Nurses’ long-lost daughter. She is now in the care of social workers while the woman who allegedly kidnapped and raised her has been arrested and charged.
- February 28, 2020 – Police and protesters clashed briefly outside the French “Oscars” ceremony as the Franco-Polish film director Roman Polanski was awarded the prize for best director. Immediately after the announcement, there was shouting and booing among the audience, and the two actors who announced the award quickly left the stage. More than 100 angry protestors had gathered to demonstrate against the award going to the controversial director, who is still wanted in the U.S. after pleading guilty to the statutory rape of a 13-year-old and then fleeing the country before being sentenced in 1977. Even after Polanski announced he would not be attending the Césars awards ceremony for fear of what he described as a “public lynching,” protesters gathered outside the venue to vent their fury at his film J’Accuse (marketed in English as An Officer and a Spy) being nominated for 12 awards. In November 2019, just before the official release of the film in France, Polanski faced accusations of rape by French actress Valentine Monnier, who alleged he violently raped her in Switzerland in 1975 when she was 18 years old. Monnier said, “Rape is a time bomb. The memory does not fade. It becomes a ghost and it follows you, and it changes you insidiously. I denounce this crime knowing that there can’t be any punishment, in an attempt to end exceptions, impunity. Public figures are being considered as models. By idolizing the guilty ones, we prevent people from realizing the serious consequences of their acts.” The actress noted that she previously revealed the alleged incident in letters to French first lady Brigitte Macron and the Los Angeles Police Department. Monnier is the fourth woman to accuse Polanski of sexual assault. Upon the film’s release, French feminist groups invaded or blockaded several cinemas, resulting in the film being yanked from some venues.
- February 28, 2020 – Over 15,000 people in Bristol, England, including many children skipping school, turned out to join a climate strike headed by Greta Thunberg. The big crowd endured heavy rain to hear the 17-year-old activist speak, “Once again they sweep their mess under the rug for us – young people, their children – to clean up for them. We must continue and we have to be patient. Remember that the changes required will not happen overnight … We will not be silenced because we are the change, and change is coming whether you like it or not. This emergency is being completely ignored by the politicians, the media and those in power. Basically, nothing is being done to halt this crisis despite all the beautiful words and promises from our elected officials. So what did you do during this crucial time? I will not be silenced when the world is on fire.” Thunberg cited the recent decision by north Somerset council to oppose Bristol airport expansion as an example of what could be achieved if activists worked together. She joined the protesters in a march through the city’s center. Ten-year-old Emily Thomson, accompanied by her mother, said, “I think it’s really important that people understand what is happening to the Earth.” Emily returned to school after the event to give a presentation on climate change.
- February 28, 2021 – In the UK, a government-backed review touted the increase in the number of women holding seats on the boards of Britain’s top 350 companies to one-third of the total, was overshadowed by a report issued by the employment specialist law firm Fox &Partners, which revealed that over 80% of women were appointed to non-executive roles to improve board diversity without giving them much influence, and for considerably less pay – women directors at the UK’s largest financial services companies were paid on average 66% less than the male directors who still hold the overwhelming majority of the actual leadership and decision-making positions. Catriona Watt, a partner at Fox & Partners, said, “Boards need to be open to challenging themselves by asking honest questions about the barriers in their organisation that might prevent women reaching the very top. To see long-term change, firms must be committed to taking steps that will lead to more women progressing through the ranks, getting into senior executive positions and closing the pay gap.”
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- February 29, 1736 – Mother Ann Lee born in Great Britain, founder and first leader of the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Coming, more commonly known as the Shakers, who moved to America in 1774.
- February 29, 1828 – Emmeline B. Wells born, American journalist, editor, poet, women’s rights advocate, diarist, and Mormon plural wife. She served as General President (1910-1921) of the Relief Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints). She represented the state of Utah at both the National and American Women's Suffrage conventions and was president of the Utah Woman's Suffrage Association. She was the editor (1877-1914) of the Women's Exponent, a newspaper aimed at Mormon women, which was not an official publication of the church, but was closely tied to the Relief Society.
- February 29, 1892 – Augusta Savage born as Augusta Fells, African-American sculptor associated with the Harlem Renaissance; she also mentored and taught many younger artists, and worked for equal rights for African Americans in the arts.
- February 29, 1916 – Dinah Shore born as Fannye Rose Shore; American singer, actress, radio and television musical variety show host, and long-time supporter of women’s professional golf. She helped found the Dinah Shore Golf Tournament in 1972, one of the major women’s golf tournaments, although now held under a different name. She also broke the gender barrier at Hillcrest Country Club in Los Angeles, becoming its first woman member around 1969-1970.
- February 29, 1940 – Hattie McDaniel becomes the first African American to win an Academy Award, as Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Mammy in the 1939 film Gone With the Wind. McDaniel was also the first black Oscar winner to appear on a U.S. postage stamp. She recorded blues sides between 1926 and 1929, and was the first African American woman to sing on U.S. Radio, where she became a frequent performer.
- February 29, 1940 – Sonja Barend born, host of the Dutch weekly television talk show Sonja from the 1970s up to 2004, noted for breaking taboos and allowing ordinary people a voice in public dialog. She was outspoken on political and ideological topics, and television viewers either loved or hated her. Especially in the 1970s and 1980s, she was never afraid to openly discuss taboo topics—homosexuality, feminism, and sexuality. An annual award for the best television interview is named after her.
- February 29, 1944 – Ene Ergma born, Estonian scientist and politician; professor of Astronomy at the University of Tartu (1988-2003); most of her scientific research was on the evolution of the compact objects (such as white dwarfs and neutron stars) and gamma ray bursts. Ergma was President of the Riigikogu (2003-2006 — the Riigikogu is the Estonian parliament). She was a Second Vice-President of the Riigikogu (2006-2007), then was elected again as President of the Riigikogu (2007-2014). She is the chair of the Space Research Committee of the Riigikogu.
- February 29, 1948 – Dame Hermione Lee born in Hampshire, then grew up in London; academic and biographer, particularly of women writers. President of Wolfson College, Oxford (2008-2017); Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature (1998-2008)) at the University of Oxford. She became the first woman professorial fellow of New College. She is also a fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Literature.
- February 29, 1948 – Patricia A. McKillip born, American author of fantasy and science fiction; her first novel, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, won the 1974 World Fantasy Award – Novel, and she won it again for Ombria in Shadow in 2003. Harpist in the Wind won the 1980 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel. She won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award in 1995 for Something Rich and Strange, and in 2007 for Solstice Wood.
- February 29, 1952 – Sharon Raiford Bush born, African-American television newscaster and print journalist; correspondent and executive producer for Black Entertainment Television.
- February 29, 1964 – In Sydney, Australian swimmer Dawn Fraser sets a new world record in the 100-meter freestyle swimming competition of 58.9 seconds.
- February 29, 1984 – Lena Raine born, American composer and producer, best known for her work on the soundtracks for video games, including Celeste; Guild Wars 2; Minecraft; and Chicory: A Colorful Tale. She was awarded the ASCAP Video Game Score of the Year in 2019. Raine also released her debut music album, Oneknowing, in 2019.
- February 29, 2016 – An essay by Katie Glass in the Spectator pointed out that saying February 29 is the day that women are allowed to propose to men is sexist. Glass declared, “The very notion that women must wait patiently for four years to pass and 29 February to arrive depends upon the assumption that we’re not allowed to propose whenever the hell we want. The leap year proposal is a myth perpetuated to keep women in their place. Women do not need one ‘special day’. If we want to get married we should just ask.”
- February 29, 2020 – The deal between the U.S. and the Taliban to pave the way for peace in Afghanistan, had huge risks to women’s rights in the process. Women suffered greatly during Afghanistan’s 40 years of war, but they also fought ferociously for equality in the years since the fall of the Taliban government in 2001, and women became ministers, governors, judges, and police and soldiers. Afghanistan’s parliament had a higher percentage of women than does the US Congress. But Afghan women’s rights activists faced resistance from the Afghan government — and lack of support from international donors —as they fought for their rightful place at the negotiating table for peace talks. This exclusion, combined with the Taliban’s relentless discrimination against women and girls, increased fears that women’s rights could easily be a casualty of this process. The US-Taliban deal focused on foreign troop withdrawal and preventing Taliban support for international terrorism attacks. It also triggered “intra-Afghan” talks between the Taliban, the Afghan government, and other factions. But women’s rights were not included in the deal. Zalmay Khalilzad, the lead U.S. envoy, repeatedly said that women’s rights — and other issues relating to human rights, political structures, and power sharing — should be resolved through subsequent intra-Afghan talks. The Taliban’s 1996 to 2001 regime was notorious for denying women and girls access to education, employment, freedom of movement, and health care, and subjecting them to violence – including public lashing or execution by stoning. A Taliban leader declared, “[W]e together will find a way to build an Islamic system in which all Afghans have equal rights, where the rights of women that are granted by Islam — from the right to education to the right to work — are protected.” Skeptics noted that from 1996 to 2001 the Taliban also argued that women were enjoying all rights “granted by Islam.” After the U.S. withdrawal in 2021, the Taliban quickly ousted the Afghan government, and took over the country again. Since then, Afghan women’s rights have been decimated by the Taliban regime – except for some women in the medical field who are allowed to treat only women patients, almost all women who were working lost their jobs, girls are denied education after the age of 8, and women must wear the burqa at all times outside their homes, and be accompanied by a male relative. The economy is in shambles, and there are severe food shortages.
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Sources
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The Feminist Cats Learning Black History Online
Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony winner
Whoopi Goldberg with Vinny, the kitten
she adopted after it survived being tossed
from a moving car on New York City's
Verrazano Bridge in 2011.
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For those of you who want to dive deeper,
the rest of the list of this week’s Women
Trailblazers and Events in Women’s History
is here: