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At age 15, on March 2, 1955 in Montgomery, Claudette Colvin refused to give up her bus seat to a white woman. This was nine months before Rosa Parks took the same action. "…as a teenager, I kept thinking, Why don’t the adults around here just say something? Say it so that they know we don’t accept segregation? I knew then and I know now that, when it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it. You can’t sugarcoat it. You have to take a stand and say, 'This is not right.' And I did." Portrait by Robert Shetterly, image and bio on Americans Who Tell the Truth: http://bit.ly/yPnhh8 Read more in the upper elem/ms book, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice: http://bit.ly/13wmSuK Biographical sketches of other women arrested the same year as Rosa Parks who became part of the same legal case: http://bit.ly/15YnIzv

Famous Firsts in American Women's History
 

1. Wyoming Territory is first to grant women the vote, 1869

In 1869, Wyoming’s territorial legislature declared that “every woman of the age of twenty-one years, residing in this territory, may at every election…cast her vote.” Though Congress lobbied hard against it, Wyoming’s women kept their right to vote when the territory became a state in 1890. In 1924, the state’s voters elected the nation’s first female governor, Nellie Tayloe Ross.

2. Californian Julia Morgan is first woman admitted to the Ecole de Beaux-Arts in Paris, 1898

The 26-year-old Morgan had already earned a degree in civil engineering from Berkeley, where she was one of just 100 female students in the entire university (and the only female engineer). After she received her certification in architecture from the Ecole de Beaux-Arts, the best architecture school in the world, Morgan returned to California. There, she became the first woman licensed to practice architecture in the state and an influential champion of the Arts and Crafts movement. Though she is most famous for building the “Hearst Castle,” a massive compound for the publisher William Randolph Hearst in San Simeon, California, Morgan designed more than 700 buildings in her long career. She died in 1957.

3. Margaret Sanger opens first birth-control clinic in the United States, 1916

In October 1916, the nurse and women’s-rights activist Margaret Sanger opened the first American birth-control clinic in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Since state “Comstock Laws” banned contraceptives and the dissemination of information about them, Sanger’s clinic was illegal; as a result, on October 26, the city vice squad raided the clinic, arresting its staff and seizing its stock of diaphragms and condoms. Sanger tried to reopen the clinic twice more, but police forced her landlord to evict her the next month, closing it for good. In 1921, Sanger formed the American Birth Control League, the organization that eventually became Planned Parenthood.

4. Edith Wharton is the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize, 1921

Wharton won the prize for her 1920 novel The Age of Innocence. Like many of Wharton’s books, The Age of Innocence was a critique of the insularity and hypocrisy of the upper class in turn-of-the-century New York. The book has inspired several stage and screen adaptations, and the writer Cecily Von Ziegesar has said that it was the model for her popular Gossip Girl series of books.

5. Activist Alice Paul proposes the Equal Rights Amendment for the first time, 1923

For almost 50 years, women’s-rights advocates like Alice Paul tried to get Congress to approve the amendment; finally, in 1972, they succeeded. In March of that year, Congress sent the proposed amendment--“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex”--to the states for ratification. Twenty-two of the required 38 states ratified it right away, but then conservative activists mobilized against it. (The ERA’s straightforward language hid all kinds of sinister threats, they claimed: It would force wives to support their husbands, send women into combat and validate gay marriages.) This anti-ratification campaign was a success: In 1977, Indiana became the 35th and last state to ratify the ERA. In June 1982, the ratification deadline expired. The amendment has never been passed.

6. Frances Perkins becomes the first female member of a Presidential cabinet, 1933

Perkins, a sociologist and Progressive reformer in New York, served as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor. She kept her job until 1945.

7. Janet Guthrie is the first woman to drive in the Indy 500, 1977

Guthrie was an aerospace engineer, training to be an astronaut, when she was cut from the space program because she didn’t have her PhD. She turned to car racing instead and became the first woman to qualify for the Daytona 500 and the Indianapolis 500. Mechanical difficulties forced her out of the 1977 Indy race, but the next year she finished in ninth place (with a broken wrist!). The helmet and suit that Guthrie wore in her first Indy race are on display in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C.

8. President Ronald Reagan nominates Sandra Day O'Connor to be the first woman on the Supreme Court, 1981

O’Connor was confirmed that September. She did not have much judicial experience when she began her Supreme Court term—she had only been a judge for a few years and had never served on a federal court—but she soon made a name for herself as one of the Court’s most thoughtful centrists. O’Connor retired in 2006.

9. Joan Benoit wins the first women's Olympic Marathon, 1984

At the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles, Joan Benoit (today known as Joan Benoit Samuelson) finished the first-ever women’s marathon in 2:24.52. She finished 400 meters ahead of the silver medalist, Norway’s Grete Waitz.

10. Manon Rheaume is the first woman to play in an NHL game, 1992

Manon Rheaume, a goalie from Quebec City, Canada, was no stranger to firsts: She was well-known for being the first female player to take the ice in a major boys’ junior hockey game. In 1992, Rheaume was the starting goalie for the National Hockey League’s Tampa Bay Lighting in a preseason exhibition game, making her the first woman to play in any of the major men’s sports leagues in the U.S. In that game, she deflected seven of nine shots; however, she was taken out of the game early and never played in a regular-season game. Rheaume led the Canadian women’s national team to victory in the 1992 and 1994 World Hockey Championships. The team also won silver at the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, Japan.

11. Madeleine Albright becomes the first female Secretary of State, 1997

In January 1997, the international-relations expert Madeleine K. Albright was sworn in as the United States’ 64th Secretary of State. She was the first woman to hold that job, which made her the highest-ranking woman in the federal government’s history. Before President Bill Clinton asked her to be part of his Cabinet, Albright had served as the country’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations. In 2004, Condoleezza Rice became the second woman--and first African-American woman to hold the job. Five years later, in January 2009, the former Senator (and First Lady) Hillary Rodham Clinton became the third female Secretary of State.

12. Kathryn Bigelow becomes the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Director, 2010

The American film director Kathryn Bigelow’s 2008 film "The Hurt Locker" garnered six Oscars on March 7, 2010, including the Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture. Written by Mark Boal, a former journalist who covered the war in Iraq, the movie follows an Army bomb squad unit as they conduct dangerous missions and battle personal demons in war-torn Baghdad. Bigelow, whose previous films include "Strange Days" and "Point Break," was the first woman to take home the Best Director distinction. She triumphed over her former husband, James Cameron, whose science fiction epic "Avatar" was another presumed front-runner.

Top to bottom: Jane Curtain, Lorraine Newman, Gilda Radner
 

Womens History
 

Wilma Mankiller-Was the first woman elected principal chief of Cherokee Nation she worked to improve the lives of Native Americans by helping them recieve better education and health care and urged them to preserve and take pride in their traditions.

Brave acts by women....don't always happen in March.....
 

25 April 1981 -
ANZAC Day. Women arrested while marching to remember women raped in war. In the early '80s, a number of Australian women attempted to join official ANZAC Day marches because they wanted to commemorate all women who had been raped in wars.

In 1980, fourteen women who tried to do this in Canberra were arrested. The following year, again in Canberra, around 250 women attempted to join the tail of the official ANZAC Day march but were stopped by police and directed not to march. The police were acting under a Section 23A of the Traffic Ordinance, a section that had only been gazetted the day before the march. As a result about 64 people, mainly women, were arrrested and charged with failing to obey the police directive.

The special legislation, march and arrests that took place aroundthat Anzac Day in 1981 gave rise to a great deal of debate in the Canberra Times.

Queen Liliʻuokalani - the last monarch of Hawaii
 

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I, Lili'uokalani, by the Grace of God and under the constitution of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Queen, do hereby solemnly protest against any and all acts done against myself and the constitutional government of the Hawaiian Kingdom by certain persons claiming to have established a Provisional Government of and for this Kingdom. That I yield to the superior force of the United States of America, whose Minister Plenipotentiary, His Excellency John L Stevens, has caused United States troops to be landed at Honolulu and declared that he would support the said Provisional Government. Now, to avoid any collision of armed forces and perhaps loss of life, I do, under this protest, and impelled by said forces, yield my authority until such time as the Government of the United States shall, upon the facts being presented to it, undo the action of its representative and reinstate me in the authority which I claim as the constitutional sovereign of the Hawaiian Islands.
— Queen Liliʻuokalani, Jan 17, 1893

Canada--The Famous Five: Women Who Made Us Persons Under Canadian Law
 

The Famous Five or The Valiant Five were five Canadian women who asked the Supreme Court of Canada to answer the question, "Does the word 'Persons' in Section 24 of the British North America Act, 1867, include female persons?" in the case Edwards v. Canada (Attorney General).[1] The five women created a petition to ask this question. They sought to have women legally considered persons so that women could be appointed to the Senate.

The petition was filed on August 27, 1927,[2] and on 24 April 1928, Canada's Supreme Court summarized its unanimous decision that women are not such "persons".[1] The last line of the judgement reads, "Understood to mean 'Are women eligible for appointment to the Senate of Canada,' the question is answered in the negative." This judgement was overturned by the British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. This case, which came to be known as the Persons Case, had important ramifications not just for women's rights but also because in overturning the case, the Privy Council engendered a radical change in the Canadian judicial approach to the Canadian constitution, an approach that has come to be known as the "living tree doctrine".

The five women were:

Emily Murphy (1868-1933) (the British Empire's first female judge);

Irene Marryat Parlby (1868-1965) (farm women's leader, activist and first female Cabinet minister in Alberta);

Nellie Mooney McClung (1873-1951) (a suffragist and member of the Alberta legislature);

Louise Crummy McKinney (1868-1931) (the first woman elected to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, or any legislature in Canada or the rest of the British Empire);

Henrietta Muir Edwards (1849-1931) (an advocate for working women and a founding member of the Victorian Order of Nurses).

Young and Fierce
 

I have to say:

My Mom
Maya Angelou and
The lady who was at the Reunion two years ago! That woman brought me to tears.

Zimmeh

Lauren Silberman
 

Dorothy Allison
 

Kathrine Switzer
 

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Kathrine Switzer was the first woman to run the Boston Marathon in 1967 as a numbered entry. She registered under the gender-neutral "K. V. Switzer."

Race official Jock Semple attempted to remove her from the race, and according to Switzer said, "Get the hell out of my race and give me those numbers." However, Switzer's boyfriend Tom Miller, who was running with her, shoved Semple aside and sent him flying. The photographs taken of the incident made world headlines.

My role models
 

Maria Luzinete Santos - Midwife/Healer - My grandmother.


Dilma Rousseff - First Brasilian Female President

http://ts2.mm.bing.net/th?id=H.45657...h=154&c=7&rs=1

Rigoberta Menchu - Nobel Peace Prize Winner

http://ts2.mm.bing.net/th?id=H.45361...h=155&c=7&rs=1

Pat Mora - Latina Literature Writer

http://ts2.mm.bing.net/th?id=H.46201...h=148&c=7&rs=1

Latinas
 

Tatyana Fazlalizadeh
 

Fazlalizadeh is an oil painter / illustrator whose work focuses on portraiture and social/political themes and her street harassment art. Her art has been making appearances in the Bed-Sty neighborhood of Brooklyn. The website, Stop Harassment recently interviewed Fazlalizadeh about her work:

Stop Street Harassment (SSH): What inspired your art project about street harassment?

Tatyana Fazlalizadeh (TF): The project was inspired by my daily experiences with street harassment. Being harassed on the street is exasperating. I’ve wanted to do some art work on the issue for a while now, but I couldn’t figure out how to properly communicate what I wanted to say in my primary artistic medium – oil paint on canvas. Over the past year or so I’ve started working in public art as a muralist. Thinking about creating art in a public space led me to this idea of wheat pasting posters. Because what better medium to create art about street harassment than street art.

SSH: Some of the prints are up on walls around Philadelphia, right? How many did you put up and how did you select where to post them?

TF: Philly, yes. As well as other places that I’m often in, mostly Brooklyn and other parts of NYC. This project is still very new and I plan to continue it and expand it, that includes venturing to different cities. I’ve placed them in areas that receive foot traffic, areas that I’ve personally been harassed, and spots that work well for wheat paste.

SSH: What reactions have you received from people who’ve seen them in person and from people who saw them on your Tumblr page?

TF: I’ve received a lot of positive reactions from women who relate to the captions on the posters. I’ve been having a lot of conversations, and a few debates, about street harassment as a result of this. I wasn’t sure what to expect because the state of this medium is very temporary; it’s likely to put up a piece and for it to be gone a few days later. So to have the pieces captured and widely shared online was surprising but, I’m also very happy about that.

To learn more about Fazlailizadeh, visit her websites:

http://tlynnfaz.com/Stop-Telling-Women-to-Smile & http://fazstreetart.tumblr.com/

http://www.xojane.com/files/stwts_5.jpeg

http://www.xojane.com/files/tumblr_m...qwo1_1280.jpeg

Gracias!!!! Loving me some Dorothy Allison!

Zimmeh

Women emerge as crisis leaders in macho Balkans
 

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Women in the Balkans are leading a political revolution.

Historically given little say in the politics of the conservative region, they are increasingly taking top leadership posts, signaling that the traditional rules are changing as Balkan countries shake off their war pasts and move toward membership in the European Union.

During the bloody 1990s, many in the Balkans turned to warrior leaders, mostly male nationalists they thought would protect them from the ethnic conflicts that flattened cities and left over a hundred thousand dead. The new millennium has brought crisis in a different form: economic doldrums, naggingly high unemployment and glaring political corruption.

Encouraged by the EU and influenced by closer ties with the West, more and more it is women who are stepping in to change the old ways of doing business in the macho Balkans. Some see women as less nationalistic and more attuned to the needs of a new era — diplomacy, consensus, and compromise.

"Women have always been more successful than men, with all due respect," said Duska Latinovic, a nurse from the Serb-controlled part of Bosnia. "Women are ... more sensitive, stronger, emotional, and in these rough times people need more of a heart."

Although overall gender equality standards are still far from those in Western democracies, strongly patriarchal Kosovo and the post-war Serb mini-state in Bosnia have both installed women in their top positions. Male-dominated Serbia and Montenegro have passed laws to increase the numbers of women in leadership positions, part of a slate of efforts to convince the EU they belong in the bloc.

"The power of women in the politics is a soft power," Atifete Jahjaga, the female president of Kosovo told the AP. "It is a positive change that our country and other countries in the region ... are making by giving a chance to women."

The latest political newcomer is the charismatic 43-year-old financial expert Alenka Bratusek, Slovenia's first ever female prime minister. While Slovenia has traditionally been more socially liberal than the rest of the Balkans, Bratusek's election last week was significant because it came at a moment of deep financial and political turmoil in the small Alpine state.

A rising star among veteran Slovenian politicians, Bratusek has been entrusted with consolidating the nation's economy and restoring confidence in state institutions, which have been badly shaken by the EU's broader financial crisis.

"It is important that this happened at a sensitive moment, a period of crisis," sociologist Milica Gaber Antic said. "It's a strong message to other women: 'We women can do it!'"

Many women leaders are already being lauded for steering their countries through the storms.

Croatia's former Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor, took over the premiership in turmoil after her predecessor Ivo Sanader was forced to resign in 2009 in a whirl of corruption scandals, and then wrapped up her country's accession talks with the EU.

In 2011 in Kosovo — where Parliament members were recently issued notebooks with an assortment of sayings including one saying that "silence is the only treasure a woman possesses" — the little-known Jahjaga was elected the first ever female president, part of a U.S.-brokered compromise that put to a rest the bickering between political groups dominated by formal rebel fighters and murky business leaders.

Last week in the ethnically Serb mini-state in Bosnia another little-known female politician, Zeljka Cvijanovic, was proposed as the new head of government after the previous Cabinet resigned. That would make her the first ever woman to lead the government in any of the country's many levels of power-sharing, where no ministry in the central government is headed by a woman.

"As a woman, I hope to add a new flair and a new dimension to the institutions of Republika Srpska," she said in an interview.

Women accounted for only 1.6 percent of Serbia's Parliament in 1990, the lowest rate in Europe. But with strongman Slobodan Milosevic ouster in 2000 and the country's efforts to join the EU, the proportion of women has soared to 20 percent. Serbian law now calls for every third candidate on an election list to be a woman — a rule requested as part of EU reforms.

It isn't always the same story across the region. During the communist rule that followed World War II, authorities promoted women's inclusion in politics as part of the communist agenda of gender equality. At the time women served at top positions in the governments and were granted equal rights, jobs, salaries and education.

Bulgaria, for example, had the highest percentage of working women in the world in the 1970s, and women in top offices include the vice president, the parliament speaker, four ministers, and the mayor of the capital city, Sofia.

But, old habits die hard. Kosovo's Minister for European Integration Vlora Citaku acknowledged that "it is almost impossible to forget even for a moment that I am a woman — I've been reminded of that every day since I became a minister."

She said that being a woman in the male-dominated politics is "a tough life."

"First of all they ask you are you married? What your dad think of you traveling alone surrounded by all men?," she scoffed. "I mean, it's all these stereotypes ... There are certain duties that a woman must do in order to be 'complete.'"

And in Slovenia, shortly after Bratusek won Parliament's approval, political opponents tweeted that "her mandate will be as long as her skirt."

Bratusek responded simply: "I wish we women were no longer judged only by the length of our skirts."

http://news.yahoo.com/women-emerge-c...073239728.html

Nepal's women climbers break highest glass ceiling
 

KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) — It's the world's highest glass ceiling. Of the 3,755 climbers who have scaled Mount Everest, more than half are Nepalese but only 21 of those locals are women.

Aiming to change the all-male image of mountaineering in their country, a group of Nepalese women have embarked on a mission to shatter that barrier by climbing the tallest mountain on each of the seven continents.

The women, aged between 21 and 32, have already climbed Everest in Asia, Kosciuszko in Australia and Elbrus in Europe. They are preparing to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa to mark International Women's Day this week.

"The main goal of our mission is to encourage women in education, empowerment and environment," Shailee Basnet, the 29-year-old team leader, said before leaving for Africa.

Women in this Himalayan nation rarely got the chance to climb because they were confined to their homes while their husbands led expeditions or carried equipment for Western climbers, Basnet said.

It was only in 1993 that a Nepalese woman — Pasang Lhamu — first reached the 8,850-meter (29,035-foot) summit of Everest. She died on the descent.

According to Ang Tshering of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, Nepalese women had traditionally expressed little attraction to mountaineering.

"It is only recently that women have shown interest," Tshering said.

Since they climbed Everest in 2008, the women have spoken in more than 100 schools across Nepal to tell students about their mission.

"We are hoping to attract more women to mountaineering, both as a profession and as a hobby," said Pema Dikki, 25, another member of the team.

Basnet said the response to the Everest climb encouraged them to push ahead.

"After Everest, we felt that we needed to go beyond the borders, so we decided to travel to all seven continents to climb the highest mountains there," Basnet said.

Basnet said the team members have spent their savings, taken out loans and sought sponsorships to finance their expensive gear, climbing permits and plane tickets.

The team plans to speak to students while in Africa to spread their theme, "You can climb your own Everest," to encourage girls to stay in school.

The team will be joined by two women from Tanzania and one from South Africa during the Kilimanjaro climb.

Nepal has eight of the 14 mountains that are more than 8,000 meters (26,240 feet) in height.
..

Robin Roberts