March is Women's History Month!!!!

[Kobi]

Mary McLeod Bethune (1873-1955) was... a graduate of Moody Bible Institute, she opened a school for black girls.... From 1935-1944 she was a special advisor on minority affairs" to FDR. "She was the first black woman to head a federal agency." She also worked as a "consultant on interracial affairs" for the United Nations. Mary founded the "National Council Youth Administration of Negro Women and was director of Negro Affairs for the National Youth Administration."

Susanna "Dora" Salter, born on 3/2/1860. In 1887, at age 27, she was elected Mayor of Argonia, Kansas, becoming the 1st woman mayor and the 1st woman elected to political office in the United States.

[femmeInterrupted]

Remember this lady? I didn't either.

Irena Sendler

Died: May 12, 2008 (aged 98)
Warsaw, Poland

During WWII, Irena, got permission to work in the Warsaw ghetto, as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist. She had an ulterior motive.

Irena smuggled Jewish infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried. She also carried a burlap sack in the back of her truck, for larger kids.

Irena kept a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto.

The soldiers, of course, wanted nothing to do with the dog and the barking covered the kids/infants noises.

During her time of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants.

Ultimately, she was caught, however, and the Nazi's broke both of her legs and arms and beat her severely.

Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she had smuggled out, In a glass jar that she buried under a tree in her back yard. After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived and tried to reunite the family. Most had been gassed. Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes or adopted.

In 2007 Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize.
She was not selected.
Al Gore won, for a slide show on Global Warming.

Please share this to honor the sacrifice and courage of this fine human being who gave so much and saved so many.


http://www.irenasendler.org/

[Kobi]

1946
Sudan's first modern women's organization, the Sudanese Women's League, is founded.

1947
The new Japanese constitution guarantees women's equality.

1947
The U.S. Congress passes the Army-Navy Nurse Act, creating permanent commissions for military nurses. The first officer commissioned is Florence Blanchfield.

1948
In the newly created countries of Israel and South Korea, women win the right to vote.

1949
Argentinian Eva Perón founds the Peronista Feminist Party.

1949
French feminist Simone de Beauvoir publishes the controversial and influential Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex).

1950
Harvard Law School admits women.

1950
The U.S. Census Bureau recognizes a woman's right to continue to use her maiden name after marriage.

1951
The Women's Equal Rights Act, which prohibits gender discrimination, is passed in Israel.

1952
Chilean Ana Figueroa becomes the first woman on the United Nations Security Council.

1953
In Westminster Abbey, Elizabeth II is crowned queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

1954
Colombian women are granted the right to vote.

1955
Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. Her arrest for this act sparks the Montgomery bus boycott.

1956
Golda Meir becomes the only woman in the Israeli cabinet when she is made minister of foreign affairs.

1958
The British House of Lords admits its first female members.

1961
Eleanor Roosevelt chairs U.S. President John F. Kennedy's Commission on the Status of Women.

1961
Paraguay is the last republic in the Americas to give women the right to vote.

1961
Wilma Rudolph runs the 100-metre dash in 11.2 seconds, thereby setting a a new world record for the event.

1961
American women organized by Women Strike for Peace stage a one-day strike asking the government to “End the Arms Race, Not the Human Race.”

1962
American biologist Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring.

1963
Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space.

1963
American feminist Betty Friedan publishes her highly influential The Feminine Mystique.

1963
Ellen Ash Peters becomes the first woman to be granted tenure at Yale Law School.

1964
The U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination in employment on the basis of race, creed, national origin, or sex.

1965
The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Griswold v. State of Connecticut that laws prohibiting the use of birth control are unconstitutional.

1966
Betty Friedan and other delegates to the Third National Conference of the Commission on the Status of Women establish the National Organization for Women (NOW).

1966
Indira Gandhi wins leadership of the Congress Party and becomes the first female prime minister of India.

1967
Muriel Siebert becomes the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.

1968
Nguyen Thi Binh, a member of the Central Committee of the National Liberation Front, leads the Vietnamese delegation to the Paris Peace Conference.

1968
Japanese writer Ishimure Michiko starts a movement against pollution by publishing Kukai jodo (“Sea of Suffering”), documenting the damage done by dumping mercury into Minamata Bay.

1969
In Ecuador a “malaria control” program is used as a cover to sterilize peasant women.

1969
Golda Meir becomes the first female prime minister of Israel.

1970
Marie Cox founds the North American Indian Women's Association, the first national Native American women's group.

1970
The Boston Women's Health Book Collective publishes Our Bodies, Ourselves.

1971
The National Commission on the Status of Women in India is created.

1971
Helga Pederson of Denmark becomes the first female judge on the European Court of Human Rights.

1971
Women in Switzerland win the right to vote.

1972
The U.S. Senate approves the Equal Rights Amendment and sends it to the states for ratification.

1972
The National Conference of Puerto Rican Women is founded.

1973
American tennis champion Billie Jean King defeats champion player Bobby Riggs in a “Battle of the Sexes” match.

1973
Jordanian women are granted the right to vote.

1973
Mothers of Nicaraguan political prisoners go on a hunger strike.

1973
The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Roe v. Wade that a woman has a constitutional right to abortion.

1974
The U.S. Merchant Marine Academy becomes the first U.S. service academy to enroll women.

[Kobi]

A graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Lt. Col. Nicole Malachowski has flown the F-15E as a member of five different fighter squadrons since 1999. Here, she shares her experience as the first female Thunderbird pilot, serving as a White House Fellow and being the commander of the largest fighter training unit in the Air Force.




Katrina Hodge: Corporal in the British Army & Miss England '09. She enlisted in the army on a dare from her brother & was nicknamed Combat Barbie after showing up to her unit wearing fake eyelashes, heels, & carrying a pink suitcase. While serving in Iraq, she saved the lives of her comrades by wresting not 1 but 2 rifles from a prisoner, then knocking him out w/ her bare hands. After winning the Miss England contest in 2009, she handed over the crown & returned to military service.

[Kobi]

1975
The U.S. Supreme Court rules that women cannot be excluded from juries because of their sex.

1975
The World Congress for International Women's Year opens in Berlin.

1976
Barbara Jordan, the first African American woman elected to Congress from the Deep South, becomes the first African American and the first woman to give the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention.

1976
Labour minister Tina Anselmi becomes the first woman in the Italian cabinet.

1976
Betty Williams and Mairéad Corrigan-Maguire, founders of the Northern Ireland Peace Movement (later Community of Peace People), are awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. The joint Catholic-Protestant group is formed after three children are killed during fighting between British soldiers and the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

1977
Canadian law prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex or marital status.

1977
Nigerian women are granted the right to vote.

1977
In Saudi Arabia, Princess Misha'al is accused of adultery and executed.

1977
Salvadoran women establish the Committee of Mothers of Political Prisoners and Frente Femenino (“Women's Front”).

1977
Roman women demonstrate against rape, beginning a campaign to change rape laws.

1977
The mothers of Argentine “disappeared” political prisoners begin a series of vigils.

1978
Kuwaiti women successfully demonstrate against a proposed law prohibiting women from working in offices.

1978
Mary Douglas Leakey discovers footprints of early hominids at Laetoli, Tanzania. Her find causes a revision of the date at which humans became bipedal.

1979
Margaret Thatcher becomes the first female prime minister of Great Britain.

1979
The First Congress of São Paolo Women starts the Brazilian day-care movement.

1980
New guidelines from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission prohibit sexual harassment.

1980
Three thousand women in Gdansk, Poland, defy tanks to pass out flowers and Solidarity literature.

1981
Sandra Day O'Connor becomes the first woman justice to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.

1982
Twenty thousand British women protest the placement of cruise and Pershing missiles at Greenham Common.

1983
Iranian women are required to wear the chador; the penalty for appearing unveiled is a prison sentence of 1 to 12 months.

1985
Chilean women demonstrate in Santiago against the repression of General Augusto Pinochet.

1986
The U.S. Supreme Court upholds affirmative action on the basis of race or gender.

1988
Benazir Bhutto becomes prime minister of Pakistan. She is the first woman leader of a Muslim country in modern history.

1989
American Barbara Clementine Harris becomes the first female Episcopal bishop.

1989
Canadian women gain access to all combat posts in the military (except submarine duty) because of a lawsuit filed in 1981.

1990
A group of Saudi Arabian women drive cars in Riyadh to protest laws preventing them from operating motor vehicles. They are briefly imprisoned and suspended from their jobs.

1990
Violeta Barrios de Chamorro is elected president of Nicaragua. She is Central America's first female president.

1991
The Nobel Prize for Peace is awarded to Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

1992
The Irish vote to allow free access to abortion information and affirm a woman's right to go abroad to obtain an abortion.

1993
Janet Reno becomes the first female U.S. attorney general.

1993
Tansu Ciller becomes Turkey's first female prime minister.

1993
Kim Campbell becomes Canada's first female prime minister.

1994
Takahashi Hisako becomes the first woman justice on Japan's Supreme Court.

1995
The United Nations' Fourth World Conference on Women meets in Beijing.

1996
In Afghanistan the ruling Taliban government places strict restrictions on women, forbidding them from receiving an education and working outside the home.

1996
A report on female genital mutilation urges international action to end the ancient rite of passage that has already been performed on roughly 100 million girls worldwide.

1998
Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born widow of former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, is unanimously elected to lead India's Congress Party.

1999
Mireya Moscoso becomes Panama's first female president and in December oversees the U.S. handover of the Panama Canal.

2000
Beverley McLachlin becomes Canada's first female chief justice of the Supreme Court. Some 70 years earlier the same court had ruled that women were not “persons.”

2000
Tarja Halonen becomes Finland's first woman president.

2000
At the Sydney Olympics, American athlete Marion Jones becomes the first woman to win five medals in track-and-field events at a single Games. She is stripped of her medals in 2007 after she acknowledges her use of banned substances.

2000
Sirimavo R.D. Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka, the world's first female prime minister, retires.

2001
Hillary Rodham Clinton is sworn in as a U.S. senator from New York, becoming the first former first lady to win elected office.

2001
Katharine Graham, former publisher of The Washington Post, dies. She was the first woman to head a Fortune 500 company and at one time was considered the most powerful woman in the United States.

2001
Voters in Bahrain approve a referendum that includes the right of women to stand for office.

2002
Britain's Queen Elizabeth II celebrates her Golden Jubilee, marking 50 years on the throne.

2003
A Nigerian appeals court overturns a sentence of death by stoning in the adultery case of Amina Lawal.

2004
Kenyan environmental activist Wangari Maathai is awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, becoming the first black African woman to win a Nobel Prize.

2005
In Ireland the McCartney sisters make a public issue of their brother's murder, spurring international criticism of the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

2005
Kuwaiti women are granted the right to vote (effective 2007).

2006
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is inaugurated as Liberia's first woman president.

2007
California congresswoman Nancy Pelosi becomes the first woman to serve as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

2007
Pratibha Patil becomes the first woman president of India.

2007
Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto is assassinated shortly after her return to Pakistan following eight years of self-imposed exile.

2007
For the first time in UN peacekeeping history, an all-female unit is deployed. Comprising more than 100 Indian policewomen, the force is sent to Liberia to train police and assist with local elections and prison security.

2008
Gen. Ann Dunwoody becomes the first woman to serve as a four-star general in the United States.

2009
Michelle Obama becomes the first African American first lady when her husband, Barack Obama, is sworn in as the 44th president of the United States.

2009
Sonia Sotomayor is sworn in as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court; she is the first Hispanic and the third woman to serve on the court.

2009
A U.S. government panel announces that women who are not at an increased risk of breast cancer should begin receiving regular mammograms at age 50, rather than 40 as had been previously recommended.

2010
Elena Kagan becomes an associate justice of the Supreme Court.

2010
The University of Connecticut's women's basketball team wins 90 games in a row—the longest winning streak in college basketball history—before falling to the Stanford Cardinal.

2011
Television talk-show host Oprah Winfrey launches the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), “a multi-platform media company designed to entertain, inform, and inspire people to live their best lives.”

[Kobi]

Thank You Mary: Mary Walker, a woman who sought equality for women. She was a surgeon, and she wore pants– when it was illegal to do so. She was proud of her arrest for this; she wanted the right for women to wear pants. She won the congressional medal of Honor when she never even had the right to vote!




Many write: 1st. female Vice Presidential candidate, Geraldine Ferraro....this is an incorrect historical statement. Geraldine Ferraro was the 25th woman to run for U.S. Vice President. She was the 1st. woman representing the Democratic party, but the first woman that became the first United States Vice Presidential Candidate was indeed Marietta Stow in 1884.

[girl_dee]

Originally Posted by femmeInterrupted

Remember this lady? I didn't either.

Irena Sendler

Died: May 12, 2008 (aged 98)
Warsaw, Poland

During WWII, Irena, got permission to work in the Warsaw ghetto, as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist. She had an ulterior motive.

Irena smuggled Jewish infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried. She also carried a burlap sack in the back of her truck, for larger kids.

Irena kept a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto.

The soldiers, of course, wanted nothing to do with the dog and the barking covered the kids/infants noises.

During her time of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants.

Ultimately, she was caught, however, and the Nazi's broke both of her legs and arms and beat her severely.

Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she had smuggled out, In a glass jar that she buried under a tree in her back yard. After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived and tried to reunite the family. Most had been gassed. Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes or adopted.

In 2007 Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize.
She was not selected.
Al Gore won, for a slide show on Global Warming.

Please share this to honor the sacrifice and courage of this fine human being who gave so much and saved so many.


http://www.irenasendler.org/

i did ! Check out post #34. She is a SHE-ro for sure! i saw an interview of her and she is a wonderful, humble and shy lady.

[The_Lady_Snow]

Mia Hamm, Olympic Medalist, Soccer bad ass and role model for women athletes!

[girl_dee]

[Kobi]

Fannie Lou Hamer was a Mississippi sharecropper in 1962 when she volunteered to register to vote, even though putting her life in danger. She endured harassment, eviction, arrest, & beatings to become a key organizer in Mississippi Freedom Summer 1964."I guess if I'd had any sense, I'd have been a little scared - but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they could do was kill me, and it kinda seemed like they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time since I could remember."



Nellie Bly (real name Elizabeth Jane Cochran, above) was a 23-year-old journalist without a job when she walked into the offices of Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World in 1887 and was given the daunting assignment of exposing the horrors of the Blackwell’s Island Insane Asylum. She rehearsed feverishly. She played mad. “Undoubtedly demented… a hopeless case,” said one of the doctors who admitted her. But inside the asylum she chronicled the awful food and awful conditions that spurred reform.

[girl_dee]

Kobi, thank you for posting about "Nelly Bly"

HEre is here ordeal :

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/wom.../madhouse.html

[Kobi]

Mercedes de Acosta (March 1, 1893 – May 9, 1968) was an American poet, playwright, and novelist. Four of de Acosta's plays were produced, and she published a novel and three volumes of poetry. She was professionally unsuccessful but is known for her many lesbian affairs with famous Broadway and Hollywood personalities and numerous friendships with prominent artists of the period.

She has been linked to the likes of actress Alla Nazimova, dancer Isadora Duncan, with actress Eva Le Gallienne, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Ona Munson, and Russian ballerina Tamara Platonovna Karsavina. Additional unsubstantiated rumors include Pola Negri, Eleonora Duse, Katherine Cornell, and Alice B. Toklas.

An ardent liberal, de Acosta was committed to several political causes. Concerned about the Spanish Civil War, which began in 1936, for example, she supported the loyalist Republican government that opposed the fascist Franco regime. A tireless advocate for women's rights, she wrote in her memoir, "I believed...in every form of independence for women and I was...an enrolled worker for women's suffrage."

Mercedes de Acosta was not hugely famous. Her contributions to the theater were minimal. Yet her story reveals a woman who stood up courageously for her beliefs and values. She seldom stumbled, even when her friends and peers turned against her. She lived her desire and paid the price. Her love for other women and her struggle for acceptance were certainly sources of her originality and fueled her writing. Perhaps the description of her as "that furious lesbian" should become an admirable attribute rather than a scornful slur.

[lusciouskiwi]

Meet the first known Native American woman engineer: Mary G. Ross (1908–2008), Mechanical Engineer. She was the first woman engineer at Lockheed’s Missiles Systems Division (1952). At Lockheed, Ross designed missiles and rockets, and developed systems for human space flight and interplanetary missions to Mars and Venus. After retiring, she began a second career as an advocate for women and Native Americans in engineering and mathematics.

For more about her: http://www.nmaie-newservice.com/v1i6/

[Kobi]

Jane Bolin was the first black woman judge in the United States. Born April 11, 1908 in Poughkeepsie, New York, Bolin always knew she wanted to be a lawyer. Her father, Gaius Bolin, the first African American graduate of Williams College, practiced law in Poughkeepsie. Bolin graduated from Wellesley College in 1928, and received her law degree from Yale University School of Law in 1931

[Kobi]

Frances Perkins was the U.S. Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945, and the first woman appointed to the U.S. Cabinet. As a loyal supporter of her friend, Franklin D. Roosevelt, she helped pull the labor movement into the New Deal coalition.

Frances Perkins, had an unenviable challenge: she had to be as capable, as fearless, as tactful, as politically astute as the other Washington politicians, in order to make it possible for other women to be accepted into the halls of power after her.

Perkins would have been famous simply by being the first woman cabinet member, but her legacy stems from her accomplishments. She was largely responsible for the U.S. adoption of social security, unemployment insurance, federal laws regulating child labor, and adoption of the federal minimum wage.

Perkins had a cool personality, which held her aloof from the crowd. Although her results indicate her great love of workers and lower-class groups, her Boston upbringing held her back from mingling freely and exhibiting personal affection. She was well-suited for the high-level efforts to effect sweeping reforms, but never caught the public's eye or its affection.

The Frances Perkins Building that is the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Labor in Washington, D.C. was named in her honor in 1980.

Perkins remains a prominent alumna of Mount Holyoke College, whose Francis Perkins Program allows "women of non-traditional age" (i.e., age 24 or older) to complete a Bachelor of Arts degree. There are approximately 140 Francis Perkins scholars each year.

[Greyson]

Originally Posted by Kobi

Perhaps the description of her as "that furious lesbian" should become an admirable attribute rather than a scornful slur.

In my thinking, it is admirable in triplets. What is "furious" in your mind is passionate with action and commitment, in mine.

[Kobi]

Originally Posted by Greyson

In my thinking, it is admirable in triplets. What is "furious" in your mind is passionate with action and commitment, in mine.

From what little I have learned about her thus far, she was a fascinating woman and almost iconic by todays standards. She might have been a little ahead of her time tho.

[lusciouskiwi]

Sister Rosetta Tharpe – gospel music’s first superstar, the godmother of rock and roll, “the original soul sister,” reconstructionist – waiting for The Blues Train in Chorlton, 1963.

With her unique singing style and electrifying stage presence, Sister Rosetta has influenced a range of beloved musicians, including Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bonnie Raitt, and The Noisettes.

In 1998, the United States Postal Service honored Tharpe with a commemorative stamp. In 2003, a dozen contemporary musicians recorded the tribute album Shout, Sister, Shout!. In 2007, Tharpe was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.