04-22 TABLE of CONTENTS: Women Sentenced Longer than for Men for the SAME Crimes Dr. Gertrude Scharff Discovered Important Properties of Spontaneous Fission Gauhar Shad Ruled as Timurid Queen What One was Never Taught Translated all the Conrad Novels into French Nun Leonarda Isabella is Ignored Italian Composer British Woman Agent Led French Resistance Force DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS QUOTES by Emily James Putnam, Emily Dickinson, Jonathan Franzen, and from a New Zealander - "Empty the Slops". Women Prison Sentences Longer than for Men for the SAME Crimes       The newspapers today are full of new studies which show that minority men receive unfair treatment in sentencing for minor crimes. There are demands that something be done.       The demands are justified and the unfairness of the sentencing should be fixed.       But almost hidden and certainly ignored situation is hiding behind the minority men's treatment and that is the DOUBLE penalty being assessed against black WOMEN.       TEN-TWENTY-THIRTY YEARS AGO there were reports of the sentencing problems and there has been progress. Unfortunately, in many states the "gender" issue has been centered around crimes committed AGAINST women and not the crime of over sentencing by judges.       The FACTS presented in the studies PROVED THAT WOMEN continue to be convicted at a higher rate and receive longer sentences for the same or lesser crimes than men, black or white.       Event April 22, 1986: the New York Task Force on Women in the Courts released its 313-page report based on a two year study that found bias against women was so pervasive in the New York State court system that women were often denied equal justice. Copies of the report are available through the chief justice of the New York Supreme Court who appointed the task force.       The first state to investigate the unfair sentencing was New Jersey in 1983.       Since then 40 other states, including California have made their own studies with the same overall conclusion.       For many years, many states had sentencing guidelines that officially imposed heavier penalties for women for the same crimes as men and the Pennsylvania legislature actually enacted a law that decreed that women should spend more time in prison than men for the same crimes!      Women are STILL being convicted at a higher rate and receive longer sentences for the same or lesser frimes than men, black or white.       Every so often newspapers "discover" the problem and do articles about women spending so much more time in prison than men of their states . . . and nothing much happens. On the whole, the women remain in prison and new women prisoners are sentenced just as harshly.      FACT: the average sentence for those who kill their mates is 15 to 20 years for women, 2 to 6 years for men. How does this discourage crime when men commit 95% of domestic violence, including murder of their partners?       Sexual, i.e., gender unbalance is greater than racial sentencing, according to the study, and conviction unbalance (according to the same studies) is worse for black women since they face double prejudice in sentencing.       For more information, albeit optimistic, see http://www.nowldef.org/html/njep/overview.htm      Recent headlines can confirm the continued gender prejudices in sentencing. A woman killed her two children in a manner that grabbed national headlines. She is sentenced to life in prison. A man in a neighboring state kills his two small sons for the insurance money and is sentenced to less than ten years.       A woman shoots her husband after years of abuse and is sentenced to life in prison. In New Jersey a man shoots his wife outside the courthouse and the judge excuses him because she nagged him.       Your daily paper probably contains an article every couple of months about a stepfather or boyfriend who beats or kills the child of his girlfriend. The woman is always charged with failing to protect her child and sentenced to prison. Yet when a woman who is being medicated for post-partum psychosis and has attempted suicide, is left alone with five small children day after day without any help then kills her children, her husband is NOT charged with failing to protect his children.      A man accidentally leaves his child in a hot car and the child dies. The police are sympathetic. A woman accidentally leaves a child in a hot car and the child dies. The woman goes to jail for manslaughter.      A man goes hunting and leaving his young son alone in a truck, his baby leaves the truck and freezes to death. The man is sentenced to 30 days in jail. (He then kills himself because, it is rumored, he is afraid of what the prisoners will do to him in prison.)       These are all terrible tragedies but the tragedy we are pointing out is that judges excuse men for their crimes so readily while women are incarcerated for long periods. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | Dr. Gertrude Scharff Discovered Important Properties of Spontaneous Fission       During World War II while she was research physicist at the University of Illinois, Dr. Gertrude Scharff Goldhaber discovered that spontaneous fission is associated with the emission of neutrons. The information was classified top secret and was not announced to the scientific community until after the war.      She also added to the knowledge of the structure of the nucleus when she found regularities in nuclear excited states.       A noted physicist, she was a member of the National Academy of the Sciences. She was elected a fellow of the American Physics Society in 1947, elected a member in the National Academy of Sciences in 1972, and then the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1980.      Dr. Goldhaber also "worked in areas that included long-lived isomers (different versions of elements) and heavy ions (positively and negatively charged atoms or molecules)."       According to her New York Times obituary, in 1948, she and her husband, Dr. Maurice Goldhaber, determined that beta rays were identical with electrons, which settled an argument among their peers.      At her retirement, Dr. Goldhaber was a senior scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory. She had been the first woman scientist at the lab to hold a Ph.D.      German-born, she earned her doctoral at the University of Munich in 1935 before fleeing to the U.S. as the Nazi oppression of Jews increased.      In 1984, the Phi Beta Kappa society selected her as a Visiting Scholar, an honor that sent her to eight campuses for the year.      While still a teenager she declined direction that pointed her towards teaching or the law which her father wanted her to study.      "I said, 'I'm not interested in the law,' " she recalled in an interview with the New York Times. "I wanted to understand what the world is made of. That actually turned out to be a good thing because when the Nazis came - I'm Jewish - I had to leave the country, and physics was something that could be done anywhere." | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | Gauhar Shad Ruled as Timurid Queen      Gauhar Shad (c1378 1459) was a queen in the area that is now Persian-Afghan. For about 40 years she and her husband ruled over a court that emphaisze science, literature, and the arts. Great monuments were built and she had built two famous mosques and colleges. The one at Meshed remains.      Although her influence remained high after her husband's death, she was executed when she supported the wrong prince to ascend the throne. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | What One was Never Taught      One forgets what one was never taught - there were very active women in the days gone by...      Ann Bailey Hahn was one of the first members of the Women's Overseas Service League. She joined the Red Cross in 1918 and served in Paris during World War I.      She then went to Albania with the Red Cross to aid those caught in the tragic conditions that followed the hard and lengthy fighting between the Serbs and Albanians. There she contracted the dread combination of malaria and sand fly fever. She recovered and returned to Paris to continue working for the Red Cross.      Born in 1892, she lived to 104, devoting much of her life to organizing and serving the unsung women who served with the various forces and organizations overseas during World War I and its aftermath.. She held almost every office possible with the Women's Overseas Service League. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | Translated all the Conrad Novels into French for Her Niece (and Herself)      Shocked at the quality of French translations extant of Joseph Conrad's novels, in her 70s Odette Lamolle began translating them for her niece in order to share her love of the novelist's works.      Seventeen years later in 1997 she finished translating all 34 Conrad novels and novellas as well as a biography of Conrad - and stored them in an old trunk until a publisher heard rumors of them from friends.      Their publication was a phenomena.      There has never been a more unusual translator.      Odette Lamolle has rarely ventured outside her family farm near the village of Barbaste, in southwest France. She barely speaks English and had no advanced degrees.      "You have to respect the music and the balance of Conrad's long sentences. I just began translating the book for Brigitte and for my own pleasure. I never dreamed it would be published."      Her publisher Henry Dougier said:       "She's a phenomenon, extraordinarily intelligent, andabsolutely sure of herself. We see lots of translationsthat are timid and tentative, but hers ring with authority.       "What's most incredible is that she did all of this without credentials or any thought of publication or recompense. It was a great adventure for her."      While most translaters work with computers and edit and refine their versions, Lamolle writes out her translations by hand, and rarely makes revisions.       "What I'm trying to translate arethoughts, not words. A word-by-word translation candeform a writer's thought. I'm not in love with Conrad, but I really feel that I understand him. I don't betray his thoughts," she says.       "I translate quickly, too quickly sometimes, but it's the only chance I have to translate well," she says. "I read the sentence in English and the French translation comes quickly, and I write it out in longhand before the thought gets away."       And like a woman sure of herself - and old enough not to care what others think, she said, "I just said to my editors: Take it or leave it. I don't want corrections in my work, except for maritime terms, which I don't know well."             [Excerpted from "An unlikely translator with a special passion for her work, " APRIL 30,1997Christian Science Monitor by Chaddock, Gail Russell .] | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | Nun Leonarda Isabella is Ignored Italian Composer      Entering the convent of St. Ursula when she was 16, Leonarda Isabella published 20 collections of her more than 200 works, consisting of solo motets, as well as masses and other religious music. Much of her solos used her own texts.      She became mother surperior of her convent and then regional mother superior. The date of her death is unknown but her last known collection publication was 1700.      NI is just one of many nuns who wrote religious music that was bypassed by the masculist church that only used music composed by men. Most of the music by nuns were kept within the women's orders and not included in church catalogs. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | British Woman Agent Led French Resistance Force      Pearl Witherington was a special British agent during World War II. Bilingual, she parachuted into France to help a local reistance member, primarily with radio communications.      When he was arrested she assume leadership of 3,500 resistance fighters who then went on to kill 1,000 German Nazis under her command. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | 04-22 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS B. 04-22-1451, Queen Isabella I - Queen of Spain and Queen of Castile and of Aragon. She ruled equally in power with her husband, Ferdinand II and was instrumental in uniting of Castille and Aragon into one nation, Spain.      Although it is impossible to separate the actions of the two, it is acknowledged that Isabella was at least an equal partner, if not the strongest.       She sponsored Christopher Columbus's voyages of exploration although did not finance them to the extent legend has it. She opposed CC's view of the Indians and freed the Indian slave CC brought back.       She was also the guiding spirit in the founding of the infamous Spanish Inquisition that was originally aimed at converting Jews to the Roman Catholic religion but led to the explusion of some 170,000 Jews, much to the harm of the nation's economy. Although very religious, she was generally at odds with the papacy over its choice of Spanish religious leaders. She did lead the reformation of the Church in Spain. She led the conquest of and drove the Moors from Spain.       Isabella also set up the first field hospitals for soldiers in battle and a number of other humanitarian events that miss the top ten list of historians.       A most remarkable woman whose death at 53 left too many things undone, including how to deal with the terms of Spanish conquests in the western hemisphere.       Her will and codicil are great histocial documents that define what she attempted to do for Spain and put her among the top rulers of her nation - and of Europe.      Queen Isabella was also a hands-on ruler. She directly oversaw the distribution of rations, managed the billeting of soldiers, and planned the routes to be used by her troops and suppliers.      She introduced the use of field hospitals that treated the wounded as quickly as possible. B. 04-22-1766, Germaine (Anne Louise) de Stael - French-Swiss novelist, literary critic, political writer and philosopher. Her salon was a meeting place for the liberal aristocracy of the pre-revolutionary Paris and her contributions to the reform cannot be overestimated.       She left Paris in 1804 after becoming disillusioned with the revolution. Napoleon banned her from Paris because he saw her salon as a danger to him. Napoleon also suppressed some of her writings. She was a radical feminist for her times.      Critics give her credit for bridging the history of ideas from Neoclassicism to Romanticism and naming her as a major literary contributor to the theories of Romanticism.      Her writings include novels, plays, moral and political essays, literary criticism, history, autobiographical memoirs, and even a number of poems.      Being exiled from Paris was a terrible experience for her and she wrote extensively about it. B. 04-22-1830, Emily Davies - founder of Girton College, Cambridge, and in 1863 was responsible for women taking the (entrance) examination for Cambridge University on an equal level with men. She opposed the idea of segragated colleges.      She was responsible for women being admitted to British Universities rather than getting segregated education.      In 1869 Davies and her friends opened a women's college at Hitchin, which moved to Cambridge in 1873 as Girton College.      She was responsible for University College, London, admitting women to classes in 1870.      ED was one of the organizers of the first woman's suffrage petition offered in 1866 and in 1906 led the delegation to Parliament demanding the vote. B. 04-22-1857, Ada Rehan - Irish-born U.S. actor.       AR was the shining star of the ensemble acting Daly group that included the top names of the day in the U.S. She was particularly praised for her Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew. In all she starred in more than 200 different roles and was feted in Britain and Europe as well as the U.S. B. 04-22-187??4, Ellen Glasgow - U.S. author. EG wrote more than a dozen novels, her first was published anonymously in 1897. She won 1942 Pulitzer Prize for her last novel In This Our Life. She is much esteemed for her realist portrayal of the south, especially the decadence of the Old South aristocracy and particularly those in Virginia.      She was descended from an old, socially prominent Virginia family on her mother's side that gave her great insight into the workings of the "aristocracy."      EG was probably the victim of sexual and physical abuse as a child. Some biographers just claim she was a "delicate" child plagued by ill health but her insights into abuse and control by secretive old families is too brilliant.       In 1897 her first novel The Descendant was published anonymously. Next came Phases of an Inferior Planet (1898), The Voice of the People (1900), The Battle-Ground (1902), The Deliverance (1904), The Wheel of Life (1906), The Ancient Law (1908), The Romance of a Plain Man (1909), The Miller of Old Church (1911), Virginia (1913), Life and Gabriella (1916), The Builders (1919) and One Man in His Time, 1922. The Shadowy Third and Other Stories came in 1923, Barren Ground (1925), The Romantic Comedians (1926), They Stooped to Folly (1929), The Sheltered Life (1932) and Vein of Iron (1935). Her last novel, In This Our Life, 1941 was awarded a Pulitzer Prize although most agree it was not her best work. In 1940 she was awarded the Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her collection of critical essays entitled A Certain Measure was published in 1943.      She died in 1945. Her memoirs were published posthumously in 1954 as The Woman Within.       An epilogue to In This Our Life was published as Beyond Defeat in (1966). B. 04-22-1891, Laura Gilpin photographer who captured New Mexico and the Navaho Indian way of life like no other. Her photographs are paintings in themselves. She also photographed the Yucatan and other native Indians of the Americas.      However, her fame rests with her landscapes that seem to catch the very soul of the American west. B. 04-22-1901, Vera Maxwell - U.S. designer of practical clothes and the first designer to introduce sportswear for women. She was often refrred to as the "American Chanel." B. 04-22-1904, Dorothy Alexander - U.S. ballet dancer and choreographer. DA established dance courses in the Atlanta, Georgia, public schools and founded the Atlanta Ballet. She was a pioneer of the regional ballet festivals. B. 04-22-1909, Rita Levi-Montalcini, Italian-American neurobiologist who was the fourth woman to be awarded the Nobel prize for medicine or physiology (1986) which she shared with her American partner Dr.Stanley Cohen.      She made ground breaking discoveries in the early 1950's of the Nerve Growth Factor that helps understanding of such disorders as cancer, birth defects, and Alzheimer's.      As a Jew, she was forced into hiding in Italy during World War II but she continued to conduct pioneering experiments of the nervous system using chicken embryos in her homemade lab which was somtimes also her bedroom.      After the war she moved to Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, where she made basic discoveries of proteins which govern cells essential to development and growth.      Several years later (1953) she began her collaboration with Cohen. Together they developed treatments for various diseases and injuries.       RLM is one of only two researchers to receive the 1986 Lasker Basic Medical Research Award.      From 1969 to 1978 she served as director of the Institute of Cell Biology in Rome. Her autobiography is In Praise of Imperfection (1988).      She held dual citizenship in the US and Italy.      Her autobiography may be found at http://www.nobel.se/medicine/laureates/1986/levi-montalcini-autobio.html B. 04-22-1912, Kathleen Ferrier - British contralto of almost legendary abilities. Her brilliant operatic career was cut short by cancer. KF was a Mahler specialist and her recording of Das Lied von der Erde is particularly rich. B. 04-22-1917, Cressida Ridley - British archaelogist who made notable discoveries in Greece.      Her obituary states, "her most important excavation, between 1971 and 1973, was on a 6th to 3rd millennium BC site near Servia, in the Haliakmon Valley in northern Greece. The work, carried out before the area was flooded as part of a hydro-electric scheme, has provided a vast range of information about life in neolithic Greece - there were even two-storey houses."       In the usual fashion, however, the obituary wrote more about her male relatives that included a past prime minister and other womanly charms such as "tackling the routine chores... In necessarily primitive conditions, she made sure that everyone else was more comfortably installed than herself ."       CR worked on a number of digs in Greece and elsewhere before doing her own excavations in the Haliakmon Valley in 1971. She spent six to nine months a year in Greece at her find until a hip problem stopped her in 1993 at age 76. She then devoted her time to cataloging and preparing material for publication.       The first volume of the book about Cressida Ridley's excavations, Servia - A Rescue Operation, which she wrote with Ken Wardle and C. A. Mould, was being prepared for publication when she died at age 81. B. 04-22-1922, France Magnes - U.S. born violinist who developed an extensive international reputation. She made her initial solo at age 14 and appeared a number of times at Carnegie Hall as well as in Europe. Her mother was her original violin teacher. B. 04-22-1923, Paula Fox - U.S. children's author. B. 04-22-1943, Eileen Christelow - U.S. children's author. B. 04-22-1937, Bobbi Fiedler - member of the U.S. House of Representatives in the Ninety-seventh and to the two succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1981-January 3, 1987).      She then ran for the U.S. Senate unsuccessfully.       From her official biography :      "In her three House terms, Fiedler sat on the Budget Committee, where she was an advocate of fiscal conservatism. Although she was a strong supporter of the Reagan administration on most issues, she broke with some of her Republican colleagues in her support of the Equal Rights Amendment and other feminist issues.      She began her public career as the organizer of a citizens' group opposed to a busing plan for the desegregation of Los Angeles schools. From her work with BUSTOP in the San Fernando Valley, Fiedler went on to win a seat on the Los Angeles School Board in 1977, and she served on that panel until her campaign for Congress. In her challenge to the incumbent, she emphasized busing, education costs and drug abuse in the schools. Fiedler was born Roberta Frances Horowitz in Santa Monica, California. She attended Santa Monica Technical School and Santa Monica City College from 1955 to 1959. She worked in the pharmacy business and as an interior decorator before entering public life. Fiedler's victory over Democrat James Corman rested on fewer than 800 votes on an election day when President Jimmy Carter conceded his own defeat three hours before the polls closed in California. Event 04-22-1974: Katherine Graham , publisher of the Washington Post, the newspaper that uncovered the Watergate scandal that toppled the presidency of Richard M. Nixon and sent his Attorney General John Mitchell to jail is the woman on the 18-member board of Associated Press. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE | | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | QUOTES DU JOUR PUTNAM, EMILY JAMES:       "Until changing economic conditions made the thing actually happen, struggling early society would hardly have guessed that woman's road to gentility would lie through doing nothing at all."            -- Emily James Putnam, The Lady; Studies of Certain Significant Phases of Her History, 1910. DICKINSON, EMILY:      Assent -- and you are sane;      Demure -- you're straightway dangerous      And handled with a Chain.             -- Emily Dickinson. U.S. poet. FRANZEN, JONATHAN:       "Writers like Jane Smiley and Amy Tan today seem conscious and confident of an attentive audience. Whereas all the male novelists I know, including myself, are clueless as to who could possibly be buying our books."            -- Jonathan Franzen, writer, commenting on writing in an article in Working Women magazine, 1996. NEW ZEALAND MESSAGE: EMPTY THE SLOPS:       This is a notice displayed by a shopkeeper in Wellington, New Zealand, shortly after women were given the vote in 1893.      "Notice to epicene women.      "Electioneering women are requested not to call here. They are recommended to go home, to look after their children, cook their husband's dinners, empty the slops, and generally attend to the domestic affairs for which Nature designed them. By taking this advice they will gain the respect of all right-minded people - an end not to be attained by unsexing themselves and meddling in masculine concerns of which they are profoundly ignorant."      (Reminds one of the song from the stage play Camelot in which they singe about women inheriting NOT the earth, but the dirt... ) | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE | | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE |