08-06 TABLE of CONTENTS:
Intelligence is Not Linked to the
Y Chromosome
Women Should Learn About Finances
BEFORE Divorce
Tale of a Woman Gone Bad
Lilian Hale, artist
Carol Galley
First Woman Rabbi of Major Congregation
Lucille Ball, American's clown
DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
QUOTES by
Dale Spender, Sarah N. Cleghorn, and Susan B. Anthony.
Intelligence is Not Linked to the Y Chromosome - a Review
of Dr. Olga Wasserman's The Door in the Dream: Conversations with Eminent
Women in Science.
In 1969-70, its first year
of coeducation, Princeton University had only two female assistant professors
and ONE female tenured professor out of a faculty of 709.
In 1968, Yale College had only TWO women professors
and 12 women on the tenure track out of 672 men.
So much for the liberalism of liberal arts universities.
Things, of course, are a bit better today but far
from being equal either in professorships or pay - but perhaps more importantly,
in opportunity for women in the sciences (in academia) as can be seen in
a remarkable book by Dr. Olga Wasserman: The Door in the Dream: Conversations
With Eminent Women in Science, Joseph Henry Press (imprint of the National
Academy Press - National Academy of Sciences).
Dr. Wasserman interviewed 70 eminent women scientists,
all member of the academy who described their experiences in pursuing their
dreams.
In the preface, Rita Colwell strikes a remarkable
chord as she tells of the "valley of
death" in education
"where girls
grades 4 through 8 are, in subtle and not so subtle ways, discouraged from
pursuing science and engineering... dearth of role models... those with
a natural bent toward science are too often directed elsewhere."
Dr. Wasserman herself was a victim
of that "valley of death," although in her case it was after
she received her doctorate in organic chemistry. The valley is deep and
wide, often neverending.
In her "elsewhere" career, she was assistant
dean of the Yale Graduate school in the fall of 1968 when in the heady
early years of women's drive for civil/human rights, Yale decided to admit
women to its undergraduate school for the first time. Women had been allowed
in graduate school on a very limited basis for years, especially during
war years when male enrollment dropped, but none was allowed to become
an Eli. Maya Lin's noted sculpture at Yale features a spiral of zero's
next to the years Yale was in existence without women being allowed to
enroll.
When Dr. Wasserman was approached to head the
integration of women into Yale,
"I naively expected, however, that I would
transfer my status as assistant deal from the graduate school to the undergraduate
college. I was promptly informed that the assistant deans at Yale College
all of whom were male would be too threatened if a woman were to join their
ranks as a fellow dean and thus as a quasi equal."
The Yale president proposed
that Dr. Wasserman serve as "Special Assistant to the President on
the Education of Women and chairman of the Committee on Coeducation."
"This was 1968 and I reluctantly agreed to this less than elegant
title. I still had much to learn."
And learn she did!
She faced a terrible anger from her former boss
at the graduate school who felt that she should have stayed loyal to him
and not taken the other position, after all, she was expected to be "grateful
forever, even though this dean had always encouraged male assistant deans
top move on and upward."
(Legends of women have
faced such a hissy-fits from their former mentors or bosses who assumed
"ownership" of their women subordinates.)
Dr. Wasserman writes that she believes the Yale
administration thought the mandate to make Yale "okay" for women
was a matter of "full-length mirrors,
bathtubs, separate lockers in the gym, and little else."
"At the time there were 12 women among 672
tenure-track faculty members, including two full professors, one in English
and one in history," Wasserman wrote.
"Through regular networking with women in similar
roles at other institutions - Sheila Tobias (Wellesley), Adele Simmons
(Hampshire College), Patricia Graham (Princeton), Jacqueline Mattfield
(Barnard), and others," Dr. Wasserman tried to make progress but instead
of seeing tangible progress, the way was barred by another committee to
study... and then another.
By 1973, when the initial transition had taken place,
she moved on to study law at Yale Law School. Her resignation from the
Yale administration was primarily because Yale male officials refused to
hire additional women faculty members and led to her interest in equal-access
issues.
She went on to a very successful family law practice,
but since she herself had veered away from a career in the sciences, she
remained interested in why women "drift
out of science for reasons that have nothing to do with their innate ability
or their interest in science."
The experiences of those who did stayed in the
sciences and attained the rarified air of membership in the National Academy
of Sciences make up the main thrust of this very important book.
Wasserman says:
"The profiles
that follow convey the obstacles that these pioneering women overcame in
order to pursue their passion for science. I continue to be amazed that
they succeeded."
The summarizing last chapters,
"Shared Experiences," "Balancing Career and Family,"
and "Righting the Balance" give the prospective woman scientist
and struggling woman scientist concrete and practical solutions to the
problems most professional women share, but are seldom able to network
with peers.
Joan Steitz, molecular biologist
who learned to do research very well because that's all she thought she'd
ever do. She did it so well that she became famous:
"I presumed
I would be a research associate in somebody's lab because that was what
all women did... all of a sudden people started offering me jobs. I was
flabbergasted... scared."
Instead of insisting that
they stay put at Berkeley where he was employed, her husband agreed to
go east to fulfill her dream.
"Self doubt, timidity, and dislike of conflict
do not contribute to success in the competitive arena of scientific research...
Some of this is quite insidious," another
scientist said.
"After
a lifetime of not feeling entitled to having our scientific careers, we
can use that against ourselves... We have to get the word out that women
can trust their own voice and then follow it."
"I realized that these women differed from
other talented but less successful women scientists precisely because each
of them learned relatively early in life how to overcome or totally disregard
such internal barriers. Having done so they were able to pursue the work
they loved with passion and without expending energy dealing with self-doubt
or guilt,"
Dr. Wasserman writes. The book also reports an
insult in a Johns Hopkins study that is seldom brought to light:
"one-third of the women reported that their
mentor's used the woman faculty member's work for the mentor's own career
benefit, rather than to benefit the woman's career, but only 10 percent
of men reported similar experiences."
(WOAH recites numerous examples of this "stealing"
of a woman's work in the sciences as well as in music with noted composers
co-opting works of wives or sisters.
Some of the WOAH examples in music are Clara Schumann
and her husband Robert and Fannie Medelssohn Hansel and her brother Felix.
In the sciences, two of the most blatant examples
occurred to Rosalind Franklin (B. 07-25-1900)
and Jocelyn Bell (B. 07-15-1943) when the
co-opting resulted in the men "thieves" receiving Nobel prizes.)
A careful reading of the profiles in Dr. Wasserman's
book makes it apparent that "even for
the highly talented members of the National Academy of Sciences their playing
field is not yet level... the scarcity of women at the top can no longer
be blamed on the scarcity of women in the pipeline. More than 5,000 women
now earn science doctorates each year."
It is simply that
"universities and research facilities were
established for men by men, Their policies are based on the once-valued
premise that each scientist has a wife at home to whom all responsibility
for family and domestic responsibilities would be delegated... The difficulty
of combining family and career responsibilities remains a major obstacle
for women scientists who must continue to find ways to fit their lives
into an environment designed for men.
"The women scientists who attained membership
in the National Academy of Sciences did so by adapting their lives to prevailing
expectations through ingenuity, doggedness, and extraordinary energy."
After reading The Door in the Dream, I
donated my copy to my local library, as Rita Colwell said in her preface,
"to provide readers whether scientists
or not, with a glimpse of the excitements and rewards to be found in scientific
research as we confront a vast range of unresolved problems waiting to
be tackled."
Probably because she concentrated on women in
the sciences, Dr. Wasserman did not explore the Yale experiences of Dr.
Hanna Holborn Gray ( B. 10-25-1930) that led
to her becoming president of the University of Chicago (1978) and the first
woman to head a major coeducational university in the U.S.
Dr. Gray had been acting president of Yale University
but took the Chicago post while the committee selection for Yale president
was underway. Rumor had it that SHE was not going to be named president
because she was a SHE.
Yale officials denied gender bias in their selection
process - and have even gone so far as to claim it had a woman president
(Dr. Gray) without actually having had one by ruse of counting Gay's tenure
as ACTING president as a regular president.
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Women and Divorce Finances
Check with your attorney who sometimes doesn't
volunteer such information to a woman, or may overlook it.
In most states a spouse's pension is considered part
of marital or community property at the time of divorce. Disposition of
the pension should be negotiated just as other assets, regardless of how
long from retirement the spouse is.
Your Pension Rights at Divorce; What Women Need
to Know is an excellent book for women who are realists. Realists know
that nothing is promised forever, and they face the fact that 40% of all
marriages end in divorce. Because of most women's dreams that love is forever
so often blinds them in financial matters and they consistently do not
get their fair share of marital/community property, or credit for their
work - or enough child support.
Study after study shows that most divorces turn ugly
only when the woman decides to assert her financial rights, such
as alimony, child support, or exploring the husband's hidden assets.
In some cases when a marriage is dissolved without
pension splitting, the financial settlement may be renegotiated when the
woman becomes aware of her rights.
Your Pension Rights at Divorce; What Women Need
to Know, published by Pension Rights Center, 918 16th St NW suite 704,
Washington DC 2006, $14.50 including shipping. Add $2 for first class postage.
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A Tale of a Woman Gone Bad but Kept from her Grave
This is one of the many legends
of women gone bad who wander the earth like the Flying Dutchman...
According to much told and retold legend (that many
an author claims as authentic and publish versions in their "histories"
or "stranger than fiction" books), on August 6, 1905, a beautiful
young housewife in Louisville Kentucky asked her husband for one new hat
too many - there is a photograph in some books of a Hazel Farris and she
IS attractive and note that the argument was HER fault because of something
trivial SHE wanted, namely a new hat.
The story gets better.
The couple's argument grew into a tussle. Hazel Farris,
it is said, grabbed a pistol from an nearby bureau and fired. Her husband
fell to the floor, dead.
The shot was heard by three passing policemen
on their way to the station house that was in the vicinity. They burst
in on Hazel who still had the gun in her hand and she fired "until
there were four dead bodies piled on the floor."
A crowd began to form
and someone summoned a deputy sheriff who now cautiously entered by the
back door in an attempt to take Hazel by surprise. He fired, shooting off
Hazel's ring finger but her deadly aim was better and she fired her fifth
bullet of the morning to kill the deputy.
She remarkably got away out the back door and left
Kentucky. A $500 dollar reward was posted.
In 1906 she was perhaps sighted in Bessemer, Alabama
and some say she took up the life of a sedate boarding housekeeper while
others say she became the madam of the best house of prostitution in town.
According to folklore, the city of Bessemer at the
time had 32 bars on one street (among many streets that had bars) and whiskey
was poured out of tank cars for bottling by local proprietors.
One of the stories has Hazel turned into an alcoholic
because of guilt and remorse, others that she drank heavy in secret (the
secrecy was necessary because she was a school teacher).
This legend and its many incarnations, retellings and
statements to its absolutely truth gets even more complex.
Supposedly she fell in love with a Bessemer policeman.
She wanted to start over again so she confessed to the murders. He immediately
turned her in. She committed suicide by taking poison before she could
be arrested. (You may take your choice as to what kind of poison but rat
poison seems to have the edge in the tales.)
Her body was washed with camphor (the only preservative
in those days) and taken to a furniture store that sold caskets. With no
known relatives, the furniture store owner started to charge 10 cents a
look at the woman's body which instead of decomposing naturally mummified.
(The exhibiting of the dead bodies of notorious people was a common thing
and according to one version of this tale of an evil woman, the custom
extended into the 1970s.)
Now the story-legend-biography changes tone a
bit. The "mummy" supposedly changed hands several times until
O.C. Brooks got it in about 1907 (or so) and exhibited her in her mummified
state for more than 40 years.
The carnival legend about such exhibitions are famous
and by the time Brooks retired near Baton Rouge he was said to have amassed
a fortune of more than $2 million dollars by exhibiting Hazel around the
world.
Well, the fortune disappeared and when Brooks died
he willed Hazel to his nephew saying that she must never be buried (she
had to stay above ground to atone for her sins!) and must never be exhibited
again except for charity.
The nephew Luther Brooks used Hazel to raise money
to build five churches in Tennessee.
Hazel was exhibited in the 1970s to raise fund for
the Bessemer Hall of History.
'Tis said the body still exists in a mummified
state which some feel was spontaneous because of the large amount of alcohol
she consumed and the poison she ingested. Hazel or whatever or whomever
she/it is, was supposedly never embalmed and the legends claim that she
still has all her internal organs, eyelashes and teeth, etc.
The idea that a living body can ingest enough alcohol
to embalm itself is, ah, rather far- fetched. And there was never any proof
that the body called Hazel was a Hazel from Kentucky or that... The fabrication,
legend, or morbid story in all its many versions takes its endurance from
people's easy acceptance of a woman gone very wrong and getting
her come-uppance throughout eternity.
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Lilian
Hale
This charming painting Young
Girl in a Red Hat was done by Lilian Hale, the almost unsung wife of
the son of the author of The Man Without a Country who was also
a painter.
She is, however, appreciated in her home city of Boston
where many of her paintings hang in the Museum of Fine Arts and many of
the homes of art collectors in New England. Their daughter Nancy Hale was
a writer of note.
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Carol Galley
Carol Galley of the U.K.
was vice-chair of Mercury Asset Management, which controlled 70 billion
pounds in investment funds, when she was chosen as one of "The 100
Most Powerful Women in the World" by Australiam Magazine in
May, 1996.
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First Woman Rabbi of Major U.S. Congregation
In 1994 Laura Geller, the fourth woman rabbi in
the United States, became the first woman SENIOR rabbi at a major metropolitan
Jewish congregation, Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills, California that has
more than 1,000 members.
She estimated that about 300 women serve as assistant,
or associate rabbis, even senior rabbis in smaller congregations in the
U.S.
There have been "issues
of gender at every step of my career,"
Rabbi Gellersays,"and some people, even
within this congregation, still find it an issue."
But, she adds,
"I'm grateful that
I came to this position as a middle-aged woman... I'm fully clear that
it' s their problem, not mine.
"When
they say, 'I like you very much, but I'm just not comfortable with a woman
rabbi,' they're telling me something about themselves, not about me."
Sally J. Priesand, ordained
in 1972, was the first woman rabbi in the United States, at the Monmouth
County Reform Temple in New Jersey. Regina Jonas was the first woman rabbi
in the world, ordained in 1935.
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Lucy Ball: America's Clown
Lucille Ball, b. 08-06-1911, became America's
clown in 1951 when she burst onto the fledgling TV industry with a previously
undiscovered flair for comedy.
She had a successful but lackluster career in Hollywood
B movies before teaming with her husband in October 1951 to star in the
TV comedy I Love Lucy. In fact, because LB was so minor a person,
her husband Desi was considered the star when the series premiered. Lucy's
untaped comedic talent blossomed and it soon boosted the show into one
of the most successful series in TV history. It is also one of the longest
running TV shows. It has been running regularly in reruns for the past
45 years with no end in sight.
In 1957-58, the show's title was changed to The
Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show, perhaps in deference to a husband who
was so completely overshadowed on small screen. The loss of Desi's star
rating was affecting their marriage.
Playing the scatterbrained redhead that belied
her shrewd comedic and business sense, Lucille Ball won the Emmy in 1952
and 1955.
LB and her husband formed a production system that
became one of the major producers of TV shows other than their own. Legend
says that Arnaz was the brains but two years later in 1960, LB took over
as president of Desilu, the first woman to head a major TV production company.
As Lucy's TV fame increased, their marriage dissolved.
Lucy played Broadway again then came back to TV
with The Lucy Show in 1962-1968, winning Emmys in 1967 and 1968.
Not content with being just a major Hollywood power
and beloved of millions of viewers who appreciated a good laugh, she made
several more movies, sold Desilu, and opened her own production company.
Ball and Arnaz pioneered 3-camera technique (now
standard) and they/she developed the concept of syndicating TV shows.
However, the duos most daring action was not technique
but a challenge to repressive social rulings on what was proper on TV.
Lucy became obviously pregnant on the show and then birthed a baby boy.
Although condemned by religious moralists, the public warmly embraced the
mother and her son.
The chocolate factory scene, the stomping of the
grapes, and the Harpo Marx mirror episodes have to be some of the funniest
routines ever recorded on film - and the most recognized.
LB was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of
Fame in 1984.
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08-06 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
Died 08-06-1661, Mere Angelique aka Jacqueline-Marie-Angelique Arnaud
- French nun/abbess who made her nunnery a center for Jansenism. One
of six sisters, her family forced her to become a nun at 9 and she became
an abbess at age 12 of an ancient religious house near Versailles. She
reformed her nunnery and several others making them more devote and spiritual.
She was the daughter of a prominent Jansenist theologian. (M´re
Ang´liquet
Event 08-06-1727: the first Roman Catholic convent in America
is occupied by the Ursaline nuns in New Orleans. The convent/school is
still occupied today although rebuilt several times and much enlarged.
Event 08-06-1777: Mary Brant, a Mohawk, had nine children with
the British superintendent of Indian Affairs. She managed his household
and was his hostess for almost 25 years until his death in 1774. She then
retired to upper New York state and was a loyalist during the American
revolution. She supplied intelligence and ammunition for the British in
the the battle of Oriskany, August 6, 1777. Brant and her brother who was
a warrior leader of of the Iroquois were instrumental in aligning the entire
Iroquois nation on the side of the British in the American revolution.
Following the defeat of the British, she joined other refugees in Kingston,
Ontario.
B. 08-06-1829, Marie Elizabeth Zakrzewski - pioneer U.S. doctor.
MEZ graduated from a school for midwives without incident but when she
was appointed chief midwife and professor, male opposition forced her resignation.
On arriving in the U.S., she met Elizabeth Blackwell who helped her enter
Western Reserve medical school for regular medical training. She assisted
the Blackwell sisters in the New York Infirmary and ran the institution
while Elizabeth was in England.
She served as physician
and professor at th New England Female Medical College in Boston but left
because the founder saw women's position in medicine limited to midwifery.
She founded the New Englandl Hospital for Women and Children in 1862 and
served in various capacities there until 1899.
In addition to her pioneering
medical work, she developed lunchrooms for the working poor women and aid
for poor Jews.
Her New England Hospital
was the first one to trained nurses and offer social services.
B. 08-06-1845, (Mary Caroline) Myrtle Page Fillmore - U.S. religious
activist. MPF's accomplishments are inseparable from those of her husband
as they jointly organizeds and were principle theorists of the Unity theory
of Christianity that proffered solutions to health, mental, and other problems.
B. 08-06-1861, Edith Kermit Roosevelt - second wife of Theodore,
President of the United States.
B. 08-06-1873, Mary Carr Moore - U.S. singer and composer. MCM
composed six operas and a number of orchestral, chamber, and piano works.
She was guest conductor for several West Coast orchestras.
B. 08-06-1876, Mary Louis Curtis Bok Zimbalist - U.S. music patron
and philanthropist.
B. 08-06-1881, Louella Oettinger Parsons - U.S. personality journalist.
LP is best known as a Hollywood gossip columnist. During the heyday of
the studio star system she held unbelievable power over the individual
actors futures as their moral judge. Her column appeared in more than 400
newspapers. Many of her critics claim she was vindictive and spiteful but
she kept the aura of Hollywood glamour alive when many of the stars were
less than nice. She was as much the creator of the Hollywood myth as the
makeup artists and the studio press people.
She was an ultra conservative
who supported right wing causes financially. She saw herself as the arbiter
of morals who believed her way and only her way was right. She forced many
stars to do her bidding to either curry favor or to prevent her from publishing
scurrilous innuendos that were often false.
In the prime of the Hollywood
star system, she was arguably the most powerful person in the business.
B. 08-06-1886, Florence Laura Goodenough - U.S. psychologist.
FLG was developmental psychologist, chief psychologist at the Minneapolis
Child Guidance Clinic (1925) and research professor at the Institute of
Child Welfare at the University of Minnesota until her retirement in 1947.
She developed cognitive
tests for children and was recognized as "an innovator of the first
magnitude in the observational study of children behavior." She argued
that research "that claimed superiorities and inferiorities of different
groups of people ignored the pervasive cultural patterns that affected
the intelligence results."
Her most acclaimed book
was Developmental Psychology which she revised three times.
B. 08-06-1886, Mary Brooks Picken - U.S. author. MBP was the
author of more than 100 books on home sewing and decorating. MBP compiled
the first dictionary ever compiled by a woman The Language of Fashion.
Her grandmother taught her to card wool, spin, and weave fabrics, and how
to sew clothes when she was very young.
She taught sewing and
dressmaking for many years even to women prisoners of Leavenworth Penitentiary.
Contracted by the Women's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences in Pennsylvania
to prepare a complete courses on sewing and dressmaking, the 64 volumes
were used to teach more than a half-million students.
B. 08-06-1892, Ruth Suckow - U.S. author.
B. 08-06-1896, Gertrude Sprague Carraway - U.S. community activist.
GSC was elected president of the Daughters of the American Revolution (D.A.R.)
in 1953.
B. 08-06-1902, Brigadier Dame Monica Golding - U.K. army Matron-in-Chief
and director of nursing services 1956-1960.
MG was an experienced
nurse in action having set up a clearing station during the 1940 British
defense in France. She saw service in India and Hong Kong as well as in
Africa.
Enrollment rose during
her tenure as head of nursing and some who view women as merely vacationing
from beauty parlors say it wasn't better leadership but prettier uniforms
that drew recruits
B.
08-06-1905, Clara Bow - U.S. film actor. CB was called the "'It'
girl" as she portrayed the carefree flapper in early Hollywood
films.
She starred in moe than
30 films including the classic Wings but her strong Brooklyn accent
prevented her from making it in talking pictures. Her various sex scandals
also lost fan support but it was her voice that ended her movie career.
She won a beauty contest
while still in high school that sent her to Hollywood. A good biography
is J. Morella's The 'It' Girl: the Incredible Story of Clara Bow
(1976).
B. 08-06-1908, Helen Hull Jacobs - U.S. tennis player. HHJ won
the Wimbledon singles in 1936 among dozens of other titles but was always
overshadowed by Helen Wills Moody whom she just could not beat. HHJ was
arguably the second best woman tennis player in the world for most the
the 1920s and 30s.
B. 08-06-1921, Ella Raines - U.S. actor.
B. 08-06-1925, Barbara Bates - U.S. actor.
Event 08-06-1926: Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim
the English channel and did it two hours faster than any man had swum
the channel to that time, in about 14.5 hours. (also see WOAH
10-23)
B.
08-06-1929, Janice Lee York Romary - U.S. Olympic fencer (1952-1968)
who in 1968 became the first woman to be the U.S. flag bearer in the opening
ceremonies of the Olympics (Mexico City).
B. 08-06-1929, Anneliese Kuppers - German equestrian, winner
of the 1956 Olympic Silver in dressage.
B. 08-06-1941, Jane Adams Amero. Elected to the Maine Senate
1992, she became assistant majority leader of the that body.
Event 08-06-1942: Queen Wilhemina of the Netherlands became the
first reigning queen to address a joint session of Congress, telling lawmakers
that despite Nazi occupation, her people's motto remained, "No
surrender."
B. 08-06-1944, Swoosie Kurtz - U.S. actor of stage, and TV.
B. 08-06-1951, Catherine Hicks - U.S. actor.
B. 08-06-1956, Stephanie Kramer - U.S. actor. (Claudia-We
Got it Made, Hunter)
Event
08-06-1993: Former Japanese Socialist party head Takako Doi, 64, won
election as Speaker of Parliament. She is the first woman to hold such
a prestigious position in modern Japan.
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QUOTES DU JOUR
SPENDER, DALE:
"We need to know how
patriarchy works. We need to know how women disappear, why we are initiated
into a culture where women have no visible past, and what will happen if
we make that past visible and real. If the process is not to be repeated
again, if we are to transmit to the next generation of women what was denied
transmission to us, we need to know how to break the closed circle of male
power which permits men to go on producing knowledge (and history) about
themselves, pretending that we do not exist."
--
From Dale Spender's Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them.
London: Pandora, 1988. This book is MUST reading.
CLEGHORN, SARAH N.:
"The golf links lie
so near the mill
"That almost any day
"The laboring children can look out
"And see the men at play."
--
Sarah N. Cleghorn: "The Conning Tower," New York Tribune,
Jan. 1, 1915
ANTHONY, SUSAN B.:
"So while I do not pray
for anybody or any party to commit outrages, still I do pray, and that
earnestly and constantly, for some terrific shock to startle the women
of this nation into a SELF-RESPECT which will COMPEL them to see the abject
degradation of their present position; which will force them to break their
yoke of bondage, and give them FAITH IN THEMSELVES; which will make them
proclaim their allegiance to WOMEN FIRST; which will enable them to see
that man can no more feel, speak or act for women than could the old slaveholder
for his slave. The fact is, women are in chains, and their servitude is
all the more debasing because they do not realize it.
"O, to compel them to see and feel and to give
them courage and conscience to speak and act for their own freedom, though
they face the scorn and contempt of all the world for doing it!"
--
Susan B. Anthony, 1870. (Brought to our attention by Wendy Brewer who said:
"Makes you wanna stand up & clap
doesn't it ? Does me...")
BTW,
to those women who think Susan B.'s words no longer apply, remember that
the average woman today makes 70 cents to a white man's $1.00 (a black
woman earns even less) and that a male high school graduate's earning capacity
matches that of female college graduate.
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