| 12-19 TABLE of CONTENTS:
A Quote for the Season...
DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
QUOTES by
Christine de Pizan and from Lewis and Simon.
Pregnancy and Work
"Finally,
when I did decide to have a child, most people, male and female were 'worried'
about my continuing to work. I did work until the night before the baby
was born... Two weeks after, I spent a day touring a client factory.
"My feelings about work was clued by my observation
of pregnant alley cats. Belly or no, they continue to jump over fences.
So can most women.
"When I was asked how I could continue to work
with such a massive handicap, the answer was easy: a big belly only
interferes with tying your shoelaces; it does not impair your intelligence.
Ask any man with one."
-- Roslyn S. Willett, "Working in 'A Man's World'; the Woman Executive,"
which appeared in Woman in Sexist Society edited by Gornick and
Moran.
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12-19 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
B. 12-19-1820, Mary Ashton Rice Livermore,
author, reformer, lecturer, and women's rights advocate. Succeeded
Lucy Stone as president of the American Woman Suffrage Ass'n 1875-78, and
was president of the Association for the Advancement of Women and several
state organizations. During the Civil War, with her friend Jane C. Hoge,
developed the Chicago Branch of the U.S. Sanitary Commission into the leading
branch of the nation.
B. 12-19-1829, Jane Cunningham Croly, probably
the first syndicated woman columnist in the U.S. An ardent feminist
she believed women would get suffrage and other reforms when women assumed
their proper place in the economic system. She formed Sorosis and called
the first national convention of women's clubs.
B. 12-19-1829, Ada Lydia Howard, first president
of Wellesley College, 1875-1881.
B. 12-19-1865, Minne Maddern Fiske, actor
who was an early advocate of stage realism. Producer, director and developer
of new talent, she was named one of the 12 greatest women in 1923 and again
in 1931.
B. 12-19-1868, Eleanor Hodgman Porter, wrote
more than a dozen books but goes down in history for Pollyanna
(1913).
B. 12-19-1881, Hetty Goldman, archaeologist,
her amazing systematic excavations and recording of details at her four
major excavation sites showed the relationship between Greece and the eastern
Mediterranean. Her evacuations of Tarsusin Turkey traced the city's development
for more than 6,000 years. She was the first woman appointed professor
at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ.
B. 12-19-1891, Dr. Pauline Berry Mack, chemist,
educator: studies of calcium chemistry of bones led to the technique of
measuring bone density. Director, Ellen H. Richards Institute for research,
Pennsylvania State College. Her mother co-operated the family store and
was in real estate.
B. 12-19-1915, Edith Piaf, the brown sparrow
of Parisian cabaret fame, composed La Vie En Rose. Her mother
was a cafe singer who abandoned her. EP was blind for four years as a child.
She was the "godmother" of French prisoners held in Germany and
aided a number of them to escape as well as helping Jewish refugees. Her
efforts during World War II were clouded because she was one of the few
who stayed in France after the conquest by the Germans and she actually
went into Germany. The facts were finally brought out after she was accused
and cleared of collaboration charges. She had a wavering, deeply moving
voice which cried of shattered lives, lost loves, and hopeless futures.
Event 12-19-1976, women win 13 of the 32 available
Rhodes scholarships in the first year of allowing women to compete
for the prestigious awards.
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QUOTES DU JOUR
De PIZAN, CHRISTINE:
"If it were customary
to send little girls to school and to teach them the same subjects as are
taught to boys, they would learn just as fully and would understand the
subtleties of all arts and sciences. Indeed, maybe they would understand
them better ... for just as women's bodies are softer than men's, so their
understanding is sharper."
--
Christine de Pizan (1365-1430) in the Prologue of her epic work, The
Book of the City of Ladies. What? You never heard of it? Wonder why.
She was probably the first woman to earn her living (and support her family)
with her writings.
[Ed. Note: Christine de Pizan (b.
1365) has variously been translated as being named Christine de Pisan and
Christine of Pisa. Her book, The Book of the City of Ladies or Le
livse de la cite des dames was written about 1400. The first English
translation was by Brian Anslay in 1521 who published Boke of the Cyte
of Ladyes. I would recommend, however, the SECOND translation done
460 years later by Earl Jeffrey Richard, Persea Books, ISBN 0-89255-066-x(pbk),
now in its third printing. The first 29 pages will knock your socks off.
--IS]
"Listen to the voices
of women and the voices of men; observe the space men allow themselves,
physically and verbally, the male assumption that people will listen, even
when the majority of the group is female.
"Look at the faces of the silent, and those who
speak.
"Listen to a woman groping for language in which
to express what is on her mind, sensing that the terms of academic discourse
are not her language, trying to cut down her thought to the dimension of
a discourse not intended for her."
--
Lewis and Simon, "A Discourse Not Intended for Her: Learning and Teaching
within Patriarchy," (1987). Harvard Educational Review, Vol.
56, No.4.
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