03-08-1995 Women of Achievement and Herstory

      March is Women's History Month and March 8 in particular is
International Women's Day.
      "For those who  are not familiar with this holiday, it began as a
commemoration of a strike of women needle trades workers in New York
City in 1908.  
      "Clara Zetkin, a delegate  to the International Socialist Congress (in
Copenhagen, August 24-29) 1909, asked that March 8th be set aside to
commemorate the strike and dedicated to the struggle for equal rights for
all women.  
      "Today this day is widely recognized in many parts of the world and
in some places women even get the day off to celebrate.  Only a few
communities in the US are even aware of the existence of this holiday or
of its roots. 
      "Here in Lexington a grad school colleague and I are co-sponsoring
a pot luck brunch in order to celebrate the day and to raise awareness of
the holiday.  I look forward to the day when we celebrate this holiday as
widely in the US as it  is celebrated in other parts of the world.  Happy
IWD!"   (Posted by  Joan Hac  <JAHAC00@ukcc.uky.edu>)
      A pot luck to celebrate International Women's Day ... well, why not?
Actually, it should be called Women's Equal Rights Day...wonder why NOW
isn't doing anything about it ...

03-08 Anniversaries ...........................................

      B. 03-08-1856, Mary Wright Plummer, librarian whose innovations
included setting up the first art reference department and a children's
library with child-sized furniture and easily reached shelves.

      B. 03-08-1861, Emily Perkins Bissell, welfare worker who led the first
Christmas Seal drive (1907) to aid tubercular children.

      B. 03-08-1886, Alice Throckmorton McLean, president American
Women's Voluntary Services in WWII with a working membership of more
than 325,000 who did everything from selling bonds to teaching, to
mechanical work to air raid defense management.  Her mother was one of
the founders of the day nursery school movement. (Studied the British,
Finnish, and Swiss volunteer organizations and founded the AWVS in 1940
as a private organization.) At first no one knew what to do with the
organization since the U.S. was still at peace and there was a prevailing
belief among many politicians of isolationism and, of course, women's
worthlessness except as mothers and housekeepers. The AWVS gave first
aid classes and women joined by the thousands. They were involved in
defense photography, map reading, child care, workshop, conservation,
salvage, canteens, rehabilitation and motor transport, even fruit pickers. 
They sold a billion dollars worth of War Bonds.  They took photographs of
men and women in the service for their families back home, made and
reconditioned clothing for children and babies, and chaufferred almost 400
military cars. They knew what to do even if the politicians didn't.

      B. 03-08-1896, Charlotte Elizabeth Whitton, Mayor, City of Ottawa,
Canada (1951).

      B. 03-08-1903, Avril Coleridge-Taylor, British conductor and composer,
first woman to direct the band of the H.M. Royal Marines, guest conductor
of the BBC and London Symphony orchestra, and founder and conductor
of the Malcolm Sargent Symphony.#127

      B. 03-08-1939, Lidiya Skoblikova, Russian athlete was first to win
four Olympic winter games gold medals in one year and first to win a total
of six in a lifetime.


      (C) 1995 Irene Stuber, PO Box 6185, Hot Springs National Park, AR
71902, irenestuber@delphi.com. Distribute verbatim copies freely with
copyright notice for non-profit use. Don't let anyone tell you there weren't
notable and effective women throughout history.  They were always there,
but historians failed to note them in our histories so that each generation
of women has had to reinvent themselves.