The Liz Library presents Irene Stuber's Women of Achievement


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September 30
WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT AND HERSTORY

Compiled and Written by Irene Stuber.
09-30 TABLE of CONTENTS:

Across 600 years, a Feminist Speaks

Political Leadership Positions Worldwide

DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS

QUOTES by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Will Roscoe, Margaret Sanger, and Kate Millet.

Revised10-19-1999


Across 600 years, a Feminist Speaks

      "To you 'gentlemen', let Lady Reason speak:
      "Men have attacked women for other reasons: such reproach has occurred to some men because of their own vices and others have been moved by the defects of their own bodies, others through pure jealousy, still others by the pleasure they derive in their own personalities from slander...
      "Those men who have attacked women out of jealousy are those wicked ones who have seen and realized that many women have greater understanding and are more noble in conduct than they themselves, and then they are pained and disdainful. Because of this, their overweening jealousy has prompted them to attack all women, intending to demand and diminish the glory and praise of such women, must like the man who tries to prove in his own work...
      "As for those men who are naturally given to slander, it is not surprising that they slander women since they attack everyone anyway. Nevertheless, I assure you that any man who freely slanders does so out a great wickedness of heart, for he is acting contrary to reason and contrary to Nature: contrary to reason in so far as he is most ungrateful and fails to recognize the good deeds which women have done for him, so great that he could never make up for them, no matter how much he try, and which he continuously needs women to perform for him; and contrary to Nature in that there is no naked beast anywhere, nor bird, which does not naturally love its female counterpart."
            -- Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, translated by Earl Jeffrey Richards. It was first printed in 1405 (1405!) indicating feminism was alive and well 600 years ago. CP is considered the first woman to earn her living through writing. The amazing(est) thing about this book is that it was out of print for hundreds of years, thus an essential view into women's history was erased until Richards made his marvelous translation that (we are told) is faithful to the original verbage yet is made readable to moderns.
      We consider this book as an essential part of the basic feminist/woman library.

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Political Leadership Positions Worldwide

* The number of female ministers worldwide doubled in the last decade from 3.4 per cent in 1987 to 6.8 per cent in 1996 at the cabinet level while in 48 countries, there were no women ministers at all.

* A "critical mass" of 30 per cent women at the ministerial level has been achieved in five countries - Barbados, Finland, Liechtenstein, Seychelles and Sweden. (NOT the United States which had 20%.) However, the pressure from the sub-ministerial level is itself reaching critical mass proportions in many nations and is getting ready to explode upward:

* At the sub-ministerial level, 136 countries had no women in ministerial positions concerned with the economy.

* Globally, only 9.9 per cent of all sub-ministerial positions (Deputy Minister, Permanent Secretary and Deputy Permanent Secretary) were held by women. Women were slightly better represented in social ministries in the Europe.

* A "critical mass" of 30 per cent women at the sub-ministerial level has been achieved in six countries - Andorra, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Costa Rica, San Marino AND THE UNITED STATES.

* In eight countries, the proportion of women at the subministerial has reached 25 per cent or more - Australia, Dominica, El Salvador, Macedonia, New Zealand, Philippines, Sweden, and St. Kitts and Nevis.

* In seven additional states, the proportion of women at the subministerial level has reached 20 per cent or more - Barbados, Colombia, Croatia, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana and Norway .

[Data compiled by the Division for the Advancement of Women, United Nations, based on January 1996 information from the Worldwide Government Directory 1996, Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.A.]

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09-30 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS

B. 09-30-1811, Augusta (Marie Luise Katharina) -German empress (1861-1890), consort of William I. She opposed and held back Otto von Bismarck's grab for absolute power through a regency.

Event 09-30-1864: Rose O'Neal Greenhow drowns when the boat she was in tried to run the blockade of the Wilmington, North Carolina harbor. Her clothes were weighed down with Confederate gold meant for supplies and weapons. A marker in downtown Wilmington commemorates the tragedy.

B. 09-30-1875, Anne Henrietta Martin - U.S. educator and suffragist. AMH led the campaign which gave women the vote in Nevada in 1914, six years before national women's suffrage was adopted. She was president of the militant National Woman's party, but joined Carrie Chapman Catt and Jane Addams in their Woman's Peace party. Her writings were published in the leading magazines of the day.
      AHM was active with Emmeline Pankhurst in London, England, and was arrested for demonstrating there in 1910. She was the first woman to run for the U.S. Senate from Nevada in 1918 and 1920 as an independent, bypassing the national political parties which she opposed and thought women should not support.
      She wrote extensively on women's rights and suffrage. She was head of the history department at the University of Nevada.

B. 09-30-1921, Deborah Kerr - Anglo-American actor nominated for the Academy Awards six times. She never won. She was given a special award by the Academy in the 1990s. Her best known film was From Here to Eternity (1953).

B. 09-30-1932, Angie Dickinson - U.S. actor. AD was a so-co character actor for 20 years before hitting stardom as TV's Police Woman in 1974, an innovative series that showed a tough woman succeeding. Her movie career, however, never matched her TV stardom.

B. 09-30-1943, Marilyn McCoo - U.S. pop singer.

B. 09-30-1960, Blanche M. Lambert Lincoln - U.S. Senator from Arkansas elected 1998. She had been the congressional representative from the third district of AR 1993-1998, declining to run for reelection to the house because she was pregnant with twins. After their birth, she resumed her political career becoming the second Arkansas woman elected to the U.S. Senate. Hattie Carraway of Arkansas was both the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate.

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QUOTES DU JOUR

STANTON, ELIZABETH CADY:
     
"Come, come, my conservative friends, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving."
            -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton in The Women's Bible.

ROSCOE, WILL:
     
"Hordes of scholars have read heterosexual behaviors and motives onto historical figures without presenting evidence or discussing alternatives. [Behaving] like cradle snatchers, their hetrosex[ist] assumptions preclude the possibility of homosexual readings [of the circumstances evidence] before they are even articulated. We should hold these scholars to the same standards that we impose on ourselves (as gay and lesbian investigators of historical figures) in the absence of conclusive evidence of sexual practices, a heterosexual interpretation must be defended (and documented) no less than a gay or lesbian one."
            -- Will Roscoe, in a 1989 review of Joan Mark's A Stranger in her Native Land, Alice Fletcher and the American Indian.

SANGER, MARGARET:
     
"Woman must not accept, she must challenge. She must now be awed by that which has been built up around her, she must reverence that woman in her which struggles for expression."
            -- Margaret Sanger

MILLET, KATE:
     
"Many women do not recognize themselves as discriminated against; no better proof could be found of the totality of their conditioning."
            -- Kate Millet from The Second Sex.


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© 1990-2006 Irene Stuber, Hot Springs National Park, AR 71902. Originally web-published at http://www.undelete.org/. We are indebted to Irene Stuber for compiling this collection and for granting us permission to make it available again. The text of the documents may be freely copied for nonprofit educational use. Except as otherwise noted, all contents in this collection are © 1998-2009 the liz library.  All rights reserved. This site is hosted and maintained by the liz library.

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