The Liz Library presents Irene Stuber's Women of Achievement


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October 6
WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT AND HERSTORY

Compiled and Written by Irene Stuber
who is solely responsible for its content.

10-06 TABLE of CONTENTS:

Woman - Target of the Religious Right...

-- some Homegrown Rhetoric

-- and more, from the Largest Protestant Denomination

-- and more, from Poland

Danu / Anu / Dana

Draga Dejanovi

DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS

QUOTES by Blanche Weisen Cook, Lisa Leslie, and John Stuart Mill.

10-07-1999


Woman - Target of the Religious Right...

      In 1983 Shirley Rogers Radl wrote the well-researched From The Invisible Woman, Target of the Religious New Right in which she sounded a warning.
      The warning needs repeating in light of the increased attempts against women's equality in the U.S. Congress, on the world stage, and in the increased actions of the far right elements within the U.S.
      Radl wrote,
"Among the first of Adolph Hitler's acts when he came into power in Germany were the banning of abortion and the shutting down of birth-control clinics. And, as is true of the New Right, he advocated - successfully - outlawing homosexuality, quelling the rising women's liberation movement in that country, and establishing the patriarchal family as 'the basic unit...
      "In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote some other words that are part of the New Right rhetoric:

" 'Her world is her husband, her family, her children, and home. We do not find it right when a women presses into the world of men. Rather we find it natural when these two worlds remain separate... Woman and man represent two different types of being. Reason is dominant in man.' "

      Shirley Rogers Radl continues, "Of the time just prior to Hitler's takeover in Germany, Richard Evans, author of The Feminist Movement in Germany - 1894-1933, wrote that there existed a view among conservatives in that nation that:  

" 'The women's movement was... destroying the family... by encouraging married women to take jobs, by supporting unmarried mothers, and by urging women in general to be more independent. It was endangering Germany's military potential by discouraging marriage (encouraging family planning and thus lowering the birthrate). It was outraging nature by campaigning for the systematic equalization of the sexes and by inciting women to do things they were unsuited for. It was international in spirit and unpatriotic.'

      "Joseph Paul Goebbels (Hitler's SS head) could have written the religious right's script:     

" 'When we eliminate women from public life, it is not because we want to dispense with them, but because we want to give them back their essential honor... The outstanding and highest calling of women is always that of wife and mother.'

      "Whether by design or accident, the 'Nazi Connection' is very clear cut...
      "No one is suggesting that the New Right is part of some covert Nazi conspiracy, but the similarities of the dogmas, strategies, and tactics are stunning..."
            -- From The Invisible Woman, Target of the Religious New Right by Shirley Rogers Radl. New York: Dell Publishing, 1983.

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-- Some Homegrown Rhetoric to Keep Women in Their Place

      "The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians."
            -- Pat Robertson addressing the cheering 1992 Republican National Convention.

And if that wasn't enough, Pat Buchanan came along on August 17 and received more cheers:

      "There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself...abortion on demand, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combat...it's not the kind of change we can abide in a nation that we still call God's Country."

...two from Texas - not reelected

      "If (rape) is inevitable, just relax and enjoy it."
            -- Clayton Williams, Texas gubernatorial candidate who lost to Ann Richards.

      "Do you know why God created women? Because sheep can't type."
            -- Kenneth Armbrister, Texas state senator.

...and from Hollywood

      "My notion of a wife at forty is that a man should be able to change her like a bank note, for two twenties."
            -- Warren Beatty said this in 1986 and in 1999 indicated he would seek political office - as a liberal!

...from Virginia

      "I don't have a cook except for the one I married thirty years ago."
            -- Jerry Falwell, religious right televangelist.

...from the heart of the U.S. Far Right

      "Feminism was established to allow unattractive women access to mainstream society."
            -- Rush Limbaugh, ultra right extremist, TV and radio comic.

      "They are trying to prove their manhood."
            -- Ross Perot commenting about women reporters who asked hard questions during his presidential campaign.

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...from the largest Protestant denomination

      The 1998 Southern Baptist conference adopted the following Statement on Family Life:

      "The husband and wife are of equal worth before God. Both bear God's image but each in differing ways. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to His people. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect and to lead his family. A wife is to submit graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being 'in the image of God' as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his 'helper' in managing their household and nurturing the next generation."
      At the same conference the SB asked Congress support the banning of gays in federal jobs. The convention also voted to call for an end to training women in the military for combat and to ask its 15.9 million members to seek a halt to public financing of PBS and the National Endowment for the Arts. Delegates claimed the two groups sponsor anti-Christian programming and works of art.

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...from Poland's "democratic" reformer

      "Women are to have fun with. In politics I prefer not to see a woman. Instead of getting all worked up, they should stay are they are - like flowers."
            -- Lech Walesa as anti-Communist, pro-religion president of Poland who was hailed by the news media for his "democratic" policies. He abolished abortion and birth control, reduced child care facilities, and overall his policies increased women's unemployment with the general lowering of their salaries.

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Danu / Anu / Dana

      The earth-mother god, the principle female god of Ireland, the Celts, and much of eastern Europe. She is, of course, the god of fertility and wisdom. Like Europa, the original Greek god, Danu is believed to have given birth to the gods, impregnated by the north wind.

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Draga Dejanovi

      Draga Dejanovi (1843-1870) - Serbian poet and feminist - Although she lived only 27 years, DD was the leader of the Serbian feminist movement, a poet, and actor. One of her most noted articles "Are Women Capable of Being Equal with Men?" was written the year of her death and inspired great support for feminism. She was active in the United Serbian Youth Movement. Most of her poems were patriotic in tone.

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10-06 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS

DIED 10-06-0404, Eudoxia who had great influence over her husband Emperor Arcadius, the Eastern Roman emperor. She also served as her husband's regent for a number of years which means she was absolute ruler of the country at that time.
      Eudoxia and was given the title "Augusta" on 01-09-400 which made her virtually the co-ruler.
      She was the mother of emperor Theodosius II (reigned 408-450) and daughter Pulcheria who acted as regent for Theodosius II for several years. She died as a result of pregnancy.

B. 10-06-1800, Sara Pugh - U.S. teacher, abolitionist, and woman suffragist. Her house was where the 1838 Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women was held after a mob of irate men burned down the convention hall where it originally scheduled. The arson was committed by men protesting women taking part in political matters, not against abolition. At the time women were not allowed to speak in public and of course, could not vote.
      SP was a close friend of Lucretia Mott, and financially enabled LM to attend the fateful London Anti-slavery convention where Mott met Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
      With women barred from participating in the abolitionist meeting in London, Mott and Stanton discussed their common interests will passing the time sitting on the porch of the boarding house where they were both staying. Both were irate at being excluded from the meetings - and one thing led to another.
      Eight years later, two women who would never have met or talked in the normal course of events, organized the first Women's Rights Convention in 1848.

B. 10-06-1820, Jenny Lind - Swedish-born operatic and oratorio soprano known as the Swedish nightingale. Her vocal control and agility were astounding which coupled with a naturalness made her the toast of Europe and the U.S.
      She retired from the opera stage because of sincerely felt religious views. Following her marriage, she settled in London where she did some oratorio singing. Sweden recently honored its most brilliant vocalist with her likeness on a Swedish currency.
      JL's vocal range was B below middle C to high G.

B. 10-06-1865, Emily Palmer Cape - first woman student at what would became Columbia University. EPC was the chief collaborator, along with her intimate friend Lester Ward, in the writing and publishing of Glimpses of the Cosmos (12 vol., 1913).

B. 10-06-1887, Maria Jeritza - Czech dramatic soprano. Vivacious, she sang with a flair that made her a natural for Hollywood films. She sang with the Metropolitan Opera Company 1921-32. In particular, she excited audiences with her flair in the lighter, more bohemian operas.

B. 10-06-1889, Maria Dabrowska - Polish author. Her most noted work was Noce i Dnie, (in four volumes 1932-34) (Eng. trans. Nights and Days) that examined the conditions of Polish peasants and calls for land reform. Her last novel Przygody Czlowieka Myslacego translated as Adventures of a Thinking Man examined Polish life under Hitler's conquering army. She also wrote short stories, critical studies, histories, and plays. Her best known work in the U.S. was the short story "A Village Wedding" that has been much anthologized.

B. 10-06-1895, Caroline Gordon - U.S. author. CG's novels were primarily about Southern American subjects. Her most noted work was The Strange Children.

B. 10-06-1897, Dr. Florence Seibert - U.S. chemist. Dr. Seibert developed the process that removed bacteria from water in a single distillation - a process vital for safe injections and other medical uses.
      Until her process, water wasn't always safe for injection even after three distillations. She also perfected the first reliable test for TB that was adopted as the standard in the U.S. in 1941 and worldwide in 1952. She was tiny, weighing less than 100 pounds and was partially disabled from a childhood bout with infantile paralysis.

B. 10-06-1902, Elizabeth Janet Gray - U.S. writer, winner of the 1943 Newberry Medal.

B. 10-06-1905, Helen Newington Wills (Moody) - U.S. tennis champion, one of the greatest of all times. She graduated from the University of California with a degree in Fine Arts Phi Beta Kappa (1928) as the reigning American woman tennis player.
      With her tremendous ground stroke teamed with amazing control and steely concentration, from 1923 to 1938 she won Wimbledon eight times - a record broken 50 years later by Martina Navratilova with nine wins. Moody won the U.S. Championship seven times and the French Open four times - and won two Olympic gold medals.
      She also won the doubles at Wimbledon three times and U.S. doubles four times.
      She led the revolt against the long-sleeved, full-stockings with skirts almost to the ground that was the approved attire for women on the tennis courts - costumes that obviously hampered their playing.
      She dared appear in sleeveless blouses and knee length skirts without stockings. She was too powerful a figure in tennis to be disqualified, although there was movement for her to be declared ineligible for "immoral behavior."
      From 1926 to 1932 she did not lose a single set on American soil!

B. 10-06-1908, Carole Lombard - U.S. film actor. CL was the outstanding American film actor of light comedy of her time. Her popularity was still on the rise when she died in a 1942 plane crash during one of her many war bond-selling trips during World War II.

B. 10-06-1911, Barbara Ann Castle - U.K. politician/statesperson. BAC served as minister of transportation (1965), secretary of state for employment and productivity, and secretary of state for social services. BAC was only the fourth woman to hold a cabinet post in England.

10-06-1914, Mary Louise Smith, chair of the Republican National Committee 1974-77. She succeeded George Bush who became head of the CIA.

B. 10-06-1917, Fannie Lou Hamer - Afro-American civil rights activist. FLH led the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and risked her life to register voters in Mississippi. She'd became active with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) although she only had a sixth-grade education. The group successfully challenged the various laws that excluded most blacks from voting. It was dangerous as bigoted whites sometimes resorted to violence to keep blacks from exercising their constitutional rights.
      FLH was the youngest of 20 children of a sharecropper family and worked the fields at a very young age. She spent most of her adult life working to improve the economic conditions of blacks in the south.

Event 10-06-1919: An all-woman bank - from janitors to president - was opened in Clarksville, Tennessee. It was a successful operation and the stockholders made a profit. It was liquidated seven years later when president and founder Brenda Vineyard Runyon became ill.

B. 10-06-1925, Shanna Alexander - U.S. author.

B. 10-06-1942 Britt Ekland - film actor.

B. 10-06-1945, Deirdre Whittleton Alpert - U.S. state legislator. DWA was a member of the 78th district California state Assembly Sacramento, 1990, and chair of the Women's Legislators Caucus.

B. 10-06-1956, Stephanie Zimbalist - U.S. actor. Her grandmother was the noted opera star Alma Gluck (05-11) and her aunt was noted author Marcia Davenport (01-09). SZ starred in several hit TV series.

B. 10-06-1963, Elisabeth Shue - U.S.actor.

B. 10-06-1970, Amy Jo Johnson - U.S. actor.

B. 10-06-1973, Rebecca Lobo - U.S. basketball player. RL led her Connecticut University team to a perfect 35-0 record and the NCAA title. While she was winning a Phi Beta Kappa key for herself with a 3.6 grade average She is an outstanding center-forward player for the New York pro women's basketball team. Unfortunately she had to sit out the 1999 season because of an injury. She stand 6'4" and usually weighs about 180.
      Fortunately, in spite of the significantly lower pay of the WNBA as opposed to the NBA, RL landed several promotional contracts that made her a millionaire - but nothing compared to what she'd have received had she been a man as the premier draft pick of her year.

Event 10-06-1978: The U.S. Congress passed the bill that forbade the cross examination of a victim's prior sexual history in rape trials. The bill was introduced by Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman (D-NY). At the time, the victim's sexual history was open and subject to the court scrutiny and cross examination, but the past criminal/rape/sexual history of the accused (as now) was closed.

Event 10-06-1993, Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's former prime minister, regained office when her Pakistan People's party won a plurality in the National Assembly. Bhutto was elected prime minister by the Assembly. BB had become Pakistan's first prime minister who was also a woman in 1988. She held office for two years before being ousted. She was returned to power later.

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QUOTES DU JOUR

COOK, BLANCHE WEISEN:
      "No censorship law can be enforced -- will ever be enforced -- in the interests of, or in the defense, of women. To expose the enemies of women, we must struggle to maintain absolute freedom of speech, press, and assembly."
            -- Blanche Weisen Cook, author of that marvelous two volume biography of Eleanor Roosevelt.

LESLIE, LISA:
      "People are surprised by how intense (women's basketball) is. Fans watch their college team and watch us sweep up in all aspect of the game. They're really shocked. They didn't know there was that much of a difference. They didn't realize how much faster we are and the fact that we are so much stronger than the other girls. Some of them go, 'Wow, you guys have muscles. You look like women.' I say we are."
            -- Lisa Leslie in a New York Times story 12/1995 during a promo trip to hype the women's all-star basketball team that went on to win the 1996 Olympic gold medal. The women's team got only a fraction of the publicity that the professional men's basketball team got... and yet drew crowds and TV viewing audiences that matched the men's play.

MILL, JOHN STUART:
      "The principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes--the legal subordination of one sex to the other - is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement... it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other."

(Mill proclaimed that inequality of women under the law was derived from antiquated rule by the strongest, that it amounted to slavery, and that it was kept in place by indoctrination of women to believe they were inferior beings. Under such repressive circumstances, it was impossible for women to recognize the true extent of their own capabilities. A strong proponent of women's education, Mill attributed the lesser achievements of women to their being barred from equal education.)

      "The only educated women are the self-educated"... (Therefore, it was inconceivable that they could compete with men in arenas in which they had been denied knowledge. Mill also recognized the greater personal demands placed on women that deter them from creative work)... "There are other reasons... that help to explain why women remain behind men, even in the pursuits which are open to both. For one thing, very few women have time for them... Independently of the regular offices of life which devolve upon a woman, she is expected to have her time and faculties always at the disposal of everybody. If a man has not a profession to exempt him from such demands, still, if he has a pursuit, he offends nobody by devoting his time to it; occupation is received as a valid excuse for his not answering to every casual demand which may be made on him . . . . [However, a woman] must always be at the beck and call of somebody, generally of everybody. If she has a study or a pursuit, she must snatch any short interval which accidentally occurs to be employed in it."
            -- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) British philosopher and economist. Along with his wife, Mrs. Taylor (sic) to whom he gave full credit for assisting him in not only his work but his reasoning, Emily Davies, and others, he assisted in the formation of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies in 1867. After an eight year delay because of political activism, he published The Subjection of Women in 1869, an amazing classical theoretical statement of the case for woman suffrage and legal equality.

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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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