Category: History
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Mary Wollstonecraft
She was not your feminist fairy godmother. Buckle Up, Besties! Today we’re headed to late eighteenth century London to meet Mary Wollstonecraft, a woman who spent her life getting paid to be difficult in print. She didn’t invent the notion that women deserve an education, rights, or a say in their own lives. Other women…
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Kathleen Hanna
She wrote “SLUT” on her stomach in marker before shows, so the men reducing her to a body would have to read the word off her skin, in her handwriting.
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The Women of the British SOE
Britain sent women behind enemy lines because Nazi sexism made them invisible. A man of fighting age was a target. A woman with a shopping basket was furniture.
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Mary Dixon Kies
Mary Dixon Kies deserves more than a Women’s History Month trivia mention. In 1809, she became the first woman widely recognized as receiving a U.S. patent in her own name, for a process of weaving straw with silk or thread to make hats and bonnets. That may sound quaint until you remember hats were an…
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Mary Anderson
In 1902, Mary Anderson watched a streetcar driver lean his face into a sleet storm because he could not see through the glass.
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Ada Yonath
Ada Yonath, a trailblazing scientist, dedicated her career to mapping the ribosome, a critical cellular machine. Despite encountering skepticism and adversity, she pioneered techniques like cryo-bio-crystallography, significantly advancing structural biology. Her groundbreaking work earned her the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2009, highlighting the importance of women in scientific discovery.
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Anita Garibaldi
Anita Garibaldi rode out of an enemy encirclement twelve days after giving birth, with the infant on her saddle. A bullet went through her hat.
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Peggy LeMaux
Peggy Lemaux, initially steered away from math by a high school counselor, defied early limitations to become a pioneering figure in biotechnology, contributing to vital advancements in genetically engineered crops. Despite her significant achievements, many projects were never commercialized due to market constraints and public resistance, yet she continues to pursue impactful research on drought-resistant…
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Jane Addams & Ellen Gates Starr
Hull House, founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr in 1889, became a pivotal social reform hub in Chicago, addressing issues like poverty, child labor, and labor conditions. It empowered women reformers such as Florence Kelley and Julia Lathrop, transforming community needs into policies while advocating dignity and rights for marginalized populations.
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Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Jocelyn Bell Burnell: The Nobel She Didn’t Win, and Says She Didn’t Deserve Picture ninety-six feet of paper. Every single night, another ninety-six feet. That is what a chart recorder spat out at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory outside Cambridge in 1967, and a twenty-four-year-old graduate student named Jocelyn Bell read all of it. By…