Today, our world lost a feminist icon. Nawal El Sadaawi was an Egyptian feminist writer, activist and physician. In her book The Hidden Face of Eve, she described how she was subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM), which she fought against ever since, because it was a tool to oppress women. FGM was only in 2008 banned in Egypt.
Nawal was born in 1931 as the second child in a family that had both progressive and traditional views. Nawal was circumcised herself when she was just 6 years old, yet her father also insisted that his children got an education. Nawal did realise at a young age that girls were regarded as less valuable than boys. When both her parents died young, Nawal was left with the care of a large family.
In 1955, Nawal graduated as a medical doctor from Cairo University. She specialized in psychiatry. She later became director of public health for the Egyptian government but had to leave this position when she published her non-fiction book Women and Sex in 1972. In this book, she railed against FGM and the sexual oppression of women.
While the government continued to work against her (for example shutting down the magazine Health which she founded), Nawal never stopped her fight for women’s rights. In 1975, she published Woman at Point Zero (a novel based on the true story of a woman on death row) and in 1977, Nawal published the book The Hidden Face of Eve, where she talked both about her own experience with FGM and her experience as a village doctor witnessing sexual abuse, prostitution and honour killing.
In 1987, Nawal was arrested as part of a group dissidents under president Sadat. She spent 3 months in prison. When president Sadat was assassinated, she was released. They then censored her work and her books were banned. Because of her fight for women’s rights, in which she didn’t shy away from conservative believers, she received death threats, was taken to court and later went into exile in the USA. There, she continued her fight for feminism.
In 2018, a BBC presenter suggested that she tone down her criticism, to which she replied
“No. I should be more outspoken, I should be more aggressive, because the world is becoming more aggressive, and we need people to speak loudly against injustices. I speak loudly because I am angry. ”
While she gained much international recognition for her fight for women’s rights , she never got recognition from her home country Egypt, something she really dreamed off. In 1996, she returned to Egypt.
Very interesting to read: this interview she gave: Saadawi, Nawal El, and Adele S. Newson-Horst. “Conversations with Nawal El Saadawi.” World Literature Today, vol. 82, no. 1, 2008, pp. 55–58.
Erica Garner (1990-2017) was an advocate for police reform in the United States. She became involved with the cause after her father, Eric Garner, was killed while in a chokehold during his arrest.
She was an important Black Lives Matter activist, and staged numerous marches and protests for the cause. The Garner Way Foundation, which she established, worked to promote political awareness and social activism.
San Juan mayor wears shirt saying “HELP US WE ARE DYING”
How to help Puerto Rico (details on where to send money, how to donate supplies, and how to volunteer). Consider also bookmarking this link - even if you can’t afford to donate now (or even if you can!), it’s important to remember that Puerto Rico will be in need for months and even years to come.
“I didn’t start publishing Pennsylvania’s Orange Street News so that people would think I’m cute. I want to get the truth to people, even if it makes grownups mad,” says 9-year-old Hilde Kate Lysiak, publisher of and reporter for the Orange Street News.
After reporting on a suspected homicide in Selinsgrove, Pa., Hilde was harassed by “disgusted” adults commenting on her site, saying her time would be better spent at tea parties and playing with dolls.
[T]hough we may have vague notions of the American women who fought so heroically for the ballot on this side of the Atlantic, they are, in our minds, in our imaginations, in the photographs and first-person narratives that have come down to us, uniformly white people.
Shannon Lucid
(b. 1943) is a NASA astronaut and biochemist. She has flown in space
five times, and is the only American woman to have served aboard the Mir space
station. At one point, she held the record for most time spent in space by an
American, as well as a woman.
Before being selected for the NASA training programme, she held various
teaching and research positions in biochemistry at institutions throughout
Oklahoma. During her multiple missions in space she performed experiments related
to life and physical science. She was the first woman who received the
Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
Sister Mary Kenneth Keller, from Cleveland, Ohio, entered the Sisters of Charity, a Catholic religious order, in 1932 and professed her vows in 1940. Later, she studied at DePaul University, where she received a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics and an M.S. degree in mathematics and physics. In 1965, she received a Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin. Her dissertation work involved constructing algorithms that performed analytic differentiation on algebraic expression, written in CDC FORTRAN 63.
Particle physicist Fabiola Gianotti has become the first woman to head CERN, the organization based in Switzerland that is home to the Large Hadron Collider. She succeeds outgoing director-general Rolf Heuer, who oversaw the laboratory’s operations for the last seven years.
Previously, Gianotti headed the ATLAS collaboration, one of two teams responsible for the discovery of the elusive Higgs boson on July 4, 2012. She quickly became a favorite figure in the media coverage surrounding that achievement — partly because of her gender (only 20% of the ATLAS team were women), and for her elegantly understated style, but also for her good humor.
For instance: Her use of the much-derided Comic-Sans typeface on her Powerpoint slides during that historic announcement was the source of much Internet amusement. Gianotti took the ribbing in stride. She even made an April Fool’s Day decree to make Comic Sans the official document typeface for all of CERN. She was a runner-up for Time magazine’s Person of the Year in 2012.
Gianotti’s father is a retired geologist, while her mother had a passion for music and art. Their daughter, born in 1962, effortlessly straddles both cultural realms, excelling not just in physics, but also music, cooking, and even dance (she trained as a ballerina as a child). “Musical harmony is based on physical principles while in cooking, ingredients must be weighed out with precision,” she told the Guardian in 2014, when her selection as the next director-general of CERN was announced. “At the same time, you have to able to invent, because if one follows the same recipe all the time, you never create anything new.”
Our next #HERstory features an accomplished musician, politician, and writer. Gertrude Bonnin, also known as Zitkala-sa, was a Sioux woman, born in 1876 in South Dakota. She was a talented violinist, and won a scholarship to the Boston Conservatory of Music. In 1913, Gertrude became the first Native American woman to write an opera, titled Sun Dance. Her passion for music remained with her for the rest of her life, but she moved on to politics when she realized that she could advocate for the rights of Native Americans across the country.
In 1916, Gertrude moved with her husband to Washington, where she became the secretary of the Society of the American Indian. There, she edited American Indian Magazine, and wrote books about the mistreatment of Native Americans in Oklahoma. In 1926, Gertrude founded the National Council of American Indians, where her investigations led to important reforms in rights and greater equality for Native Americans.
March is Women’s History Month! To celebrate, we’re spotlighting our exchange alumni, famous stories, and unsung heroes. These women have shown us all that #ItOnlyTakesOne to raise the bar, set a new standard, or make a positive impact. Share your favorite stories for Women’s History Month with us on social media by tagging them with #ItOnlyTakesOne.
Countess Agnes Randolph defended the castle of Dunbar against the English forces of King Edward III.
Though she was faced with one of England’s most able commanders and only had a few people to defend it, she refused to yield the castle when it came under siege in 1338.
She enjoyed mocking the besiegers. When bombarded by stones from catapults, she led her ladies in her best clothes to the damaged parts and wiped off the damage.
Agnes had a battery ram destroyed by dropping a huge boulder on it, which had first been thrown inside the castle walls by the English.
After a siege of almost five months, the English gave up and Agnes retained the castle.
Nowadays, she is still a famous heroine in Scotland.
2015 marks the 25th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope. Launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 24, 1990 and transmitting its first image on May 20 the same year, Hubble has changed the way astronomers perceive the universe. The data it has collected has been the basis for over 10,000 scientific articles, and the images it takes have been found on wall prints, desktop backgrounds and other products countless times. The idea of a telescope the size of Hubble began in 1946 with astrophysicist Lyman Spitzer, but it took nearly 50 years for Spitzer’s idea to go from paper to the cultural and scientific icon that is the Hubble. It wasn’t until the 1960’s and 1970’s that the idea gained traction in the scientific community. In the late 70’s the United States Congress was finally convinced to fund the project. In the 80’s there were myriad technological issues and redesigns. Finally the telescope was launched in 1990, but that still wasn’t the major milestone. It came with a design flaw in the lenses. Not until 1993 did the telescope work properly. But when it did – wow.
Vital to the creation of the telescope was Dr. Nancy Roman, sometimes called the “mother of Hubble.” Roman was one of few women working at NASA at the time, and she was the chief of the Astronomy and Relativity Programs for the space agency until her retirement in 1979. Born in 1925, Roman had a strong fascination with the stars, forming an astronomy club with neighborhood friends, and battled stereotypes about women throughout her education, eventually earning a doctorate in astronomy from the University of Chicago in 1949. NASA was formed July 28, 1958 and while working for the Navy Research Laboratory, Roman was offered a job at NASA as the program director for the agency’s astronomy program in 1959.
As the first chief of the Astronomy and Relativity program for NASA, Roman was responsible for laying the groundwork in space-based astronomy, as well as convincing astronomers to support the idea of an orbiting telescope, rather than a terrestrial one. Slowly but surely, Roman was able to build support for NASA’s astronomy program, and she served as Chief Scientist on the agency’s Orbiting Astronomical Observatory (OAO) program in the late 1960’s. The OAO’s that were launched provided Roman and NASA with valuable information on what it would take to successfully operate a telescope in space. At this stage in her career, Roman was responsible for launching Ultraviolet and X-Ray based satellites into space, making advances in science and broadening the appeal of space astronomy.
In 1962, at a meeting hosted by the National Academy of Sciences, the concept of a telescope with a large three meter lens was proposed. Roman initially opposed the idea, arguing that technology hadn’t advanced to the point that it would be feasible, and instead opted to focus on the OAO projects already on the boards. By 1965 engineers and aerospace companies began proposing designs for a manned space telescope without input from astronomers. Lyman Spitzer’s idea of a orbital space telescope had gained traction, but it would be Roman who carried it out. With the aerospace industry turning out designs deemed unacceptable by astronomers and NASA employees designing goals for a space telescope, Roman bridged the gap between the two groups. In her own words, she decided to organize a joint committee of engineers and scientists to develop a schematic that would “satisfy astronomers’ requirements and still meet the feasibility concerns of the engineers.” After overseeing the programs to determine if the Hubble would actually work and designing the device, Roman also assisted in lobbying Congress by providing written testimony and meeting with congressional staff to secure the funds needed to make the telescope a reality.
Eventually Roman left NASA in 1979 to work with contractors at Goddard Space Center. Today, Nancy Roman lives in Bethesda, Maryland and still attends lectures, as well as spending her time motivating young women to pursue education in the sciences. Without her initiative, determination and leadership, it is doubtful that the Hubble could have become reality.
![eternallybeautifullyblack:
“ The African-American Suffragists History Forgot by Lynn Yaeger
[T]hough we may have vague notions of the American women who fought so heroically for the ballot on this side of the Atlantic, they are, in our minds, in our...](https://cdn.statically.io/img/64.media.tumblr.com/04d1fb06dd46f43a04c58d11fc04289a/tumblr_nwq9ah9cFi1rkianko1_500.jpg)
