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Odds are you haven't heard of Jean Jennings Bartik, who died recently at age 86. More »
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Where is the movie about ninety-six year-old Gertrude Hadley Jeanette? Not only was she New York City's first female cab driver, she was also the first female licensed motorcyclist. And that was before a distinguished theater career, and as a black woman in profoundly racist times. More »
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You probably heard that NASA announced a groundbreaking discovery that expands the definition of life as we know it. Did you know the lead scientist is a woman named Felisa Wolfe-Simon — and she's young? Prepare to feel inadequate. More »
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Nicola Briggs, subway heroine, now says it's about "taking away the shame, from you, as a woman being violated - and bringing the shame back on the perpetrator." (A three-time offender, he'll be deported.) We've asked her to say more. More »
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Public service announcement: I'll be live-tweeting a Radcliffe panel, "Feminism Then and Now" with Susan Faludi and Nell Irvin Painter, among others, at 10:30am, as well as a lunch with Gloria Steinem at 12:30. [Twitter, Radcliffe] More »
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"My fourteen-year-old daughter said, 'Couldn't there be a book about two nice kids who do it and nobody has to die?" Judy Blume told me last night while discussing Forever. There was also a fabulous purple jacket involved. More »
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There's a lot more to Pam Grier than stories of cocaine vaginas. As an interview with the Times today confirms, Grier's emerged from a life "more interesting and dangerous than some of the movies I've done" a strong, resilient woman. More »
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"Because of [your books] I wanted to marry not a slave, but a free woman," one Cairo man told Nawal El Saadawi, 79. Read about the writer, psychiatrist, and outspoken critic of (and survivor of) female genital mutilation here. [Guardian] More »
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Gabby Sidibe's as quotable as ever. "If fashion was porn, this dress would be the money shot," she says. Plus, she dishes on wanting to work with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler (second clip). More »
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Yesterday's health care summit may have featured only four women, but one of them, Representative Louise Slaughter, managed to make a pretty big impression. More »
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"As the girls who loved Anne Frank grew up, they became women who loved Miep Gies, and who hoped that they would do what she did, if ever they were asked to." [Washington Post] More »
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"[You don't have to] be a hero to do your human duty. I am afraid nobody would ever help other people, because who is a hero? I was not. I was just an ordinary housewife and secretary." [AP, NYT] More »
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"But violence against women determines much about who we are as a society...My goal is to keep fighting violence against women until it stops. Imagine what the world would be like if women could walk around without fear." More: [U.S.News] More »
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…Said Sigourney Weaver in a discussion about action heroines. Star Trek's Zoe Saldana fumed: "We fight a room full of men over whether we should wear pants… They think I can do [action] in a shirt and Gucci boots." [EW] More »
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8-year-old Emma Hicks is being hailed as a heroine after she saved her grandmother's life (and her own) by taking the wheel of the family SUV after the grandmother, Jeannie Mendoza, passed out while driving. More »
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We've written about this series before; now it features a non-American woman, Princess Diana. Coming in April: Michelle Obama. Past issues include Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, and, yes, Sarah Palin. Images after the jump. [Daily Mail] More »
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Entertainment Weekly has compiled a list of the "20 All Time Coolest Heroes In Pop Culture," of which only 5 are women: Sydney Bristow, Ellen Ripley, Nancy Drew, Foxy Brown, and Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. More »
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Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging about women in technology. In honor of Ada, we ask you commenters to highlight your heroines working in tech. Do us all proud! [FindingAda] More »
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Two British film fests are celebrating the femme fatale, from silent vamps to the double-crossing dames of 40's noir - rich female characters "no longer prized by Hollywood or the wider world." [Independent] More »
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According to a recent survey, Obama has beaten out Jesus as America's most admired person. Sadly, but unsurprisingly, the top ten heroes were nearly all men, with Mother Theresa coming in at #10. More »
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Love her: Just before today's White House press briefing, MSNBC's cameras caught correspondent Helen Thomas doing what we all feel like doing after lunch on Friday: power-napping. More »
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A teen purse-snatcher got a rude awakening when the elderly lady she was robbing gave chase. Little did she know that 72-year-old retired teacher, Jean Hirst, was a former 100-yard British national sprinting champion! [Neatorama] More »
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By now, we've all heard of Chesley Sullenberger, the heroic pilot who saved the lives of all 155 passengers on USAirways Flight 1549. But there's another hero in this story: 19 year old Brittany Catanzaro. More »
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On this date in 1924, Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman elected to the United States Congress, was born in Brooklyn, New York. Chisholm, who had gone to college to be a teacher, was elected to Congress in 1968, and broke another barrier by becoming the first African-American major-party candidate to run for the Presidency in 1972. While her run was ultimately unsuccessful, Chisholm earned 28 delegates and ensured that the face of American Presidential politics would be forever changed. "I am a candidate for the Presidency of the United States," Chisholm noted, "I make that statement proudly, in the full knowledge that, as a black person and as a female person, I do not have a chance of actually gaining that office in this election year. I make that statement seriously, knowing that my candidacy itself can change the face and future of American politics—that it will be important to the needs and hopes of every one of you—even though, in the conventional sense, I will not win." More »
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On this date in 1972, Corin Tucker, one of the pioneering members of the Riot Grrrl movement of the 1990's and arguably one of the best vocalists in punk rock history, was born. Tucker is a founding member of both Heavens to Betsy and Sleater-Kinney, two all-female bands that utilized the punk rock medium as a means to give a voice to the underground feminist movement of the era. The mainstream media failed to recognize the true intentions of the Riot Grrrl movement, however, as Tucker noted in the Riot Grrrl Retrospective documentary: "I think it was deliberate that we were made to look like we were just ridiculous girls parading around in our underwear. They refused to do serious interviews with us, they misprinted what we had to say, they would take our articles, and our fanzines, and our essays and take them out of context. We wrote a lot about sexual abuse and sexual assault for teenagers and young women. I think those are really important concepts that the media never addressed." Though Sleater-Kinney split in 2006, their legacy remains, paving the way for other women to make their voice heard in the loudest way possible by starting a band of their own. As Tucker herself once said, "We just want to say that we're not here to fuck the band. We are the band." A sample of Tucker's work, after the jump. More »
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The world as we know it will be a different place next weekend: the election will be over, and after two years of endless coverage, analysis, worry, excitement, and anticipation, we'll finally know who our next president will be. As Election Day approaches, it's important to remember how important women have been in this election: with two females on the national stage, one as a potential President and one as a potential Vice President, the focus on women voters has been more intense than ever. But beyond the PUMAs and Obama Girl and the women who strangely came to represent all women during the course of this election, there are the rest of us, women who are proud of and plan to exercise our right to vote, a right that was given to us through the hard work of other women, who refused to remain silent, and demanded that we have a say in how the government controls our daily lives, and the lives of our future daughters, nieces, and granddaughters. To celebrate Election Day and the power of women voters, I've assembled a little tribute, after the jump. More »
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After what was perhaps the most exhausting, exhilarating, heart-breaking, moving, and amazing year of her life, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton turns 61 years old today. It is hard to even put into a short blog post what kind of a life this woman has lead over the past 61 years, but it has truly been an extraordinary one so far. I suppose I could list the biographical elements of her life, but anyone who has paid any attention to American politics over the past 15 years already knows of Hillary's accomplishments as both a lawyer, a First Lady, and a Senator from the state of New York. It is strange to think that at one point in this election, Hillary Clinton was the woman everyone was taking shots at, perhaps at times for the right reasons, and perhaps at times for reasons that look a bit silly now, in comparison to the platform on which Sarah Palin stands. But nobody can deny that Hillary Clinton, at her best, has the power to inspire both women and men, both little girls and little boys, to want something better, to keep pushing for something more, as her speech at the DNC this year showcased. In honor of Senator Clinton's birthday, the clip is after the jump. Happy Birthday, Hillary. And thank you. More »
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On this day in 1773, Phillis Wheatley, a poet who is widely considered to be one of the founders of African-American literature, was freed from slavery based on her international success as a poet. Kidnapped from her home in Africa at the age of 6, Wheatley was purchased by John Wheatley of Boston, a well-to-do merchant who, along with his family, instructed Phillis in a myriad of subjects, including history, religion, and English. Her poetry was so beautiful and impressive that Wheatley even had to go to court to prove that she had, in fact, written it. Though she eventually died in poverty at the age of 31, Wheatley's poetry paved the path to her own freedom, as well as the path for many other African-American writers. One of my favorite Wheatley poems is after the jump. More »
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On this day in 1915, British nurse Edith Cavell was executed for her role in helping over 200 Allied soldiers escape to the Netherlands from Belgium during World War 1. Ms. Cavell, who was stationed at the Berkendael Institute, a nursing school that was converted to a Red Cross military hospital once the Great War broke out, was captured after several Allied soldiers were reported missing from the hospital. After roughly 10 weeks in solitary confinement, and despite the protestations of the United States government, who warned Germany of the potential repercussions of harming Ms. Cavell, she was led before a firing squad and shot to death at the age of 49. The night before her execution, she made peace with her impending death and the circumstances that led her to it, telling her pastor: "Patriotism is not enough, I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone." More »
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Remember when 8-year-old Yemeni Nojoud Muhammed Nasser (pictured) filed for divorce against the 28-year-old perv she was forced to marry, and that divorce was granted? Well let's hope this as yet unnamed 8-year-old Saudi girl meets the same fate as Nasser. According to the BBC the Saudi girl in question was married off by her father to a man in his 50s without her knowledge. The girl's mother is pushing for an annulment, but the father wants the marriage to remain valid. [BBC] More »
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Nojoud Muhammed Nasser wants a divorce. She is eight years old, and really too cute to be illustrating an angry feminist rant, but I guess that's sort of the point: Nasser's dad married her off to a thirty-year-old child molester, and while that sort of thing is perfectly legal in Yemen since they amended the marital age limit laws in 1999, the molester was not supposed to try to actually molest her, according to the law, until she was "mature." Remarkably, he did not comply. It's a tossup who is the more reprehensible man in this story: the husband —"Whenever I wanted to play in the yard he beat me and asked me to go to the bedroom with him," she tells the Yemen Times, or the dad, who "beat me and told me that I must marry this man, and if I did not, I would be raped and no law and no sheikh in this country would help me" — until you learn her dad is a beggar who probably has mental problems. Some interesting context re the Yemen Times: they employ columnist Maged Thabet Al-Kholidy, author of the recent internet sensation: "There Must Be Violence Against Women." More »
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In our free time we've been learning all we can about ousted Obama foreign policy adviser Samantha Power, so here you have it for your attempts at intelligent barroom conversation: she's a big drinker and a big talker. She did not plan to take a position in any sort of Obama cabinet precisely because she likes to talk too much. She was inspired to be a foreign correspondent during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Calls Obama a "seriously special dude." Thinks too much conviction can be a dangerous thing because it erodes empathy. Thinks genocide has "brutalized" the sensibilities of all who recognize it, making for something like a trickle-down effect that gave us Abu Ghraib. Has that same problem all smart pretty girls have where dudes don't pay attention to what she's saying because they are too busy trying to feel her up which may be why she has to say reckless things. Is dating a fellow Obama adviser. But most endearing of all, we found, was her advice on love, offered in this 2006 commencement speech. More »
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