Growing up, I remember learning of the accomplishments of many people in US and world history and more often than not, those people were men. Women received much less coverage. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that the accomplishments of women have long been minimized, dismissed, or ignored.  This is another way that sexism has played out in society. Denying the accomplishments of women is an insult. It treats them as if they’re unimportant…as if they haven’t contributed significantly to events throughout human history. In this ongoing series, I’ll be highlighting notable women, historically important women, and those women who ought to be acknowledged.  My intent is to show that women have contributed to the course of human history and ought to be recognized, rather than ignored or overlooked. One of the most effective Union spies during the Civil War, Elizabeth Van Lew is today’s woman of the day.

Continue reading “Woman of the Day: Elizabeth Van Lew” →

Growing up, I remember learning of the accomplishments of many people in US and world history and more often than not, those people were men. Women received much less coverage. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that the accomplishments of women have long been minimized, dismissed, or ignored.  This is another way that sexism has played out in society. Denying the accomplishments of women is an insult. It treats them as if they’re unimportant…as if they haven’t contributed significantly to events throughout human history. In this ongoing series, I’ll be highlighting notable women, historically important women, and those women who ought to be acknowledged.  My intent is to show that women have contributed to the course of human history and ought to be recognized for their accomplishments.  Maria Tallchief, the first Native American prima ballerina of the New York City Ballet, is today’s woman of the day.

Continue reading “Woman of the day: Maria Tallchief” →

Growing up, I remember learning of the accomplishments of many people in US and world history and more often than not, those people were men. Women received much less coverage. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that the accomplishments of women have long been minimized, dismissed, or ignored. This is another way that sexism has played out in society. Denying the accomplishments of women is an insult. It treats them as if they’re unimportant…as if they haven’t contributed significantly to events throughout human history. In this ongoing series, I’ll be highlighting notable women, historically important women, and those women who ought to be acknowledged.  My intent is to show that women have contributed to the course of human history and ought to be recognized, rather than ignored or overlooked. One of the first scientists to measure carbon dioxide levels in seawater, Dr. Katsuko Saruhashi is today’s woman of the day.

Dr. Saruhashi was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1920.  After graduating from Toho University in 1943 she met and befriended Japanese meteorologist Yasuo Miyake, who helped her get a job at the Meteorological Research Institute. Around 1950, Miyake suggested that Dr. Saruhashi look into measuring the concentration of carbon dioxide in seawater. At the time, there was little interest in the idea of global warming, thus Dr. Saruhashi had to design most of her techniques and make much of her own equipment. For her work, which involved measurements of how carbon dioxide varied by depth and location, Dr. Saruhashi was awarded a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Tokyo, becoming the first woman to do so. In 1958, she founded the Society of Japanese Women Scientists to help support and further the careers of women in the sciences.

In the early 1950s, several world governments conducted above-ground nuclear tests at remote sites; tests which released radioactive fallout into the atmosphere.  Following the death of a Japanese fisherman downwind of one of the tests, Dr. Saruhashi and her team were tasked with measuring the amount of radioactivity reaching Japan by seawater and rainwater.  Dr. Saruhashi and her lab found that radioactivity from the nuclear tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll reached the coast of Japan after a year and a half. Protesters in the United States and the Soviet Union used her research to pressure those governments to abandon above-ground nuclear testing. Following this, she continued her work on radioactivity, producing some of the first research on nuclear testing.

In later years, she showed that the Pacific Ocean releases twice as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as it absorbs from the air, suggesting that the ocean isn’t likely to help combat the effects of global warming.

Throughout her career, Dr. Saruhashi received numerous honors and awards, including:

• first woman to be elected to the Science Council of Japan (1980)
• the Avon Special Prize for Women (1981)
• the Miyake prize for geochemistry (1985)
• the Tanaka prize from the Society of Sea Water Sciences (1993)

Dr. Katsuko Saruhashi passed away in 2007, at the age of 87.

(sources)

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Facts on File

Growing up, I remember learning of the accomplishments of many people in US and world history and more often than not, those people were men. Women received much less coverage. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that the accomplishments of women have long been minimized, dismissed, or ignored.  This is another way that sexism has played out in society. Denying the accomplishments of women is an insult. It treats them as if they’re unimportant…as if they haven’t contributed significantly to events throughout human history. In this ongoing series, I’ll be highlighting notable women, historically important women, and those women who ought to be acknowledged.  My intent is to show that women have contributed to the course of human history and ought to be recognized, rather than ignored or overlooked.  Ernestine Rose, today’s woman of the day, was a feminist atheist, abolitionist, and major force in the women’s rights movement in the 19th century.

Born in Russian Poland to wealthy parents in 1810, Ernestine Rose (née Ernestine Sismondi) developed a distaste for religion early in life. Her father, a rabbi, would engage in frequent fasts which led to Rose questioning why God would exact such hardships on his followers.  By the age of 16, when her mother died, she had rejected the notion of female inferiority and the religious texts supporting the idea. Shortly thereafter, unbeknownst to Rose, her father had betrothed her to a young Jewish friend of his. Not wanting to be married to a man she neither knew nor loved, she traveled to a secular civil court where she pleaded her case herself. The court ruled in her favor, freeing her from her betrothal and ruling that she was entitled to her full inheritance from her mother. She gave her inheritance to her father, keeping enough to allow her to travel, and travel she did.

In Prussia, she protested the antisemitic laws that required non-native Jews to have a sponsor. Her invention of a room deodorizer brought Rose enough money to continue traveling (she would later visit the Netherlands and Paris).

After moving to England in 1831, Ernestine Rose met utopian socialist Robert Dale Owen. With Owen, Ernestine Rose helped found the Association of All Classes of All Nations, an organization that sought full legal equality for all people.  She and fellow Owen supporter William Rose married shortly thereafter, and the two of them moved to New York City.

Following her arrival in America, Rose began working on women’s rights. With Paulina Wright and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Rose played a key role in the effort to win women the right to control property they brought into marriage. The Married Women’s Property Act of 1848 successfully passed, and a few years later, Rose helped win another law that granted New York women equal guardianship of their children.

An outspoken and popular advocate for women’s rights, Rose became president of the National Women’s Rights Convention in 1954, and when questioned about her fitness for that role (due to her atheism), she was supported by Susan B. Anthony.

Known as the “Queen of the Platform” for her speeches on women’s rights and public education, Rose was also a strong opponent of slavery. On one visit to speak out against slavery in the South, one newspaper characterized her as “a thousand times below a prostitute”, for her atheism. Her anti-slavery advocacy saw collaborations with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, and Frederick Douglass.

In 1869, after becoming an American citizen, Rose and her husband retired to England. Despite the efforts of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Rose chose to remain in England, where she died in 1892. Susan B. Anthony would later consider Rose a pioneer of the women’s suffrage movement (despite having died decades before women gained the right to vote).

(sources)

http://womenshistory.about.com/od/marriedwomensproperty/p/ernestine_rose.htm

http://jwa.org/people/rose-ernestine

Growing up, I remember learning of the accomplishments of many people in US and world history and more often than not, those people were men. Women received much less coverage. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that the accomplishments of women have long been minimized, dismissed, or ignored.  This is another way that sexism has played out in society. Denying the accomplishments of women is an insult. It treats them as if they’re unimportant…as if they haven’t contributed significantly to events throughout human history. In this ongoing series, I’ll be highlighting notable women, historically important women, and those women who ought to be acknowledged.  My intent is to show that women have contributed to the course of human history and ought to be recognized, rather than ignored or overlooked. Today’s woman of the day, Eve Queler, is recognized as a pioneer in the world of opera.

Born in New York City in 1936, Eve Queler (née Eve Rabin) had an aptitude for music at an early age. She began piano lessons at the age of 5 and attended the New York City High School of Music and Art, the Hebrew Union School of Education and Sacred Music, and the Mannes College of Music.  While attending Mannes College, she began the study of conducting under Carl Bamberger. Queler faced slow progress as the field was traditionally all-male. Nonetheless, she continued to study, even working with Joseph Rosenstock of the Metropolitan Opera. Her first public appearance as a conductor was an outdoor performance of a truncated version of Cavalleria rusticana in 1966.

In 1967, Queler organized the Opera Orchestra of New York, in part to gain experience conducting professionally (and also to give opportunities to singers and instrumentalists).  In time, the orchestra established itself, and Queler received public acclaim as one of only a few women to become a professional orchestra conductor. Queler would go on to conduct over 100 operas in concert at Carnegie Hall as well as engagements around the world. In 2010, she received a lifetime achievement award in the field of opera from the National Endowment of the Arts.

(resources)
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/486976/Eve-Queler

http://www.evequeler.com/bio.shtml

http://womenshistory.about.com/library/bio/blqueler.htm