Great Buzzfeed Post!

In a search for a subject for my next post I stumbled across a post from Buzzfeed. Usually Buzzfeed, in my experience, merely has entertaining articles, not necessarily educational/historical ones. The article, 100 Inspiring Women, lists 100 women who were the first to do something throughout history. There is a timeline laid out with these women and their accomplishments. Take a look!

First Woman Doctor in Britain Was A... Man?

Did that title confuse you a little? Hopefully it got your attention!
Dr. James Barry, a British physician was a man of great renown. Known for his ill temper and great medical expertise, the man who had become Inspector General of Military Hospitals kept a sensitive secret throughout his medical career. This secret would not become exposed until after his death and burial, something that he had tried to prevent from happening even then.

Margaret Ann Bulkley was born in County Cork, Ireland in the 1790's. After her father, Jeremiah Bulkley, a greengrocer, was arrested for debt, Margaret and her mother turned to James Barry, Margaret's maternal uncle, for support. James Barry, a well known artist, was a liberal and forward thinker for his time. He was a member of a set who strongly advocated women's rights and education. After his Barry's death he left a large amount of money to Margaret and her mother, while his group of friends gladly took them under their care and support.

The Bulkley women moved to London where Margaret began taking lessons from Edward Fryer, a physician. Margaret was a quite capable student, and before long a rather elaborate and ambitious plan began to take shape. It was decided that Margaret would decide herself as a young man and enter university to train as a doctor, as women were not permitted to study at the university.

In 1809 the new and "resurrected" James Barry sailed from London to Edinburgh with Mrs. Buckley to establish themselves as aunt and nephew. Margaret Ann Bulkley was no longer. Margaret/James enrolled at the university as a medical student and the mother and daughter were soon well established in the area as aunt and nephew.

Thanks to an overcoat to disguise her figure and a tweak to her age to explain her higher voice and smooth chin, Margaret, now James, flew through medical school and three years later returned to London as an apprentice surgeon for six months at St. Thomas' Hospital.

In 1813 Margaret joined the army, and three years later was posted to Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. While in South Africa she hired a black manservant who would serve her for half a century, during which he would lay out six towels every day for her to use to broaden her shoulders and hide her curves.

Dr. Barry was known to be a bit of a "prickly" character, highly defensive of his honor, and very outspoken about his beliefs. When one realizes that Dr. Barry was actually a woman, I feel that you gain a better understanding as to why "he" behaved the way he did.

Apart from Barry's personality, Dr. James Barry became a surgeon of great acclaim, being the first surgeon to successfully compete a Cesarean section in Africa, saving the life of both mother and child. Barry ardently fought for proper hygiene practices, radically changed the treatment of leprosy and tropical diseases, and raged against poor medical treatment.

Although Barry's personal life and behavior had many flaws, the medical achievements reached by Dr. James Barry, a woman, were amazing for anyone of that time period. Even though she had to live her life as a man, her achievements show that, given the chance, women were just as capable as men.

While Margaret did not become the first female doctor in Britain as a woman, but as a man, she was still the first female doctor in Britain.

"Women are Unfit to Fly"

So recently I substituted for a second grade class. For reading we read this short true story about a woman I had never heard of before. I have been meaning to write about her, but for some reason just have not gotten around to it. I can honestly say there is no good reason as to why I have not posted in almost two weeks, I just have not. I have wanted to write about her, so I figured I should work on it today, since I had my computer out anyways!

Ruth Bancroft Law was born May 21, 1887 in Lynn, Massachusetts. Her parents were Sarah Bancroft Breed and Frederick Henry Law. She had at least one older brother, Rodman, who eventually went on to become one of the first stuntmen. There is not much information about Ruth's childhood, but there is evidence that she was a tomboy growing up and was adventurous. When Ruth was still young she fell in love with flying and airplanes. She purchased her first airplane from Orville Wright. While Wright willingly sold her the plane he refused to teach her how to fly it, claiming that women were unfit to fly.

In the summer of 1912 she started flying lessons at Burgess Flying School and took her first flight a month later in July. The next month she took her first solo flight and in November 1912 she received her pilot's license. Her adventurous streak rolled over into her aviation career. Ruth became a competitive daredevil and was making as much as $9,000 a week doing exhibitions. After three years of flying she announced that she would be performing a loop the loop for her audience. No woman had yet completed a loop the loop. Her husband, who apparently was always nervous when she performed, was against her completing this daring feat. However, Ruth was quite capable and not only successfully completed a single loop the loop, but did two loops!! This made her the first woman to complete the loop the loop. That same year, 1915, she also became the first woman to fly at night.

The next year would prove to be another record breaking year for Ruth. One was an altitude competition, where after competing multiple times and being judged unfairly she insisted that she be judged the same as the men and at Sheepshead Bay in New York set a new record of 11, 200 feet. However, her greatest endeavor was a cross country distance record, which is is the story I read about in the class I substituted for. The former record was 462 miles, she completed a flight from Chicago to New York state, a distance of 590 miles. . The next day she flew to New York City, but had to make an emergency landing while flying over Manhattan as her engine cut out due to lack of fuel. She made this flight in November of 1916, in freezing cold weather. She wore multiple layers, with a skirt over it all, as she was a "proper lady". Crowds celebrated her record breaking flight and President Woodrow Wilson toasted her at a dinner held in her honor in December of 1916.

When the United States entered World War I the following year Ruth promptly enlisted as a pilot. She learned that she would not be allowed to fly in combat and wrote an article for the "Air Travel" magazine entitled "Let Women Fly". She was informed that she would not be allowed to fly, but would receive a uniform and could help with recruiting. She was the first woman to wear a United States Marine NCO uniform and continued to do exhibitions to raise money for the Red Cross.

After the war Ruth continued flying in exhibitions and breaking records. She once again broke an altitude record by reaching a height of over 14,500 feet in 1919. Three years later Ruth announced her retirement from flying. She stated that she had been in the limelight long enough and now it was her husband's turn. She explained by saying, "Why? Because I'm a normal woman and want a home, a baby, and everything else that goes with married life. Why, I've been married almost ten years to Charlie Oliver, the man who has managed my exhibitions, and scarcely anyone knew who he was. And the poor boy was so worried about me all that time that every time I went up he lost a pound. It was a matter of choosing between love and profession. Of course, I'm just crazy about flying, but one's husband is more important!"  

After her retirement Charlie and Ruth moved to California where they lived for almost fifty years. Ruth died on the first of December, 1970 at the age of 83.

First Female Scientists in Antarctica

It seems that many people agreed with Darlington when she stated that she did not think women belonged in Antarctica. It was long believed, by both sexes, that the female sex, the "weaker" of the two, would not be able to endure the rough Antarctic continent. Antarctica became, in many ways, the last, great "boys club". It was as if Antarctica was a giant tree house with an even bigger "NO GIRLS ALLOWED" hung up above it. Sure, the occasional "girl" got it, due to special circumstances such as being married to a member of an expedition, but they were not allowed in based on their own merits. In fact, the United States Navy REFUSED to transport women to Antarctica. Even if American scientists, who happened to be female, were able to somehow get to Antarctica, they would not be allowed to work on the ice, as the National Science Foundation (NSF) forbade women from working on the ice.

*Now, for the past several days I have been trying to figure out for sure who the first woman was to actually be allowed on Antarctica as a scientist. I keep finding articles and such that state who the first American female scientist, or Australian female scientist, etc. but not just the flat out first female scientist.*

It wasn't until the 1950's when Marie V. Klenova, a Russian marine geologist, was a part of an oceanographic team that was mapping uncharted portions of the continent that we see the first woman as an official part of scientific team in Antarctica. Russian women had sailed aboard whaling ships for years in the area, which made it a bit easier for her to break into the Antarctic scientific world. Klenova's work was part of the first atlas of Antarctica which the Soviet Union published.

Besides Marie Klenova, women did not do much work on the ice in the 40's and 50's as many countries, like the United States, did not allow women on the ice. In fact, it was not until the very end of the 1960's, after the Women's Liberation Movement, that we begin to see women actively participating in scientific endeavors on the Antarctic continent. The first woman to become a member of the United States Antarctic Research Program was Christine Muller-Schwarze, a psychologist with her Ph.D. from Utah State University. Alongside her scientist husband she studied the behavior of penguins on the Antarctic.

After Muller-Schwarze was able to break into the scene, the floodgates opened, and more women came to work on the frozen continent. Just a few weeks after the study of penguin behavior started, an all women team from Ohio State University arrived, headed by Lois Jones. Among the four women team was a 19 year old undergraduate student, Terry Tickhill Terrell, who joined the team after despairing at the idea of spending her entire college career inside of a chemistry lab.

The team from OSU, Kay Lindsay, Terry Tickhill Terrell, Lois Jones, and Eilenn McSaveney. 

Terry Terrell, who had never traveled more than 300 miles from her home, was now traveling to the bottom of the world, not quite knowing all of the barriers that had always stood between women and the place she was now headed to. There was a concern, or maybe a belief, that these women would not be able to make it down in the Antarctic. Their every move was watched, would they mess up? Would they come off weak, needy, inept? Knowing that they were under extreme scrutiny, the women kept to themselves, taking care of every issue they could on their own, and did what they came to do.

After awhile everyone came to accept that these women were there, and not only were they there, but they were doing their jobs quite well. Eventually the Navy decided to "cash in" on this novelty of women on their continent. Up to this point no woman had ever stepped foot on the South Pole. The Navy took the women down to the South Pole and organized the moment of the first woman to step foot on the very bottom of the Earth. The only problem was, who would be first? Rear Admiral D.F. Welch who was the commander of the naval forces in Antarctica at the time decided with Solomon like wisdom that the solution was for all six women to jump off the back of the plane at the same time, so they could all be the first woman to step foot on the South Pole. 

November 12, 1969 LtR Pam Young, Jean Pearson, Terry Tickhill Terell, Lois Jones, Eileen McSaveney, and Kay Lindsay.

Woman had arrived at the South Pole. It was a momentous occasion and was an event that was a long time coming. While women are still not in equal number as men on the Antarctic continent, they are at least now represented, and more so than they have been in past years. 

First Women in Antarctica

The history of the discovery and exploration of Antarctica is a long one. From rumors of the continent, to the near discovery in the 1770's, to the first people to finally reach the South Pole in 1911, it stretches across centuries. While the first man stepped foot in 1911, the first woman would not arrive until more than two decades later, with Caroline Mikkelsen, the wife of a Norwegian whaling captain being the first woman to step foot on Antarctica in 1935. Her excursion to Antarctica was brief, but it was the first of its kind. It would be more than a decade until Antarctica would see another woman.

Caroline Mikkelsen

In 1947 we see the first women to winter in Antarctica, with the arrival of two women traveling with their husbands who were members of the Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition. Edith "Jackie" Ronne and Jennie Darlington, two women who originally planned on only journeying with their husbands as far as Valparasio, Chile, the last stop before reaching Antarctica, wound up at the last minute continuing with the Expedition to Antarctica. According to an obituary in the Washington Post, Ronne actually never planned on going with her husband at all, she traveled to Beaumont, Texas to see him off, but planned on returning home after that. The obituary states, "She packed little more than a good suit, a good dress, nylon stockings and high heels for the trip." However, her husband persuaded her to go with him, and she gave in, joining him for the journey, from Panama to Chile.

Jennie and Edith

Jackie making coffee in the hut.

*These two pictures came from The Antarctic Book of Cooking and Cleaning

Once Jackie was convinced into going to Antarctica with her husband, she wanted another woman to go with her. Jennie Darlington, new wife of the chief pilot of the Expidition, Harry Darlington, was to be the second woman. Ronne was the first American woman to step foot onto Antarctica, and Ronne and Darlington became the first women ever to spend the winter in Antarctica. After they left Antarctica Darlington stated, "Taking everything into consideration, I do not think women belong in Antarctica." Ronne's opinion was, "I will never, never go back to the Antarctic." While Darlington stuck with her opinion, Ronne returned thrice more to the Antarctic in her future years. 

These three women were the first women to ever step foot on Antarctica. Jackie Ronne was the first woman to assist the members of an Expedition, although she was not technically a member of the Expedition, she did serve as their recorder-historian. 

Powerful- What Does it Mean?

As I search for the next woman to highlight, either from Australia or South America, I run various Google searches hoping to stumble upon the right woman to feature next. I usually start out with a search of powerful women from that continent. Guess what sort of links pop up when I run this search? See for yourself. Someone who is powerful is someone who has influence in the business world. Someone who has money, or influence over those with money. While some of these women most definitely are wonderful role models, women who are powerful, self confident, and able, not all of them are. Some are not great role models, and definitely not the kind of woman I want to feature.

For whatever reasons, this is the type of women who are considered to be the most powerful. Like I have said before, this is not necessarily the type of woman I am looking for. 

The First Afrikaner Feminist?

Ready or not, here she is! So the past several days I have been doing various Google searches trying to find just the right woman to highlight for the African continent. During these searches I found several amazing women, some who were actually from a country in Africa, some who were born elsewhere and moved there. Some of these women were dead, most were still alive. However, none of them were quite what I was looking for.

Sometime either yesterday or the day before I stumbled across a journal that had been put online from a few different woman who had been in the concentration camps during the Boer War. These were interesting, but there was not quite what I wanted. (Really, I do not think I could tell you exactly who I was searching for, or what I wanted, but I felt like I had not found the right individual yet.) After finding these journals I decided to do a bit of digging around to see if I could find a woman who lived somewhere around that time period that felt right.

Concentration Camps during war (1899-1902).

Yesterday I came across a name and a short blip about a woman and it struck a nerve.

       "A single Afrikaans woman raised her voice against this ideology. She was Marie du Toit, the             sister of Prof. J.D. du Toit, popularly known as the Afrikaans poet Totius. In her book, Vrou en           feminist, of Iets oor die vrouevraagstuk, published in 1921, she objected against the                            recommendation of a committee headed by her brother that, on biblical grounds, women should          not be allowed to vote, neither in church nor in parliament."

I hadn't read much more than that, but I felt like here was a woman who was power. A woman who had stood up for something she believed in, against something she felt was wrong. The fact that she wrote a book going against something that her brother was backing, something that she objected to, was an idea that I just loved. 

I started digging around online, trying to find more information about this woman. I did not have a ton to go on, so I just searched for her name. Apparently there is/was an actress with the same name. I tried different search tactics to try and find more about her. 

Some back history to why Marie du Toit wrote her book and what was going on around her at that time. Several years prior to the publishing of her book, a monument, The Women's Monument was built in Bloemfontein. This monument was in recognition of the state and bravery of the Afrikaaner women. While this monument sounds like a great idea, no women were able to participate in the inauguration of monument, no women were interred there, and the suffering of the women was used to garner worldwide sympathy for the cause of the Boers. Actually, a man who allowed women to have a bake sale so that he could have funds to write a history of the woman, wrote the history to show that these women's souls "were too pure for politics, and that they had no intentions of becoming suffragettes like the women in Europe who worshipped the ideals of the French Revolution." 

Basically, at this time, in this country, women were applauded for show submission and being subservient to their husbands. Since their souls were too "pure and fragile" for much else, they were expected to stay at home and take care of the family. (Now, I am not saying that no woman should ever stay home and take care of their family, I think that this is something that is actually a noble calling, and not something to be looked down upon.) Women were not allowed any power, political, religious, etc. and were seen as not strong enough, smart enough, etc. to hold any power or position. 

Marie du Toit wrote her book in response and reaction to the decision made by the Reformed Church of South Africa in 1920, of which her brother had a part of, that stated women would not be permitted to vote about matters of the church. Apparently, this committed had found verses in the bible that they believed supported their decision to deny women the ability to vote in both state and church matters. Marie du Toit, however, debated that it was not Jesus nor nature that kept women held to private life, but rather men who did this. She, in fact, argued that it was a time when  those suffering from poverty and oppression needed the insight and intelligence of women to help. In addition to this she believed that women should be allowed equal access to education and pay. She stated that the restrictions placed on women and the subservience expected of them was unnatural, and her interpretation of the Bible was that Jesus sought for women to be human beings, free akin to men. It was not the right of men to choose whether or not women could vote and be involved in public and political life. She asked Afrikaaner women to stand up and stand together to get their rights and to not feel unworthy. She wanted women to moved out of the private life in their home, and to move into a world where they could hold political power and make a difference in the world.

As far as Marie du Toit's life, little can be found on the internet. She was born in 1880 and remained an unmarried school teacher until her death at 51 in 1931. She did have tuberculosis, and I am assuming that this is what she died of. At the time of the publishing of her book she was little known, with apparently no supporters. She was a lone voice in a time and a country where her views were much before their time. Even today in a world of feminism and a struggle for equality between men and women, she is a unheard of individual.

Irena Sendler

There are certain events and times in history that almost everyone knows about. Ever heard of little events known as World War I and World War II? What about the Holocaust? In addition to these events most people recognize the names of individuals like Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, and Adolf Hitler. Some may be more familiar with one of the other of these men, but it is more than likely that you have at least HEARD these names before. As a former History major in college and an avid history fan myself, I am more than familiar with these names. While studying these individuals was fascinating in a terrible way, I actually enjoyed learning about the little known people throughout history, both your average every day Jane and Joe who represented the people as well as the unsung heroes throughout history.

Irena Sendler. Does the name ring a bell? No, not Irene Adler from Sherlock Holmes, who due to the most recent adaptions of the movie and BBC series has become just about as infamous as Sherlock himself. Irena Sendler was a name that I had not heard about either until I came across this "pin" on Pinterest, a year or more ago.

I instantly pinned the pin and would occasionally think of this little known woman who had done such an amazing thing in her life. Here was a "real women with power". I have done a bit more research on Irena, and I believe that a few of the facts on this pin are incorrect, as far as her occupation, etc. These little inaccuracies do not make her story any less amazing or her any less powerful. The story of who she was "rediscovered" is in and of itself a great process.

Life in a Jar is the official website of a project that has helped share Irena Sendler's life with the world and in so many ways have changed the lives of thousands more, even after her life has ended. 16 years ago three high schools students from Kansas were helped by their teacher to undertake a project that would last the entire year. The website explains it as a, "National History Day project which would, among other things, extend the boundaries of the classroom to families in the community, contribute to history learning, teach respect and tolerance, and meet our classroom motto, "He who changes one person, changes the world entire.'" After seeing a cut out of a News and World report from five years prior that briefly mentioned Irena, the young women set out on a journey of discovery of Irena.

Among other things, they discovered that Irena was a young Protestant or Catholic (I believe) social worker during the Nazi regime. She was able to gain access to the Warsaw Ghetto, where Jewish families lived and many ultimately were sent to the death camps, and essentially talked these desperate Jewish families into given up their children in hopes of their survival. She then sneaked these children out the Ghetto, and was able to adopt them into families or hide them in orphanages and convents in Poland. She and the people she worked with kept a coded list of the real names of the children, as their names had to be changed to protect their Jewish identity, and hoped that one day they would be able to find these children and reveal to them their heritage that had to be hidden for their safety. 

After several years Irena was captured and by the Nazis and beaten to such an extent that both of her legs were broken. Eventually the Polish underground was able to bribe a guard and get her to safety and into hiding. 

After WWII Irena Sendler was branded a fascist by the Communists and for many years her story was mostly hidden. It is amazing to be that this woman, along with several others rescued 2,500 children during such a horrible period, and yet hers is not a name that is known. I have always felt that while there is so much darkness and ugliness in the world and we should be aware of it, there is just as much, if not more light, but it is not those things we celebrate. 

My summary about Irena Sendler was very brief, and there is much more information out there. I strongly urge you to go to Life In A Jar which is about the project that the young women who "rediscovered" Irena have continued working on. Her story was turned into a play, there is now a book, as well as a movie. Almost two dozen colleges and universities are now using her letters and other documents as part of the curriculum. "He who changes one person, changes the world entire."