WOW2 - Early November: Women Trailblazers and Events in OUR History - 2017

Welcome to WOW2 — Early November!!

WOW2 used to a monthly sister blog to This Week in the War on Women, but it’s grown so much that now it’s a twice-monthly blog, splitting the month in half. These are the women and events from November 1 to November 15.

The purpose of WOW2 is to learn about and honor women of achievement, including many who’ve been ignored or marginalized in most of the history books, and to mark moments in women’s history. It also serves as a reference archive of women’s history. There are so many more phenomenal women than I ever dreamed of finding, and all too often their stories are almost unknown, even to feminists and scholars. Just in the first two weeks of November, we have stories all the way from a woman born on November 8,1342, to Hilary Clinton’s run for the presidency in 2016.

Incredibly, this is my third year of work on WOW2, and every week I’m still discovering more stories of outstanding women. These trailblazers have a lot to teach us about persistence in the face of overwhelming odds. I hope you will find reclaiming our past as much of an inspiration as I do.

This Week in the War on Women 

just posted, so be sure to go there next and catch up on the latest dispatches from the frontlines: www.dailykos.com/...

Next Saturday, there will be a Special Bonus Edition of WOW2, in honor of Native American Heritage Month, so please stop by and check it out. 

Early November’s Women Trailblazers and Events in OUR History

• November 1, 1848 –New England Female Medical School, the first medical school for women, opens. It will merge in 1874 with Boston University, becoming one of the first co-educational medical schools

• November 1, 1889 –Hannah Höch born, German Dada artist, painter and pioneer in photomontage

• November 1, 1898–Sippie Wallace born, American blues singer-song-writer, “The Texas Nightingale”

• November 1, 1915 –Margaret Taylor-Burroughs born, American painter and poet; co-founder of the DuSable Museum of African American History

• November 1, 1946–Yuko Shimizu (清水侑子 Shimizu Yūko) born, Japanese designer; creator of  Hello Kitty and Angel Cat Sugar

• November 1, 1949– The U.S. Department of Commerce declares Author’s Day an official national day. First proposed in 1928 as a tribute to American Authors by schoolteacher Nellie Verne Burt McPherson to members of the Bement Illinois Women’s Club, and the General Federation of Women’s Clubs

• November 1, 1959–Susanna Clarkeborn, English author, her first novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, won a Hugo Award; also noted for short story collection, The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories

• November 1, 1961–Louise Boije of Gennäs born, Swedish feminist writer; noted for best-selling semi-autobiographical novel, Stjärnor utan svindel (Stars Without Vertigo)

• November 1, 1964–Nita Ambani born, influential Indian businesswoman and philanthropist; co-founder and chair of Reliance Foundation, one of the largest private foundations in India, which sponsors Braille materials for the blind and a cornea transplant program, among several other programs

• November 2, 1879–Marion Jones Farquhar born, American tennis player, first Californian to reach the finals at the Women’s U.S. Tennis Championships in 1898, but her first win is in 1899, her second win is in 1902. At the 1900 Olympics, became the first American woman to win a medal in Tennis; inducted into International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2006

• November 2, 1921 - Margaret Sanger's National Birth Control League combines with Mary Ware Denetts’ Voluntary Parenthood League to form the American Birth Control League, which later becomes Planned Parenthood

• November 2, 1936 –Rose Elizabeth Bird born, first woman California Secretary of Agriculture, allowed workers to unionize, appointed Chief Justice of California Supreme Court in 1977, the only California justice not to be reconfirmed by voters in 1987 election, primarily because of her opposition to death penalty

• November 2, 1939–Pauline Neville-Jones born, career member of Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service (1963-1996) in Rhodesia, Singapore, Washington DC and Bonn; seconded to the European Commission (1977-1982); 1991-1994, Head of Defence and Overseas Secretariat in the Cabinet Office and Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet; made a Dame Commander in 1995, and The Baroness Neville-Jones in 2007

• November 2, 1942–Shere Hiteborn in the U.S., became a German citizen in 1995; sexologist whose work focuses primarily on female sexuality

• November 2, 1949–Lois McMasterBujold born, American speculative fiction author; 4-time Hugo Award-winner; The Mountains of Mourning, The Curse of Chalion, Paladin of Souls

• November 2, 1961–k.d. langborn, Canadian pop-country singer-songwriter, 4-time Grammy winner

• November 2, 1964–Britta Lejon born, Swedish Social Democratic politician; member of the Riksdag, and in the cabinet of Göran Persson (1996-2006)

• November 2, 1974–Sofia Polgárborn, Hungarian chess player, the middle sister between Susan and Judit Polgár, all three Polgárs are Chess Grandmasters; Sofia was World Under-14 Girls Champion in 1986, her highest performance rating of 2879 came at a tournament in Rome; at one time she was ranked as the world’s sixth-strongest woman player

• November 3, 1793–, French playwright, abolitionist and feminist, Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne– Declaration of the Rights of Woman and Citizeness (1791) is guillotined for her opposition to the execution of Louis XVI, and a poster which demands a plebiscite so the people could choose between a unitary republic, a federalist government or a constitutional monarchy

• November 3, 1905 –Lois Mailou Jones born, African American painter, Harlem Renaissance artist, North Carolina’s Palmer Memorial Institute Art Department founder/Chair

• November 3, 1918–Elizabeth Paschel Hoisington born, U.S. Army office, one of the first two woman to attain the rank of brigadier general; director of the Women’s Army Corps (1965-1971)

• November 3, 1918–Oodgeroo Noonuccal, born Kath Walker, Australian poet, political activist and key figure in the movement to grant Aboriginal people full citizenship in the Australian Constitution; first Aboriginal Australian to publish a book of verse

• November 3,1924–Violetta Elvinborn as Violetta Prokhorova, Russian prima ballerina with the Bolshoi, then at Sadler’s Wells Ballet (now the Royal Ballet) in England

• November 3, 1930–Mable Johnborn, American blues vocalist; first woman signed by Berry Gordy for Motown’s Tamia label

• November 3, 1947–Mazie Hirono born, American politician; U.S. Congresswoman (D-HI 2007-2013); U.S. Senator (D-HI) 2013 to present

• November 3, 1949–Anna Wintour born in England, American journalist and editor; editor-in-chief of Vogue since 1988; a former personal assistant, Lauren Weisberger, wrote the 2003 best seller, The Devil Wears Prada

• November 3, 1956–Cathy Jamieson born, Scottish Labour Party politician, MP for Kilmarnock & Loudon (2010-2015); Minister for Justice in the Scottish Executive (2003-2007)

• November 3, 1992–Carol Moseley-Braunis the first African-American woman elected as a U.S. senator (D-IL)

• November 4, 1924 –Nellie Tayloe Ross becomes first US female governor (Wyoming)

• November 4, 1853–Anna Bayerováborn, the second Czech woman medical doctor, but her doctorate was from the University of Bern in 1881, so Czechoslovakia refused to recognize it (the first Czech woman to get a medical degree faced the same problem, but she became a midwife in her hometown); Bayerová set up her medical practice in Bern; in 1889, seven hundred Czech women signed an open letter to her, which appeared in the women’s magazine Ženské Listy, expressing hope that she could return and practice in her homeland

• November 4,1897– Janaki Ammal born, Indian botanist who researched cytogenetics and phytogeography; did notable work on sugarcane and the eggplant; strong supporter of Gandhi and India;s independence;the Ministry of Environment and Forestry of India instituted the Janaki Ammal National Award of Taxonomy in her honor in 2000; the 'Magnolia Kobus Janaki Ammal' is named for her

• November 4, 1909–Evelyn Bryan Johnsonborn, American pilot with the greatest number flying hours of any woman pilot in the world; Colonel in the Civil Air Patrol; after learning to fly in 1944, she logged 57,635.4 flying hours,  becoming the oldest flight instructor in the world, training a record number of pilots and giving the most FAA exams; she lived to age 102

• November 4, 1915–Marguerite Patten born, English home economist, food writer and broadcaster; during WWII, she worked for the Ministry of Food, giving recipes making use of available rationed food on a BBC programme called The Kitchen Front; debuted her first television cookery show on the BBC in 1947; author of dozens of cookery books, including the first cook book in England with colour illustrations, Cookery in Colour

• November 4, 1921–Mary Sherman Morgan born, American rocket fuel scientist and engineer, who invented the liquid fuel Hydyne in 1957, which powered the Jupiter-C rocket

• November 4, 1924 –Nellie Tayloe Ross becomes first US female governor (Wyoming)

• November 4, 1928 –Hannah Weiner born, American poet; part of the New York “happenings” of the 1960s; in later years, she wrote journals about her experiments with automatic writing and her struggles with schizophrenia

• November 4, 1929 – Shakuntala Devi born, Indian polymath, mental calculator, author of both fiction and non-fiction on mathematics, puzzles, and a sympathetic study of homosexuality in India, considered the first serious work on the subject

• November 4, 1939 – Gail E. Haley, American children’s book author-illustrator, winner of the 1971 Caldecott Medal and the 1976 Kate Greenaway Medal

• November 4, 1960– At Kasakela Chimpanzee Community in Tanzania, Dr Jane Goodall observes chimpanzees creating tools, the first observation in non-humans

• November 4, 1965–Lee Ann Roberts Breedlove is the first woman to exceed 300 mph, 308.5 mph

• November 5, 1607–Anna Maria van Schurman born, Dutch painter, scholar, engraver and poet; highly educated, proficient in 14 languages, and excelling at art, music and literature; a defender of female education: Dissertatio De Ingenii Muliebris ad Doctrinam, & meliores Litteras aptitudine (The Learned Maid or, Whether a Maid may be a Scholar) arguing for educating women, but not for them using their education to enter a profession, and was against allowing it to interfere with their domestic duties

• November 5, 1834–Anna Leonowens born, English teacher and author; governess to children of king Mongkut of Siam, her book about the experience was turned into a play, and the play became the Broadway musical, The King and I

• November 5, 1850–Ella Wheeler Wilcox born, American author and poet

• November 5, 1857–Ida Tarbell born, ground-breaking investigative reporter, wrote exposé on Standard Oil that led to federal investigation and break-up of the company

• November 5, 1872 –Susan B. Anthony is arrested in New York for casting a ballot ( along with 15 other women), testing the limits of the newly ratified 14^th Amendment; her vote is not counted; at the trial, she is denied the right to take the stand on her own behalf on the grounds of “incompetence,” and fined $100, which she refuses to pay

• November 5, 1900–Ethelwynn Trewavas born, British ichthyologist, over a dozen fish species named in her honor

• November 5, 1922–Violet Barclay born, also used name Valerie Barclay, American illustrator and pioneering female comic-book artist

• November 5, 1945 –Aleka Papriga (ΑλέκαΠαπαρήγα) born, Greek Communist Party politician, the first Greek woman to head a major political party in Greece (1993-2015); currently MP for Athens B

• November 5, 1945 –Vandana Shiva born, Indian scholar, environmental activist, food sovereignty advocate, and anti-globalization author; noted for her book Vedic Ecology

• November 5, 1958 – Mo Gaffney born, American comedian, writer and activist; co-wrote and starred with Kathy Najimy in two off-Broadway ‘Kathy and Mo’ shows shows, which both won Obie Awards; activist for same-sex marriage

• November 5, 1974 – Ella T. Grasso elected as governor of Connecticut, the first U.S. woman elected as a state governor without succeeding her husband

• November 6, 1856 –Scenes of Clerical Life, three short stories by the author later known as George Eliot, is submitted for publication

• November 6,1886–Ida Barney born, American astronomer and mathematician; produced 22 volumes of astrometric measurements on 150,000 stars; worked at the Yale University Observatory as a researcher (1922-1955); awarded the American Astronomical Society’s Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy in 1952

• November 6, 1894–Opal Kunz born, American aviator; first woman pilot to race men in an open competition; chief organizer of the Betsy Ross Air Corps, and charter member of the Ninety-Nines, a women pilots’ organization; during WWI, was a flight instructor for Navy cadets and the Civilian Pilot Training Program

• November 6, 1900 – Ida Lou Anderson born, pioneer in radio broadcasting, and professor; mentor and adviser to Edward R. Murrow; died at age 40 of complications from childhood polio

• November 6,1917 –New York State adopts a constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote in state elections

• November 6, 1938 – Diana E. H. Russell born in South Africa, educated in Britain and the U.S.; feminist writer, sociologist and anti-apartheid activist; pioneer in Women’s Studies, offering one of the earliest courses as an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Mills College; organizer of the first International Tribunal on Crimes against Women in Brussels in 1976; advocate for the use of ‘Femicide’ to describe violent murders of women by men because they are female, and adding it as a category to legislation against hate crimes

• November 6, 1940 – Ruth Messenger born, New York Cityliberal political leader and advocate for public education, ran unsuccessfully for mayor against incumbent Rudy Giuliani in 1997; president and CEO of American Jewish World Service (1998-2016)

• November 6, 1946–Sally Field born, American actress and director; Oscar-winner for Best Actress for Norma Rae and Places in the Heart; director and co-author of the TV movie The Christmas Tree (1996), and the feature film Beautiful (2000); advocate for women’s rights and gay rights

• November 6, 1947– First show of  NBC’s Meet the Press;Martha Rountree, co-creator of Meet the Press, was the first moderator (1947-1953), and its only female host to date

• November 7, 1867–Marie Curie born, Polish chemist, she and her husband women the Nobel Prize for physics for discovery of the element Radium

• November 7, 1872 – Leonora von Storsch Speyer, Lady Speyer, bornin America, poet who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her book Fiddler’s Farewell; played violin professionally before her first marriage, which ended in divorce; her second husband was Sir Edgar Speyer, a British banker

• November 7, 1878–Lise Meitner born in Austria-Hungary,Austrian-Swedish physicist; co-leader with Otto Hahn of the scientists who discovered the nuclear fission of uranium when it absorbed an extra neutron, a process which was the basis of the WWII nuclear weapons developed by the U.S. at Los Alamos

• November 7, 1878–“Cissy” Eleanor Medill Patterson born, editor and publisher of the Washington Times-Herald; early crusader for home rule for the District of Columbia; novelist, Glass Houses and Fall Flight

• November 7, 1893–Margaret Leech born, American historian and fiction writer; won the 1942 Pulitzer Prize in History in 1942 for Reveille in Washington, the first woman to win for history, and again in 1960 for In the Days of McKinley, which was also awarded the Bancroft Prize; married to Ralph Pulitzer, Joseph Pulitzer's son

• November  7, 1893–Women in Colorado are granted the vote, the second U.S. state to give women the vote

• November 7, 1901–Norah McGuinness born, Irish Painter and illustrator

• November 7, 1909–Ruby Hurley born, on committee that arranged Marian Anderson’s performance at the Lincoln Memorial after she was barred from Constitution Hall; as NAACP Youth Secretary, she increased youth membership to 25,000; investigated the 1955 Emmitt Till murder in Mississippi despite personal danger

• November 7, 1915 –M. Athalie Range born in Bahamas, American Civil Rights activist and Florida politician; first black person to serve on the Miami City Commission, first African-American since Reconstruction, and first woman, to head a Florida state agency, Department of Community Affairs

• November 7, 1916–Jeannette Rankin becomes the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress

• November 7, 1919–Ellen Stewart born,influential American theatre director-producer, founder of La MaMa, an experimental theatre company in NYC, which produced the first plays of many new playwrights, including Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson, and Harvey Fierstein, and gave actors like Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and Bette Midler some of their first roles

• November 7, 1921 – Susanne Hirzel born, a German music student who became a member of the White Rose, an anti-Nazi resistance group; she was arrested and convicted in 1943 of distributing leaflets, but sentenced to six months in prison, because the prosecution was unable to establish that she had knowledge of the leaflets’ contents; after 1945, she became a cello teacher, and wrote a series of books on cello technique

• November 7, 1925 –Barbara Wertheimer born, author; We Were There: The Story of Working Women in America; Coalition of Labor Union Women founding member

• November 7, 1926 –Joan Sutherland born, Australian-Swiss soprano

• November 7, 1937 –Mary Dalheim born, American journalist, historical romance and mystery author; noted for the Bed & Breakfast series; her first mystery, Just Desserts, was nominated for an Agatha Award

• November 7, 1939–Barbara Liskovborn, American computer scientist; one of the first U.S. women to be granted a doctorate in computer science; Turing Award winner for the Liskov substitution principle; Institute Professor at MIT

• November 7, 1941–Madeline Gins born, American architect, artist and poet; with her husband, artist Shusaku Arakawa, she co-founded the Reversible Destiny Foundation, to support projects built in harmony with their “Mechanism of Meaning” principles, involving the expertise of practitioners from many disciplines to enhance life-extending properties of the building designs; unfortunately, their ideas did not extend their lives - her husband dies at 73, and Gins dies at 72

• November 7, 1944–Hannah Szenes born, Hungarian Jewish poet; at age 23, she is one of 37 Mandate Palestine paratroopers dropped into Hungary by British Army during WWII to rescue Hungarian Jews about to be deported to Auschwitz; arrested near the Hungarian border, imprisoned and tortured, but refuses to reveal any details of her mission, and after a pro forma trial, is executed by firing squad on this day. A national heroine of Israel, where her poetry is widely known; Israel Hatzeira headquarters and several streets are named for her

• November 7, 1990 –Mary Robinson becomes Ireland’s first female President

• November 7, 2000 –Hilary Rodham Clinton is elected to the U.S. Senate (D-NY), the first First Lady to win public office

• November 8, 1342–Julian of Norwichborn, English anchoress and mystic; her Revelations of Divine Love is the first theological book in the English language attributed with certainty to a woman; venerated in the Anglican and Lutheran churches, but not beatified by the Roman Catholic church, possibly because of her vision of God as being both masculine and feminine

• November 8, 1710 –Sarah Fielding born, English author; The Governess, or the Little Female Academy, first novel aimed specifically at children

• November 8, 1837–Mary Lyon founds Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, which later becomes  Mount Holyoke College

• November 8, 1878–Dorothea Bate born, English paleontologist, and pioneer in archaeozoology

• November 8, 1892 –Therese Benedek born, pioneer in psychoanalysis, fled Nazi Germany for U.S., pioneer in research on female sexuality

• November 8, 1897 –Dorothy Day born, social reformer, suffragist and peace activist, co-founder Catholic Worker movement, edited “The Catholic Worker” newspaper

• November 8, 1908–Martha Gellhornborn,journalist, war correspondent and author; one of two little girls representing “future voters” at a demonstration for woman’s suffrage at the 1916 national Democratic convention in St. Louis; went to Europe in 1930, worked as a foreign correspondent for the United Press Paris bureau; returned to the U.S., worked with photographer Dorothea Lange for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, documenting hungry and homeless people; went with Ernest Hemingway to Barcelona in 1937 to cover the Spanish Civil War, then reported on the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany; covered WWII from Finland, Hong Kong, Burma, Singapore to England; posed as a male stretcher bearer to cover D-Day, the only woman to land at Normandy; one of the journalists who covered the liberation of Dachau; her four-year marriage to Hemingway ended in divorce in 1945, in part because of conflict over her career; worked for Atlantic Monthly, covered the Vietnam War, the Arab-Israel conflicts and civil wars in Central America; retired in 1995 at the age of 87 because of failing eyesight; The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism was created in her honor in 1999

• November 8, 1910 – Washington state passes a constitutional amendment to guarantee woman suffrage

• November 8, 1920–Esther Rolle born, actor, founding member of the renowned Negro Ensemble Company, Florida Evans on “Maude,” starred in “Good Times”

• November 8, 1922 –Thea D. Hodge born, American computer scientist, a pioneer in the field who mentored many women students; one of the first women members of the Association for Computing Machinery

• November 8, 1926–Darlene C. Hoffmanborn, American nuclear chemist; in the 1950s she applied for a position with the Los Alamos National Laboratory radiochemistry group, but was told, "We don't hire women in that division." She persisted, and was hired by an enlightened male group leader, becoming a division leader of the isotope and nuclear chemistry division, the first woman to head a scientific division there; senior faculty scientist in the Nuclear Science Division of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory; one of the researchers who confirmed the existence of Seaborgium, element 106; recipient of the U.S. National Medal of Science in 1997

• November 8, 1951–Dame Laura M. Cox born, English, Queen’s Bench High Court judge

• November 8, 1984–Dr. Anna L. Fisher, physician on NASA shuttle Discovery, becomes 3rd American woman in space — and first Mom in space — there were six stars on the crew patch, five for the crew, and one more for her daughter

• November 9, 1732–Julie de Lespinasse born, Frenchwoman who hosted an influential Salon during the Enlightenment; also noted for her love letters, published over 30 years after her death, first to the Marquis de Mora, son of the Spanish Ambassador to France, who died from tuberculosis in 1774, and then to the Comte de Guibert, whose marriage to another woman led to her downward spiral into depression and opium addiction, and death at 43

• November 9, 1854 – Maud Howe Elliott born,American writer, co-author with her sister of a biography of their mother, Julia Ward Howe, which won the 1917 Pulitzer Prize for Biography, first year prize given in this category

• November 9, 1871–Florence R. Sabin born, pioneering woman in medical science; first female full professor at John Hopkins School of Medicine; first woman elected to the National Academy of Sciences; first female department head at Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research; Chaired the Colorado Governors’ Committee on Health, spear-heading campaign to pass health reform laws, named the ‘Sabin Health Laws’ in her honor, which drastically reduced tuberculosis cases in the state, expanded and improved hospital care, and became a blueprint for health reform in other states

• November 9, 1905–Erika Mann born, German anti-Nazi writer who moved to Switzerland in 1933, then in 1935 entered a marriage of convenience with W.H. Auden to obtain a British passport after her German citizenship was rescinded by the Nazis; her 1938 book, School for Barbarians, criticized the Nazi education system; worked for the BBC during WWII, broadcasting in German, and after D-Day was a war correspondent traveling with the Allied forces, also covered the Nuremberg trials; after the war, she moved to the U.S., but was branded a Communist by the McCarthy witchhunt, and moved back to Switzerland

• November 9, 1914–Hedy Lamarr born in Austria, Hollywood film star, and co-inventor with composer George Antheil of a spread spectrum communications technique decades ahead of its time, the springboard for modern wireless technology

• November 9, 1916 –Martha Settle Putney born, American lieutenant and historian who served as one of the first black members of the WWII Women’s Army Corps, and chronicled the history of African Americans in the U.S. armed forces

• November 9, 1918 –Florence Chadwick born, legendary female long distance swimmer, swam English channel in 1950 beating existing record by 71 minutes

• November 9, 1922 - Dorothy Dandridge born, first black American to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress, for her performance in the 1954 film Carmen Jones

• November 9, 1923–Elizabeth Hawley born, American journalist, and chronicler of Himalayan expeditions since the early 1960s, even though she’s never climbed a mountain, she is respected by the international mountaineering community for her accurate and detailed records; Peak Hawley in Nepal is named for her

• November 9, 1928–Anne Sexton born, American poet; 1967 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her book Live or Die; co-authored four children’s books with poet Maxine Kumin

• November 9, 1936–Mary Travers born, singer-songwriter of Peter, Paul and Mary

• November 9, 1938–Ti-Grace Atkinson born, American radical feminist,  early member of National Organization for Women, but left over disputes about abortion and marriage inequalities; founder of The Feminists (1968-1973), advocate of political lesbianism; author of Amazon Odyssey

• November 9, 1946–Dame Marina Warner born, British novelist and historian whose non-fiction works frequently relate to feminism and myth; first woman elected president of the Royal Society of Literature since its founding in 1820

• November 9, 1948–Jane Humphries born, American-British Professor of Economic History and Fellow of All Souls College at the University of Oxford; her field is economic growth and development and the industrial revolution; Gender and Economics, Childhood and child labour in the British Industrial Revolution

• November 9, 1960–Sara Franklin born, American anthropologist, who combines ethnographic methods and kinship theory with fieldwork on IVF, cloning, embryology and stem cell research, as well as leading major research studies addressing the cultural and social dimensions of new reproductive and genetic technologies

• November 9, 2016–Hillary Clinton wins the popular vote by 2,864,974 votes, but loses her bid to become the first woman U.S. president to Donald Trump in the Electoral College vote, 227-304

• November 10, 1620–Ninon de l'Enclos born, French author, freethinker and arts patron; her salon attracted the literati of Paris, including a young Molière; she had a series of love affairs with prominent and wealthy men, but they did not support her, she supported herself; however, her lack of discretion and outspoken opinions on religion got her in trouble, and she was imprisoned in the Madelonnettes Convent in 1656, but released when Queen Christina of Sweden interceded on her behalf; in her will, she left money for the 9-year-old son of her accountant so he could buy books – he grew up to be known as Voltaire

• November 10, 1874–Idabelle Smith Firestoneborn, American composer and songwriter

• November 10, 1884–Zofia Nałkowska born, Polish novelist, dramatist, and essayist; executive member of the Polish Academy of Literature (1933-1939); Granica and Medaliony

• November 10, 1887 –Elisa Leonida Zamfirescu born, Romanian who was one of the first female engineers; at the Geological Institute of Romania, she started as an assistant, but later led several geology laboratories and participated in various field studies, including some that identified new resources of coal, shale, natural gas, chromium, bauxite and copper. She also taught physics and chemistry

• November 10,1891 – In Boston, the first Woman's Christian Temperance Union meeting

• November 10, 1911– California Proposition 4, the most elaborate campaign ever mounted for woman suffrage, succeeds by just 3,587 votes

• November 10, 1929–Marilyn Bergman born, lyricist and songwriter with her husband-partner Alan Bergman; they have won three Academy Awards for Best Song

• November 11, 1744 –Abigail Adams born, politically influential First Lady, early advocate for women’s rights; ‘Founding Mother’

• November 11, 1895–Wealthy Consuelo Babcock born, American mathematician, received a master’s in 1922 and a doctorate in 1926, both from the University of Kansas, where she taught for 30 years: “I’ve enjoyed teaching very much.  It has been the most important part of my life.”  The University of Kansas ‘Wealthy Babcock Mathematics Library’ was named in her honor 

• November 11, 1896–Shirley Graham Du Bois born, composer, “Tom Tom” libretto, did  “Swing Mikado” score for the Federal Theater Project, married to W.E.B. Du Bois

• November 11, 1914 –Daisy Lee Bates, mentor-advisor of “Little Rock Nine” who integrated Arkansas public HS 1959-61; her autobiography is The Long Shadow of Little Rock

• November 11, 1915–Anna Jacobson Schwartz born, American economist, monetary expert and author

• November 11, 1979 –Bethune Museum and Archives opens in Washington D.C., center for African-American women’s history, honors Mary McLeod Bethune

• November 11, 1992– The General Synod of the Church of England votes to ordain women priests

• November 11, 1993– The Vietnam Women’s Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C. after being conceived by former army combat nurse Diane Carlson Evans and sculpted by Glenna Goodacre to honor the 265,000 women who voluntarily served during the Vietnam era

• November 12, 1651–Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz born, Hieronymite nun of New Spain, self-taught scholar, feminist philosopher, composer and poet; called “The Mexican Phoenix”; Her criticism of misogyny and the hypocrisy of men led to her condemnation by the Bishop of Puebla, and in 1694 she was forced to sell her collection of books and focus on charity towards the poor; she died the next year from the plague, caught while nursing her sister nuns

• November 12, 1815 –Elizabeth Cady Stanton born, American suffragist, abolitionist, and leading figure of the women’s rights movement; She wrote the Declaration of Sentiments for the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention which launched the woman suffrage campaign; president of the National Woman Suffrage Association (1892-1900), but she was also an advocate for women’s parental and custody rights, property, wage and employment  rights, divorce and birth control; author/editor of the controversial The Woman’s Bible, a challenge to the traditional view that women should be subservient to men

• November 12, 1887–Bertha McNeill born, civil rights activist, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, newspaper columnist

• November 12, 1905–Louise McPhetridge Thaden born, American aviation pioneer, held the women’s records for altitude, endurance and speed; won the first Women’s Air Derby, nicknamed the Powder Puff Derby in 1929, but one pilot was killed, so women were barred from racing from 1930-1935; in 1936, the first year women are allowed in the race, she won the Bendix Trophy Race, setting a new world record of 14 hours, 55 minutes from NYC to Los Angeles, and the pilot Laura Ingalls (not the author) came in second

• November 12, 1941 –Carol Gluck born, American historian and author of books on Japan, including Rekishi de kangaeru (Thinking with History) and Showa: the Japan of Hirohito

• November 12, 1945 –Judith Roitman born, American mathematician specializing in set theory, topology, and Boolean algebra; has run workshops for elementary and high school teachers on teaching mathematics; served in the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics writing group which produced Principles and Standards for School Mathematics; received the Louise Hay Award in recognition of her work as a math educator; also a published poet

• November 12, 1964–Barbara Stühlmeyer born, German musicologist, church musician, and authority on Hildegard of Bingen

• November 12, 1964–Paula Murphy, American race car driver,  sets the female land speed record 226.37 MPH

• November 13, 1715 –Dorothea Erxleben born, first woman medical doctor in Germany;  instructed at home by her father, she was inspired when Italian scientist Laura Bassi became a university professorship to fight for her right to practice medicine. In 1742 she published a tract arguing that women should be allowed to attend university. She became the first German woman to receive a PhD in 1754. After being admitted to study by a dispensation of Frederick the Great, Erxleben received her M.D. from the University of Halle. She went on to analyze the obstacles preventing women from studying, among them housekeeping and children

• November 13, 1869 –Helene Stöcker born, German author, feminist and pacifist; earned a doctorate from the University of Bern; in 1905, she was a founder of Bund für Mutterschutz (League for the Protection of Mothers), and editor of the organization’s magazine; her philosophy, the New Ethic, advocated for equality of illegitimate children, legalization of abortion, and sexual education; Bund für Mutterschutz sponsored a number of sexual health clinics, where women and men could go for contraception, marriage advice, and sometimes abortions and sterilization. After a papal encyclical, the Casti connubii, issued in December, 1930, denounced sex without the intent to procreate, Bund für Mutterschutz worked with the Socialist and Communist parties on a two-year campaign against paragraph 218, which prohibited abortion. Stöcker added her iconic voice but the campaign ultimately failed. She fled Germany when the Nazis came to power

• November 13, 1869 –Ariadna Tyrkova-Williamsborn in Russia, liberal politician, writer and feminist; was a leading campaigner for the All-Russian Union for Women’s Equality; left Russia in 1920, and lived in the UK and the U.S., founding the Russian Liberation Committee, and raising money for Russian orphans

• November 13, 1886 – Mary Wigman born Marie Wiegmann, German choreographer and dancer, a pioneer of modern dance and dance therapy

• November 13, 1906–Eva Striker Zeisel born in Hungary, American industrial ceramics designer whose worker is included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum, the British Museum, and many other museums around the world

• November 13, 1920–Guillermina Bravo born, Mexican ballet dancer, choreographer and director, co-founder of Academia de la Danza Mexicana  (The film clip below shows part of  the ballet “On the Violence” which she choreographed)

• November 13, 1938 –Mother Francis Xavier Cabrini beatified, first American woman citizen to become a saint

• November 13, 1966 – Susanna Haapoja born, Finnish politician, who was in her second term as a Centre Party MP (2003-2009) when she died from a cerebral hemorrhage at age 42

• November 14, 1805–Fanny Mendelssohn born, German pianist and composer

• November 14, 1856–Madeleine Lemoyne Ellicott born, American woman suffragist; one of the organizers of the Pan-American Conference of Women in 1922, and founder of the League of Women Voters of Maryland, serving as its president for 20 years
• November 14, 1878–Julie Manet born, French painter, artist’s model, art collector and diarist, Growing Up with the Impressionists
• November 14, 1889– Journalist Elizabeth Cochran, aka Nellie Bly, sails around the world in 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes, and 14 seconds, beating the fictional record set by Phineas Fogg in Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days

• November 14, 1903 – The U.S. Women’s Trade Union League is established

• November 14, 1906–Louise Brooks born, actor, dancer, worked in American and German films (“Pandora’s Box”) authored memoir Lulu in Hollywood and film criticism

• November 14, 1907–Astrid Lindgren born, Swedish author, best known for the Pippi Longstocking series

• November 14, 1939 – Wendy Carlos, born Walter Carlos, American musician and composer noted for electronic music and film scores, particularly featuring the Moog synthesizer

• November 14, 1945–Louise Ellman born, British Labour Co-operative MP for Liverpool Riverside since 1997

• November 14, 1946–Emily Greene Balch, co-founder of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

• November 14, 1960 –Ruby Bridges becomes the first black child to attend a segregated white elementary school in Louisiana

• November 15, 1607 –Madeleine de Scudéry born, French writer and salon host; often published her work under her brother’s name; her 10-volume novel Artamène, ou le Grand Cyrus, which contains over two million words, is believed to be the longest novel ever published; acknowledged as the foremost “bluestocking” of Paris in the last half of the 17^th century

• November 15, 1849–Mary E. Byrd born, American astronomer who used photography to determine cometary positions, and a pioneer in astronomy teaching at the the college level, designing a method of teaching Astronomy as a laboratory science combined with field work, and writing one of the first teacher training manuals on the subject; She was the director of the observatory at Smith College (1887-1906), but resigned her position because she disapproved of the college accepting money from Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller

• November 15, 1873 – Sara ‘Doctor Jo’ Baker born, American physician and medical inspector for the New York City Department of Health, who fought against urban poverty and ignorance to save newborns and children; invented a safe infant formula which helped women return to work and support their families, an eye drop system to prevent infants from becoming blind as a result of transmitted gonorrhea, and safety lessons and licenses for midwives which reduced childbirth fatalities. She said it was more dangerous to be a child in Hell's Kitchen than it was to be a soldier on the front lines of World War I, as their mortality rate was three times higher. She was a pioneer in preventative medicine, and is also noted for tracking down Mary Mallon, the infamous ‘Typhoid Mary’

• November 15, 1887 –Georgia O’Keefe born, innovative painter, known for landscapes and oversized, close-up paintings of flowers

• November 15, 1887 –Marianne Moore born, influential poet and translator

• November 15, 1916 – Nita Barrow born, Barbadian nurse, humanitarian activist and politician; Governor-General of Barbados (1990-1995)

• November 15, 1932 – Petula Clark born, English vocalist, composerand actress; her singing career began at age nine, during WWII, performing for the studio audience at a BBC radio broadcast delayed by a bombing raid; she became part of a WWII troupe entertaining the troops, making hundreds of appearances, often with another child performer, Julie Andrews

SOURCES:

http://www.nwhp.org/events/november/

http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/important-dates-us-womens-history

http://www.historyplace.com/specials/calendar/november.htm

http://www.onthisday.com/day/november/