WOW2: Late October's Women Trailblazers and Events in OUR History – 2018

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.

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This Week in the War on Women will post soon, so be sure to go there next and catch up on the latest dispatches from the frontlines. 

 

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Early October’s Women Trailblazers and Events in Our History

_{Note: All images and audios are below the person or event to which they refer}

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• October 17, 1910–Esther Wier born, American novelist and children’s author; The Loner won the 1964 Newbery Award for young adult fiction

• October 17, 1919–Violet “Vi” Milstead Warren born, Canadian aviator, she earned her private and commercial aviation licenses early in 1940; noted for being the first Canadian woman bush pilot, and one of four Canadian women who served in the British Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) during WWII. With over 600 hours of flight time in 47 different types of aircraft during the war, she was also the longest-serving Canadian woman. After the war, she returned home and worked as a flight instructor and bush pilot. She was a member of the Canadian Aviation Hall of Fame, the Order of Canada, and the Bush Pilots Hall of Fame

• October 17, 1936–Sathima Bea Benjamin born, South African singer-songwriter and record producer; sang with Duke Ellington’s  orchestra at the 1965 Newport Jazz Festival; founded her record label, ekapa, in 1979;  received the Order of Ikhamanga Silver Award from South African president Thabo Mbeki for “excellent contribution as a jazz artist” and “contribution to the struggle against apartheid”

• October 17, 1946 –Drusilla Modjeska born in England, Australian author and anthology editor; noted for novels Poppy and Stravinsky’s Lunch

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• October 18, 1929– Celebrated in Canada as “Persons Day”: The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council overrules the Supreme Court of Canada in Edwards v. Canada when it declares that women are to be considered “Persons” under Canadian law, establishing both the citizenship rights of Canadian women, and the “living tree doctrine,” that a constitution is organic and must be read in a broad and liberal manner so as to adapt it to changing times. The Lord Chancellor, Viscount Sankey, wrote that “…exclusion of women from all public offices is a relic of days more barbarous than ours,” and that “to those who ask why the word should include females, the obvious answer is why should it not.”

• October 18, 1930 –Flora Fraser born, the Lady Saltoun, Scottish peer; holder of a lordship of Parliament since 1979, she was one of the 90 hereditary peers chosen by election to remain in the House of Lords after the House of Lords Act 1999 removed 662 hereditary peers. Lady Saltoun retired from the House of Lords in 2014. She is the Chief of the Name and Arms of Clan Fraser, since a 1984 decree of the Court of the Lord Lyon, and is also head of the Scottish lowland family the Frasers of Philorth

• October 18, 1930–Esther Hautzig born in Vilna, Poland (now Vilnius, Lithuania), American writer  known for The Endless Steppe, winner of the first Sydney Taylor Book Award in 1968, which is an account of her life in Siberia after her family’s deportation there following the Soviet conquest of eastern Poland in 1941

• October 18, 1931–“Ien” Isabella Dales born, PvdA Dutch politician; Minister of Internal Affairs (1989-1994); Mayor of Nijmegen (1987-1989); Member of Parliament (1982-1987); State Secretary for Social Affairs (1981-1982); Rotterdam Director of Social Services (1977-1981)

• October 18, 1941–Martha Burk born, American political psychologist, syndicated columnist and feminist; money editor for MS magazine, and current head of the Corporate Accountability Project for the National Council of Women’s Organizations, which started the 2003 Women on Wall Street investigation into sex discrimination at companies associated with Augusta National, which led to two women becoming members of the all-male golf club in 2013; Chair of the National Council of Women’s Organizations (2001? -2005), an umbrella organization for over 100 women’s organizations

• October 18, 1948–Ntozake Shange born as Paulette Williams, American playwright, poet and black feminist, best known for her Obie Award-winning play, for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf

• October 18, 1950–Wendy Wasserstein born, American playwright, noted for The Heidi Chronicles, winner of a Tony Award for Best Play, and the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

• October 18, 1955–Rita Verdonk born, Dutch politician, originally with the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (2002-2007), then an independent (2007-2008), and founder and leader of the Proud of the Netherlands Party (2008-2011); Parliamentary leader in the House of Representatives (2007-2010); Member of the House of Representatives (2007-2010); Minister of Justice (2006)

• October 18, 1956–Martina Navratilova born in Czechoslovakia,  Czech-American tennis player, considered one of the all-time best women tennis players; advocate for LGBT rights, freedom of speech, and animal rights; involved with charities which benefit underprivileged children

• October 18, 1972 –Mika Ninagawa born, Japanese photographer and director of films and music videos; winner of 2006 Ohara Museum of Art Prize

• October 18, 1977 –Flavia Colgan born in Brazil,  Brazilian-American Democratic strategist; political contributor to MSNBC

• October 18, 1984 –Esperanza Spalding born, American jazz bassist and singer; musical prodigy, played violin in the Chamber Music Society of Oregon at age 5; Four-time Grammy Award winner, including first jazz artist to win Best New Artist in 2011

• October 18, 1988 –Tessa Schram born, Dutch director and actress; noted for writing and directing the 2014 film Painkillers

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• October 19,1923 –Ruth Carter Stevenson born, American art patron and collector; founder of the Amon Carter Museum of Art in Fort Worth, Texas, noted for its collection of American Western Art; she was the first woman appointed to the board of the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, and its first woman chair

• October 19,1926–Marjorie Tallchief born, member of the Osage nation and prima ballerina, the first Native American to be named première danseuse étoile in the Paris Opera Ballet; younger sister of Maria Tallchief

• October 19, 1930–Mavis M. Nicholson born in Wales, British writer and radio-TV broadcaster; started with Thames Television hosting one of their first daytime television programmes; was a presenter on Tea Break, Good Afternoon, After Noon and Mavis on 4, from the 1970s to the 1990s

• October 19, 1945–Patricia Ireland born, American lawyer, administrator and feminist activist; president of the National Organization for Women (1991-2001); when she worked as a flight attendant for Pan Am, Ireland discovered gender-based discrepancies in the treatment of insurance coverage for spouses of employees, brought a formal complaint and fought for a change in coverage. After the U.S. Department of Labor ruled in her favor, she began law school and performing volunteer work for the National Organization for Women. She advocated extensively for the rights of poor women, gays and lesbians, and African-American women. She has campaigned for electing female candidates, and trained people to defend clinics from anti-choice protesters around the United States; author of What Women Want

• October 19, 1954 –Deborah Blum born, American journalist, science writer and director of the Knight Science Journalism program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); author of The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York and The Poison Squad; she wrote a series of articles for the Sacramento Bee called “The Monkey Wars” which won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting

• October 19, 1958 –Carolyn Browne born, British diplomat, British Ambassador to Kazakhstan (2013-2018); Ambassador to Azerbaijan (2007-2011); one of the Permanent Representatives of the United Kingdom to the European Union (2002-2005)

• October 19, 1960–Susan Straight born, American author, essayist and short story writer; 2007 Lannan Literary Award for Fiction; 2008 Edgar Allan Poe Award for her short story “The Golden Gopher”

• October 19, 1962–Tracy Chevalier born in America, American-British historical novelist, best known for Girl with a Pearl Earring

• October 19, 1967–Amy Carter born, American human rights and diplomatic solutions activist; daughter of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter

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• October 20, 1920 –Fanny de Sivers born, Estonian-French linguist, literature researcher and essayist; linguist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research

• October 20, 1946–Diana Gittins born, American author and academic; noted for Madness in Its Place: Narratives of Severalls Hospital 1913-1997

• October 20, 1952–Wilma Salgado born, Ecuadorian politician and economist; Minister of the Interior (2008); member of the Andean Parliament (2007-2008); appointed as Manager of the Deposit Guarantee Agency (AGD) in 2003, she ordered the seizure of goods from dozens of companies and individuals owing money to banks that had been bankrupted in the financial crisis of 1999. Former President of the National Congress Juan José Pons filed a lawsuit against Salgado for seizing a house belonging to him, accusing her of perverting the course of justice, but she was acquitted of the charges

• October 20, 1957–Jan Bonham Carter born, Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury; British Liberal Democrat politician and member of the House of Lords since 2004; Liberal Democrat’s Director of Communications (1996-1997); previously, she was a television news programme producer for the BBC and Channel 4

• October 20, 1957–Valerie Faris born, American film and video director with partner Jonathan Dayton; noted for co-directing the feature film Little Miss Sunshine, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture; writer Michael Arndt won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, and Alan Arkin won Best Supporting Actor for the film

• October 20, 1963–Julie Payette born, Canadian politician, astronaut and engineer; Governor General of Canada since 2017; COO for the Montreal Science Centre (21013-2017); chief astronaut for the Canadian Space Agency (2000-2007), she completed two spaceflights STS-96 (1999) and STS-127 (2009), logging more than 25 says in space, and served as a capsule communicator at NASA Mission Control in Houston

• October 20, 1964–Kamala Harris born, American lawyer and Democratic politician; U.S. Senator from California since 2017, the third woman to serve as a California U.S. Senator, and the first of Jamaican or Sub-continental Indian descent; Attorney General of California (2011-2017); District Attorney of San Francisco (2004-2011)

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• October 21, 1896–Esther Shumiatcher-Hirschbein born in Belorussia, Canadian Yiddish poet, playwright and screenwriter; she moved to New York after her marriage in 1918 to New York Yiddish playwright Peretz Hirschbein, where she published two children’s plays intended for use in the Yiddish secular schools. In 1940, the couple moved to Hollywood.  She is noted for writing poems about pregnancy, motherhood, and grief when her husband died

• October 21, 1911–Mary Robinson Blair born, American artist and children’s author who drew concepts for the Walt Disney animated films of Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Song of the South and Cinderella; also worked on designs for attractions at Disneyland

• October 21, 1921–Ingrid van Houten-Groeneveld born, Dutch astronomer, credited with discovery or co-discovery of 4,625 numbered minor planets

• October 21,1940–Marita Petersen born, Faroese politician,  special needs teacher and school manager; the first woman Prime Minister of the Faroe Islands (1993-1994); first female speaker of the Løgting (Parliament 1994-1995); Leader of Javnaðarflokkurin (Faroese Socialist Party); Minister of Cultural Affairs (1991-1993); member of the Løgting (1988-1998 – except when she was a minster or prime minister). When she became Prime Minister, unemployment rates were at a record high, people were leaving the country, the fishing industry was struggling, protests occurred almost daily, and the economy was on the brink of collapse. As Prime Minister, Petersen spearheaded tough negotiations with the Danish Government and the Danish Bank, preventing the Faroese economy from crashing. She also reached an agreement with the trade unions to cut back wages in order to avoid mass lay-offs in the public sector. When she first became a member of the Løgting, she was one of only three women representatives. Today, 10 of the 33 members are women, and many more women are involved in both the ministries and local government. Petersen is credited as “the woman who saved the Faroe Islands,” and is an icon for the islands’ women. She died of cancer at the age of 60 in 2001

• October 21,1946–Jane Heal born, British philosopher specializing in the philosophy of mind and language; Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge since 2012; first woman President of St. John’s College, Cambridge (1999-2003); professor at Cambridge (1999-2012); lecturer at Cambridge (1986-1999); lecturer at Newcastle University (1975-1985); author of Mind, Reason and Imagination

• October 21, 1956 –Carrie Fisher born, American actress and author; noted for her book and screenplay, Postcards from the Edge

• October 21, 1973–Lera Auerbach born to a Jewish family in Soviet Russia; orchestral composer and pianist; she defected to the U.S. in 1991 during a concert tour, and studied composition at the Julliard School; made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2002, performing her own Suite for Violin, Piano and Orchestra

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• October 22, 1844 –Sarah Bernhardt born, renowned French stage actress; after a lackluster debut at the Comédie-Française and brief membership in the company (1862–1864), she clashed with one of the leading actresses and was forced to leave. After further trials and tribulations, she found her home at the Odéon theatre, which was popular with students from the Left Bank. The theatre became a hospital during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), and Bernhardt took charge of nursing the wounded. Later, she returned triumphantly to the Comédie-Française (1872-1878), and would also make several world tours, beginning with a debut in London in 1879. She was noted for playing the title roles in La Dame Aux Camelias by Alexandre Dumas, fils, and La Tosca by Victorien Sardou. She also played male roles, including Shakespeare’s Hamlet

• October 22, 1897 –Marjorie Flack born, American children’s book author; The Story About Ping, her Angus series, and Boats on the River, which was a Caldecott Honor book

• October 22, 1931–Ann Rule born, American true crime author and former Seattle police officer; in 1971, while volunteering at a suicide crisis hotline, she worked with Ted Bundy, and after he was revealed as a serial killer, she wrote The Stranger Beside Me (1980)

• October 22, 1943–Catherine Deneuve born, French International film star; 1993 Oscar for Best Actress for Indochine; UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for the Safeguarding of Film Heritage (1994-2003), also involved with Children of Africa,Voix de femmes pour la démocratie (Voice of women for democracy), and Amnesty International’s campaign against the death penalty; in 1972, she signed the Manifesto of the 343, an admission by the signers they had undergone illegal abortions, which exposed them to judicial actions and prison sentences

• October 22, 1967–Oona King born, Baroness King of Bow, British Labour politician; member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow (1997-2005); the second British black woman elected to Parliament; served as Vice-Chair of the All-Parliamentary Group on Bangladesh; strong advocate for international aid and human rights; after a visit to Rwanda, she spoke out about genocide

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• October 23, 1850– The first U.S. National Woman’s Rights Convention begins in Worcester, MA; 1,000 people, representing 11 states, including a delegate from California, came to the first session, and more people stood outside. Ironically, the majority of attendees were men, and the Central Committee appointed by the convention was made up of 9 women and 9 men. Paulina Wright Davis presided, and in her opening address called for “the emancipation of a class, the redemption of half the world, and a conforming re-organization of all social, political, and industrial interests and institutions.” Lucy Stone, who was still recovering from typhoid fever, spoke on the evening of the second day, “We want to be something more than the appendages of Society; we want that Woman should be the coequal and help-meet of Man in all the interest and perils and enjoyments of human life. We want that she should attain to the development of her nature and womanhood; we want that when she dies, it may not be written on her gravestone that she was the “relict” of somebody.” (‘relict’ can refer to a bereaved spouse, but it also means something left over, such as a species or geologic feature from a previous age.) The national convention was preceded in April 1850 by the first state-wide women’s rights convention in Salem, Ohio; 500 people attended, but men weren’t allowed to vote, sit on the platform or give speeches during the Ohio convention

• October 23, 1915 –Woman’s suffrage: In New York City, over 31,000 women march on Fifth Avenue for the right to vote

• October 23, 1961 –Laurie Halse Anderson born, American author for kids of all ages; noted for Speak, Chains, Ashes and The Impossible Knife of Memory

• October 23, 1969–Trudi Canavan born, Australian author of fantasy novels and short stories; noted for her trilogies The Black Magician and Age of the Five

• October 23, 2017 –Three women U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientists, scheduled to speak and present a 500-page report on climate change this day, had been abruptly removed from the program of a conference on the Narragansett Bay Estuary and Watershed in Rhode Island, at the EPA’s request, just four days before the event. The EPA said the scientists could attend the conference, but were not to speak because “it is not an EPA conference.” EPA Scientist Autumn Oczkowski was to be the conference’s keynote speaker, and the other two scientists, Rose Martin and Emily Shumchenia, were scheduled to appear on a panel entitled “The Present and Future Biological Implications of Climate Change.” Scott Priutt, Trump-appointed head of the EPA since February 2017, would resign in July 2018, while under at least 14 separate investigations by the Government Accountability Office, the EPA inspector general, the White House Office of Management and Budget, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, and two House of Representatives committees over his spending habits, conflicts of interests, extreme secrecy, and questionable management practices

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• October 24, 1764 –Dorothea von Schlegel, German novelist and translator, oldest daughter of Moses Mendelssohn, a leading figure of the German Enlightenment.  The novel Lucinde (1799), by poet Friedrich von Schlegel, created a scandal because it was viewed as an account of their affair, which began in 1797, and led her to divorce her Jewish husband (1799), and become a Protestant in order to marry von Schlegel (1804). Her first novel, Florentin, had to be published anonymously in 1801

• October 24, 1830 –Marianne North born, English botanist, botanical artist, and world traveler

• October 24, 1830 –Belva Lockwood born, attorney, first woman admitted to practice law before Supreme Court (1879), she also ran for U.S. President in 1884 and 1888 as the Equal Rights Party candidate

• October 24, 1838 –Annie Edson Taylor born, American schoolteacher and daredevil; in 1901, on her 63rd birthday, she became the first person to survive going over Niagara Falls in a barrel

• October 24, 1868–Alexandra David-Néel born, Belgian-French explorer, Buddhist, anarchist and author of over 30 books about Eastern religion and her travels, including Magic and Mystery in Tibet; first Western woman to enter the forbidden city of Llasa, disguised as a beggar; her writings influenced ‘beat’ writers Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, and Alan Watts, who popularized Eastern philosophy and poetry in the West

• October 24, 1891–Brenda Ueland born, American journalist, editor, author, essayist, feminist, animal rights advocate, and teacher; noted for If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit (1938), which Carl Sandburg called “the best book ever written on how to write,” and is still in print. She was a freelance writer for a variety of magazines, from the Saturday Evening Post to Sportsman, and a staff writer for Liberty Magazine and the Minneapolis Times newspaper. From 1915 to 1917, she was an editor for Crowell Publishing, which was primarily publishing trade books and biographies at that time. Ueland also wrote scripts for radio shows, including Tell Me More, an advice call-in show, and Stories for Girl Heroes, a children’s program about notable women. She also taught creative writing classes. A collection of her work was published in 1992 under the name Strength to Your Sword Arm, featuring many of her articles and essays on topics like children, feminism, her life in Minneapolis, animals, health and well-being. Ueland said she lived her life by two rules: to tell the truth, and never do anything she didn’t want to

• October 24, 1914 –Lakshmi Sahgal born, Indian Independence movement revolutionary, physician, officer in the Indian National Army dubbed “Captain Lakshmi” which was her rank when taken prisoner in Burma during WWII; Minister of Women’s Affairs during Azah Hind (Provisional Government of Free India 1943-1946). She was in Singapore in 1942 during its surrender to the Japanese, aiding wounded prisoners of war, many of them Indian nationalists. She was recruited by Subhas Chandra Bose into the Rani of Jhansi regiment, an all-women brigade of the Azad Hind Fauj (Indian National Army). The INA marched with the Japanese army to Burma, but left them before the Battle of Imphal, where the Japanese suffered heavy casualties and were driven back by an allied army which included several divisions of Indian troops. Captain Lakshmi was arrested by the British, and held in Burma from May 1945 until March 1946, when she was sent to India, where the INA trials were increasing discontent and hastening the end of colonial rule. She returned to medical practice, but also became a prominent Communist politician and labour activist. During both the Partition of India (1947) and the Bangladesh Liberation War (1971), she organized aid and medical care for refugees; one of the founding members of the All India Democratic Women’s Association in 1981

• October 24, 1915–Marghanita Laski born, English journalist and science fiction critic, radio panelist on Any Questions?, biographer, novelist and short-story writer, noted for her novels Little Boy Lost and Tory Heaven, and biographies of Jane Austen, George Eliot and Rudyard Kipling; she was also a prolific contributor to the Oxford English Dictionary, having “carded” almost 250,000 quotations. Laski was a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament activist, and an avowed atheist

• October 24, 1917–Marie Foster born, American Civil Rights leader who helped register many African-American voters in Selma, Alabama, and also helped start the Dallas Country;  Voters League; she personally was turned away from registering eight times before she succeeded, and then began teaching other black citizens how to pass the tests being used to bar them from registering. Only one person showed up for her first class, a 70- year-old man. She taught how to write his name. Foster was one of the main organizers of the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965; on ‘Bloody Sunday’ she was clubbed by a state trooper across the knees, but despite her injuries, two weeks later, she walked with the others the fifty miles to Montgomery in five days

• October 24, 1918–Doreen Tovey born, English author and cat lover; she wrote over a dozen books about her fictionalized life with her husband, their Siamese cats and other animals, which have sold over 150,000 copies. She was president of the RSPCA for North Somerset

• October 24, 1927 –Barbara Robinson born, American children’s author and poet; noted for Across from Indian Shore and TheHerdmans series

• October 24, 1930 –Elaine Feinstein born, English poet, novelist, radio play and short story writer, biographer and translator; Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature since 1981, and recipient of the 1990 Cholmondeley Award for poetry

• October 24, 1931–Sofia Gubaidulina born, Tatar-Russian composer and pianist; she composed several scores for documentary films, but in 1979, she was blacklisted for participation without approval in music festivals in the West. Noted for violin concerto Offertorium, and a T.S. Eliot tribute based on his Four Quartets

• October 24, 1937–M. Rosaria Piomelli born, Italian architect, author and academic; was a project architect for I.M. Pei and Partners (1971-1974), then opened her own firm in New York City in 1974; member of the American Institute of Architects; organized Women in the Design of the Environment, a 1974 exhibition in New York. Piomelli became the first woman dean of an architectural school in the U.S. when she was appointed as dean of the CCNY School of Architecture in 1980

• October 24, 1950–Gabriella Sica born, Italian poet and author; director of Prato pagano magazine since 1987

• October 24, 1950–Maria Teschler-Nicola born, Austrian biologist, anthropologist and ethnologist; noted for her work on a very rare genetic disorder in humans, tetrasomy 12p mosaicism; Director of the Department of Archaeological Biology and Anthropology of the Museum of Natural History of Vienna since 1998

• October 24, 1952–Jane Fancher born, science fiction and fantasy author and artist who worked for Warp graphics in the 1980s, then did adaptations of C.J. Cherryh’s Morgaine series as graphic novels in collaboration with Cherryh, whom she married in 2014. Fancher is noted for her Groundties series and Dance of the Rings trilogy

• October 24, 1958–Nokugcine ‘Gcina’ Mhlophe born, South African storyteller, songwriter and children’s author; she played a large role in keeping Black South African history alive and encouraging children to read

• October 24, 1959–Ruth Perednik born in England, Israeli psychologist and a pioneer in the  study and treatment of the anxiety disorder Selective Mutism (SM), which causes a person who is normally capable of speech to go mute in specific situations or with specific people, which often begins in early childhood

• October 24, 1959–Annette Vilhelmsen born, Danish politician and teacher; Minister for Social Affairs & Integration (2013-2014); Minister of Economic & Business Affairs (2012-2013); elected Leader of Socialist People’s Party (2012-2014); Member of Parliament (2011-2015)

• October 24, 1964–Donna Hyer-Spencer born, American litigation attorney for New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services, and Democratic politician; member of the New York State Assembly (2007-2010); advocate for stronger penalties for child sex abusers, and successfully sponsored legislation to combat domestic violence, as well as a law to eliminate fees for Order of Protection to remove financial roadblocks for victims, and was an advocate for education and healthcare, including opposing increases in state education tuition and Education budget cuts, and increasing income eligibility for prescription drug coverage for seniors; strong advocate on environmental issues, against hydro fracking within New York City’s watershed

• October 24, 1971–Zephyr Teachout born, American attorney, author and Associate Professor of Law at Fordham University; on the advisory board for Let America Vote, working to end voter suppression, and was treasurer for Cynthia Nixon’s campaign for New York governor in 2018; has been a supporter of Bernie Sanders; author of Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United

• October 24, 1975– The Women’s Strike: 90% of Icelandic women take part in a national ‘Women’s Day Off’ refusing to work to protest gaps in gender equality in Iceland. The country grinds to a halt, not only because women are missing from work, but because fathers are forced to stay home, taking over childcare. Five years later, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir becomes the first woman president of Iceland (1980-1996)

• October 24, 1985–South Africa ‘Purple Rain’: Hundreds of marchers, most of them women wearing t-shirts with the slogan “Troops Out,” reached the Capetown city centre to protest troops being permanently stationed in townships, and refuse to obey an order to disperse. Capetown police use water cannons to spray purple-dyed water on them, setting off a riot

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• October 25, 1800 –Maria J. Jewsbury born, English writer poet and literary reviewer; when her mother died in 1819, Maria took over running the household and raising her younger siblings. In spite of her many duties, she began contributing poems to the Manchester Gazette in 1821. Noted for Phantasmagoria, or Sketches of Life and Literature; Letters to the Young; Lays for Leisure Hours; and The Three Histories. Her first book, Phantasmagoria, a mix of poetry and prose, was published in 1825, and attracted the attention of William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, with whom she became friends. Jewsbury became part of the literary scene, and was courted as a guest as much for her brilliant conversation as for her growing reputation as a writer. Making the acquaintance of Charles Wentworth Dilke, editor of the literary magazine TheAthenaeum, led to her becoming a contributor in 1830. Against her father’s wishes, she married Reverend William Kew Fletcher in 1832, and she went with him to India. When they arrived at Sholapoor where Reverend Fletcher was assigned, it was in the midst of a drought and famine. He fell ill from overwork and anxiety, and she nursed him back to health. A medical certificate that his health could not bear the climate allowed them to leave, but she succumbed to cholera in Poona on October 4, 1833, and was buried there

• October 25, 1884–Maria Czaplicka born, Polish cultural anthropologist  known for her ethnography of Siberian shamanism; her studies were published in Aboriginal Siberia (1914); she also published a travelogue, My Siberian Year (1916); and a set of lectures as The Turks of Central Asia (1919); in 1916, she was the first woman lecturer in anthropology at Oxford University, and she received a Murchison Grant from the Royal Geographical Society in 1920, which wasn’t enough to offset the loss of income from her three-year fellowship at Oxford, which expired in 1919. Then a travelling fellowship she applied for didn’t come through, and she was only able to find a temporary teaching position. She poisoned herself in 1921, leaving all her papers to her colleague, Henry Usher Hall, who was on the 1914-1915 expedition to Siberia with her and ornithologist Maud Doria Haviland. There was speculation about her relationship with Hall, especially since he was being married in the U.S. around the time of her suicide

• October 25,1900–Chief Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti born, Nigerian women’s rights and political activist who founded the Abeokuta Women’s Union, which grew to 20,000 members, and launched successful campaigns against price controls which were hurting the women merchants of the Abeokuta markets, and against tax collection abuses. Ransome-Kuti also campaigned for Nigerian women’s right to vote. In the 1950s, she was one of the few women elected to the house of chiefs, serving as Oloye of the Yoruba people. Her three sons were also political activists. In 1978, Ransome-Kuti was thrown out of a third floor window by military personnel who invaded the compound of her son Fela. She went into a coma and died two months later. In 2012, the government proposed putting Ransome-Kuti’s picture on a N5000 note. Her grandson, Fela’s son Seun Kuti, a popular musician, said on television that his grandmother was murdered by the Federal Government, and asked the government to apologise to his family for her death before considering immortalizing her on the nation’s money. The government did not respond in spite of protest groups adding pressure on social media. The N5000 proposal was withdrawn

• October 25,1903–Katherine E. Byron born, American politician; first woman elected to U.S. Congress from Maryland (D-MD, 1941-1943)

• October 25, 1941–Lynda Benglis born, American sculptor and visual artist, noted for wax paintings and poured latex sculptures

• October 25, 1942 –Gloria Katz born, American screenwriter and film producer; co-writer of the screenplays for American Graffiti, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

• October 25, 1952 –Wendy Hall born, English computer scientist, mathematician and academic; Regius Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton. Her team invented the Microcosm hypermedia system in 1984, before the World Wide Web was launched. She became the school’s first woman professor of engineering in 1994. She was Head of the School of electronics and Computer Science (2002-2007.) Founding Director of the Web Science Research Initiative in 2006

• October 25, 1955 –Gale Anne Hurd born, American film producer and screenwriter; founder of Pacific Western Productions and Valhalla Entertainment; produced the movies The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, Tremors and Dante’s Peak, and the TV series, The Walking Dead

• October 25, 1966 –Zana Briski born, British photographer and documentary filmmaker; she directed Born into Brothels, 2004 winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature; and is the founder of Kids with Cameras, a non-profit that teaches photography to marginalized children

• October 25, 1969 –Samantha Bee born, Canadian-American comedian, writer, producer, political commentator, and host of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee since 2015

• October 25, 1971 –Elif Shafak born, Turkish-British novelist, essayist, academic, women’s and minorities rights activist, and advocate for freedom of speech. She writes in English and Turkish, and is a founding member of the European Council on Foreign Relations. She was awarded the 1988 Rumi Prize for her first novel, Pinhan (The Hidden), and won the 2000 Turkish Writers’ Union Prize for Mahrem (The Gaze). Her first novel written in English was The Bastard of Istanbul (2006), in which she addresses the Armenian genocide, still denied by the Turkish government. She was charged with “insulting Turkishness” (Article 301 0f the Turkish Penal Code) for writing about the genocide. She has also addressed honor killings in her book Honour (2012)

• October 25, 1975 –Zadie Smith born, British novelist, essayist and short story writer; noted for her novel White Teeth, winner of the 2000 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, and a collection of essays, Feel Free (2018)

• October 25, 1980 – The Hague International Child Abduction Convention concludes, after developing a multilateral treaty to provide for quick return of a child under age 16 abducted or detained by a non-custodial parent from one member country to another – as of March 2016, a total of 94 countries are party to the treaty

• October 25, 1980 –Victoria Francés born, Spanish illustrator, noted for her Dark Romanticism

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• October 26, 1935–Gloria Conyers Hewitt born, American mathematician and academic; the fourth African American woman to earn a PhD in Mathematics, and the first African American woman to chair a math department in the U.S., at the University of Montana (1995-1999); her research focused on Group Theory and Abstract Algebra; awarded the National Science Foundation postdoctoral Science Faculty Fellowship

• October 26, 1936–Etelka Kenéz Heka born, Hungarian writer, poet and singer, who grew up in Yugoslavia, and has lived most of her life outside of Hungary, she has three citizenships, Hungarian, Austrian and Croatian, and now lives in Hódmezővásárhely in south-east Hungary. She has written about 90 books, but none of them have been translated into English yet. Winner of the 2015 Hódmezővásárhely Pro Urbe Award

• October 26, 1956–Rita Wilson born as Margarita Ibrahimoff, American film producer, actress, and singer-songwriter; cancer research and children’s charities supporter, and advocate for the ONE Campaign to make women a priority at the UN’s Sustainable Development Summits; noted as producer of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Connie and Carla, and Mama Mia!

• October 26, 1996– The first Intersex Awareness Day, held in Boston by the Intersex Society of America in cooperation with the Transexual Menace group

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• October 27, 1885 –Sigrid Hjertén born, major Swedish modernist painter,  She was encouraged by her future husband, Isaac Grünewald, to go to Paris, where she studied with Matisse (1909-1911). Some of her paintings were first exhibited in a group show in Stockholm in 1912.  She and her family lived in Paris between 1920 and 1932, and made many excursions into the French countryside and to Italy for painting, but in the late 1920s, Hjertén began to experience the first symptoms of schizophrenia. She complained of loneliness when her husband was away, and feelings of abandonment. She was returning to Stockholm in 1932 when she collapsed, and was taken temporarily to the psychiatric hospital of Beckomberga. Over the next two years, she painted frenziedly, creating a painting a day, calling them the picture-book of her life. In 1934, she went with her family to southern Europe, continuing to paint. A joint exhibition with Grünewald stirred controversy, and many of the critics wrote scornful or deeply offensive reviews, some calling her work idiocy or horrors. But in 1936, she had a well-received solo exhibition at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts, and she was honored as one of Sweden’s most original artists. Then Grünewald, who was frequently unfaithful, divorced her. Her illness escalated. By 1938, she was permanently hospitalized at Beckomberga, and painted very little. In 1948, she died after a botched lobotomy

• October 27, 1925–Monica Sims born, British radio producer for the BBC, became a strong advocate for quality in children’s television as BBC television’s head of Children’s Programmes (1967-1979); Controller of BBC Radio 4 (1978-1983); in 1985, she produced the report Women in BBC Management which showed the number of women in top jobs was virtually the same as it had been a decade before: 6 women compared with 159 men. The report concluded with 19 recommendations, including appointment of a women's employment officer; more career guidance for both women and men; a review of the Appointments Board policy for senior posts; increasing the number of women attending Management Training Courses, and the introduction of women-only courses as an experiment. She also recommended part-time work, job sharing and other options for flexible working schedules

• October 27, 1966–Hege Nerland born, Norwegian Socialist Left Party politician; deputy representative to the Norwegian Parliament (2005-2006), but died in 2007

• October 27, 1992–Emily Hagins born, American filmmaker who made her first movie at age 12 in her hometown of Austin, Texas – a zombie movie called Pathogen, and has since made five more movies

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• October 28, 1816–Malwida von Meysenbug born, German writer noted for Memories of an Idealist, the first volume of which she published anonymously in 1869. She was acquainted with Friedrich Nietzche and Richard Wagner. She broke with her family over her advocacy of the emancipation of women and approval of the German revolutions of 1848-49 which aimed at unifying Germany under a more democratic form of government.  She lived first in a free community in Hamberg, then immigrated to England, making her living as a teacher and translator. She went to Italy in 1862 with a friend, remaining there due to poor health. In 1876, she invited Nietzche to Sorrento, where he began work on Human, All Too Human. In 1901 she was the first woman nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature after French historian Gabriel Monod submitted her name. In 1903, von Meysenbug died in Rome

• October 28, 1905–Tatyana van Aardenne-Ehrenfest born, Dutch mathematician; contributed to De Bruijn sequences, the discrepancy theorem and the BEST theorem

• October 28, 1943–Karlyn Patterson born, British psychologist; pioneering specialist in cognitive neuropsychology at the Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Cambridge and MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge; fellow of the Royal Society and the British Academy

• October 28, 1946–Sharon Thesen born, Canadian poet and academic; her 2000 poetry collection, A Pair of Scissors, won the Pat Lowther Award, presented by the League of Canadian Poets; in 2003, she was one of the judges for the Griffin Poetry

• October 28, 1950 –Sihem Bensedrine born, Tunisian journalist and human rights advocate; in 1980, she was a reporter for the independent journal Le Phare, when the journal stopped publication, she was a political chief at Maghreb, and then at Réalités. When Maghreb ceased publication in 1983, she oversaw the opposition newspaper El Mawkif. In 1998, she founded the Conseil National pour les Libertés en Tunisie (CNLT - National Council for Liberties in Tunisia), but in 1999, she faced numerous police and judicial actions, including confiscation and destruction of property and a personal libel campaign in which she was portrayed as a prostitute, because of her freedom of the press and human rights activities. In 2001, after denouncing torture, corruption, and lack of judicial independence during an interview with a foreign television station, she spent 45 days in Manouba women's prison. Bensedrine was honored by OXFAM in 2005 with their Novib/PEN Award

• October 28, 1955 –Indra Nooyi born in India, Indian-American business executive, currently chair of PepsiCo, was its CEO (2006-2018), and CFO (2001-2006); consistently ranked by Forbes magazine as one of the 100 most powerful women in the world since 2008

• October 28, 1958–Concha García Campoy born, Spanish radio and television journalist and program host; Televisión Española News Service (1983-1987 and 1991-1993); Cadena SER radio (1987-1991); Antena 3 Radio (1993-1999); also worked for Telecino, Punto Radio and Cuarto; in 2012, she was diagnosed with leukemia, and died in 2013

• October 28, 1967–Julia Roberts born, American actress and producer; won the 2001 Oscar for Best Actress for Erin Brockovich; co-founder and head of Red Om Films, which produced Eat Pray Love and several children’s movies; traveled to Haiti in 1995 and spoke about the poverty she witnessed as part of a UNICEF fundraising campaign, and was the voice of Mother Nature on a Conservation International 2014 short film aimed at raising awareness of climate change

• October 28, 2009 – Angela Merkel is sworn in for her second term as Chancellor of Germany

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• October 29, 1891 –Fanny Brice born, American comedian and comic singer

• October 29, 1932 –Joyce Gould born, Baroness Gould of Potternewton, British Labour Party politician and pharmacist; member of Campaign Against Racial Discriminations (1965-1975), Secretary of the National Joint Committee of Working Women’s Organizations (1975-1985), and served in various capacities with a number of other commissions and organizations; in 1993, made a Life Peer,  serving on House of Lords committees, involved with anti-racism, gender equity and civil liberty issues in particular

• October 29, 1947 –Helen Lloyd Coonan born, Australian Liberal Party politician; Senator for New South Wales (1996-2011); the first woman in the Coalition Leadership Team as Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate (2006-2007); served as Minister for Revenue and Assistant Treasurer (2001-2004) and Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (2004-2007)

• October 29, 1952–Marcia Fudge born, American Democratic politician; Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio’s 11^th District since 2008; Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus (2013-2015); Mayor of Warrensville Heights (2000-2008)

• October 29, 1966–Mary Bucholtz born, American professor of linguistics at University of California, Santa Barbara, noted for work on sociocultural linguistics and for developing the tactics of intersubjectivity framework with Kira Hall; co-author of Gender articulated: language and the socially constructed self

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• October 30, 1728 –Mary W. Hayley born, the curious and independent child of a prosperous distiller, who loved to read, and defied convention as she grew older by attending trials at the Old Bailey, London’s central criminal court, and traveled throughout Britain. She became an English businesswoman who parlayed the inheritance in 1753 from her much older first husband into a sizeable estate with her second husband, who had been the chief clerk of husband #1, by establishing trade relationships with the American colonies. Their firm shipped the tea which went overboard in the Boston Tea Party. When her second husband died, she ran the business on her own, and became one of the few British merchants who recouped her losses from America after the war. In 1784, she bought a frigate formerly used as a war ship, and refurbished it as a whaling and sealing vessel, which she rechristened the United States. She moved to Boston for the next eight years, running the whaling business and becoming known for her charitable donations. Returning from the venture’s inaugural voyage to the Falkland Islands with a cargo of whale oil, her ship was boarded by the British Navy in 1785, and the cargo was seized. But the British Crown was unable to prove that she owed duty because British merchants were exempt if a third of their crew were also British, so the Crown had to recompense her. In 1786, she married a Scottish merchant in Boston, but in 1792, she left him, returning to England with the stipulation that he never again appear in her presence. She retired to Bath, and died there in 1808

• October 30, 1741 –Angelika Kauffman born, Swiss Neoclassical painter who had a successful career in London and Rome; she and Mary Moser were the only two women among the founding members of the Royal Academy in London (1768); best remembered for historical scenes and portraits

• October 30, 1917 –Minni Nurme born, Estonian author, poet and translator; during WWII, she lived behind Soviet lines; after the war, she moved to Tallinn, Estonia’s capital. She wrote two novels, several collections of short stories, and eleven collections of poetry, in spite of harassment by Stalinist authorities

• October 30, 1944 –Martha Graham’s ballet Appalachian Spring, with music by Aaron Copeland,  premieres at the Library of Congress

• October 30, 1972 –Jessica Hynes born, English scriptwriter and actress; co-creator, writer and star of the British sitcom Spaced, for which she won a BAFTA award; supporter of the Women’s Equality Party

• October 30, 1976 –Stephanie Izard born, considered one of America’s top chefs; co-owner and executive chef of three award-winning Chicago restaurants: Girl and the Goat, Little Goat, and Duck Duck Goat

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• October 31,1711–Laura Bassi born, Italian physicist and academic; earned a doctoral degree in Philosophy from the University of Bologna in 1732; the first woman to receive a professorship in physics at a university, and the first woman known to be appointed a university chair in a scientific field; Bassi was one of the first women to lecture in public, and some of the key events in her career happened in the Palazzo Pubblico, attended by major political and  religious figures as well as university faculty and students; she conducted experiments with electricity with her husband, which attracted other talented scientific minds to Bologna, and helped spread the study of Newtonian mechanics throughout Italy. She was most interested in Newtonian physics and in Franklinian electricity, fields of study that were not part of the regular curriculum, so Bassi gave private lessons. In her lifetime, she was the author of 28 papers, the majority of these on physics and hydraulics, although she did not publish any books, and only four of her papers were published. She also carried on an extensive correspondence with many outstanding scientists of her day in France and England

• October 31,1883–Marie Laurencin born, French Cubist painter and printmaker associated with La Section d'Or, a Cubist-Orphist collective of artists, poets and critics, named for Salon del la Section d’Or, the most important public showing of Cubist work before WWI, in 1912 in Paris

• October 31,1897–Constance Savery born, British author of fifty novels and children’s books, as well as articles and short stories; noted for Enemy Brothers and Emeralds for the King

• October 31,1908–Muriel Duckworth born, Canadian pacifist, feminist and community activist who maintained that war is a major obstacle to social justice, because of the violence it inflicts on women and children, and the money spent on armaments which perpetuates poverty while reinforcing the power of the elite; founding member of Nova Scotia Voice of Women for Peace, the regional branch of Voice of Women; she was president of VOW (1967-1971) and led protests against the Canadian government’s quiet support for the U.S.-led Vietnam War. She was the first woman in Halifax to run for a seat in the Nova Scotia legislature, although she did not win. She led community campaigns for better housing , education, social assistance and municipal planning. In 1991, she was honored with the Pearson Medal of Peace

• October 31,1949–Allison Wolf born, Baroness Wolf of Dulwich, British economist and author; Sir Roy Griffiths Professor of Public Sector Management at King's College London; Director of the International Centre for University Policy Research, King’s Policy Institute; Director of the university’s MSc programme in Public Sector Policy and Management; Does Education Matter? Myths about Education and Economic Growth;
  and The XX Factor

• October 31,1962– Anna Geifman born, American historian and author; focused on political extremism, terrorism and the history of the Russian revolutionary movements; Thou Shalt Kill: Revolutionary Terrorism in Russia, 1894-1917 and Entangled in Terror: The Azef Affair and the Russian Revolution

• October 31,1962–Mari Jungstedt born, Swedish journalist on public radio and television; crime fiction author; The Killer’s Art and The Dead of Summer

• October 31,1996 – The South African National Assembly passes the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act, which allows women, including minors, to terminate pregnancies on request with the first 12 weeks, and under specified circumstances from the 13^th week to through the 20^th week, and under very limited circumstances beyond that point

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Sources

• www.nwhp.org/...
• todayinwomenshistory.saintssistersandsluts.com/…
• todayinsci.com
• Wikipedia
• A Book of Days for the Literary Year, edited by Neal T. Jones
• The Music-Lover’s Birthday Book, Metropolitan Museum of Art