Happy International Women’s Day, everyone! While we should be celebrating the truly badass women that surround us every day (I’m lucky to have a life chock full of them), I’m thrilled that there’s a day dedicated to it. I’m a firm believer in both honoring and questioning our history: today, we should be doing both. Let’s honor the female innovators, revolutionaries, and heroes of the past; let’s question why history doesn’t tell us about them (or perhaps it does, but, like in the case of Edith Wilson, leaves out the important bits). Let’s look back on these women, who were not only excellent partners and mothers, but also ruthless rulers, tireless academics, innovative artists, and the epitome of strength and intellect.
For your perusal (and please, please click on the links I give and look up more about them – they’re so cool), here are eight badass women to help you celebrate this eighth of March.
(Important note: while I made an effort to not be Eurocentric, I fully acknowledge that this list is not as diverse as it should be. I’m researching much more into women of color, women of the LGBT+ community, and the like, but I don’t want to tell their stories until I know more. These women are just some of many that I find fascinating, complex, and, in many cases, inspiring.)
1) Agent 355 (? – 1781) – The Spy Who Saved America: The Culper Spy Ring was established in 1778, in Setaucket, Long Island, by Officer Benjamin Tallmadge. It was the first spy network to be created for the American force during the Revolution, and it would quickly become the Continental Army’s secret weapon. Comprised of both men and women, the Culper Spy Ring was able to move, undetected, in British circles. The information gained from their missions is a huge reason why America won the war.
Among them was Agent 355, one of their best.
We still don’t know her name. We have no idea who she was, or where she came from. What we do know is that she obtained crucial information from high-ranking British officials, ending with the Americans winning battles and saving lives. She’s the one who is believed to have revealed the treason of Benedict Arnold. She was beloved by her fellow spies: they, too, never wrote her name down.
There are suspicions, of course. Because of the information she passed down, and letters from her compatriots, she is believed to have been a member of an important Tory family in New York. That would explain how she could move within important social circles without attracting attention. Another speculation is that she was the lover of fellow spy Robert Townsend, became pregnant with his child, and died on a prison ship after giving birth to his son. This has remained unproven, but Townsend’s emotional response to the capture and death of “one who hath been ever serviceable to this correspondence” certainly adds some heat to the fire.
Regardless, Agent 355 contributed so much to this nation’s beginning. She died for it, in fact: that much we do know. She put her life at risk to save so many others; she was smart, and skilled, and fearless. And we don’t even know her name, much less honor her. Let’s honor her now.
(For further listening/reading pleasure: Not Your Father’s History podcast, The Bowery Boys podcast, http://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2011/12/agent-355.html, and https://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/culper-spy-ring)
2) Edith Wilson (1872 – 1961) – “America’s First Lady President”: Every American history student knows that Edith Wilson was the wife of Woodrow, our nation’s 28th president. Did you know, though, that she is technically our first female president?
Born Edith Bolling in 1872, descended from Virginian aristocracy and the Powhatan tribe, she grew up in an impoverished family in Wytheville, Virginia. She was able to study at a small college nearby at age 15, but never completed a formal education. In 1896, she married her first husband, Norman Galt. After he passed away unexpectedly in 1908, Edith took over his jewelry business. At that time, she was already making a splash in Washington: newfound wealth had given her a taste for travel, French couture, and the latest and greatest (she was the first woman to drive her own car in the city!). Despite this, though, she was barred from society, as she was the nouveau riche.
That changed quickly after her somewhat controversial marriage to President Woodrow Wilson in 1915. Now, Edith served as her beloved husband’s right hand man. As the US entered World War I and the innumerable political problems that it brought about, Edith was constantly at Woodrow’s side, given access to classified documents, important meetings, and wartime codes. In a way, she acted as advisor to him, even traveling to Europe with him during peace negotiations. She was always with him, much to the dislike of his male advisors.
This access amped up even further in 1919, after Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. No one wanted to inform the country that their president was no longer fully fit to serve. Instead, Edith stepped in. She called it her “stewardship,” always insisting that it was her who decided priority and importance of what to bother her husband with, but never making the true decisions. That’s debatable to this day. What is fully factual, though, is that, for one year and five months, America had a female president. In a way. Three years after this, President Wilson passed away, and Edith remained a respected figure of Washington society until her death in 1961.
Historians argue about whether Edith Wilson did a good job or not. They argue about whether we can truly consider her the “lady president.” They argue about whether we should honor her for being the mind of this country for over a year. I think we should. I also think it’s worth noting that the articles that mock her are written by men; the ones that don’t are written by women. I shan’t put a notion into your head, but that’s just something to think about. ;)
(For further reading pleasure: https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/first-ladies/edith-bolling-galt-wilson/, http://www.firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=29, and https://www.biography.com/news/edith-wilson-first-president-biography-facts)
3) Katherine Dunham (1909 – 2006) - The Black Ballerina: Y’all, I had to write a paper about this woman during my sophomore year of college, and I fell in love with everything about her. She did so much in her lifetime. I’m only going to do a bullet point version here, so I am begging you to look her up. Pleeeeeaaaaase. She’s unbelievably cool. The dictionary definition of badass. Love her. :)
Born in 1909 to an African-American father and a French-Canadian mother, Katherine Dunham did not grow up dancing. She sang in her church’s choir first, only later awakening her love of dance by joining her school’s Terpsichorean Club and learning a type of freestyle modern dance. In 1928, she began studying ballet with Ludmilla Speranzeva, one of the first teachers to accept black students; around this time, she was also exposed to East Indian, Javanese, and Balinese dance forms. While studying dance, she graduated with an anthropology degree from the University of Chicago, one of the first black women to do so. She would later go on to earn her doctorate in the subject.
In 1930, Dunham founded Ballet Negre, one of the first African-American ballet companies. This was followed by her founding of the Negro Dance Group in 1932, a school dedicated to teaching ballet to young black students. She started developing her now-renowned style of dance technique around this time, a fusion of ballet, modern, African dance, and Haitian dance. This became so popular that the group started traveling.
Now, this is where her life gets bananas. I truly don’t know how to bullet point this, so I’m just gonna throw it at you. From 1937 until 1960, Ballet Negre traveled the world to perform under Dunham’s direction: they visited Europe, North Africa, South America, East Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. Dunham acted as keen businesswoman (getting them out of nasty contracts), artistic director, teacher, choreographer, and motivational speaker. She fought segregation, refusing to perform unless all races could watch together; she even choreographed pieces depicting lynchings and other racially charged violence. She conducted anthropological research and presented in prestigious universities throughout the world. She established scholarships funds. She published multiple novels. She was an outspoken civil rights activist. She was well-honored in her time, too: among her many awards are the Heritage Award from the National Dance Association, the Albert Schweitzer Music Award from Carnegie Hall, the Distinguished Service Award from the American Anthropological Association, the National Medal of the Arts, a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame, and a Kennedy Center Honor. She was even named a chevalier of the Haitian Légion d'Honneur et Merite and was an artist-in-residence at Southern Illinois University. Katherine Dunham was a true revolutionary.
So why don’t we talk more about her today?
(For further reading pleasure: http://kdcah.org/katherine-dunham/, http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/dunham/dunham-timeline.html, https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200152685/, and https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200003814/)
4) Frances Marion (1888 – 1973) – “The Woman Who Gave Hollywood Its Voice”: The Poor Little Rich Girl. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Pollyanna. Anne of Green Gables. Anne Christie. Dinner at Eight. If you like movies, chances are you’ve heard of a few of those. And if you know those, then you should know Frances Marion. One of the few female screenwriters of early Hollywood—“scenarists,” at the time—and the first to receive two Oscars for writing. One of the founders of Hollywood. The woman who quite literally wrote the book on screenwriting. The first woman to cross the Rhine in World War I. A brilliant writer, a stubborn patriot, a devoted wife and mother. We should all know her.
Born Marion Benson Owens in 1888 San Francisco, Marion grew up in a fairly prosperous family. However, after causing a scandal (she was *gasp* divorced twice), she moved to Los Angeles as an artist in marketing. There, she was fascinated with and entranced by the movies, an infant industry at the time. After meeting Mary Pickford and being trained under director/writer Lois Weber, Marion had found her foothold in the industry. She did a little of everything in the beginning, as most early Hollywood creatives did. She is most well-known, now, for her collaborations with Pickford, a woman she grew incredibly close to; due to that connection, by the mid-1920s Marion was working for MGM and earning $3,000 (the equivalent of $40,000 today) a week. Before that, though, during World War I, she traveled to war-torn Europe to document women’s doings during the war. It was the first documentary of its kind, and, though it wasn’t well-received originally, its importance is noted today.
Upon returning to Hollywood (and marrying the man she described as the love of her life, pastor-turned-actor Fred Thomsen), Marion quickly became the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood. She wrote countless films that are still considered artistically brilliant today; she was the first writer of either sex to win two Oscars, for The Big House in 1931 and The Champ in 1932. She wrote the first textbook on screenwriting—How to Write and Sell Film Stories—in 1937. After that time, though, she walked away, and became a full-time mother to her two boys. She had become disillusioned with Hollywood as a whole; in addition, her beloved Fred had died in 1928, and that encouraged her retirement.
Throughout her entire prestigious career, Marion fought intense sexism. Less so at the beginning, remarkably, as Hollywood was founded by female directors, writers, editors, and actors (in fact, it’s estimated that over half of the silent films of this period were written by women). As the industry grew, however, Marion faced harassment, attempted pay cuts, censorship of women’s stories, and the horrors of the casting couch (though she was never in that position, she was horrified at how actresses were being treated). She viewed Hollywood as quickly deteriorating in both art form and humanity. She remained an outspoken advocate for more female writers and for having more control over her art until the day she left. Late in her life, she described those last years as “like writing on sand, with the wind blowing.”
And there’s a lot more of her life where that came from. Read about her. Watch her movies. Watch female-driven, female-created stories, to honor her. She was brilliant.
(For further reading pleasure: The Girls in the Picture by Melanie Benjamin, https://wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-frances-marion/, and https://time.com/4186886/frances-marion/)
5) Hatshepsut (c. 1479 BCE – c. 1458 BCE) – The Queen Who Would Be King: I’m assuming most of us have heard this name. Hatshepsut, the Egyptian Queen before Cleopatra. Hatshepsut, the name we should all think of in tandem with the most influential ancient rulers. There’s a horrible reason we don’t, though, and it’s part of what makes her and her time period so fascinating.
Hatshepsut was born in the age of the New Kingdom, around 1479 BCE. It was a time of intense prosperity and growth for Egypt, and she grew up seeing that. She idolized her father. After the Pharaoh’s death, though, Hatshepsut was forced to marry her half-brother, Prince Tuthmosis, to solidify his claim to the throne. Fortunately (for her), he died three years later, and a baby from another concubine (Tuthmosis III) was crowned. Hatshepsut was named queen regent. Two years later, she crowned herself king.
King, mind you, not queen. Hatshepsut was very careful to craft a masculine image, as she knew it would aid in the respect and trust of the people. That’s why, in any etching or portrait that has since been found of her, she is depicted as a male Pharaoh. Note, though, that she never cross-dressed, and never pretended to be a man. She simply depicted herself more masculinely.
Now, Egyptian kings were supposedly chosen by the gods, so how did she accomplish this? Basically, she was smart as hell, and managed to convince people that A) her father had ordained it, and B) she was conceived when the god Amun had disguised himself as her father and had sex with her mother. Sure, that’s bonkers, but it seriously shows how intelligent/strategic this woman was.
Her reign was remarkable. It was an era of peace and prosperity for Egypt. Of her most important accomplishments: Hatshepsut reestablished trade networks between the neighboring kingdoms, and constructed some of the most markedly ambitious Egyptian architecture of the period. She was a benevolent, intelligent, driven, kickass ruler. And remember Tuthmosis III? She didn’t have him killed or put on house arrest, or anything of that sort. Instead, she sent him to a prestigious military academy.
So what happened to her? She did all of these things, and we don’t talk about her: why? Well, it’s because Tuthmosis III up there decided to erase her from history. After her death in 1458 BCE, he decided to eradicate any memory of her. He had her name chiseled from obelisks, had her portraits defaced or fully destroyed. He had her removed from the official list of pharaohs. It took the modern world centuries to finally find her again: she was fully forgotten until hieroglyphics were translated in the 19th century, and it took even longer—until 2007—to ascertain where the unmarked place in which she was buried was. Why did he do it? We don’t know. It could have been jealousy or hatred. It could have been political expediency. Regardless, he erased her. He shouldn’t have.
But we’ve found her now. And we need to continue celebrating this woman who ruled one of the most remarkable kingdoms in history with peace, affluence, and glory. Let’s remember Hatshepsut.
(For further reading pleasure: Princesses Behaving Badly by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-queen-who-would-be-king-130328511/, and https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/hatshepsut)
6) Lyudmila Pavlichenko (1916 – 1974) – The Soviet “Lady Death”: Full disclaimer: I don’t necessarily take full inspiration from this woman. She’s incredibly impressive, though.
Born in 1916 in Balaya Tserkov, just outside of Kiev, Lyudmila Pavlichenko grew up always trying to prove people wrong. When speaking of her childhood, she remembered not allowing herself to be outdone by boys in anything. That’s why she took up going to the shooting range at such a young age, besting the young men there. In 1937, she enrolled at Kiev University to study history, aiming to be a teacher. That changed when the Germans invaded, and ultimately bombed the university she loved so much. She joined the army immediately; to make her prove her marksmanship, a Red Army officer handed her a rifle and commanded her to shoot two Romanians working a ways away from them. When she did, she was accepted as a sniper.
Now, I could give dates for every battle Pavlichenko was involved in. Chronology is great, sometimes. But that isn’t overly important. What is is the fact that Pavlichenko had 309 official kills, including 36 other snipers, during World War II. She cited her inspiration as being when a young boy, a comrade-in-arms, was taken out by a bullet right beside her during the fight. “He was such a nice, happy boy,” she later said. “And he was killed just next to me. After that, nothing could stop me.”
She was known as “Lady Death.” As “The Ghost Who Killed.” As “The Russian Bitch from Hell.” She was one of the Axis’s biggest fears. After her husband was shot and killed, too, a man whom she loved more than anything (she later professed), it grew even worse. She didn’t kill cleanly anymore, and was cruel to her targets. Eventually, she herself was hit (on four different occasions, actually, but she kept going back out until she got hit in the face), and her fame was declared too important for her to go back to the front.
She was sent on a tour of America, to heighten the war effort and get Americans to understand the atrocities happening on the other side. With the help of Eleanor Roosevelt, Pavlichenko found her voice. Sick of being asked if she could do her hair or make-up at the front, she once retorted, “I am 25 years old and I have killed 309 fascist occupants by now. Don’t you think, gentlemen, that you have been hiding behind my back for too long?”
After the war ended, Pavlichenko remarried, had two children, and lived a relatively quiet life behind the Iron Curtain. There was one thing that remained from her old days, though: she and Eleanor Roosevelt remained very close until the day she died.
(For further reading pleasure: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/eleanor-roosevelt-and-the-soviet-sniper-23585278/and https://www.rejectedprincesses.com/princesses/lyudmila-pavlichenko)
7) Elizabeth Freeman, or Mum Bett (1744? – 1829) – The Woman Who Won Her Freedom: Elizabeth Freeman was born around 1744 in Claverack, New York; at six months, she and her sister were sold to John Ashley of Sheffield, Massachusetts, whom she worked for until she was forty years old. During this long stretch of time, Freeman listened intently to every conversation surrounding the newly-written Bill of Rights and state constitution: though she was illiterate, she was incredibly intelligent. She held onto every word.
After an incident in which Freeman was hit with a hot kitchen shovel (she was protecting her sister), she left her owners and said she wouldn’t come back. She meant this. She called upon Theodore Sedgewick, a lawyer with anti-slavery beliefs, to help her; as she said, if all people were born free and equal, as the constitution says, that should include her, too. Sedgewick took on the case, and, in 1781, Freeman and her sister were freed. Brom and Bett v. Ashley set the precedent that humans were not property in Massachusetts. Just by the use of her own smarts, her own knowledge, Elizabeth Freeman had bested a racist, ignorant system to free herself and her sister.
Literally, how badass is that? I truly cannot even.
After winning her freedom, Elizabeth Freeman worked as a paid domestic servant in Theodore Sedgewick’s home, and was a prominent healer, midwife, and nurse for over 20 years. She was even able to purchase a house for herself and her children; she lived there contentedly until her death in 1829. She was around 85 years old.
Wanna know something else cool? W.E.B. DuBois is her great-grandchild. I guess badassery runs in the family.
(For further reading pleasure: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2p39.html and https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/elizabeth-freeman)
8) Lady Ada Lovelace (1815 -1852) – The Victorian Computer Scientist: Hey, you, reading this on your phone/laptop/computer/iDevice of any kind. Yeah, you. You have this lady to thank for that device you have there. A device that connects all of us. Lady Ada did that.
Lady Ada Lovelace was born Augusta Ada Byron, the only legitimate child of poet Lord Byron and mathematician Annabella Milbanke, in 1815. As her mother wanted her to grow up to be very unlike her whimsical, unreliable, emotional father, she was tutored in mathematics and the sciences from a young age. She showed natural prowess immediately: in 1828, she produced a fully mapped-out design for a flying machine. It only continued from there.
In 1833, Ada met Charles Babbage, an inventor and mathematician, at a party in London. The two would become lifelong friends and research partners; their letters last from 1835 to 1852. Unfortunately, that wasn’t to start quite yet, as Lady Ada took an intermission to marry her husband and become a mother. As soon as domestic duties allowed, though, she jumped right back in. As much as it appears she loved being a mother, her mind wouldn’t rest unless she was working.
In 1835, Babbage told Lady Lovelace about a new “Analytical Machine” he was concocting. He wanted her help. At first, her help came in translating French documents that spoke of such a machine; however, she added her own notes and observations to it. It is still the one being read today, and her additions are what make it work. If you’re of a mathematical mind, I highly suggest checking it out: there are some excerpts in the New Yorker article I linked below.
In essence, Lady Ada Lovelace gave massive contributions to coding. She invented the first computing machine. The first computer. It was her notes that later led to Alan Turing developing the first mass computer in the 1940s, which in turn led to our modern-day computers. If Lady Ada had not contributed to the sciences, we may very well have not had any of that. We owe her a thank you.
Now, some people argue that Lady Ada Lovelace’s contributions are overstated, that Charles Babbage did most of the work. I’ll just let Babbage’s own words, written to Lady Lovelace herself, do the talking: “I think your taste for mathematics is so decided that it ought not to be checked.” I agree, man.
(For further reading pleasure: https://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/lovelace.html, https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/ada-lovelace-the-first-tech-visionary, and https://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/adalovelace/)
And there you have it! I know it’s a bit late in the day, but I hope these eight helped you celebrate a bit more. They’re all complex, heroic, smart, driven, flawed, perfect human beings. We need to recognize them all.
Thank you for reading! Happy International Women’s Day!
(Side note: I listened to female film composers while writing this. It was a good time.)
~Rhiannon~
(Thumbnail courtesy of Real Simple)