Category: Herstory

1st Case of a Judicially-Alienated Mama: 1800’s

Frances Wright’s remarkable life was destroyed as a result of her not having the power to maintain custody, while her ex had the power to take and alienate her child from her.

Frances would often visit France and became friendly with the Marquis de LaFayette, hero of both the American and French Revolution. It was rumored that she had an affair with him.

When LaFayette later came to the U.S., he introduced her to the founding fathers. Still in her ‘20’s, she got Thomas Jefferson to agree with her plan to end slavery and soon founded her own utopian community, the Nashoba Commune, in Tennessee.

Frances was against organized religion. She believed in an education based on science, free from religious superstition. She supported the rights of working people and advocated for universal education, along with equal rights for women.

Frances was the foremother of the liberated woman and was the first to condemn marriage as a form of slavery. This threatened men’s control over women and earned her a lot of backlash. She was described as a “harlot of infidelity” and “bold blasphemer and voluptuous preacher of licentiousness” and a “female monster” who dared to take the public-lecture platform—unacceptable female behavior.

In 1830, she sailed to France and became pregnant by one of her lovers. This posed a problem because, although she openly believed in sex outside of marriage, she thought she would be ostracized from polite society and it would harm her activism. She was most concerned, though, that her child would bear the stigma of “illegitimacy”, quite damaging to the lives of illegitimate children in those days.

So she went into seclusion in Scotland to hide her pregnancy, and the French father went with her. In December of 1830, Frances gave birth to Sylva, but it was not until six months later that she married the father. She gave birth to another child in 1832, who died shortly after birth.

Problem solved. Frances gave Sylva her deceased child’s birthday so it would appear as if she had been married when she gave birth to Sylva. No issue of illegitimacy. It was a secret they would both keep until their death.

Unsurprisingly, Frances did not like being married. By 1836, when Sylva was just 4 (really 6), they had separated. Thus began a childhood-long battle for custody of Sylva and the father’s attempt to take all of Frances’ money.

The father was given temporary custody of Sylva and began his campaign to alienate her from Frances. Frances’ mental and physical health declined precipitously. She suffered “nervous breakdowns” (as they were called in the day).

Frances never regained custody, though she tried mightily throughout Sylva’s childhood. She had all the money necessary for the best representation in court, but it made no difference. He was the man/father with all the power, and she was the woman/mother with no power.

In 1838, Frances withdrew from public life and activism. She was never again able to be the powerhouse she had been, lecturing and fighting for equality. It is ironic that her own inequality and lack of power led to her inability to maintain custody and protect her own child from being alienated from her. Not to mention being financially devastated.

By her teenage years, Sylva was estranged completely from Frances. As a young adult, Sylva even started a campaign publicly opposing Frances’ work for for women’s equality. That’s how bad the brainwashing had been.

In 1850, after Sylva was an adult and aged out of the system, Frances was finally granted a divorce. Her ex-husband and Sylva were awarded her entire property, including all her earnings from lectures and royalties.

Towards the end of Sylva’s life, she apparently realized the truth—that she had been alienated from her mother by her father. She seemed to have even realized that her mother was right about women being equal to men.

Lest you think this is a rare phenomena, check out the results from one of our surveys. Nearly half of the mothers were completely alienated from their children, with nearly 40% experiencing hostility, after custody was switched to the father.

This power to take and alienate children goes back to the beginnings of Patriarchy circa 12K years ago. Despite women’s progress, women have no more power in the family than they did 200 years later. Only now, men have created a specialized “Family Court” system that makes it even easier for judges to lie about women and switch custody.

Source: 1st Case of a Judicially-Alienated Mama: 1800’s

Meet Luo Fuli, The 29-Year-Old “AI Prodigy” Behind DeepSeek’s Global Success | NDTV

China’s groundbreaking AI model, DeepSeek, has taken the tech world by storm, outperforming prominent AI players like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude AI. The chatbot has catapulted to the top of the Apple app store charts, surpassed ChatGPT, and sent ripples through the US stock market. DeepSeek’s remarkable success can be attributed to its talented team of young innovators, who have developed cutting-edge AI technology despite limited resources.

One standout member of this team is Luo Fuli, a brilliant mind hailed as an “AI prodigy” in China. The 29-year-old AI researcher and prodigy has garnered widespread acclaim for her pioneering contributions to natural language processing (NLP).

Luo’s journey began at Beijing Normal University, where she initially struggled in computer science but eventually excelled. She then earned a spot at Peking University’s Institute of Computational Linguistics, publishing eight papers at the prestigious ACL conference in 2019.

This remarkable achievement caught the attention of tech giants Alibaba and Xiaomi, paving the way for her future collaborations. As a researcher at Alibaba’s DAMO Academy, Luo spearheaded the development of the multilingual pre-training model VECO and contributed significantly to the open-source AliceMind project.

She then joined DeepSeek in 2022. Her expertise in natural language processing played a crucial role in developing DeepSeek-V2, which has been hailed for its ability to rival ChatGPT.

Following her stint at DeepSeek, Luo’s exceptional skills caught the attention of Xiaomi’s founder, Lei Jun, who offered her an annual compensation package of 10 million yuan, as per the South China Morning Post. 

Source: Meet Luo Fuli, The 29-Year-Old “AI Prodigy” Behind DeepSeek’s Global Success

ICC chief prosecutor seeks arrest warrants for Taliban leaders over persecution of women | Taliban | The Guardian

The international criminal court’s chief prosecutor has requested arrest warrants for the Taliban’s supreme leader and Afghanistan’s chief justice on the grounds that their persecution of women and girls in Afghanistan is a crime against humanity.

It marks the first time the prosecutor has built a case around systemic crimes against women and girls, legal experts say. It is also a rare moment of vindication for Afghan activists, who over the last three years have often felt abandoned by the international community even as Taliban oppression deepened.

Since sweeping back to power in 2021, the Taliban have issued more than 80 decrees that violate women’s basic rights. Women are barred from most work, secondary education and public spaces, and their daily life is restricted in various ways.

Recently the group banned windows in rooms frequently used by women, to ensure they could not be seen by men not related to them. New buildings should be constructed without windows in these rooms and existing windows should be covered up, the order stipulated.

Activists are campaigning for the crime of gender apartheid to be recognised under international law, to reflect the scale of Taliban restrictions.

Source: ICC chief prosecutor seeks arrest warrants for Taliban leaders over persecution of women | Taliban | The Guardian

Women Who Dared to Discover: 16 Women Scientists You Should Know | A Mighty Girl

For centuries, women have made important contributions to the sciences, but in many cases, it took far too long for their discoveries to be recognized — if they were acknowledged at all. And too often, books and academic courses that explore the history of science neglect the remarkable, groundbreaking women who changed the world. In fact, it’s a rare person, child or adult, who can name more than two or three female scientists from history — and, even in those instances, the same few names are usually mentioned time and again.

Now is time to change that! In this blog post, we’re sharing the stories of 16 historic female scientists who have who have blazed new trails in their disciplines. From determining the size of the universe to unlocking the secrets of the genetic code, these women have forever changed the way we see our world. And if you’d like to learn more about any of the featured women or introduce them to children and teens, after each profile we’ve shared several reading recommendations for different age groups, as well as other resources that celebrate these women of discovery.

For even more biographies of inspiring scientists, visit our entire selection of Scientist Biographies. You can also find hundreds of books for children and teens on trailblazing women in all fields in our Role Models Biography collection.

Source: Women Who Dared to Discover: 16 Women Scientists You Should Know | A Mighty Girl

Hidden women of history: the Australian children’s author who captured the bush – before May Gibbs’ Australiana empire  | The Conversation

Louise Anne Meredith drew her literary inspiration from the Australian landscape and crafted her own ‘brand’ in its image. May Gibbs, who did the same, began publishing after her death.

Unlike Gibbs, though, Meredith’s illustrations were naturalistic. She rendered native Australian flora and fauna as characters for children’s literature, arguably beginning this tradition. But she didn’t “cutesify” them, or give them human features.

While Meredith is largely remembered for her botanical illustrations and travel writing, she was prolific as a children’s writer. She published a range of books for children set in Tasmania, created from her colonial perspective. Public knowledge of her contributions to Australian children’s literary history is scarce outside Tasmania.

Last year, the Royal Society of Tasmania established the Louisa Anne Meredith Medal to be awarded every four years to a “person who excels in the field of arts or humanities, or both, with outstanding contributions evidenced by creative outputs”.

Source: Hidden women of history: the Australian children’s author who captured the bush – before May Gibbs’ Australiana empire

Revealed: face of 75,000-year-old female Neanderthal from cave where species buried their dead | University of Cambridge

A new documentary has recreated the face of a 75,000-year-old female Neanderthal whose flattened skull was discovered and rebuilt from hundreds of bone fragments by a team of archaeologists and conservators led by the University of Cambridge.

New analysis strongly suggests that Shanidar Z was an older female, perhaps in her mid-forties according to researchers – a significant age to reach so deep in prehistory.

Without pelvic bones, the team relied on sequencing tooth enamel proteins to determine her sex. Teeth were also used to gauge her age through levels of wear and tear – with some front teeth worn down to the root.

At around five feet tall, and with some of the smallest adult arm bones in the Neanderthal fossil record, her physique also implies a female.

This archaeological work was among the first to suggest Neanderthals were far more sophisticated than the primitive creatures many had assumed, based on their stocky frames and ape-like brows.

“As an older female, Shanidar Z would have been a repository of knowledge for her group, and here we are seventy-five thousand years later, learning from her still,” Pomeroy said.

Source: https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/shanidar-z-face-revealed?

130 years of Women’s Suffrage, the role wāhine Māori played, and today (Published: 19 September 2023)

It is 130 years since Aotearoa New Zealand became the first self-governing country to give women the right to vote in parliamentary elections.

Kate Sheppard is likely the most recognised suffragist, but there were many others including Meri Mangakāhia (Te Rarawa, Ngāti Te Teinga, Ngāti Manawa, Te Kaitutae) and Ākenehi Tōmoana (Ngāi Te Rangiitā, Ngāti Papa-tua-maro, Ngāti Ngarengare, Ngāi Turahi).

Meri was the first woman recorded to address the lower house of the Te Kotahitanga Parliament (Māori Parliament) in 1893 calling for Māori women to be able to vote and stand for parliamentary seats. Ākenehi, who joined Meri at her address to the lower house, was a well-educated prominent Māori woman leader of chiefly status.

At the heart of the Māori women’s movement were concerns about the well-being of Māori, the loss of land, and restrictions on Māori women’s rights to own land imposed by European laws. ‘Wāhine rangatira’ (women of chiefly status) were used to having decision-making power, but the new European system forced them to find new ways to assert their authority.

Source: 130 years of Women’s Suffrage, the role wāhine Māori played, and today

The deadly serious world of poison gardens – and why I planted my own | The Conversation

Matriarchal knowledge

Australia does not boast any public poison gardens but Felicity McDonald runs a witches’ garden in the Mitta Valley, Victoria. Although it is not a poison garden, Felicity does have a lot of poisonous plants – hemlock, wormwood, hellebore, hogweed, datura, rhubarb, hydrangeas, foxglove, yew and more.

McDonald stresses poisonous plants should only be accessed under supervision. “Being a witch’s garden, we have plants that heal, however some of these plants have contradictions which could make you very sick or result in death.” She guides groups around the garden – school groups, senior citizens, families and Wiccans (people who follow pagan rituals and crafts) – describing plants’ medicinal and poisonous qualities.

I ask McDonald if there is a matriarchal knowledge associated with women and plants, especially poisonous ones. Yes, she says, and it is all about control. Reducing a woman to home duties, she says, denied her power. “But ancient Egyptians worshipped Isis, goddess of healing and magic. In Celtic Britain, the goddess Brigid was responsible for healing, poetry and smithcraft. And in Norse countries, Eir was the goddess associated with medical skill.” So while women had little influence in the public political sphere, they exercised power in the realms of herbs and healing.

Both McDonald and the duchess note the number of women with traditional expert plant knowledge has declined over recent centuries. I ask the duchess whether she mourns this loss of plant-related matriarchy. She answers, “A matriarch implies a strong woman who is a leader but often the best poisoners were acting quietly behind the scenes; tending to their gardens; weeding, drying herbs.”

Plants in a pot.
The author’s modest poison garden. Prudence Gibson, CC BY

 

 

Source: Friday essay: cure or kill? The deadly serious world of poison gardens – and why I planted my own

The Burning Times –  Donna Read

This documentary takes an in-depth look at the witch hunts that swept Europe just a few hundred years ago. False accusations and trials led to massive torture and burnings at the stake and ultimately to the destruction of an organic way of life. The film questions whether the widespread violence against women and the neglect of our environment today can be traced back to those times.

Source: The Burning Times – NFB

‘The bush calls us’ | Ruby Ekkel | The Conversation

Australia’s early women bushwalkers shunned convention by walking unchaperoned and wearing shorts. These fascinating photos and archival snippets tell their story.

In the 1920s and ’30s, some people scoffed at the idea women could handle rugged encounters with nature. The bush was considered a place for men.

The Melbourne Women’s Walking Club was the first of its kind in Australia. But other women of the era also took their place on the walking track. They include Jessie Luckman of Tasmania, Marie Byles and Dot Butler of New South Wales, and Alice Manfield who led guided walks on Victoria’s Mount Buffalo.

Thanks in part to the audacity of early female bushwalkers, it is no longer controversial for women to walk unchaperoned or wear shorts.

Many members of the Melbourne Women’s Walking Club went on to become committed conservationists. Several played vital roles in advocating for the protection of the natural spaces we enjoy today.

For example Jean Blackburn, an enthusiastic club member from 1934 until her death in 1983, played a leading role in the creation of national parks in Victoria.

The club survived the stresses of the Second World War and a slump in membership in the 1950s. Today, more than 100 years after its inception, the Melbourne Women’s Walking Club is still going strong. In fact, today it boasts its largest ever membership.

Source: ‘The bush calls us’