The feminist scholar and activist Diana Russell, who has died aged 81, devoted her life to the campaign to end male violence towards women and girls. Perhaps her greatest achievement, and the one of which she was most proud, was popularising the term “femicide”, which she described as “the killing of females by males because they are female”.
She said: “From the burning of witches in the past, to the more recent widespread custom of female infanticide in many societies, to the killing of women for so-called honour, we realise that femicide has been going on a long time.”
Category: Herstory
Were the First Artists Mostly Women?
Women made most of the oldest-known cave art paintings, suggests a new analysis of ancient handprints. Most scholars had assumed these ancient artists were predominantly men, so the finding overturns decades of archaeological dogma.
“There has been a male bias in the literature for a long time,” said Snow, whose research was supported by the National Geographic Society’s Committee for Research and Exploration. “People have made a lot of unwarranted assumptions about who made these things, and why.”
Meet The Forgotten Female Scientist Who Debunked Theories Of Male Superiority
Leta Stetter Hollingworth was a trailblazing psychologist and champion of women’s rights. But a century after the 19th Amendment, equality has a long way to go.
Source: Meet The Forgotten Female Scientist Who Debunked Theories Of Male Superiority
Reclaim Her Name: why we should free Australia’s female novelists from their male pseudonyms
The Women’s Prize for Fiction has just published 25 literary works by female authors with their real names for the first time. Could we do the same for Miles Franklin and Henry Handel Richardson here?
For these authors, using a pseudonym was not just about slipping their work past male publishers who did not think publishing was a place for a woman. It was also about more diffuse forms of gender prejudice.
Women writers – witheringly dubbed “lady novelists” in the 19th century – also worried that their work would be marginalised as “women’s writing”; as domestic, interior, “feminine” and personal, as opposed to “masculine” themes such as history, society and politics that are, according to social norms, deemed to be more serious and culturally significant.
Source: Reclaim Her Name: why we should free Australia’s female novelists from their male pseudonyms
Exploring Gender Roles in Vintage Advertising
A look back at the portrayal of women and men as homemakers and breadwinners in cinema advertising from the 1940s.
The pressure on women to be perfect in everything they did was intense during this era and present at every stage in life. Household products were pitched directly at women, rather than men, and the marketing message was clear – ‘Brand X’ will help you win over that man and guarantee you’ll keep him.
The period of the late-1950s going into the 1960s saw a recovering economy, greater availability of ‘luxury’ items, the introduction of television, widespread migration and a growing women’s movement. There was a shift in culture and more relaxed social attitudes but the advertising industry continued to employ strictly defined gender roles whenever it thought they might be helpful in targeting different demographics.
Source: Exploring Gender Roles in Vintage Advertising | NFSA
What Was Happening Before ‘Just Be Nice Feminism’? Part I: Early Rumblings, 1970 – 1971
From early on there were attempts to use both the Women’s Liberation and Gay Liberation movements as a shield to push for the legitimation of male sexual fetishes.
The feminist response to males claiming to be female was quick to develop. The radical feminist newspaper It Ain’t Me, Babe started by the Berkeley Women’s Liberation group in 1970 were clear that transsexualism was antithetical to feminism and female liberation.
Angela Douglas claimed that ‘there have been and may be male transvestites and transsexuals active in Women’s Liberation, usually unknown to the other females’. There are many reasons for deceiving women to enter the Women’s Liberation Movement according to Douglas: ‘some [transsexuals]seek to perfect their feminine role as much as possible; some are sexually attracted to aggressive females; others may be intelligence agents’.
The clash between feminists and transsexuals became so great that it caught the attention of the Los Angeles Free Press, a widely circulated alternative newspaper established in the 1960s. Also known as ‘The Freep’, it reported in December 1970 that ‘Some feminists accused male transvestites and male transsexuals of being “super-male chauvinists.”
[T]here was an analysis in the Free Press of how transsexualism was a form of male supremacy. . . . It was publicly discussed how transsexualism relied on sexism and sexist stereotypes. The author proposed that ‘sexist oppression will not end for many, many years and transsexualism will probably greatly increase’. The author speculated on the future and warned that ‘the pool of medically indigent transsexuals in the preoperative phase is rapidly growing…. There exists a possibility of extremely militant (to the point of violence, etc.) groups of transvestites developing on a national scale within the very near future. Such a development merits close scrutiny’.
Source: What Was Happening Before ‘Just Be Nice Feminism’? Part I: Early Rumblings, 1970 – 1971
Meet Rosie Stephenson-Goodnight, the woman trying to fix Wikipedia’s sexism
Five years ago, Stephenson-Goodknight didn’t have her own Wikipedia page. For most of her life, she didn’t contribute to the website at all. But Stephenson-Goodknight has become a superstar in the community, and a pioneer for gender equality on a platform deeply in need of articles about women. She has written over 5,000 articles for the website, nearly 1,400 dedicated to women specifically.
Stephenson-Goodknight is up against centuries of history that haven’t documented or recognized women’s accomplishments. And in the present day, she’s up against various factions of Wikipedia’s contributors, who are 90 percent male. Some go so far as to delete articles about women or, worse, sexually harass the website’s female users.
But that’s beginning to change, in large part thanks to Stephenson-Goodknight, who, in 2015, co-founded Women in Red, a volunteer organization that works to increase Wikipedia’s women biographies (one of Stephenson-Goodknight’s many gender-equality projects on the website).
Source: Meet Rosie Stephenson-Goodnight, the woman trying to fix Wikipedia’s sexism – The Lily
Harry Potter and the Reverse Voltaire
[A]pparently what had prompted my colleague’s enthusiastic denunciation of J. K. Rowling’s statement of the political importance of the concept of sex was not so much any disagreement with the essence of what was said, but the thought that it may or may not be hateful to say so.
“I agree completely with what you say, but I’ll fight to the death to prevent you from saying it.”
If we are denied the language and resources to recognise, record, and respond to the facts of female oppression, we will not be able to ameliorate these harms. That is why, despite the many efforts made to prevent us from doing so, so many of us continue to speak.
The ‘Reverse Voltaire’ is of course a nod to its more famous cousin, the quote so-often attributed to Voltaire in defence of free speech:
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
The words were not actually Voltaire’s, but those of his biographer, one S. G. Tallentyre. Stephen G. Tallentyre was itself a pseudonym, of one Evelyn Beatrice Hall. Writing in 1906, the female Evelyn chose a male pseudonym to increase her chances of being listened to. And her words certainly were heard, though their true attribution is more often forgotten.
Source: Harry Potter and the Reverse Voltaire | by Mary Leng | Jul, 2020 | Medium
Lillian Moller Gilbreth
Mother of Modern Management and America’s First Lady of Engineering
Eleven years before receiving her Ph.D., Lillian married Frank Gilbreth. Together, they had 12 children. Two of the children went on to write two books, “Cheaper by the Dozen” and “Belles on Their Toes,” about their life in the Gilbreth household. Frank and Lillian devoted themselves to finding the “one best way” to perform any task in order to increase efficiency and productivity in industry. These studies are called time and motion studies.
In June 1924, Frank died suddenly of a heart attack. Lillian continued the work they had begun, writing four books and teaching industrial engineering courses at various schools, including Purdue, Bryn Mawr, and Rutgers. She was the first person to integrate psychology into concepts of industrial management.
During the Great Depression, President Hoover asked her to join the Emergency Committee for Unemployment. While on this committee, she created a successful nationwide program, “Share the Work,” that created many new jobs. During World War II, Lillian worked as a consultant for the government. She oversaw the conversion of factories to military bases and war plants. Lillian is credited with many inventions. These inventions include the foot-pedal trash can and refrigerator door shelves.
Hidden women of history: Enheduanna, princess, priestess and the world’s first known author
The world’s first known author is widely considered to be Enheduanna, a woman who lived in the 23rd century BCE in ancient Mesopotamia (approximately 2285 – 2250 BCE). Enheduanna is a remarkable figure: an ancient “triple threat”, she was a princess and a priestess as well as a writer and poet.
Source: Hidden women of history: Enheduanna, princess, priestess and the world’s first known author