Different ways women have made change historically

[MurderOfGoths]

Long time no see, I needed some advice and couldn't think of anywhere better, so hi again.

Last few days I've been talking to women who think they don't do enough because they aren't good at more forceful activism, or at theory/political stuff, and I wanted to show them that women throughout history have utilised all sorts of ways to create change.

Unfortunately my mind has gone blank, I have niggling memories that I can't quite recall, and thought maybe some of you would be able to help?

Particularly I'm looking for ways in which women made change even when it was hard or impossible for them to step outside socially accepted behaviour for women. So used behaviours/methods seen as more feminine than masculine, behaviours that might be seen as weak by some, but actually had some power.

Thank you!

[PlaysWellWithOthers]

Lovely to see you back!

I have nothing to add right now, but will ponder and come back tomorrow. If that's ok?

[MurderOfGoths]

Of course! It's stupidly late, I just wanted to make sure I didn't forget to ask. :)

[YonicScrewdriver]

Hi

Hang on..

[YonicScrewdriver]

"Miss Henrietta Leavitt died in 1921. Working for years at the Harvard College Observatory under the noted astronomer Edward Pickering, this nearly forgotten observatory assistant, a 'computer' (one that does computations by hand), provided a tool critical to unraveling the most basic question facing astronomers in the early twentieth century. Was the Milky Way essentially the entire universe, or was the Milky Way just one of many large clusters of stars? These hypothetical clusters went by various names: island universes, nebulae, and galaxies."

www.amazon.co.uk/Miss-Leavitts-Stars-Discovered-Discoveries/dp/0393328562?tag=mumsnet&ascsubtag=mnforum-21

This woman did her 'lowly' work so well that she made a yardstick for the galaxy.

Is that the kind of thing you mean?

[YonicScrewdriver]

Wonderful story about her from a writer who takes facts seriously when characterising:

www.amazon.co.uk/Woman-Measured-Heavens-Comma-Singles-ebook/dp/B00GSV83FE?tag=mumsnet&ascsubtag=mnforum-21

Only 99p!

[BobbyGentry]

Mary Anning as in 'she sells seashells on the seashore' first palaeontologist. Could join the royal society so sold her fossils on on the sea shore to tourists and royal society members.

New Zealand was the first country to extend the vote to women (Sep 19, 1893.) Movement led skilfully by Kate Sheppard. Women in the U.K didn't get the vote 'til 1916-1917.

[Lurkedforever1]

During ww2? Although it didn't come near equality and women were mainly kicked back to domesticity after, it was at least acknowledged short term they were capable of more.
The Brontes, particularly Emily and wuthering heights. Even her own sister tried to explain away the ideas/ passion in the book.

[BobbyGentry]

• Couldn't

[YonicScrewdriver]

Lysistrata? Maybe not the right message...

[PlaysWellWithOthers]

Adelaide Hoodless

The woman credited with starting the WI, who, after her son died, decided that no other children should die like he did and set about revolutionising domestic science in Canada.

If she's not a great example, then all the women of the WI for the last 100 years, sharing knowledge, having fun and making friends in a very female centred way. Very quietly and efficiently changing the world, or at least their worlds.

[NotCitrus]

The property-owning women who went out and voted before the law was tightened to specify men only.
The first Girl Guide leaders and all the ones after, followed by those who lobbied the Scouts to admit girls
The women who start local petitions eg for road safety and lobby local councillors and MPs (always a majority of women)
All the early students in male-dominated fields who just turned up and kept going and didn't get worn down - medical students, engineers, student comedy
All the women who declined to marry the first contender and used networks of friends to urge a better bet to propose to them. Thinking of Recency times but probably an issue forever.

Mothers persuading sons to follow one course of action or another. Power behind the throne figures like Elinor of Acquitaine/Castile.

Other female dominated organisations like the CAB, PTAs, employment and educational access law firms...

[MurderOfGoths]

Those are some excellent examples, thank you!

[YonicScrewdriver]

Katharine of Aragon and Margaret d'Anjou leading armies when their kings were away/insane.

[TheWanderingUterus]

The first women to ride bicycles, wear trousers, fly planes, drive cars.
Nurses and ambulance drivers on the front lines in terrible conditions.
Women who wrote diaries or books about their experiences.

Women who have come forward and written about painful/traumatic/taboo things like rape, domestic violence, depression, abortion, surrendering their children for being unmarried etc.

Women who raised their sons to respect women and their daughters to believe they could reach their full potential.

[slug]

You might want to check out Dale Spender's Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done To Them for a feminist analysis of women's intellectual heritage.

[uglyswan]

Frances Oldham Kelsey, who was working for the FDA in 1960 and, despite increasing personal pressure from the manufacturer, refused to authorise the approval of Thalidomide in the US.

[grimbletart]

Gertrude Bell

[SenecaFalls]

Women were in many ways the backbone of the Civil Rights Movement in the US and much of that was in behind-the-scenes contributions that were more traditionally the province of women. They housed and looked after activists, made coffee, tea, and sandwiches for meetings, typed endlessly and ran the mimeograph machines, and counseled and urged on the people who were in the front lines.

[CaptainWentworth]

Marie Curie, who as well as discovering radium, and winning two Nobel prizes in separate scientific disciplines, pioneered (with her daughter) the use of field x ray machines during WW1; I watched a really interesting documentary about her the other day, which suggested her eventual death from leukaemia was a result of this rather than her research work.

She was an even more remarkable woman that I'd realised, actually. Worked as a governess in Poland to pay for her sister to the Sorbonne, then when the sister graduated as a doctor she paid for Marie to attend in her turn. The Sorbonne awarded degrees to way before British universities deigned to.

[CaptainWentworth]

Rosalind Franklin, whose painstaking crystallography work was essential to the discovery of the structure of DNA- after her male colleague showed her images to James Watson without her permission- and without being credited as co discoverer.

[EBearhug]

The property-owning women who went out and voted before the law was tightened to specify men only.
Although some of them voted for their candidate who was against women's suffrage... (Can't remember any details, other than one voted for George someone. Which isn't helpful.)

---

Dame Stephanie Shirley set up a women-only software company in the '60s (women only until Equal Opportunities legislation, anyway), and is still doing a lot of charitable work for autism and philanthropy in her '80s. Amazing woman.

---

What about writing women into wikipedia? It's a comparatively small effort multiplied by loads of women (mostly). This is an example of one of their workshops. I think that sounds a lot more achieveable to many people than being a top scientist or whatever. (That Marie Curie programme is worth seeing, though.)

[sashh]

It might sound trivial but what about fashion? Women who decided to not wear the clothes of their day but more practical clothing such as 1920s 'cycling suits', cutting long hair in to a bob (around the same time), Suzanne Lenglen's 'shocking' tennis dresses.

They might seem trivial but we wear clothes that are a lot more comfotable than the Victorians, and more importantly we have a choice.


The suffergists who don't get much recognition but fought for the vote in a 'more feminine' way.

The wives of the miners during the strike.

The women in Argentina who danced with photos of the 'disappeared', the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.

[YonicScrewdriver]

Not trivial Sashh, I'm sure fashion is seen as trivial because it's seen as a woman's concern. It's a multi-£ business, the vast majority of which anyway is shops selling everyday wear.

[TeiTetua]

Cycling suits like this?
witness2fashion.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/wtwem-sept-1899-wareham-joke-500.jpg?w=500&h=395