Happy Women's History Month!

[ArabellaScott]

I had no idea women got a whole month!!!

I can't wait to see the flags flying from every government building and all the celebrations of women in history everywhere. 😊

A small thing but my DC’s school are sending home a purple card for kids to draw/write about an influential woman in their life this week 💪

Not in my Borough. LGBT etc get a full month of events, workshops, posters, exhibitions ………

Women get a day, except it’s a not a full day, it’s a two hour long event on a Friday evening between 7.00 and 9.00.

I see Arabella has already mentioned my heroine Mary Barbour, so may I commend to you, this Women's History Month, Dr Elsie Inglis en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsie_Inglis

Pioneer of Scottish women's medicine and surgery, suffragist, war hero, clever woman, humanitarian, who refused to "go home and sit still".

I'm not going to be able to explain this very well as this is so far our of my area of knowledge but I was wondering about the survival rate, I was also wondering if it was a period of time where the babies came out easier/smaller with less loss of the mother during the birth as otherwise the population growth wouldn't have been as great. And don't big jumps in human advancement need lots of pregnant live women and viable children.

Dr Inglis is a great heroine pf mine, too - I wrote an article for our parish magazine about her.

I've got so much information for further articles from this thread - thank you so much.

Viable children (which largely presupposes healthy mothers) - yes, but possibly longer life expectancy would be a greater contributor to big jumps in advancement (gives people time to learn and to develop further from those advancements already made). Longer life expectancy would likely come with a societal change from hunter-gathering to the development of agriculture, I imagine.

Populations didn't grow very quickly until comparatively recently, I think.

(This is all speculation on my part - this isn't my area of expertise either)

A little trip back to the 17th century (mainly because I really like her poem)

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (born November 12, 1651, San Miguel Nepantla, Viceroyalty of New Spain [now in Mexico]—died April 17, 1695, Mexico City) was a poet, dramatist, scholar, and nun, an outstanding writer of the Latin American colonial period and of the Hispanic Baroque.

Juana Ramírez thirsted for knowledge from her earliest years and throughout her life. As a female, she had little access to formal education and would be almost entirely self-taught.

You can find out more about her here: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sor-Juana-Ines-de-la-Cruz

But this is one of her poems:

You Foolish Men

by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz 1651 – 1695

You foolish men who lay
the guilt on women,
not seeing you’re the cause
of the very thing you blame;

if you invite their disdain
with measureless desire
why wish they well behave
if you incite to ill.

You fight their stubbornness,
then, weightily,
you say it was their lightness
when it was your guile.

In all your crazy shows
you act just like a child
who plays the bogeyman
of which he’s then afraid.

With foolish arrogance
you hope to find a Thais
in her you court, but a Lucretia
when you’ve possessed her.

What kind of mind is odder
than his who mists
a mirror and then complains
that it’s not clear.

Their favour and disdain
you hold in equal state,
if they mistreat, you complain,
you mock if they treat you well.

No woman wins esteem of you:
the most modest is ungrateful
if she refuses to admit you;
yet if she does, she’s loose.

You always are so foolish
your censure is unfair;
one you blame for cruelty
the other for being easy.

What must be her temper
who offends when she’s
ungrateful and wearies
when compliant?

But with the anger and the grief
that your pleasure tells
good luck to her who doesn’t love you
and you go on and complain.

Your lover’s moans give wings
to women’s liberty:
and having made them bad,
you want to find them good.

Who has embraced
the greater blame in passion?
She who, solicited, falls,
or he who, fallen, pleads?

Who is more to blame,
though either should do wrong?
She who sins for pay
or he who pays to sin?

Why be outraged at the guilt
that is of your own doing?
Have them as you make them
or make them what you will.

Leave off your wooing
and then, with greater cause,
you can blame the passion
of her who comes to court?

Patent is your arrogance
that fights with many weapons
since in promise and insistence
you join world, flesh and devil.

This bit from @JanesLittleGirl post about the match girls strike:

"Born in slums, driven to work while still children, undersized because underfed, oppressed because helpless, flung aside as soon as worked out, who cares if they die or go on to the streets provided only that Bryant and May shareholders get their 23 per cent, and Mr. Theodore Bryant can erect statues and buy parks?"

Makes me wonder if this poem of unknown origin comes from the same period of time.

Children should be seen and not heard
Beaten and not fed
Deprived and harried
and comprehensively oppressed.

How magnanimous of them!

😍

Sold!

Good time for most women too - it's not as though a lot of them will be putting children to bed, feeding families, chucking school/work clothes into the wash, or supervising homework between 7.00 and 9.00 is it?

Than you - I shall get this and add it to "TheSeven Daughters of Eve" on my bookshelf (Bryan Sykes - also tracing mitochondrial DNA- fascinating stuff!)

Nellie Bly's biography is awesome inspiring: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Bly

I'm only really on the Iron Age!!!

But I can't resist a picture of wee Bessie Watson, aged 9.

Also the march in Edinburgh where she played the pipes. There's my favourite banner: 'A guid cause maks a strong arm'

To go with your Nellie Bly...

Elizabeth Bisland Wetmore (February 11, 1861 – January 6, 1929) was an American journalist and author, perhaps now best known for her 1889–1890 race around the world against Nellie Bly, which drew worldwide attention. The majority of her writings were literary works. She published all of her works as Elizabeth Bisland.

In November 1889, the New York World announced that it was sending its reporter Nellie Bly around the world, in a bid to beat Phileas Fogg's fictitious 80-day journey in Jules Verne's novel Around the World in Eighty Days. Catching wind of this publicity stunt, John Brisben Walker, who had just purchased the three-year-old and still-fledgling Cosmopolitan, decided to dispatch Bisland on her own journey.

Ultimately, however, Bly triumphed over Bisland. Critically, while in England, Bisland was told (and apparently believed) she had missed her intended ride, the swift German steamer Ems leaving from Southampton, even though her publisher had bribed the shipping company to delay its departure. It is unknown whether she was intentionally deceived.[13] She was thus forced to catch the slow-going Bothnia on January 18, departing from Queenstown (Cobh), Ireland, ensuring that Bly would prevail.

Bisland's ship did not arrive in Manhattan until January 30. She completed her trip in 76 1⁄2 days, also well ahead of Fogg's fictional record. Bisland wrote a series of articles for the Cosmopolitan on her journey, subsequently published as a book entitled, In Seven Stages: A Flying Trip Around The World (1891).

Interestingly there is a chance that the article I posted earlier about a woman's cycle was written by Elizabeth 's sister Mary Bisland, but I haven't been able to nail down the connection.

@Boiledbeetle that poem could have been written yesterday. Amazing woman.

I know that's what struck me when I read it! So many centuries and nothing bloody changes!

Fabulous thread. Thank you.

I have a lot of conversations about films in our house. To explain why I don't want to see yet another film or TV series about men. Am sure SAS rogue hero's is great. But am sick of watching history about men, for men.

Will hunt out 'Made in Dagenham ', thank uou for the idea. Maybe somebody will eventually realise the rich history of women's endeavours that would be perfect for lots of films and tv.

There was a TV series about the Western Approaches Tactical Unit mentioned upthread. I can't remember what it was called but well worth watching if you can find it.

Can't vouch for the choices but if you have Netflix:10 Documentaries That Celebrate the Power of WomenBecause well-behaved women rarely make history.

https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/womens-history-month-documentaries

There's also the film Hidden Figures

Hidden Figures
Hidden Figures is a Hollywood film about three African-American women who helped NASA launch pioneer astronaut John Glenn into orbit in 196212. The women, Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, broke the gender and race ceiling working as NASA mathematicians, computer experts and engineers during the Jim Crow era in the United States2. The film was nominated for an Oscar1.

That's the world over! It is presumed the men are the great artists, writers, intellectuals etc when all the time it's the hard working women who have been shoved in the background 🙈 #Womanhooded

Omg this def got my attention 🙈🤣 I agree with what she said!! 😘

Good point!! Have you messaged them to correct their error?? 😜

The Herring Lasses

Herring girls (or herring lasses) were groups of women who would travel the east coast of the United Kingdom from as far north as Aberdeen to as far south as Great Yarmouth, following herring as they migrated throughout the year.

Herring, sometimes called silver darlings‚ are a small fish that were caught in huge numbers in the North Sea from the eighteenth century right up until the mid twentieth century. Over the course of the year, the herring migrated to new breeding grounds, so the best place to sail from to catch them would change depending on the time of year ‚ from Scotland and northern England in Spring down to the coast of East Anglia in the Autumn.

Men worked on trawler ships catching the herring, but on land, it was the women's job to preserve them. Because there was no refrigeration, when herring were caught, they needed to be salted, smoked or frozen quickly. The herring girls typically salted their catches. Women worked in groups of three or four, gutting and salting, each group packing one barrel at a time. The women were paid depending on the amount of barrels they finished, so it paid to work fast.

The work was all outside, so it could be freezing cold in the winter. Standing in a quagmire of mud and fish guts (imagine the smell!), the women worked with sharp knives to gut the fish, which could cause injuries, and combined with the salt and brine, the work could be very painful. It was also extremely tiring. The women had to work for as long as it took to gut and salt the whole day's catch, which could be up to fifteen hours a day.

It would have been scary for some. Some girls started work at sixteen. The women would often be away from home for months at a time. Some of the herring girls from the Scottish islands may not even have spoken English, only Gaelic. However, working in the herring industry gave these women huge amounts of freedom to travel and work, increasing their independence and confidence. Some crews travelled and lived together for a whole season, instilling a huge amount of camaraderie and community in the group.