It's Women's History Month

[minoanmiss]

I need to find some notable women to write about.

I still remember being told as a child by my classmates, the sons of wealthy White people, that only White men invented things. I knew this wasn't true, because, but at the time I didn't have any counterexamples on tap. Sometimes I wonder what power those classmates of mine grew up to wield and if they ever changed their minds.

Sometimes I wonder if when we talk about how representation matters we focus too much on the side of it where we get to see people like us, and not encough on the side of it where we see people not like us. A friend of mine, a children's librarian, once told me that boys won't read books about girls, and while she is the person on the ground and I am an armchair theorist, I was always dissatisfied with that answer. We need for boys to read books about girls (and White kids to read about kids of color, and Christian kids to read about kids from other religions, and able-bodied kids to read about disabled kids in stories that aren't ableist parables, and so on) because I will never be able to stop wondering if those classmates of mine changed their minds about whether only White men can innovate, and if not, how many women and people of color's careers they derailed.

For the moment, off the top of my head, here's a book rec: Rejected Princesses by Jason Porath, who wrote and illustrated magnificent reports on historically significant women all over the world. Every library should have a copy, IMHO. And make sure all the kids read it, boys, girls, and kids to whom such categories don't apply.

Comments

[eller]

Notable women... If you're interested, here are some notable women from my home town Hamburg.

Agathe Lasch. She was a Germanist, and the first woman ever to become a professor at the University of Hamburg. (Personally, I'm mainly interested in her because of her studies of Low German.)

Erna Mohr. She was a famous German biologist who, among other discoveries, for example figured out how tho tell the age of fish.

Ottilie Assing. She was an early feminist, and also became famous in the movement to abolish slavery.

[sabotabby]

This is so important. I was disappointed in the previous English teachers at my school who were convinced that our kids (majority boys at the time) would only read "boy books." We're all encouraged to identify with white boys through literature; heaven forbid white boys be encouraged to identify with anyone else. One of the reasons why I appreciated my English teacher assigning Wizard of Earthsea, which gets you to identify with the protagonist before revealing his skin colour.

[kayre]

I was deeply frustrated in seminary when one professor kept urging me to do research on women in church history. I would respond, "that's a great topic, why don't you suggest it to [one of the men in the class]?" He would even do this after I had already proposed a workable topic.

[princessofgeeks]

I am happy to report that in my kids' age cohort (now college age), boys definitely read books and watch movies about girls. My boys and their friends all loved Hunger Games and Divergent, for example. And my boys and their friends also loved the first Wonder Woman movie, as another example.

[redbird]

Off the top of my head: Congresswoman Jeanette Rankin, the only member of the House of Representatives to vote against the US entering both World Wars. I know too little else about her to know whether you, or I, would find her congenial, though.

[oracne]

This sounds like an excellent project.

[stranger]

Let us not forget that the women who probably did more to invent agriculture than men, would have been dark-skinned.

[lunabee34]

Thanks for the rec!

[gloss]

I really enjoyed this list of some notable African-American women, fwiw.

[jjhunter]

I have a tumblr tag for 'Badass women in history' you may find helpful for this. For example: Marion Stokes (1929-2012), civil rights activist, feminist, and news archivist (film documentary about her life | Movie & Video Collection at the Internet Archive).

She was a civil rights activist and archivist, who was extremely concerned about preserving history. She believed that, by taping television, she would be preserving history EXACTLY as it was perceived at the time; she didn’t want the detail in the news to disappear with time. And she was RIGHT.

Like I said, she didn’t just tape ‘whatever’ was on television. It was extremely targeted towards news stations. There were 8 VCRs running at all times in her home. Her life—-and her family’s lives—-were centered around 6 hour blocks, since that was the amount of time that a tape would record for. Her collections were also extremely organized.

[contrarywise]

In my little corner of the world, Lillian Moller Gilbreth seems to be having a (well-deserved) moment. Two different podcasts with different focuses have mentioned her in detail recently.

Representation is important, and not just for those being represented. Seeing and reading about people who are different from us in various ways leads to thinking and feeling differently about those people. Diversifying one's media inputs can make a surprising amount of positive difference.

[amaebi]

A lifelong task, journey, and joy.