“You don’t know you’re making
history when it’s happening. I
just wanted to do my job.”
– Charity Adams Earley,
Highest-Ranking Black American
Woman Officer of WWII – she
fought segregation and racism
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WOW2 is a four-times-a-month sister blog to
This Week in the War On Women
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“It’s not that I’m apolitical …
In my youth, I was a freelance
political speechwriter, which
taught me a lot about writing
fiction, I must add.”
– Susan Isaacs, American author
of Brave Dames and Wimpettes:
What Women Are Really Doing
on Page and Screen
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“I fight every day so that this country
changes and confronts, as painful as
it may be, the truth, the tragedy
that it experienced.”
– Sola Sierra, Chilean Human
Rights Activist — she searched
for the thousands “disappeared”
by Pinochet’s regime
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The purpose of WOW2 is to learn about and honor women of achievement, including many who’ve been ignored or marginalized in most of the history books, and to mark events in women’s history.
These trailblazers have a lot to teach us about persistence in the face of overwhelming odds. I hope you will find reclaiming our past as much of an inspiration as I do.
THIS WEEK IN THE WAR ON WOMEN will post
shortly, so be sure to go there and catch up
on the latest dispatches from the frontlines.
Many, many thanks to libera nos, intrepid Assistant Editor of WOW2. Any remaining mistakes are either mine, or uncaught computer glitches in transferring the data from his emails to DK5. And much thanks to wow2lib, WOW2’s Librarian Emeritus.
Note: All images are below the person or event to which they refer.
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- December 1, 1083 – Anna Komnene born, Byzantine princess, scholar, physician, hospital administrator, and historian; author of the Alexiad, an account of her father’s reign which is now the main source of Byzantine political history for the period; she administered a large hospital and orphanage in Constantinople, and taught medicine there; considered an expert on the treatment of gout; she was involved in a plot to overthrow her brother when he took the throne after her father’s death, so her estates were forfeited, and she studied philosophy and history at the convent of Kecharitomene.
- December 1, 1443 – Madeleine of France born, became Princess of Viana by marriage to Prince Gaston of Viana; she bore two children, but Gaston died in 1470, two years before his father’s death in 1472. Madeleine was regent for her son Francis Phoebus until his death in 1483, and then served as regent for her daughter, Catherine, until 1494. She battled her brother-in-law John of Foix, who tried to claim the throne as a male heir. In 1494, Madeleine was taken hostage by Ferdinand II of Aragon during his conflict with the French over control of Italy. In 1495, she died at age 51, still imprisoned.
- December 1, 1722 – Anna Louisa Karsch born, German poet from the Silesia region; first German woman to earn a living from her literary works. She was taught some Latin, and to read and write in German by a great-uncle, but after her father died, her mother remarried, and her stepfather became abusive about her “reading mania.” In secret, she continued to read books lent to her by a friend. She married at age 16 and bore two children, but divorced in 1745. Penniless, she remarried, but her second husband became an alcoholic. After a poem she wrote was read at a funeral, she began to compose poems for weddings and other local events, and her work started appearing in Silesian newspapers, where they developed a following. The payments she received for them helped her support her children. She arranged for her abusive husband to be pressed into the Prussian Army during the Prussian campaign against Austria, and some poems she wrote about Frederick the Great, the Prussian King, attracted even more notice. Members of the aristocratic salons became her patrons, and introduced her to literary notables. She was later given a pension and a house by Frederick’s successor, Friedrich Wilhelm II, and lived there composing poetry until her death at age 69 in 1791.
- December 1, 1761 – Marie Tussaud born, French sculptor; considered a royal sympathizer, she was arrested during the French Revolution in 1794, barely escaping the guillotine herself before making death masks of the famous victims of the guillotine. After extensively touring the British Isles with her collection, she founded Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum in London in 1835. In 1850, she died in her sleep at age 88.
- December 1, 1847 – Christine Ladd-Franklin born, mathematician, logician, psychologist, and feminist; noted for theories on the development of the color sense of human beings, and theories which accounted for color-blindness in some individuals. Author of Color and Color Theories. In 1883, she also published an original logic method for reducing all syllogisms to a single formula. Advocate of equality for women within the scientific community.
- December 1, 1847 – Agathe Backer Grøndahl born, Norwegian pianist and composer; she made her debut as a pianist with 26-year-old Edvard Grieg conducting the orchestra, and later became a student of Franz Liszt. During the 1870s and 1880s, she built an outstanding career as a pianist, giving concerts in the Nordic countries, London, and Paris. George Bernard Shaw gave her enthusiastic reviews in his days as a music critic. She composed over 400 pieces, many of them song cycles.
- December 1, 1893 – Dorothy Detzer born, worked at Hull House investigating child labor infringements; national secretary of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF / 1924-1946); known as the “Lady Lobbyist” by members of Congress, respected for research and integrity – no personal favors, private dinners, or backroom deals.
- December 1, 1901 – Dorothy James born, American composer and music educator; known for Three Symphonic Fragments, The Jumblies (text by Edward Lear), Paul Bunyan, and Patterns. She taught music, theory, and composition at Eastern Michigan University (1927-1968).
- December 1, 1901 – Ilona Fehér born, Hungarian violinist and violin teacher. In 1942, WWII, she and her daughter were interned in a WWII concentration camp, but they escaped in 1944, and joined Hungarian and Czech partisans until Hungary was liberated by the Soviet Union in 1945. In 1949, she emigrated to Israel, where she taught the violin to Pinchas Zukerman, Shlomo Mintz, and Hagai Shaham. She was also a frequent jurist at international violin competitions in Europe. Fehér died at age 86 in 1988. The Ilona Fehér Foundation awards grants to promising young Israeli violinists.
- December 1, 1910 – Dame Alicia Markova born as Lilian Marks, English ballerina and choreographer-director; notable for her career with Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, and as Prima Ballerina for the company that would become the Royal Ballet; she was the first to perform several of Frederick Ashton’s early ballets.
- December 1, 1913 – Mary Martin born, American actress, singer, and Tony Award-winning Broadway star, the first to play Nellie Forbush in South Pacific, and Maria von Trapp in the Sound of Music. Probably best remembered as Peter in the Broadway musical version of Peter Pan, because the show was recorded and shown several times on television in the 1950s and 1960s. She was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1973. Martin died of cancer in 1990 at age 76.
- December 1, 1917 – Geraldine McCollough born as Geraldine Hamilton; American sculptor and painter; made her sculpting debut in 1963 at the Century of Negro Progress Exposition in Chicago. Her work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian and the National Woman’s Museum.
- December 1, 1919 – American-born Lady Nancy Astor took her seat in the U.K. House of Commons, first woman to serve as a Member of Parliament (1919-1945). Nancy Langhorne married Waldorf Astor in 1906, whose father William, scion of the American Astor family, became a British subject, and was raised to the British peerage in 1916-1917 for his many philanthropic activities. Nancy Astor appealed to voters on the basis of her earlier war work with Canadian soldiers, charitable work, her financial resources for the campaign, and her ability to improvise. Voters appreciated her wit and ability to turn the tables on hecklers.
- December 1, 1919 – Lurlean Hunter born, African-American singer. In 1951, she was featured performer with George Shearing and his quintet at Birdland; in 1961, she was under contract to Atlantic Records, and made her first album “Blue and Sentimental.”
- December 1, 1926 – Mother Antonia Brenner, ‘Madre Antonia,’ born as Mary Clarke, American Roman Catholic religious sister and activist, who had a dream in 1969 of being imprisoned awaiting execution, and Jesus visiting her. But she was barred by church rules from joining any religious order because she was an older divorced woman. She began caring for prisoners at the notorious maximum-security La Mesa Prison in Tijuana, Mexico, and founded an order for women like herself, the Eudist Servants of the Eleventh Hour. In addition to her work with the prisoners, she negotiated an end to a riot, and also persuaded the jail administrators to discontinue prisoner incarceration in substandard cells known as the tumbas (tombs). In 2003, her religious community was formally approved by Rafael Romo Munoz, Bishop of the Diocese of Tijuana. In September 2009, she received the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award, presented at the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego.
- December 1, 1930 – Dame Marie Bashir born, Australian physician, psychiatrist, and politician; Community Health Services director in the Central Sydney Area (1987-1990); Governor of New South Wales (2001-2014).
- December 1, 1934 - Hilly Axwijk born, Surinamese-Dutch social worker and women's rights activist. She was the founder of the foundation "Surinaamse Vrouwen Bijlmermeer" (SVB) in 1982, which campaigned for the emancipation and equal rights of Surinamese-Dutch women and to give them better opportunities.
- December 1, 1935 – Sola Sierra born, Chilean human rights activist; she joined the communist party as a young woman, and campaigned for healthcare for the poor. When Augusto Pinochet overthrew the Chilean government in 1973 and assumed power, Sierra and her husband, a fellow communist, stayed in the country. Her husband and a friend disappeared after they were arrested in 1976, and Sierra became president of Familiares de detenidos desaparecidos (Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared), working to uncover the truth about what happened to thousands of people who disappeared during Pinochet’s regime. Familiares continued to struggle for answers and bring those responsible to justice after Pinochet stepped down in 1990 under an amnesty agreement. When Pinochet was arrested in London in October 1998, charged with numerous human rights violations, tax evasion, and embezzlement, Sierra traveled to London to help a Spanish prosecutor campaign for his extradition. She died of a heart attack at age 63 in 1999.
- December 1, 1937 – Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga born, Latvian politician and academic; first woman President of Latvia (1999-2007), noted for her leading role in Latvia becoming part of the European Union and NATO; she was a professor of psychology at the University of Montreal (1965-1998), teaching psychopharmacology, psycholinguistics, scientific theories, experimental methods, and language and cognitive processes. Her experimental research focused on memory processes and language, and the influence of drugs on cognitive processes. At the same time she did scholarly research on semiotics, poetics, and structural analysis of computer-accessible texts from an oral tradition ― Latvian folksongs. Director of the newly-founded Latvian Institute (1998-1999). Drafted by the Saeima (Latvian Parliament) as a candidate for President of Latvia in 1999, she won, then was re-elected in 2003. In 2005, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan recruited Vīķe-Freiberga for his team of global political leaders to promote his comprehensive reform agenda. She is a founding member and current President of the Club of Madrid, a forum of former Heads of State, and Co-Chair of the Nizami Ganjavi International Center, a global center for developing new ways to bring about peace.
- December 1, 1945 – Bette Midler born, American singer, songwriter, actress, and producer; founder of the New York Restoration Project, to revitalize neglected neighborhood parks, and founder of a coalition that saved a number of community gardens from being sold off by the city for commercial development. Midler is active in helping wounded U.S. military men and women, and their families, with resources and customizing homes to meet the needs of persons with disabilities. She has also done several tours for the USO.
- December 1, 1950 – Manju Bansal born, Indian biophysicist specializing in the field of molecular biophysics; professor of theoretical Biophysics group in Molecular Biophysics unit of in the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Bansal is the founder and director of the Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology at Bangalore. She is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, and since 1998, a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (India), in Allahabad.
- December 1, 1952 – The New York Daily News reports the story of Christine Jorgensen, the first widely known case of sex reassignment surgery.
- December 1, 1954 – Dame Judith Hackitt born, British chemical engineer and civil servant; Chair of the UK Health and Safety Executive (2008-2016); Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering since 2010, and of the Institution of Chemical Engineers.
- December 1, 1955 – Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a bus to a white person in Montgomery, Alabama; her arrest sparks the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a landmark case in the modern U.S. civil rights movement.
- December 1, 1955 – Karen Tumulty born, American journalist; national political correspondent for The Washington Post. Previously wrote for Time magazine (1994-2010) on Washington DC politics, after 14 years at the Los Angeles Times (1980-1994).
- December 1, 1958 – Candace Bushnell born, American journalist, columnist, novelist, and television producer; her column for the New York Observer was anthologized as the bestselling book Sex and the City, which became the basis for the hit TV series.
- December 1, 1964 – Jo Walton born in Wales, Welsh-Canadian Fantasy and science fiction writer, winner of a Nebula, a Hugo, the World Fantasy Award, a Mythopoeic Award, and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer; noted for her Sulien, Small Change, and Thessaly series.
- December 1, 1970 – Sarah Silverman born, American stand-up comedian, actress, singer, producer, and writer. Known for comedy that addresses social taboos and sexism, racism, religion, and politics. She produced and starred in The Sarah Silverman Program (2007-2010) on Comedy Central. She campaigned for Bernie Sanders during the primaries, then later spoke in support of Hillary Clinton at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. In her convention speech, she urged other Sanders supporters to back Clinton and, later, amid some boos from some Sanders supporters, said: “Can I just say? To the ‘Bernie or Bust’ people, you’re being ridiculous.” Silverman then hosted the Hulu web television late-night talk show I Love You, America with Sarah Silverman (2017-2018).
- December 1, 1976 – Laura Ling born, American journalist and writer; in 2014, she became Director of Development at Discovery Digital Networks; previously producer of the Vanguard television documentary series; in 2009, she and fellow journalist Euna Lee were detained in North Korea, accused of illegally entering the country and “hostile acts” when they attempted to film refugees along to the North Korean-Chinese border. They were tried and sentenced to 12 years in a labor prison, but U.S diplomatic efforts, and a visit to North Korea by former President Bill Clinton, secured their release after two months.
- December 1, 1985 – Janelle Monáe born, African-American singer, rapper, and actress; in 2016, she made her theatrical film debut in two high-profile productions – in Hidden Figures, she played NASA mathematician and aerospace engineer Mary Jackson, and she played Teresa in Moonlight. Hidden Figures was a box office success, and Moonlight won the Oscar for Best Picture at 2017 Academy Awards. In 2019, she won the GLAAD Outstanding Music Artist Award. In 2022, she came out as non-binary.
- December 1, 1989 – An attempted coup d'état against Philippine President Corazon Aquino by 3,000 soldiers loyal to disgraced former leader Ferdinand Marcos, and allied with members of the Reform the Armed Forces Movement, almost seized the presidential palace. Aquino requested U.S. support, and a special operations force was formed, and USAF F-4 fighters buzzed the rebel’s airfields, with orders to fire in front of any aircraft which attempted to take off, then shoot them down if they succeeded in becoming airborne. By December 9, the coup was completely defeated.
- December 1, 2010 – In the UK, Jo Shuter, headteacher at Quintin Kynaston school in St John’s Wood, launched a £2 million appeal to create an accommodation centre for the school’s homeless students. "We currently have around six students in the sixth form who are living in hostel accommodation, and another dozen with home situations so chaotic that they are on the precipice and could easily drop over," she said. "For a 16-year-old who becomes homeless, the council has no duty to provide foster care, so they end up living in a hostel for under-25s where they are expected to cook and fend for themselves. Two years ago, … my deputy head … and [I] started talking about a star pupil who was struggling academically because he had become homeless. We both have teenage sons and we mused how horrendous it would be for them to live in a hostel, how hard it would be for them to cope, and that's when the idea popped into my head." Before Shuter took the helm in 2002, Quintin Kynaston was “the place nobody wanted to send their children to,” but since Shuter took over, the number of students has doubled. Her plan is to buy a large family house with a garden in nearby Willesden with up to 10 beds. She reckons the house will cost £1.5 million and that they'll need a £500,000 endowment to run it and employ a couple as proxy parents. Kieran Gibbs, the Arsenal football fullback who recently visited the school, and Madness singer Suggs, a former pupil, will help raise the cash. Shuter explained, “The ethos of our school is to create a family environment that replicates, if you like, the Jewish home in which I grew up and where I was given unconditional love despite being a terrible rebel. It's that sense of family as a safety net that I am looking to recreate for children that come from these deprived and sometimes dysfunctional families."
- December 1, 2016 – In London, CEO of CWM Anthony Constantinou was convicted of two counts of sexual assault, and given a 12 month sentence in retrial of a case compared to the atmosphere of sexual bullying in the Hollywood movie The Wolf of Wall Street. In 2014, he pushed a woman up the frosted glass of a reception area and went on to grope and kiss her against her will. In 2015, while on bail for the first attack, Constantinou assaulted another woman during drinks after a business meeting. During the meeting, Constantinou threw her mobile against a wall and told her: “Don’t answer phones in my meeting.” Later that night, he picked up a big chunk of hot wasabi paste and shoved it in her mouth. At one point Constantinou went over and grabbed the woman, saying he could “get with her, kiss her and do what he wanted with her” because she did not work for the company. Judge Nicholas Cooke QC said: “Sexual bullying in the workplace blights lives. There are eminently foreseeable consequences.” Constantinou denied all charges and declined to give evidence, and made no reaction as he was jailed after the judge refused his lawyer’s plea for a suspended sentence.
- December 1, 2019 – Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat announced his resignation under pressure over the 2017 car bombing that killed anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. Muscat stepped down as leader of the governing Labor Party in January, then resigned as prime minister. Hours before the announcement, nearly 20,000 people protested in the capital, Valletta, demanding his departure. The slain reporter's family said Muscat's resignation wouldn't satisfy a population demanding an end to corruption. "People will be out in the streets again tomorrow," tweeted one of her sons, Matthew Caruana Galizia, also a journalist.
- December 1, 2020 – In Belgium, a Hungarian MEP (member of the European Parliament) was caught by police after fleeing a “sex party” above a Brussels bar, allegedly a “gay orgy.” Because more than four people were there, the gathering was a violation of Belgium’s COVID lockdown laws. József Szájer is a senior member of Fidesz, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s right-wing party. About 20 people, mainly men, including at least two other EU diplomats, attending the party. Szájer attempted to escape by climbing out of one of the apartment’s windows, but was spotted by a passerby “fleeing along the gutter,” according to Sarah Durant, a spokeswoman for the Brussels region’s deputy public prosecutor. He was unable to produce identity papers for the police, and was escorted to his residence, where he produced a diplomatic passport, and claimed diplomatic immunity, but parliamentary immunity doesn’t exempt him from obeying the lockdown laws. Szájer, who has a wife and child, previously boasted that he personally drafted changes to the Hungarian constitution that defined marriage as being between a man and a woman, a year after Orbán’s government came to power. In the intervening decade, Orbán’s government made “family values” a centrepiece of its political programme, frequently employing anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. Szájer resigned after the story ran in the Brussels press, without mentioning his brush with the law or the nature of the party, “I deeply regret violating the COVID restrictions – it was irresponsible on my part. I am ready to pay the fine that occurs. I apologise to my family, to my colleagues, to my voters ... The misstep is strictly personal. I am the one who owns responsibility for it.”
- December 1, 2021 – The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case which the far-right six- justice majority on the court would use in June 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade, ending federal protections for a woman’s right to choose, so each individual state determines its own laws on whether or not women may obtain abortions, and under what circumstances. Poll after poll show that the majority of Americans want abortion to be legal in most circumstances, and overturning Roe became a factor in the failure of an expected Republican “Red Wave” in the November 2022 mid-term elections.
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- December 2, 1501 – Queen Munjeong born, Korean queen, Regent of Korea (1545-1565) for her son, King Myeongjong, who was 12 when he was crowned; Munjeong noted as a good administrator and for giving land which owned by the nobility to the common people, but she also remained the real power long after her son reached his majority.
- December 2, 1777 (traditional) – Philadelphia housewife and nurse Lydia Darragh saved the lives of General George Washington and his Continental Army when she reported to Washington overhearing the British planning a surprise attack on Washington’s army for the following day.
- December 2, 1884 – Ruth Draper born, noted solo performer and dramatist, whose range of original characters were much admired during her 40 years of entertaining audiences all over the world in multiple languages; The Italian Lesson, Three Women and Mr. Clifford, Doctors and Diets, and The Children’s Party are among her best-known works.
- December 2, 1886 – Josephine Roche born, first woman police officer in Denver (1912); she gained control of her late father’s Colorado coal mine operation (1927), and invited United Mine Workers to organize workers and negotiate contracts; she was appointed to supervise the Public Health Service as part of FDR’s administration, made recommendations for Social Security, and was an advocate for universal health coverage (1935).
- December 2, 1895 – Harriet Cohen born, British concert pianist and activist, who aided refugees from the Nazis during WWII; she played a duet concert with Albert Einstein in 1934 to raise money to bring Jewish scientists out of Nazi Germany; she was a Zionist and pleaded with the British to allow more Jewish refugees to settle in Palestine; for a concert tour in Russia in 1935, she began to learn music by Russian composers like Shostakovitch who were little-known outside of their country, and helped to popularize their music by playing it in her concerts all over Europe.
- December 2, 1900 – Herta Hammersbacher born, German landscape architect and lecturer/professor at TU Berlin (1946-1969); she worked on 3,500 private and public projects in Berlin, including the gardens at the Waldfriedhof Zehlendorf cemetery.
- December 2, 1909 – Joan Hoskyn Davies born on Robben Island, where her father was a medical doctor; South African archivist, beginning her career at the Cape Archives Depot (1935-1944), then transferred to the Transvaal Archives Depot (1944-1957); in 1957, she was appointed head of the new Liaison Department, and in 1966 became the head of the Cape Archives Depot, the first woman to earn the title ‘archivist’ and first to head an archives depot, holding the position until her retirement in 1974; member of the executive committee of the Society of Civil Servants (1946-1959), and chair of the SCS central women’s committee (1957-1959).
- December 2, 1911 – Harriet Fleischl Pilpel born, lawyer, women’s rights activist; served on both Kennedy and Johnson Commissions on Status of Women, chaired Planned Parenthood Law Panel International; first vice chairwoman of ACLU’s National Advisory Council. In 1961, she argued on behalf of Planned Parenthood in Poe v. Ullman, asking the Supreme Court to reverse a Connecticut law criminalizing birth control. She wrote Planned Parenthood's amicus curiae brief for that case as well for 1965's Griswold v. Connecticut. Pilpel believed the right to privacy upheld in Griswold could be extended to a woman's right to abortion. She put abortion on the ACLU Biennial Conference agenda in 1964 (the board did not take up the issue until 1967). Pilpel wrote Planned Parenthood’s amicus brief for Roe v. Wade, strategizing with Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee.
- December 2, 1917 – Sylvia Syms born, African American jazz singer who received informal training from Billie Holiday, and was hired by Mae West for a part in a revival of her Broadway hit Diamond Lil. In 1956, Syms signed a contract with Decca Records. Frank Sinatra called her “the world’s greatest saloon singer” and conducted her 1982 album Syms by Sinatra. She had a lung removed in 1972, but still performed in dinner theatre and night clubs until she had a heart attack while on stage at New York’s Algonquin Hotel’s Oak Room, and died at age 74 in 1992.
- December 2, 1921 – Isabella Karle born, American chemist; noted for her Symbolic Addition Procedure, now the method of choice for structure determination from X-ray diffraction data on crystalline materials, even in computerized programs. The procedure dramatically increased the speed and accuracy of chemical and biomedical analysis. Her work had a significant impact on the fields of molecular biology, chemistry, physics, metallurgy, geology, genetics, and pharmacology, and contributed to the discoveries of new drugs to combat many diseases. In 1969, she determined the crystal structure of toxins found in the venom of frogs in South America, which are now used in the study of nerve transmission.
- December 2, 1923 – Maria Callas born, Greek-American operatic soprano, “La Divina,” famous for her bel canto voice, she won international acclaim for her dramatic interpretation of a wide range of roles.
- December 2, 1924 – Else Marie Pade born, Danish pioneering electronic composer; part of the Danish resistance in WWII, arrested in 1944, and sent to Frøslev prison camp (1944-1945). In the camp, she used her belt buckle to write music on her cell wall, creating songs which her fellow inmates sang to keep their spirits up. After the war, she studied composition at the Kongelige Danske Musikkonservatorium (Royal Danish Academy of Music).
- December 2, 1925 – Julie Harris born, American stage, screen, and television actress, whose first major role was the 12-year-old girl in The Member of the Wedding on Broadway in 1950, and in the 1952 film. In a career spanning over 60 years, she won five Tony Awards for Best Actress in a Play, appeared in many films, including East of Eden, The Haunting, Requiem for a Heavyweight, and The Hiding Place, and won eleven Primetime Emmy Awards for roles like Nora in A Doll’s House, and Queen Victoria in Victoria Regina. She also recorded her stage performance of Emily Dickinson in The Belle of Amherst for public television. Her distinctive voice was used in recordings of children’s books, and for documentaries, including Ken Burns’ documentaries The Civil War; Brooklyn Bridge; and The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts to God. Harris was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1979, honored with the National Medal of Arts in 1994, and with a Special Lifetime Achievement Tony in 2002. She died at age 87 of congestive heart failure in 2013.
- December 2, 1939 – Yaël Dayan born, Israeli politician, peace activist, author, and newspaper columnist; Knesset member (1992-2003) and chair of the Committee on the Status of Women, campaigning for Israel’s sexual harassment law; chair of Tel Aviv city council (2008-2013); noted for her memoir, Israel Journal: June 1967.
- December 2, 1942 – Anna G. Jónasdóttir born, Icelandic political scientist, social theorist, and gender studies academic at GEXcel International Collegium for Advanced Transdisciplinary Gender Studies; author of Why Women Are Oppressed.
- December 2, 1945 – Penelope Spheeris born, American film director-producer, and screenwriter, primarily of documentaries, including her trilogy, The Decline of Western Civilization; she has also directed feature films, including Wayne’s World.
- December 2, 1952 – Carol Shea-Porter born, U.S. Representative (Democrat-New Hampshire 2007-2011, 2013-2015, and 2017-2019). In June 2013, Shea-Porter voted against the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would ban abortions that take place 20 or more weeks after fertilization.
- December 2, 1960 – Deb Haaland born, American Democratic politician, member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe; U.S. Secretary of the Interior since March 2021, the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary; New Mexico 1st congressional district representative (2019-2021).
- December 2, 1963 – Ann Patchett born, American author and editor; her novel Bel Canto won the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction; editor of the 2006 edition of The Best American Short Stories.
- December 2, 1978 – Nelly Furtado born, Portuguese- Canadian singer-songwriter; two songs, “I’m Like a Bird” and “Turn Off the Light,” from her debut album, Whoa, Nelly!, were top-10 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2000, and she won a Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for “I’m Like a Bird.” Since then, she has sold over 40 million recordings worldwide. Furtado hosted a program about AIDS on MTV, and donated $1,000,000 CDN to Free the Children’s campaign to build girls’ schools in the Maasai region of Kenya. She is also a member of the Canadian charity Artists Against Racism.
- December 2, 1980 – A Salvadoran death squad rapes and murders four American Catholic missionaries, three nuns and lay missionary Jean Donovan, who wrote to a friend shortly before they were murdered.
- December 2, 1988 – Benazir Bhutto is sworn in as Prime Minister of Pakistan, first woman to head a democratic government in a Muslim majority nation.
- December 2, 2014 – In the UK, Labour MP Frank Doran was roundly criticised for saying that he wasn’t sure the role of Fisheries Minister is “a job for a woman.” He then insisted that he wasn’t being sexist “because he knows the fishing industry very well.” Women and Equalities Minister Nicky Morgan demanded an apology from Doran, say his comments are “outrageous and deeply offensive, and seriously undermine our work to raise aspiration among young women and girls.” Defence Minister Anna Soubry said Mr. Doran was "talking nonsense and insulting women."
- December 2, 2019 – Outrage grew in India, with demonstrations in Delhi, Bengalurur and Kolkata, over the gang rape and murder of a 27-year old woman, whose burned body was discovered at the end of November in Hyderabad. Four men, now in police custody, were accused of deflating her scooter’s tires to strand her so they could pretend to offer her help, then dragged her into an abandoned area, where they gang raped and then asphyxiated her. Her body was set on fire, and dumped. In 2018, a survey by the Thomson Reuters Foundation rated India the most dangerous place in the world to be a woman. Campaigners for ending violence against women say the Indian government has failed to check the rising rate of crimes against women. Jyoti Badekar, a women’s rights activist from Mumbai, said the lack of women officers in the police is one of the factors fueling the problem. Tens of thousands of cases also remain stuck in courts. In 2017, the courts opened 18,300 new cases related to rape, but over 127,800 cases, many pending for years, remained unresolved at the end of the year.
- December 2, 2020 – An article in the Los Angeles Times cited a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report showing U.S. women have been leaving the workforce at nearly four times the rate of men during the COVD-19 pandemic. With so many women laid off, sidelined, or stepping away to manage remote schooling or care for their families, men need to stand up as allies to ensure that gender equality in the workplace isn’t set back a generation. The corrosive effect of this downturn was already evident. The wage gap expanded, nearly back where it was almost 20 years ago by some economists’ estimates. Men, meanwhile, were 2.3 times more likely than women to say that working from home during the pandemic was positive for their careers. These are not “women’s issues,” but demand men play a role in disrupting the status quo. Men may believe in gender equality but are too often don’t take any action. There are evidence-based strategies men can employ to advocate for women in their workplace. First, men need to proclaim their own family priorities. For too long, men have been reluctant to leave work boldly when they have obligations such as parent-teacher conferences or a sick child at home, slinking out the side door, and missing an opportunity to level the playing field. Men need to be clear at work about sharing family responsibilities with their partners, taking full parental leave, sick leave, and requesting flextime arrangements that support their partner’s career and household demands. When men publicly embrace these benefits, they destigmatize the domestic work that is linked to a “motherhood penalty” for women. Men in decision-making positions have to advocate for paid parental leave, creative telework arrangements, and childcare consortiums for all workers, to end the perception these are women-only issues.
- December 2, 2021 – Karen McDonald, the Oakland County prosecutor trying the case against a 15-year-old boy being tried as an adult after he killed four students and injured six other students and a teacher in a shooting rampage on November 30 at Oxford High School in suburban Detroit, Michigan. McDonald charged the shooter with the crime of terrorism, and considered charges against his parents for improperly securing the 9mm Sig Sauer semi-automatic handgun and 50 rounds of ammunition used in the mass shooting, and ignoring their son’s need for mental health treatment. These charges are rarely invoked in school shootings, but McDonald said in an interview that the rampage also traumatized the students and teachers who were not shot, and declared “If that’s not terrorism, I don’t know what is.” She added, “There is no playbook about how to prosecute a school shooting.”
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- December 3, 1838 – Octavia Hill born, British social reformer, advocate for the working poor, especially for improving housing, and saving open green spaces for recreation.
- December 3, 1842 – Phoebe Apperson Hearst born, American suffragist, feminist, and philanthropist. A Missouri store owner’s daughter, she studied to be a teacher. She met George Hearst when he returned to Missouri to care for his dying mother, and they were married in 1862. They moved to California, where George became a very successful miner, and later became a U.S. senator. Their only child was William Randolph Hearst. She was a major benefactor and director of the Golden Gate Kindergarten Association. In 1902, Phoebe Hearst funded construction of a building to house kindergarten classes, teacher training space, and the association's offices, which administered 26 kindergartens before the San Francisco earthquake in 1906. She was a major benefactor of the University of California, Berkeley, and its first woman regent, serving on the board (1897-1919). She contributed to establishment of the National Congress of Mothers, now the National Parent-Teacher Association. She donated over two hundred objects to the Penn Museum, including Anasazi ceramics excavated from the Cliff Palace site of Mesa Verde, Colorado. She also funded a University of Pennsylvania Museum expedition to Russia, and sent the Aztec specialist, Zelia Nuttall, to Moscow to set up exchanges between Russian museums and the Penn Museum. Hearst was a “moderate” feminist, believing women should have financial independence, and the right to vote “to protect homes and children,” but didn’t think women should run for office. She died at age 76 in 1919.
- December 3, 1842 – Ellen Swallow Richards born, American chemist; pioneer in sanitary engineering, and first to apply chemistry to the study of nutrition. She founded the home economics movement in the United States. The first woman admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), she graduated with a B.S. in 1873, and stayed on as a chemistry assistant. Richards analyzed Boston’s water supply, an early contribution to the field of ecology. In November 1876, she created the Woman’s Laboratory at MIT where women could learn the rudiments of science. In 1884, MIT made Richards its first woman faculty member. She helped develop a new curriculum in air, water, and sewage chemistry, but she also saw keeping house and child-rearing as complex and important work, saying homemakers should be educated. Richards spent thirty years developing the concept of domestic science.
- December 3, 1895 – Anna Freud born in Austria, Austrian-English psychologist and psychoanalyst; pioneer in child psychoanalysis, and one of its first and foremost practitioners. Also made fundamental contributions to understanding how the ego, or consciousness, functions in averting painful ideas, impulses, and feelings. Important in her own right, but diverging from her father in emphasizing the role of the ego (as opposed to id forces) in psychological functioning. Her book The Ego and Mechanisms of Defense (1936) laid the groundwork for ego psychology.
- December 3, 1895 – Te Ata born, interpreter of Cherokee, Chickasawa, Creek, and Choctaw traditions and dance in theatrical performances which entertained and educated. She inspired Eleanor Roosevelt, and impressed visiting British royalty.
- December 3, 1900 – Karna Birmingham born, Australian artist, illustrator, and print maker; known for pen-and-ink drawings and children’s book illustrations. She wrote and illustrated Skippety Songs in 1934, but in 1938, she contracted trachoma, an infection that roughens the inner eyelid, which damaged the cornea, limiting her sight and her career.
- December 3, 1910 – Freda du Faur becomes the first woman to scale Aoraki (Mount Cook) in New Zealand. An Australian mountaineer, she was one of the leading climbers of her day.
- December 3, 1923 – Moyra Fraser born in Sydney, Australia, but her family emigrated to the UK when she was six months old. She earned a scholarship with Sadler’s Wells Ballet in 1937, and joined the company, making her solo debut in Giselle. In 1946, she left ballet to perform in musicals and plays, and appeared onstage with the Old Vic Company (1959-1960) in As You Like It, The Double Dealer, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. She also played a wide variety of roles in film and television, including the BBC comedy As Time Goes By (1992-2005). Fraser died in 2009 at age 86.
- December 3, 1937 – Morgan Llywelyn born in the U.S., American-Irish author of historical fantasy, historical fiction, and historical non-fiction for adults and young readers, including Lion of Ireland, a New York Times bestseller; The Horse Goddess, winner of ALA Best Novel for Young Adults award; and Strongbow: The Story of Richard and Aoife, a Bisto Award for Excellence in Children’s Literature winner.
- December 3, 1938 – Sally Shlaer born, American mathematician, software engineer; at Los Alamos National Laboratory, she designed and implemented an operating system to operate an electron accelerator to work in real time; led a team of software developers in building a new control system for the subway of the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit System; co-developer of the Shlaer-Mellor method of software development and project management.
- December 3, 1942 – Alice Schwarzer born, German journalist, feminist, author, and founder-publisher of the feminist journal EMMA, and a columnist for the influential German tabloid Bild (Picture), one of the best-selling newspapers in Europe. As a child, she was evacuated to Bavaria during WWII. She began her career in journalism in France, and was a founding member of Mouvement de Liberation des femmes (MLF, the French Feminist Movement). She was one of the 340 signers of the declaration that they had undergone illegal abortions, part of the successful campaign to legalize abortion in France, and a similar declaration in West Germany, which resulted in temporary legalization, but was struck down in 1975 by the German Constitutional Court. Noted for her book, Der kleine Unterschied und seine großen Folgen (The little difference and its huge consequences), which was translated into 11 languages, and made her well-known not only in Germany, but across Europe. She is an advocate for women’s economic self-sufficiency, and in favor of banning pornography.
- December 3, 1956 – Ewa Kopacz born, Polish Civic Platform politician, and pediatrician; second woman Prime Minister of Poland (2014-2015); Leader of the Civic Platform Party (2014-2016); first woman Marshal of the Sejm (Polish Parliament’s lower house – 2011-2014); Minister of Health (2007-2011) Deputy to the Sejm (2001-2014).
- December 3, 1959 – Four women – Kafi Benz, Joan Kelly, Esty Weiss, and Betty White (not that Betty White) – are expelled, for voicing objections, from a meeting in Newark, New Jersey, organized to generate support for building a major regional airport to accommodate large jet aircraft on the Great Swamp, a pristine watershed area formed at the end of the last major ice age in North America (approximately 75,000 to 11,000 years ago). The women, all members of the newly-formed Jersey Jetport Site Association, opposed development of the airport in the swamp. Their ejection from the meeting backfired, as reports in the press of their expulsion were what first brought the development plan to the attention of the public, and the North American Wildlife Federation (NAWF). NAWF formed a Great Swamp Committee early in 1960, and the two organizations worked together to buy as much of the land as possible and donate it to the federal government for perpetual protection as a wildlife refuge. Arizona Representative Stewart Udall championed their cause in Congress. In May, 1964, now Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall oversaw the official dedication of the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, the first federal wilderness area within the U.S. Department of the Interior.
- December 3, 1960 – Daryl Hannah born, American actress, best known as the mermaid in Splash. Her credits include Legal Eagles, Wall Street, Roxanne, High Spirits, Steel Magnolias, and Kill Bill. Hannah wrote, directed, and produced a short film titled The Last Supper, and was director, producer, and cinematographer for the documentary Strip Notes. She is also an environmental activist, with a weekly blog called DHLoveLife featuring sustainable solutions. Her home runs on solar power, and she is a vegan. In June, 2006, Hannah was arrested for her involvement with over 350 farmers, their families, and supporters, confronting authorities trying to bulldoze the largest urban farm in the U.S., located in South Central Los Angeles. The farm was established after the 1992 L.A. riots to allow people in the city to grow food for themselves, but the property was sold to a developer who wanted to build a warehouse there. Even when activists raised the money to meet his asking price, he refused to sell. In 2008, she was with a Sea Shepherd crew during Operation Mushashi, opposing Japanese whaling. Hannah is also involved in efforts to end sex trafficking and exploitation.
- December 3, 1960 – Julianne Moore born, American Academy Award winning actress, and author of the Freckleface children’s book series; a pro-choice activist, and campaigner for LGBT rights, sensible gun laws, and a supporter of the Parkland students campaign. Moore also works with Everytown for Gun Safety.
- December 3, 1967 – Marie Françoise Ouedraogo born, Burkinabé mathematician and academic in the Mathematics Department of the University of Ouagadougou; president of the African Mathematical Union Commission on Women in Mathematics in Africa (2009-present).
- December 3, 1985 – Amanda Seyfried born, American actress and singer; she began at age 15 on the soap operas As the World Turns and All My Children. She made her film debut in 2004’s Mean Girls, and has since appeared in Mama Mia, Letters to Juliet, Gone, The Art of Racing in the Rain, and the 2012 film of Les Misérables. She has spoken publicly about her struggles with anxiety, panic attacks, and stage fright, and is a board member of INARA, an NGO providing medical services for children wounded in war zones, focusing on refugee children from Syria.
- December 3, 2019 – The Center for American Progress issued an agenda “What Women Need” developed by Shilpa Phadke, Robin Bleiweis, and Nora Ellman addressing immediate needs of women and families during the Coronavirus Pandemic, and broader policy solutions to ensure long-term health, safety, economic security, and equality. Their ideas range from expanding healthcare coverage and maternal healthcare, including access to abortion, contraception, and childcare; to stopping gun violence, gender-based violence, and discrimination based on gender, race, and ethnicity.
- December 3, 2020 – The International Golf Federation Board elected Annika Sörenstam, who won ten major women’s golf championships before her retirement, as its new President. Her term began January 1, 2021. IGF Board Chairman Jay Monahan said, “... we are thrilled to have someone as accomplished and universally respected as Annika Sörenstam to move into the role as IGF President ... Annika played a prominent role in golf’s successful bid to be an Olympic sport by serving as a Global Ambassador with Jack Nicklaus. Since retiring from competition, she has promoted women’s golf through her foundation. She is the ideal person to succeed Peter [Dawson] in this role.” Sörenstam joined only two other women Presidents in the Olympic Movement, Marisol Casado and Kate Caithness, heads of World Triathlon and the World Curling Federation respectively. Founded in 1958, the IGF is composed of 151 Member Federations, from 146 countries, representing more than 60 million golfers. All national golf federations affiliated with the IGF are now included in their country’s National Olympic Committees (NOCs).
- December 3, 2021 – The proposal to make Barbados a republic was postponed time and again for decades. Mia Mottley, her country’s first woman Prime Minister, oversaw the transition of Barbados to a republic, ending the 396 year reign of the British monarchy over the island nation. The country’s first president, Dame Sandra Mason, was sworn in by the chief justice and took the oath of allegiance to her country as hundreds of people in the capital cheered, a 21-gun salute was fired, and the national anthem played. The global pandemic devastated the Caribbean island’s tourist-driven economy. President Mason said in her inauguration speech, “Our country must dream big dreams and fight to realise them.”
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- December 4, 1777 – Juliette Bernard Récamier born, French leader of a salon for leading literary and political figures of Paris; she became an icon of neoclassicism. Married at age 15 to Jacques-Rose Récamier, a banker almost 30 years her senior, and apparently the marriage was never consummated. In spite of her husband’s heavy financial losses, beginning in 1805, and his death in 1830, leaving her in even more reduced financial circumstances, she continued to receive visitors in her apartment in a converted convent, where she lived from 1819 until her death from cholera in 1849. The récamier, a type of chaise longue, is named for her.
- December 4, 1829 – Though faced with fierce local opposition, British Governor-General Lord William Bentinck issued a regulation declaring anyone who abets suttee in Bengal is guilty of culpable homicide – the rest of British India followed his lead.
- December 4, 1882 – Constance Davey born, Australian psychologist who started special education classes in South Australia, and developed university courses on working with special needs children for teachers and social workers; author of Children and Their Law-makers.
- December 4, 1883 – Katharine Susannah Prichard born in Fiji, Australian author; co-founding member of the Communist Party of Australia, and member of the Movement Against War and Fascism; a political activist who organized left-wing women’s groups and unemployed workers. She was frequently harassed by Western Australia police, and the Australian government kept a surveillance file open on her from 1919 until her death in 1969. Author of Working Bullocks, Coonardoo, and Kiss on the Lips.
- December 4, 1907 – Jo Boer born as Johanna Maria Boer in Surabya, East Java; Dutch novelist. She was two when she and her mother moved to the Hague. She published her first novel Catharina and the Magnolias in 1938. Boer lived in North Africa for several years, worked for the UK Royal Navy during WWII, and then worked for the Dutch embassy in Paris. Her other novels include World’s Fair, Image and Mirror Image, and Cross or Coin, which won the inaugural Bijverberg Prize for Best Novel Written in Dutch in 1948.
- December 4, 1920 – Jeanne Sobelson Manford born, teacher, gay rights activist, and co-founder of Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG); awarded the 2012 Presidential Citizens Medal.
- December 4, 1922 – Lucille Atcherson becomes the first woman U.S. Diplomatic Consular Officer, at the Bern legation in Switzerland; she later served in Panama. A woman suffragist, and a WWI volunteer who helped wounded Americans and French civilian war survivors, for which she was honored with Medaille de la Reconnaissance Francaise.
- December 4, 1939 – Joan Brady born in San Francisco, American-British author; first woman and first American to win the Whitbread Book of the Year Award for her novel Theory of War (1993).
- December 4, 1945 – Roberta Bondar born, Canada’s first woman astronaut, and the first neurologist in space, aboard NASA Space Shuttle Discovery in 1992. She served as NASA’s head of space medicine (1993-2004).
- December 4, 1947 – Jane Lubchenco born, American environmental scientist and marine ecologist; Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Undersecretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere (2009-2013).
- December 4, 1961 – ‘The Pill,’ oral contraceptives for women, become available on the National Health Service in Britain.
- December 4, 1966 – Suzanne and Suzette Malveaux born (twin sisters); Suzanne is an American television journalist; former NBC Pentagon correspondent; a key reporter in CNN’s 2004 and 2006 election coverage; CNN White House correspondent (2000-2008); co-anchor of Around the World (2012-2014). Suzette is a lawyer and professor of law at the Columbus School of Law; expert on civil rights law and class action litigation; appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court in Wal-Mart v. Dukes, a gender pay and promotion discrimination suit.
- December 4, 1978 – Following the murder of Mayor George Moscone, Dianne Feinstein is sworn in as San Francisco’s first woman mayor.
- December 4, 2011 –Hundreds of protesters in Singapore demonstrate against sexual violence against women, as part of the global ‘SlutWalk’ movement, a rare public protest in the tightly-controlled city state.
- December 4, 2015 – Defense Secretary Ash Carter announces the Pentagon is opening all combat jobs in the U.S. military to women. Women who meet entry standards can serve in any unit, including the elite Navy SEALs, Army Special Forces, and the Marine Corps infantry.
- December 4, 2019 – Peloton, the American exercise equipment and media company, lost about $1.5 billion USD in share price since the November 2019 release of its holiday commercial, “The Gift That Gives Back” which showed a wife receiving a Peloton bike for Christmas from her husband, and recording a video diary of herself using the bike, then a year later, proclaiming that she "didn't realize how much this would change me." Critics attacked the ad for implying that her husband was dissatisfied with her physical appearance. The ad was called “old-fashioned and tone deaf,” and a reminder of “tips for keeping your man” from the 1950s.
- December 4, 2020 – In Iran, several widely publicized instances of violence against women drew national attention and outrage. Authorities pledged to review discriminatory laws that leave women at risk of domestic violence, and draft a comprehensive law to protect women. Iranian women’s rights activists have campaigned for such a law for 16 years. President Hassan Rouhani’s administration has worked on a draft law since the 2013 election. The cabinet had been reviewing the draft “Protection, Dignity and Security of Women against Violence” bill since September 17, 2019, after the judiciary announced that completion of its review and submitted the bill back to the cabinet. Masoumeh Ebtekar, vice president for women and family affairs, said in August submission of the bill to parliament was “imminent.” Authorities were urged to act during the international December 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence. “For decades, Iranian women have been waiting for comprehensive legislation to prevent violence against women and prosecute their abusers,” said Tara Sepehri Far, Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch. “With the growing national attention to this important issue, the law is long overdue, and parliament should not waste any time in adopting it.” The bill was approved by the administration of President Hassan Rouhani in January 2021, but still faced possible opposition by the powerful Guardian Council, consisting of six experts in constitutional law, and six experts in Islamic law, which has veto power over legislation passed by parliament. Iran’s parliament approved the bill in April 2023, following economic sanctions imposed in March 2023 by 30 nations and the European Union for Iran’s brutal suppression of dissent and peaceful protests following the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini.
- December 4, 2021 – Sanna Marin – who was briefly the youngest world leader when she became prime minister of Finland at age 34 – said her country is committed to preserving its comprehensive welfare system, and sees development and export of green technology as key to the country’s future prosperity. She noted that while her country was named as the happiest country in the world in April 2021 by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Finland “wanted to do better when it comes to equality ... We have always worked for equality in Finland, and I think it’s also important in the future, and not only the equality of men and women, or the genders, but also the equality of minority groups in society. We have to make sure that structures don’t act as barriers to people. So there are many things to do.” A new parental leave system expected to come into effect in 2022 will increase the time allowed for fathers from 54 days to a minimum of 97 days. “The idea would be that mothers and fathers would spend the same amount of time at home with their small children, so that both can have the same opportunities in their career, but also so that we can [narrow] the gender pay gap,” said Marin.
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- December 5, 1556 – Anne Cecil de Vere born, Countess of Oxford; daughter of William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, chief adviser to Queen Elizabeth I, and Mildred Cooke, Lady Burghley, a translator of Greek and Latin. Lady Burghley was responsible for her children’s education, so Anne had a much better education than most girls of her time; in addition to Greek and Latin, she studied philosophy, science, literature, and music. She married Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, at age 15 in 1571, but continued to reside with her parents. When she gave birth to her first child, a daughter named Elizabeth, in 1575, her husband was touring the continent. When he returned, he accused her of adultery, and declared the child wasn’t his, possibly because Burghley didn’t save his cousin, Thomas Howard, from execution for Howard’s part in the Ridolfi plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth, and put Mary, Queen of Scots, on the English throne. In 1576, de Vere separated from Anne, after rumors spread of his accusations against her. He refused to allow her to be at court, in spite of pressure from her powerful father. While they were separated, he began an affair with Anne Vavasour, the Queen’s Lady of the Bedchamber, who gave birth to his illegitimate son in 1581. This scandal caused the Queen to send both of them to the Tower of London, but de Vere was soon released, and Anne wrote to him, a correspondence which led to their reconciliation, and his acknowledging paternity of their daughter. She gave birth to four more children, but two of them died in infancy, including her only son. Anne herself died at age 31, of unknown causes, in 1588. Her father was so stricken with grief at her death he was temporarily unable to carry out his ministerial duties in the Privy Council. Her three surviving daughters were raised in Burghley’s household, and later married into the peerage.
December 5, 1822 – Elizabeth Cabot Agassiz born, American naturalist; co-founder in 1894 and first president (1900-1903) of Radcliffe College; co-founder, with her husband Louis Agassiz, of the Anderson School of Natural History, and a marine laboratory in Buzzard’s Bay, Massachusetts. She was a major figure in Radcliffe becoming the “Harvard Annex” in 1894, so Radcliffe’s women students could be taught by Harvard professors. With Mary Fairfax Somerville and Maria Mitchell, she was one of the first women members of the American Philosophical Society. Her books include A First Lesson in Natural History, and A Journey in Brazil.
- December 5, 1830 – Christina Rossetti born, English poet and author; noted for her poetry collection, Goblin Market and Other Poems; she spoke against slavery, exploitation of underage girls in prostitution, and cruelty to animals. Her poem “In the Bleak Midwinter” was set to music as a Christmas carol by Gustav Holst.
- December 5, 1890 – Mildred Scott Olmsted born, American Quaker, woman suffragist, birth control advocate, civil rights and peace activist, and promoter of nonviolent protest. She was the first executive director of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and served on boards of SANE, which she helped to found, and the ACLU.
- December 5, 1896 – Ann Nolan Clark born, American writer and teacher at the Tesuque Pueblo school, a first-through-fourth-grade one-room-schoolhouse, for 25 years; her students inspired many of her stories; the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs published 15 of the books based on her Pueblo experiences; In My Mother’s House, illustrated by Pueblo artist Velino Herrera, was a 1942 Caldecott Honor book.
- December 5, 1912 – Kate Simon born in Poland, best-selling American travel writer and autobiographer; her first book, Bronx Primitive: Portraits in a Childhood, was nominated for a National Book Critics Award, followed by Fifth Avenue: A Very Social Story; A Renaissance Tapestry: The Gonzaga of Mantua; and England's Green and Pleasant Land.
- December 5, 1918 – Charity Adams Earley born, first African-American woman officer in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. As a Major, she commanded the first battalion of Black American women serving overseas during WWII. She fought against segregation, and was once threatened with a court-martial by a general who told her he was “going to send a white first lieutenant down here to show you how to run this unit" and she responded, "Over my dead body, sir." She countered his threat by beginning to file charges against him for using "language stressing racial segregation" and ignoring a directive from Allied headquarters. They agreed to drop the matter. After the war, she earned a master’s degree in psychology, and taught at the college level. She also volunteered for the United Negro College Fund, and the Urban League.
- December 5, 1926 – Felicia Adetoun Ogunsheye born, Nigerian professor of Library and Information Science at the University of Ibadan; first woman to graduate from the Yaba College of Technology; first Nigerian woman to earn BA and MA degrees at Newnham College, Cambridge University; and first woman professor in Nigeria. She established the Abadina Media Resource Centre Library of the University of Ibadan. In 1973, she became a full professor at University of Ibadan, then dean of faculty of education at Ibadan (1977-1979), the first woman to become a dean in any Nigerian university. Noted advocate for African libraries reinventing their foundations, getting away from the influence of their former colonial masters, and documenting oral data and cultures into the system.
- December 5, 1934 – Joan Didion born, American author and screenwriter; noted for her novels, Play It As It Lays, and The Year of Magical Thinking, winner of 2005’s National Book Award for Nonfiction.
- December 5, 1935 – Mary McLeod Bethune, civil rights and women’s rights leader, becomes the founding president of the National Council of Negro Women in New York City, advocating for more economic, educational, and civic opportunities for black women, which became an umbrella organization for community-based services and programs in the U.S. and Africa.
- December 5, 1943 – Eva Joly born as Gro Farseth in Norway; French politician for Europe Écologie-The Greens; Member of the European Parliament for Île-de-France; French juge d’instruction (investigating magistrate); outspoken critic of political corruption, advocate for stopping all nuclear energy production in France, and deriving 40% of France’s energy needs from renewable resources by 2020; also higher tax rates on the wealthy and a minimum 17% corporate tax rate on multinational companies; author of “La Force qui nous manque” (The Force We Lack).
- December 5, 1953 – Gwen Lister born in South Africa, Namibian journalist, publisher, apartheid opponent, and freedom of the press activist; co-founder of The Namibian newspaper in 1985 and was the first female editor of a southern African newspaper. Some of Lister’s reporting landed her in jail without trial, including a 1988 report based on a secret document about planned new police powers. Revealing the plans “at least ensured they were never implemented,” she said. Lister is a founding member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and now heads the Namibian Media Trust, which trains journalists and promotes media freedom and access to information. The Nambian was fire bombed several times, the worst in 1991, after the paper published a story about a possible coup attempt; the perpetrators, who were never caught, used phosphorus grenades and burned the newsroom to the ground. She won the 1992 International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the 2004 Courage in Journalism Award from the International Women’s Media Foundation.
- December 5, 1955 – The Montgomery Bus Boycott begins, after the arrest of Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her seat to a white person. Claudette Colvin, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, and Mary Louise Smith, all women who had been discriminated against by Montgomery bus drivers, agreed to become plaintiffs in a federal civil action lawsuit, bypassing the Alabama court system. Jo Ann Robinson, president of the Women’s Political Council in Montgomery, was already pushing for a boycott when Rosa Parks was arrested. She and other WPC members copied tens of thousands of leaflets calling for a one-day boycott to protest Parks’ arrest, and distributed them across the city. It was such an overwhelming success, that the boycott was continued by African Americans until December 20, 1956, when the federal district court ruling in Browder v. Gayle took effect. The ruling was appealed, up to the U.S. Supreme Court by the state and city, which affirmed in November, 1956, that the Alabama and Montgomery laws that segregated buses were unconstitutional.
- December 5, 1956 – Jeannette Wing born, computer scientist, leading figure in formal methods (mathematical analysis to prove thereliability and robustness of a design or program); professor and Avanessians Director of the Data Science Institute at Columbia University; Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Research with oversight of its core research laboratories around the world and Microsoft Research Connections (2012-2017); on the faculty (1985-2012) then head of the Computer Science Department (2010-2012) at Carnegie Mellon. Worked with Barbara Liskov of the development of the Liskov Substitution Principle, published in 1993, and a strong promoter of computational thinking, expressing the algorithmic problem-solving and abstraction techniques used by computer scientists and how they might be applied in other disciplines.
- December 5, 1961 – Laura Flanders born in England, American-based broadcast journalist, and non-fiction author; founding director of the women’s desk at the media watch group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting). Noted for her books Blue Grit, and Real Majority, Media Minority: The Cost of Sidelining Women in Reporting.
- December 5, 1964 – Diane J. Humetewa born, first Native American woman to serve as a U.S. Attorney; currently Judge of the U.S. District Court for Arizona since 2014, appointed by Barack Obama; U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona (2007-2009), appointed by George W. Bush; Judge of the Hopi Appellate Court (2002-2007); Hopi Tribal Liaison in the office of the U.S. Attorney for Arizona from 1996 until her promotion to Senior Litigation Counsel (2001-2007). A graduate of the Indian Legal Program at Arizona State University’s College of Law, Humetewa is considered a national expert on Native American legal issues; she has instructed law enforcement and prosecutors on this topic.
- December 5, 1968 – Margaret Cho born, American comedian, author, and singer-songwriter; best known for her stand-up routines, with commentary on race and LGBT rights; creator and star of the sitcom All-American Girl (1994-1995); she has won awards for her humanitarian efforts on behalf of women, Asian Americans and the LGBT community; author of I’m the One That I Want and I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight.
- December 5, 1968 – Lydia Millet born, Canadian-American novelist; noted for her third novel, My Happy Life, which won the 2003 PEN Center USA Award for Fiction.
- December 5, 1979 – Sonia Johnson is formally excommunicated by the Mormon Church for her outspoken support of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution.
- December 5, 1980 – Jessica Paré born, Canadian actress and singer; known for her co-starring roles on the television series Mad Men and SEAL Team. She grew up in Montreal, and speaks English and French. She has also appeared in films, including Stardom, Wicker Park, and Brooklyn. She is a feminist, and said in an interview, "of course I'm a feminist ... if you're not for the equal treatment of men and women, then you're a fascist."
- December 5, 2004 – The Civil Partnership Act comes into effect in the United Kingdom, and the first civil partnership is registered there, granting the same legal rights and responsibilities as civil marriage to same-sex couples.
- December 5, 2016 – In the UK, artist Helen Marten had already mounted three major exhibitions in 2016 before she won the Hepworth Prize for Sculpture; then two weeks later, she was announced as the 2016 winner of the prestigious Turner Prize.
- December 5, 2019 – A 23-year-old woman in Uttar Pradesh, India, on her way to testify against two men she accused of raping her, was set on fire by five men that she told authorities included the accused rapists. The medical superintendent of the Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Hospital said, "She has 90 per cent burn injuries and we are taking utmost care. A team of doctors are observing her." She died of cardiac arrest on December 6, 2019. Swati Maliwal, chair of the Delhi Commission for Women said, "There are so many times that rapes have happened ... by people who were already convicted of rape, or who were already involved in a rape case and were out on bail. How do you ensure systems till the time, how do you ensure detriments until the time? There are no systems."
- December 5, 2020 – Faced with an explosion of seriously ill coronavirus patients in New Mexico hospitals, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham has taken the first step toward the grim possibility of rationing care. In an executive order, the governor said she wants her medical advisory team to recommend “if and when” the state should activate “crisis care” standards. She said it was clear to her that she would need to take extreme measures to head off the “most serious emergency that New Mexico has ever faced.”
- December 5, 2021 – A report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows that government policies in the UK made almost no difference in the gender pay gap for the last 25 years. Researchers compared official earning data for over 2 million people aged 20 to 55 between 1995 and 2019. The report found that the average working-age woman in the United Kingdom earned 40% less than her male counterpart in 2019 because: women worked 1.8 hours more unpaid work each day than men; they were paid 18% less pay per hour on average; their average hourly pay rate was £13.20 compared to £16.30 for men; and 83.5% of women are in paid work compared to 93% of men. “If you account for education attainment, there has been very little progress in reducing the gender earnings gap since 1995,” said Alison Andrew, co-author of the report and senior research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. “The highest female earners take home just 67p for every £1 that the best-paid men do, while fewer than one-quarter of men earn the same or less than the median woman.”
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- December 6, 1731 – Sophie von La Roche born in Bavaria, author of the first German novel known to be written by a woman, Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim (History of Lady Sophia Sternheim).
- December 6, 1815 – Jane Swisshelm born, suffragist, newspaper publisher, and journalist, wrote for women’s rights, and against slavery, capital punishment, and legal inequities. She nursed wounded Union soldiers during the Civil War, and was a close friend of Mary Todd Lincoln. In 1848, Swisshelm started the Pittsburgh Saturday Visiter, a weekly newspaper with a national following in abolitionist circles. She regularly and strongly attacked slavery and spoke out for women's rights. In 1850, Swisshelm was the first woman in the Senate press gallery. Though her wit and confident voice earned her a national following, the paper always struggled financially. After her daughter was born in 1851, she couldn’t handle the combined strain of work, a failing marriage, and childcare, so in 1856, the Visiter merged with the Pittsburgh Journal. After the Civil War, Swisshelm worked for the federal government, and founded the newspaper, The Reconstructionist. Her attacks in the Reconstructionist on President Andrew Johnson led to her losing the paper and being fired from her government job.
- December 6, 1878 – Elvia Carillo Puerto born, Mexican socialist politician and feminist activist; she had been married at age 13 and widowed by 21. She was the founder of the first feminist leagues in Mexico, including Liga Rita Cetina Gutierrez (League of Rita Cetina Gutierrez), named after one of Yucatan’s best-known educators, founded in 1919, which campaigned against prostitution, drug and alcohol abuse, superstition and fanaticism. The league offered talks on child care, economics, on hygiene for poor women, inspected schools and hospitals, and helped to establish a state orphanage. They also fought successfully for legalized birth control, and instituted family planning programs, as well as prenatal and post natal care for women. In 1923, Carillo became Mexico's first woman state deputy. She toured Southeastern Mexico organizing Mayan women, and setting up training programs to prepare them for voting and running for office. She also campaigned for land reform. But her brother Felipe Carrillo Puerto, who was governor of Yucatán, and who was committed to extending women’s rights, was assassinated in 1924, and the rights of women were revoked by the new governor, who also removed women from office. In 1925, Carillo was elected to the national Chamber of Deputies as a representative of San Luis Potosí; but she was denied the seat because federal suffrage and holding national office were restricted to men. For her contributions to Mexican government and history, she was officially decorated as a "Veteran of the Revolution." Carillo's tireless dedication to the revolution and women's movement earned her the nickname La Monja Roja (The Red Nun).
- December 6, 1884 – Cornelia Meigs born, American author, playwright, and academic; won the 1915 Drama League prize for The Steadfast Princess, 1933 Newbery Medal for Invincible Louisa, about Louisa May Alcott.
- December 6, 1887 – Lynn Fontanne born, English actress who usually starred on stage with her husband Alfred Lunt; she played 160 parts, many in plays created by playwrights especially for the couple. The Lunts were known for their use of overlapping dialogue – both speaking at the same time. Yet the audience would not miss a word. Great skill was required in order to bring this off. Lunt spoke in a slightly different rhythm and at a slightly different pitch than Fontanne; each modulated his or her volume level to accommodate the other; and, perhaps most difficult of all, they made the effect sound perfectly natural. During WWII, they left the U.S. in 1943 to give performances in London, and toured army camps in France and Germany in 1945.
- December 6, 1888 – Libbie Hyman born, American zoologist; noted for her comprehensive six-volume reference work, The Invertebrates, which covers most phyla of its subject. This work is important for its organization, description, and classification of invertebrates, and is still used as a reference today. Hyman continued her laboratory studies throughout her life, and published about 145 scientific papers. The sixth volume of The Invertebrates was her last, completed at the age of seventy-eight, when she was suffering from Parkinson’s disease. She died two years later, in 1969.
- December 6, 1893 – Sylvia Townsend Warner born, English novelist and poet; noted for Whether a Dove or a Seagull, and Summer Will Show, an early lesbian love story, set in Paris during the 1848 revolution.
- December 6, 1898 – Winifred Lenihan born, American actor, writer, and director; played Joan of Arc in the original 1923 American production of Saint Joan; directed radio plays; in 1925, became the first director of the Theater Guild's School of Acting; co-author of the play Blind Mice.
- December 6, 1904 – Ève Curie born, French-American journalist and pianist; her biography of her mother, Madame Curie, won the 1938 National Book Award for Non-Fiction; worked on behalf of UNICEF (1965-1979).
- December 6, 1905 – Elizabeth Yates born, American author and journalist; began her career contributing articles, mainly on travel, to The Christian Science Monitor and The New York Times; among her many books, written mostly for young readers, she is noted for Mountain Born, a Newbery Honor book in 1944, and Amos Fortune, Free Man, a biographical novel about a real person, which won the 1951 Newbery Medal for Excellence in American children’s literature.
- December 6, 1908 – Herta Taussig Freitag born in Austria, Austrian-American mathematician; professor of mathematics at Hollins College; known for her work on the Fibonacci numbers; she earned her master’s at the University of Vienna in 1934, and was working there until 1938, when her father, editor of Die Neue Freie Presse, came under threat by the Nazis for having editorialized against them, and she emigrated with her family to England, where she had to work as a maid because English immigration laws prevented her from entering the country as a teacher. Her father died in 1943, and she, with her mother and brother. moved to the U.S., where she was able to resume teaching mathematics at the Greer School (1944-1948). She earned a second master’s degree (1948) and her PhD (1953) from Columbia University. She joined the faculty at Hollins College in 1948, and later became a full professor and department chair. In 1962, she was the first woman to serve in her section as section president for the Mathematical Association of America; she was a frequent contributor to the Fibonacci Quarterly, which dedicated an issue to her for her 89th birthday (89 is a Fibonacci number).
- December 6, 1916 – Yekaterina Budanova born, Russian WWII fighter pilot. With five air victories, she was one of the world’s first two women fighter aces, with Lydia Litvyak. Budanova was shot down in 1943 near Novokrasnovka, and was buried there.
- December 6, 1917 – Tauba Biterman born in Poland to a Jewish family, who fled in 1939 to what is now the Ukraine in Russia, where she stayed on because she had a job, while the rest of her family moved deeper into Russia, so she was on her own when WWII started. She was first hidden, then passed off as a German from the Black Forest. She avoided being sent to a concentration camp by abandoning her identity, and living an underground existence. In 1948, she and her husband Judah, who was also a Holocaust survivor, emigrated to the U.S., and settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She spoke to hundreds of students and civic groups, never refusing a request to talk about her personal Holocaust experience because “it’s important for young people to know about the Holocaust so it shouldn’t happen again.” Biterman died in 2019 at the age of 102.
- December 6, 1917 – Eliane Plewman born in Marseille to an English father and a Spanish mother, British agent of Special Operations Executive (SOE) and member of the French Resistance working in the "MONK circuit" in occupied France during WWII. In spite of her tiny frame and lack of inches – she was just over five feet tall –her fierce determination got her through the same SOE training course as the men, and she passed the psychological tests with flying colours. In August, 1943, she parachuted into France. Plewman was involved in a number of highly successful sabotage missions but was arrested in March 1944, tortured by the Gestapo, and executed by the SS at Dachau Concentration Camp in September, 1944. She was posthumously honored with the King's Commendation for Brave Conduct, and the French Croix de Guerre 1939-1945 with bronze star.
- December 6, 1927 – Patsy Mink born, first Japanese-American Congresswoman (Democrat-Hawaii); she wrote the Women’s Educational Equity Act, and played a key role in enactment of Title IX, renamed posthumously the “Patsy Takemoto Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act.”
- December 6, 1938 – Oxana Yablonskaya born, Russian pianist who emigrated to the U.S. in 1977. Yablonskaya toured in concert and recital throughout the world and made numerous recordings. She taught as a member of the piano faculty at the Juilliard School for over 30 years, until her retirement in 2009.
- December 6, 1949 – Linda Barnes born, American mystery writer; noted for her Carlotta Carlyle series; her story “Lucky Penny” won the Anthony Award for Best Short Story, and A Trouble of Fools, her first Carlotta book, won the Edgar Award for Best Novel.
- December 6, 1950 – Helen Liddell born, Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke, Scottish Labour politician; British High Commissioner to Australia (2005-2009); Secretary of State for Scotland (2001-2003); MP for Monklands East (1994-1997); BBC Scotland economics journalist (1976-1977).
- December 6, 1951 – Wendy Ellis Somes born, worldwide producer of the Sir Frederick Ashton ballets Cinderella and Symphonic Variations, since 1994; she was a dancer (1970-1990), soloist, and principal ballerina with the Royal Ballet in London; retired from dancing in 1990.
- December 6, 1953 – Sue Carroll born, English journalist, columnist at the Daily Mirror (1998-2011); she was The Sun’s Women’s editor and feature writer in the 1980s. She died of pancreatic cancer at age 58 in 2011.
- December 6, 1955 – Dame Anne Begg born, Scottish Labour politician; Member of Parliament for Aberdeen South (1997-2015); she has used a wheelchair since 1984 because of Gaucher’s disease, and was the first permanent wheelchair user in the House of Commons since 1880 (Arthur MacMorrough Kavanagh was the first – 1868-1880). Begg campaigned against disabled people being allowed to work for less than minimum wage if they so choose in order to establish themselves in employment, and in favour of allowing embryonic stem cells to be used in the research for treatments of diseases, including currently incurable conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease.
- December 6, 1959 – Deborah L. Estrin born, American computer scientist; Professor of Computer Science at Cornell Tech; co-founder of the non-profit Open mHealth. Estrin is known for her work on sensor networks, mobile health, and small data. She is one of the most-referenced computer scientists of all time, with her work cited over 118,000 times according to Google Scholar. Estrin was a Professor of Computer Science at UCLA between 2001 and 2013, where she was the founding director of the NSF-funded Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS). She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007, and inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in 2009. In 2012, Cornell Tech announced Estrin as the first academic hire to the high-tech campus in New York City. Among her awards are the National Science Foundation’s 1987 Presidential Young Investigator Award, the 2017 IEEE Internet Award, and a MacArthur Genius Grant in 2018.
- December 6, 1964 – Mall Nukke born, Estonian artist, painter, and printmaker; known for her paintings, collages, and installations.
- December 6, 1967 – Helen Greiner born in London, American robotic engineer; currently an advisor to the U.S. Army. She was co-founder of iRobot and former CTO of CyPhyWorks, a start-up company specializing in small multi-rotor drones for the consumer, commercial and military markets. During her tenure at iRobot, the company released the Roomba, the PackBot, and SUGV military robots. In 2014, Greiner was named a Presidential Ambassador for Global Leadership (PAGE) by US President Barack Obama. She was honored in 2008 with the Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Award for Innovation for her work at iRobot.
- December 6, 1972 – Heather Mizeur born, American Democratic politician; member of the Maryland House of Delegates (2007-2015). She was Senator John Kerry’s Director of Domestic Policy, and wrote much of his health care platform for Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. Served as Takoma Park City Councilwoman (2003-2005).
- December 6, 1982 – Susie Wolff born, Scottish racing driver; she began in kart racing, and worked her way up to Formula Renault and Formula Three before moving to Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (German Touring Masters) for Mercedes-Benz. In 2012, she was signed by the Williams Formula One team to work as a development driver, took part in the British Grand Prix at Silverstone in 2014, then announced her retirement from motorsport in 2015. In 2016, she joined Channel 4 in the UK to be an analyst for their F1 Coverage. In 2018, Wolff joined the Venturi Formula E Team as Team Principal.
- December 6, 1989 – Montreal Massacre: An anti-feminist gunman murdered fourteen women at the Ėcole Polytechnique, an engineering school affiliated with the Université de Montréal. Ten other women and four men were wounded. The killer entered a classroom and ordered the women and men to opposite sides of the classroom, separated nine of the women, and ordered the men to leave. Saying he was “fighting feminism,” he opened fire on the nine women, killing six of them. Then he went through the corridors, the cafeteria, and another classroom, targeting women for 20 minutes. He killed eight more women before killing himself. It was the deadliest mass shooting in Canadian history until an attack in Nova Scotia in 2020. Firearms regulations in Canada were strengthened and changes were made in police tactical response to shootings. December 6 is now Canadian National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, also called White Ribbon Day.
- December 6, 2009 – Aminatou Haidar, a Sahrawi human rights activist and outspoken advocate for the independence of Western Sahara, had been camped out at Lanzarote airport since November 14, and on a hunger strike for 20 days. Morocco stripped her of her passport and flew her out of the country after she refused to state her nationality as Moroccan, or to acknowledge Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony. Late on December 5, an agreement appeared to have been reached and the 43-year-old boarded a jet to return, but Morocco denied it landing rights minutes before take-off, her lawyer said, and demanded that Haidar make a formal apology to the king of Morocco before she would be allowed to return. Spain’s deputy prime minister, María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, said negotiations would continue. Both Amnesty International and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay called for Morocco to allow her to return home. Nobel laureates and other notable figures made public statements supporting Haidar. Spanish foreign minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos offered to arrange a Spanish passport for Haidar, but she turned down his offer, insisting on the return of her original passport. Haidar was becoming too weak to stand, and began slipping in and out of consciousness. On December 11, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also contacted the Moroccan Foreign Minister to request Haidar's re-entry. On December 17, after being unable to swallow liquid for two days, Haidar was admitted to the hospital. She continued to refuse to break her fast. Late that night, Moroccan authorities relented, and Haidar was allowed on a plane back to El-Aaiún. The Spanish foreign ministry attributed the resolution to "a co-ordinated effort between Spain, France and the U.S." Appearing before a crowd in the El-Aaiún airport, Haidar stated, "This is a triumph, a victory for human rights, for international justice and for the cause of Western Sahara ... And it's all thanks to your pressure." Moroccan officials said the government was "committed to respecting human rights in Western Sahara and elsewhere in the country" but Haidar was immediately placed under house arrest by Moroccan police, and journalists were blocked from speaking with her.
- December 6, 2017 – Australia’s Federal Parliament approved legislation legalizing same-sex marriage, a move expected after the public embraced marriage equality in a postal survey in November. Public opinion had shifted since Australian politicians changed the Marriage Act 13 years ago to explicitly prohibit same-sex unions. “Australia has done it. What a day for love, for equality, for respect,” Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said. “This belongs to us all. This is Australia — fair, diverse, loving, and filled with respect for every one of us. This has been a great, unifying day in our history.”
- December 6, 2017 – In the UK, a 34-year-old man was found guilty of all 37 counts against him for the horrific kidnappings and rapes of 11 women and children during a two week period in April and May of 2017. He had been on probation after serving time for an armed burglary in 2008 when he was arrested and convicted of another burglary early in 2017, which should have sent him back to prison, but instead he was freed by mistake. Labour’s policing spokeswoman, Louise Haigh, said a “perfect storm” of budget cuts to the police, and to the probation and judicial systems had led to his improper release. The judge in the current trial said he was considering a life sentence, and would also seek an explanation of the perpetrator’s licence conditions at the time of the barbaric offences.
- December 6, 2020 – Canada’s National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women marks the anniversary of the Montreal Massacre that claimed the lives of 14 young women (See entry for 1989). Fourteen women lost their lives that day, 14 promising young women had their futures cut violently short. Thirty years after the Montreal Massacre, in Canada a woman is killed every other day; once a week a woman is murdered by her partner; and at least one in three women will experience some form of sexual violence over the course of their lives.
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- December 7, 1627 – Louise Henriette, Countess of Nassau, Electress consort of Brandenburg (1646-1667). She was married to Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, on her 19th birthday, and became his trusted adviser. Through correspondence with the Queen of Poland, Marie Louise Gonzaga, she brought about an alliance with Poland in exchange for the Polish recognition of Prussia as a province of Brandenburg. In 1665, she founded an orphanage with places for 24 children. She was described as truly kind and gentle with a sharp intellect. Her advice was vital for her spouse, and their marriage was considered a role model. During time of war, she made great efforts to soften the damages upon society. She gave birth to six children, but only two of them lived into adulthood, Frederick, who became the first King in Prussia, and Louis, who died at age 21. Louise Henrietta died at age 39 in 1667.
- December 7, 1801 – Abigail Hopper Gibbons born, abolitionist, teacher, and social welfare activist. She was born to a Quaker family which aided fugitive slaves, and her mother taught the children of free people of color. Abigail became a teacher at a Quaker school in New York in 1821. She married James Sloan Gibbons in 1833, who was also an abolitionist. She worked with notable abolitionists like Lydia Maria Child, Sarah Moore Grimké, William Lloyd Garrison, and Theodore Dwight Weld. In 1841, she joined the Manhattan Anti-Slavery Society, which was a predominately African-American organization. She was a leader in advocating for civil rights and education for black Americans. Gibbons was a co-founder of the Women’s Prison Association, seeking improvement in prison conditions, ending overcrowding, hiring police matrons, and the construction of separate prisons for women. During the Civil War, she worked with contraband slaves who were supporting the Union, and campaigned for medical care for Union soldiers. After the war, she founded the Labor and Aid Society, to help Union veterans returning from the war, especially in finding work. Gibbons was also a founder of the New York Diet Kitchen, which served infants, the elderly, and the poor. She died of pneumonia at age 91 in 1893.
- December 7, 1873 – Willa Cather born, American author, noted primarily for novels, but she also wrote essays and nonfiction; she won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel, One of Ours. Best known for O Pioneers!, and My Ántonia, the first and last books of her Great Plains trilogy, and for Death Comes for the Archbishop.
- December 7, 1878 – Akiko Yosano born as Shō Hō, Japanese author, poet, pioneering feminist, and social reformer. Published in 1901, Midaregami (Tangled Hair), her first of several collections of tanka, a traditional Japanese poetry form, contained around 400 poems, the majority of them love poems. Denounced by most literary critics as vulgar or obscene, it was widely read by free-thinkers, as it brought a passionate individualism to this traditional form, unlike any other work of the late Meiji period. The poems defied Japanese society’s expectation of women to always be gentle, modest, and passive. In her poems, women are assertively sexual. These were the first tankas in which a poet had written specifically of women’s breasts, not vaguely as a symbol of child feeding and motherhood, but in terms of a woman’s sexual pleasure. In 1911, her poem “The Day the Mountains Move” declared that women will demand equality. She frequently wrote for the all-women literary magazine Seitō (Bluestocking). Yosano disagreed with a prevailing opinion of Japanese feminists of the time that the government should provide financially for mothers, saying dependence on the state and dependence on men were really the same thing. Even though she gave birth to 13 children, 11 of whom survived to adulthood, she rejected motherhood as her main identity, saying that limiting a sense of self to a single aspect of one’s life, however important, entraps women in the old way of thinking. In a 1918 article, Yosano attacked “the ruling and military class which deliberately block the adoption of a truly moral system in an effort to protect the wealth and influence of their families ... They hurry to invoke the power and precepts of the old totalitarian moral codes to direct the lives of Japanese citizens,” and called militarism “barbarian thinking which is the responsibility of us women to eradicate from our midst.” In her later years, she was to support her country’s military ambitions and the glory of dying for the Emperor, but most of these poems are regarded as lacking the brilliance and originality of her earlier work.
- December 7, 1900 – Kateryna Bilokur born, Ukrainian folk artist, noted for her paintings of flora and natural landscapes; she was named a People’s Artist of Ukraine, one of only two painters, along with Volodymyr Patyk, to be honored with this award.
- December 7, 1902 – Hilda Taba born in Estonia, American educator; even with a master’s degree from Bryn Mawr College, and attending Columbia University’s Teachers College, when she applied for a position at Tartu University, she was turned down because she was a woman, so she became curriculum director at the Dalton school in New York City; author of the influential Curriculum Development: Theory and Practice (1962).
- December 7, 1910 – Eleanor Gibson born, American psychologist who studied learning processes in children. Noted for her "visual cliff" experiment which showed how an infant's depth perception helps prevent injuries and falls. In 1960, she placed 6 to 14 month old infants on a table covered with a sheet of plate glass that extended beyond the table's edge. When enticed with a favorite toy or coaxed by their mothers to crawl out beyond the table's edge onto the clear glass extension, nearly all of the babies withdrew. Thus she demonstrated that babies can distinguish depth. In 1992, Gibson was awarded the National Medal of Science, becoming one of only ten psychologists among 304 recipients of the award since 1962. Author of An Odyssey in Learning and Perception.
- December 7, 1913 – Kersti Merilaas born, Estonian poet and translator from German who also wrote books for children, plays, and the libretti for three operas by Estonian composer Gustav Ernesaks; one of the poets in the literary circle known as Arbujad (“Soothsayers”). She became a member of the Estonian Writers Association, but was forced to resign in 1950 after Soviet annexation of Estonia for promoting “bourgeois nationalism.”
- December 7, 1915 – Leigh Brackett born, American author, primarily of science fiction, The Sword of Rhiannon and The Hounds of Skaith; screenwriter on The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye and The Empire Strikes Back; dubbed the ‘Queen of Space Opera.’
- December 7, 1924 – Mary Ellen Rudin born, American mathematician known for work in set-theoretic topology on constructions of counterexamples to well-known conjectures. In 1958, she found an unshellable triangulation of the tetrahedron. Most famously, Rudin was the first to construct a Dowker space, which she did in 1971, disproving a conjecture of Clifford Hugh Dowker. She also proved the first Morita conjecture. Rudin began her career at Duke University, later became a lecturer, and then a professor (1971-1991) of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin, and Professor Emerita after her retirement. She was vice president of the American Mathematical Society (1980-1981), and became a Fellow of the Society in 2013. She died at age 88 in 2013. The Mary Ellen Rudin Young Research Award, established in 2013, is given annually to a young researcher in a field related to topology.
- December 7, 1936 – Martha Layne Collins born, American Democratic politician; first woman to be elected as governor of Kentucky (1983-1987). Her administration had two primary focuses: education and economic development. She had previously served as Kentucky’s Lieutenant Governor (1979-1983), and as a Democratic National Committeewoman. She was also a delegate to the 1972 Democratic National Convention.
- December 7, 1941 – Melba Pattillo Beals born, civil rights activist, and journalism teacher; member of the Little Rock Nine, the first black students to integrate Central High School in Little Rock AR in 1957; author of Warriors Don’t Cry, the story of that school year; the Little Rock Nine were each awarded a Congressional Gold Medal.
- December 7, 1941 – Annie Fox, chief nurse in the Army Nurse Corps at Hickam Field during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, becomes the first woman awarded the Purple Heart for combat. At that time, there was no requirement for Purple Heart recipient to be injured, but requirements changed after Pearl Harbor and her Purple Heart was later replaced by a Bronze Star because she wasn’t wounded in the attack.
- December 7, 1943 – Susan Isaacs born, American novelist, essayist, and screenwriter; Compromising Positions; Brave Dames and Wimpettes: What Women are Really Doing on Page and Screen.
- December 7, 1947 – Anne Fine born, British children’s author; winner of Carnegie Medals for Goggle-Eyes and Flour Babies, which also won a Whitbread Award, and a Smarties Prize for Bill’s New Frock; British Children’s Laureate (2001-2003).
- December 7, 1967 – Nina Turner born, American Democratic politician; in 2017, she became president of the Bernie Sanders-affiliated group Our Revolution, and served as national co-chair of Sanders 2020 presidential campaign. She was a member of the Ohio state Senate (2008-2014), where she led unsuccessful efforts to change Ohio’s custody laws regarding convicted rapists, wanting to prevent rapists from having parental custody or visitation rights. She also served on the Cleveland City Council (2006-2008).
- December 7, 1971 – Stephanie D'Abruzzo born, American actress, puppeteer, and singer. She has worked in various roles on Sesame Street since 1993, appeared on Broadway in the musical Avenue Q, and in several Off-Broadway shows. She appeared as Uma and Inka on the Noggin TV series Oobi (2000-2005).
- December 7, 1978 – Suzannah Lipscomb born, British historian, academic, and television presenter; worked at Hampton Court Palace organizing a series of exhibitions marking the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII’s accession to the English throne (2009), which won an Arts and Humanities Research Council KTP Award for Humanities; lecturer in history at the University of East Anglia; elected as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2011. Noted for her books on Henry VIII, Tudor England, and women in 16th century France.
- December 7, 1979 – Ayako Fujitani born, Japanese author, screenwriter, and actress; noted for her novels, Touhimu (Flee-Dream) and Yakeinu (Burnt Dog). She co-authored the screenplay adaptation of Touhimu with writer-director Hideaki Anno, released as in 2000 as a film under the title Shiki-Jitsu (Ceremonial Day). Fujutani also starred in the film. In 2006, she directed a short drama for TV Tokyo’s Drama Factory program. She writes articles and criticism for Japanese publications.
- December 7, 1979 – Sara Bareilles born, American singer-songwriter, actress, author, and producer; released Careful Confessions, her debut studio album, in 2004. Bareilles composed music, wrote lyrics, and also starred in the 2015 Broadway musical Waitress, which earned her a Tony Award nomination for Best Original Score and a Grammy Award nomination for Best Musical Theatre Album. Nominated for eight Grammy Awards, she has one win, plus three Primetime Emmy Awards, and two Tony Awards. In 2015, she published her memoir Sounds Like Me: My Life (So Far) in Song.
- December 7, 1992 – The U.S. Supreme Court rejects a Mississippi abortion law which requires women to get counseling and wait 24 hours before terminating their pregnancies.
- December 7, 1993 – Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary reveals that the U.S. government had secretly conducted more than 200 nuclear weapons tests at its Nevada test site.
- December 7, 1993 – Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders suggests the U.S. government study the impact of drug legalization.
- December 7, 1998 – U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno declines to seek an independent counsel investigation of President Clinton’s 1996 campaign financing.
- December 7, 2014 – Anne Hidalgo, the Mayor of Paris, calls for diesel cars to be banned from the French Capital by 2020, in order to reduce pollution. A partial car ban had already been imposed in March, 2014, as the capital’s air was found to be close to the record for worst air quality.
- December 7, 2017 – Senator Al Franken (Democrat-Minnesota) announced that he would resign, after multiple women accused him of touching them inappropriately. A day earlier, over 20 fellow Democrats called on him to step down. Franken said the ongoing public reckoning over sexual harassment and assault was "long overdue," but said some of the allegations were "simply not true," while he remembered others "quite differently" than his accusers. Franken also took a swipe at Republicans, saying it was ironic "that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office, and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party."
- December 7, 2019 – Hundreds of women protesters raised their fists chanting “Stop rape” across India. Leena, a 35-year-old protester, said, “I was six years old when I was raped and I could never speak about it. This is India’s worst disease and we need to fix it before even more women are hurt.” Women across India took to the streets demanding justice for rape victims and government action to stop the daily brutality suffered by women. For Swati Maliwal, chair of the Delhi Women’s Commission and one of India’s most forthright activists, the fear that their demands would be ignored yet again led her to take more extreme measures. She began a hunger strike on December 1, stationing herself in New Delhi at the memorial to India’s Prime Minister Babu Jagjivan Ram, a social reformer who worked to lift up the poorest classes in the nation. His monument is called ‘Place of Equality.’ Maliwal, her voice weakened by her fast, said, “Over the past three years, I have handled 55,000 rape and sexual assault cases, but when I heard about the Hyderabad rape, and then the six-year-old, I couldn’t take it anymore. The systems, from police to the courts, have failed. My demand is greater police resources, greater accountability of police, more fast-track courts, a strong system that delivers punishment for rapists and a message by the government that no more rapes will be tolerated. And if I have to die to see that happen, so be it.” Despite the atrocities against women reported in the first week of December, she pointed to the resounding silence from prime minister Narendra Modi as evidence of the government’s lack of interest in tackling the problem. “If I die tomorrow during my fast, I don’t think it will bother the central government at all.” She added: “Fear of rape is the permanent state of mind of women in this country; it’s conditioned into us from the moment we are born and it’s impossible to escape. I am constantly thinking about my safety, and you can say that for almost every woman in India. Imagine where India would be if that time could be put towards the progress of our country.” (See also entry for December 5, 2019.)
- December 7, 2020 – Gail M. Beaton published her book, Colorado Women in World War II, just in time for the commemoration of the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, which brought America into the war. Her book interweaves nearly eighty oral histories—including interviews, historical studies, newspaper accounts, and organizational records—and historical photographs (many from the interviewees themselves) to shed light on women’s participation in the war, exploring the dangers and triumphs they felt, the nature of their work, and the lasting ways in which the war influenced their lives. Beaton offers a new perspective on World War II—views from field hospitals, small steel companies, ammunition plants, college classrooms, and sugar beet fields—giving a rare look at how the war profoundly transformed the women of Colorado.
- December 7, 2020 – The home of Rebekah Jones was raided by armed police. Jones, a data scientist who was fired in May 2020 after clashing with Florida Republican Governor Rick DeSantis over the state’s handling of Coronavirus figures, created and maintained a coronavirus data website to track the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths. The police confiscated electronic devices, including her personal phone and laptop computer. Florida Department of Law Enforcement said in a statement that the warrant was issued because Jones was suspected of hacking into a Florida Department of Health computer system and sending an unauthorized message to members of the State Emergency Response Team on November 10, 2020. The alleged statement urged recipients to "speak up before another 17,000 people are dead." In a press interview, Jones denied sending the unauthorized message. She stated that because the authorities seized only her personal electronic devices and not other electronics in her house, she doesn’t think she was the target of the investigation at all, but rather that her phone was seized so authorities could identify the Florida Department of Health workers with whom she had been communicating, including her confidential sources. On January 16, 2021, an arrest warrant was issued for Jones by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement claiming she illegally breached state systems and downloaded the confidential contact information for nearly 20,000 people and sent a message to state employees telling them to "speak out." Jones stated she couldn’t speak to the media about the charges because it could "result in the police 'stacking' additional charges." In May 2022, a Florida inspector general’s report declared there was “insufficient evidence” to support her claim of wrongful termination, but notably did not examine her claim that Florida intentionally hid Covid deaths to make the pandemic seem less deadly.
- December 7, 2021 – Vice President Kamala Harris issued a fact sheet and call for action on the inaugural White House Maternal Health Day of Action. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) estimated that 720,000 more people would gain Medicaid postpartum coverage if every state upped coverage from the current 60 days to 12 months. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed establishment of a “Birthing-Friendly” hospital designation and issued guidance to states on providing Medicaid coverage for a full year postpartum. Maternal mortality statistics in the United States have worsened over the past 20 years, even as rates among peer nations have generally improved. In addition, each year, tens of thousands of mothers experience severe morbidity—unintended consequences of pregnancy that result in life-altering health challenges, such as heart issues, hemorrhages, seizures, and blood infections. This maternal health crisis is particularly devastating for Black and Native American women, and women in rural communities. Black women are over three times as likely to die from pregnancy-related complications as white women, and Native American women are more than twice as likely, regardless of their income or education. Pregnant women who live in rural communities are about 60 percent more likely to die before, during, or following birth than women in urban communities.
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- December 8, 1626 (O.S. date) – Christina, Queen of Sweden, born; she succeeded to her father’s throne at age six, but was crowned and took power at age 18, reigning until her abdication in 1654. One of the most educated women of the 17th Century, she was interested in literature, the Arts, religion, philosophy, mathematics, and alchemy. In 1649, she invited René Descartes to Sweden to organize a royal academy, and act as her tutor, but Descartes caught pneumonia and died early in 1650. Her decision not to marry caused a scandal, then she compounded it by abdicating her throne, converting to Roman Catholicism, and moving to Rome.
- December 8, 1660 – A woman – likely Margaret Hughes, but possibly Anne Marshall – appears on an English public stage for the first time, in the role of Desdemona in a production of Shakespeare’s play Othello.
- December 8, 1864 – Camille Claudel born, notable French sculptor; studied at the Académie Colarossi, one of the few art schools open to women, and with sculptor Alfred Boucher, who became her mentor. When Boucher moved to Florence, he asked Auguste Rodin to take over instruction of his students. Claudel and Rodin became lovers, and around 1884, she began working in his workshop, and sometimes as his model. But he never gave up his relationship with Rose Beuret, a seamstress who was his son’s mother. In 1892, Claudel had an abortion, and ended their sexual relationship, but still worked with Rodin until 1898, especially after her father’s death, when her family stopped the financial assistance her father had given her. She needed Rodin’s financial aid to continue her work, and sometimes had to collaborate with him in order to bring her ideas to fruition, then let him take the credit for their work. She is regarded as a woman genius, an equal in talent to the better-known painter Berthe Morisot. In 1899, she produced a sculpture entitled The Mature Age. When Rodin saw it, he was shocked and angry, and suddenly and completely stopped all his support for Claudel. After 1905, Claudel appeared to be mentally ill, destroying many of her sculptures, disappearing for long periods of time, and showing signs of paranoia. She accused Rodin of stealing her ideas and plotting to kill her. By 1906, she was living as a recluse in her workshop. In 1913, her brother Paul arranged for her to be committed to the psychiatric hospital of Ville-Évrard in Neuilly-sur-Marne. Although the form said she had been "voluntarily" committed, her admission was signed only by a doctor and her brother. Apparently, she was still lucid while working on her art. Doctors tried to convince Paul and their mother that Camille did not need to be in the institution, but her mother and brother were adamant that she remain confined. For a while, the press accused her family of committing a sculptor of genius. Her mother never visited, and her brother only came to see her seven times in 30 years. In 1929, sculptor Jessie Lipscomb, who shared a workshop with Claudel before she met Rodin, visited her, and afterwards insisted "it was not true" that Claudel was insane. Camille Claudel died in October 1943, after 30 years in the asylum. Her remains were buried in a cemetery, but after 10 years, they were re-buried in a communal grave at the asylum, mixed with the bones of the most destitute. The Musée Camille Claudel was opened in March, 2017, as a French national museum dedicated to Claudel's work. It is located in Nogent-sur-Seine, where she lived as a teenager. It displays approximately half of Claudel's 90 surviving works.
- December 8, 1897 – Josephine Bell born, British physician, novelist, and mystery writer, originally as Doris Bell Collier; noted for her series featuring Dr. David Wintringham; founding member of the Crime Writer’s Association.
- December 8, 1903 – Zelma Watson George born, African-American philanthropist alternate American delegate to the UN General Assembly (1960-;1961); a singer who studied African-American music; and the first Black woman to play the title role in Gian-Carlo Menotti’s opera, The Medium. An active member of member of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, and the League of Women Voters, she served on the executive council of the American Society of African Culture.
- December 8, 1917 – Ginette Jullian born, served as an agent of the UK’s SOE during WWII. Jullian lived in Algeria as a child, married at age sixteen, and was later divorced. In 1940, after the German invasion, she fled France for England. In 1943, she failed a training course to be a pilot with the British Air Transport Auxiliary, but later joined the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, then trained for the Special Operations Executive, learning parachuting, security, and wireless operation. On June 7, 1944, the day after D-Day, she parachuted into France near the village of Saint-Viâtre, Loir-et-Cher, with her colleague Gérard Dedieu. They arrived with the SOE networks in chaos. Jullian's wireless was confiscated by a French Resistance leader. Many members of the resistance had been captured by the Germans or were in hiding. In late June, Dedieu and Jullian finally found a safe house in Chartres and obtained a wireless set and began operations, arranging for 450 CLE canisters of arms and supplies to be air-dropped to the resistance fighters. After Chartres was liberated by the American army in August, she worked with the Americans as a wireless operator, accompanying the army to Dijon, which was liberated on September 11th. Dedieu described Jullian as "very brave and never lost her nerve even when the SS arrived to search the house from which she was transmitting." She returned to Britain in September 1944. Jullian died at age 45 in a scuba diving accident in Tahiti in 1962.
- December 8, 1919 – Julia Robinson born, American mathematician and theorist; worked on decision problems, and on solving Hilbert’s 10th problem. Though Soviet mathematician Yuri Matiyasevich solved the problem, he wrote in an article, “The name of Julia Robinson cannot be separated from Hilbert’s 10th problem.” She suffered as a child from both scarlet fever and rheumatic fever, causing life-long health problems. When she married fellow mathematician Raphael Robinson, UC Berkeley anti-nepotism rules barred her from working in the mathematics department, so she worked in jobs outside her field, but continued to publish in mathematics journals and present her mathematical work at conferences. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1976, but the university press office had to call the mathematics department to ask who Julia Robinson was. UC Berkeley quickly made her a full professor. Robinson writes, “In fairness to the university, I should explain that because of my health, even after the heart operation, I would not have been able to carry a full-time teaching load.” Though she worked for years with Martin Davis on the 10th problem, originally coming at it from opposite directions, they were unable to come up with what Davis described as a “Goldilocks” equation. “The solutions aren’t supposed to grow too fast, and they aren’t supposed to grow too slowly,” Davis said. Meanwhile, Matiyasevich had tried to tackle Hilbert’s 10th problem as a college student, but abandoned it around the time he graduated in 1969. But a new paper by Julia Robinson sucked him back in, and he asked to review it – just five pages about the relative growth of solutions to certain equations in two variables. Her ideas immediately sparked new ideas for him, and he produced the needed “Goldilocks.” Kirsten Eisenträger of Penn State, a number theorist whose research is related to the 10th problem, says “Her work is still very relevant today.” In 1983, during her term as president of the American Mathematical Society, Robinson was diagnosed with leukemia, was treated, and the cancer went into remission, but soon returned. Robinson died in July 1985 at age 65. Robinson told her sister, who wrote her life story, “What I really am is a mathematician. Rather than being remembered as the first woman this or that, I would prefer to be remembered, as a mathematician should, simply for the theorems I have proved and the problems I have solved.”
- December 8, 1919 – Kateryna Yushchenko born, Ukrainian computer and information research scientist, developed the Address programming language; first woman in the USSR to become a Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences in programming.
- December 8, 1922 – Jean Ritchie born, American folk music singer, songwriter, and song collector; with her husband, she spent 18 months on a Fulbright scholarship tracing links between American folk songs and traditional music of Britain and Ireland.
- December 8, 1925 – Carmen Martín Gaite born, Spanish novelist, essayist, screenwriter, author of short stories and children’s books, playwright, and poet. Best known for her novel, Entre visillos (Behind the Curtain), winner of the Premio Nadal in 1957.
- December 8, 1935 – Tatiana Zatulovskaya born in Soviet Russia, chess player, emigrated to Israel; three times Soviet Women’s Champion, and twice Women’s Senior World Champion.
- December 8, 1943 – Mary Woronov born, American actress, author, and painter; best known as an Andy Warhol superstar in his avant-garde art films, but she is the author of several books, including Snake, Blind Love, and Swimming Underground: My Years in the Warhol Factory.
- December 8, 1947 – Margaret J. Geller born, American astrophysicist; a pioneer in mapping the middle-aged universe and the distribution of dark matter. After research fellowships at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, England, she became an assistant professor of Astronomy at Harvard University (1980-1983). She then joined the permanent scientific staff of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, a partner in the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Geller is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. In 1990, she was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
- December 8, 1949 – Mary Gordon born, American novelist and literary critic; The Company of Women.
- December 8, 1949 – Nancy Meyers born, mainstream American film director-producer and screenwriter; noted for Private Benjamin; The Parent Trap (1998 remake); What Women Want; Something's Gotta Give; The Holiday; It's Complicated; and The Intern.
- December 8, 1952 – On I Love Lucy, pregnancy is talked about on a TV show for the first time.
- December 8, 1961 – Conceição Lima born, a poet, broadcaster, and producer for the BBC Portuguese Language Services, from the island São Tomé in São Tomé and Príncipe, north of the equator off Africa’s western coast. She studied journalism in Portugal, then worked in radio, television, and the press in São Tomé. In 1993, she founded and edited O País Hoje (The Country Today). Author of O Útero da Casa (The Uterus of the House) and A Dolorosa Raiz do Micondó (The Dolorosa Root of Micondo). She holds degrees in Afro-Portuguese and Brazilian Studies from King’s College London.
- December 8, 1969 – Kristin Lauter born, American mathematician and cryptographer, noted for research in application of number theory and algebraic geometry in cryptography. Researcher and head of the Cryptography Group at Microsoft Research. President of the Association for Women in Mathematics (2015-2017), and co-founder of the Women in Numbers Network, a research collaboration community for women in numbers theory. Co-winner of the Selfridge Prize at ANTS III for their paper, Computing Hilbert Class Polynomials. Fellow of the American Mathematical Society since 2015.
- December 8, 1976 – Zoe Konstantopoulou born, Greek lawyer; Hellenic Parliament member (2012-2015); Speaker of the Hellenic Parliament (2015).
- December 8, 1997 – Jenny Shipley is sworn in as the first woman prime minister of New Zealand (1997-1999), and was also the first woman to lead New Zealand’s National Party. She was defeated in 1999 by Helen Clark of the Labour Party, who became New Zealand’s second woman prime minister.
- December 8, 2011 – The UK Ministry of Defence announced that the Royal Navy will lift the ban on women serving in submarines. Women officers could serve aboard Trident missile Vanguard submarines beginning in 2013, followed by ratings (enlisted personnel below warrant officer rank) in 2015. They can serve on newer Astute class boats from 2016, once changes to the accommodation quarters are made. In May, 2014, Lieutenants Maxine Stiles, Alexandra Olsson and Penny Thackray, after months of specialised training to earn their ‘Dolphins,’ became the first women submariners in the submarine service’s 110 year history.
- December 8, 2019 – In Russia, a draft of the country’s first law to address domestic violence was criticized by Human Rights Watch (HRW) for not including a complete and comprehensive definition of domestic violence, including physical, sexual, economic, and emotional abuse. HRW said provisions of the bill concerning protection orders, and access to justice for victims of domestic violence weren’t enough to ensure victims’ safety. Current Russian law doesn’t recognize domestic violence as a stand-alone offense, leading to a lack of comprehensive or reliable statistics. Police often refuse to investigate or even respond to domestic violence complaints. The social services infrastructure doesn’t adequately provide for victims of domestic violence and the judicial system is stacked against them. Legislative amendments adopted in February 2017 decriminalized first battery offenses among family members, a serious setback. Russia’s nongovernmental groups and human rights’ advocates, and some policymakers, have pushed for Russia to adopt a national law on domestic violence for over two decades. Public awareness and opposition to domestic violence has increased, after severe cases made headline news. In July 2019, Valentina Matvienko, Federation Council chair, started a working group to analyze Russian domestic violence laws and enforcement. She underscored needing to maintain consistent, comprehensive statistics on domestic violence. Groups affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church hampered change, lobbying against adopting a domestic violence law, organizing public protests against the bill, and falsely claiming efforts to prevent and punish domestic violence are an assault on “the Russian family,” using misleading, untrue, or inflammatory claims the law would break up Russian families, making it easier for authorities to remove children from families and put them up for adoption to be “brought up by homosexuals.”
- December 8, 2020 – Newly-elected to the Kansas state legislature, Aaron Coleman, age 20, then a Democrat, was slapped with a temporary anti-stalking order by Judge Kathleen Lynch after Brandie Armstrong, campaign manager for Stan Frownfelter, his Democratic opponent in the primaries, made a complaint. Coleman previously admitted to and apologized for acts of online bullying, blackmail, extortion, revenge porn, and death threats when he was in middle school. On December 21, 2020, seven recently elected women Democratic state legislators signed a letter calling on Coleman to resign before he took office on January 11, 2021, but he ignored them. Coleman's ex-girlfriend said on December 27, 2019, Coleman choked and slapped her in a hot tub; in a text message a few days later, Coleman wrote he smacked her. In another incident on December 31, Coleman slapped and choked her again, and told her to kill herself. The Topeka Capitol-Journal reported that Coleman also texted her "I hope you get abducted raped chopped up and have ya pieces scattered and Burnt in different locations." and "If you get pregnant, I will have to kill you and the baby." Coleman apologized for his actions, saying he experienced child abuse from his elementary school teachers. After Democratic house minority leader Tom Sawyer denied Coleman any committee seat assignments, Coleman announced two days after being sworn in that he had left the Democratic Party, and was now an Independent. In late October, 2021, Coleman was arrested and charged with domestic battery. The judge ordered Coleman to undergo a mental health evaluation. Republicans in the legislature, fearing “setting a precedent,” blocked Democrats’ attempts to censure or expel him.
- December 8, 2021 – California legislative leaders proposed making the state a sanctuary for women seeking abortions when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending women’s constitutional right to an abortion. The sanctuary plan, a package of 13 bills, called for increased funding for abortion providers and making it easier for women to access abortion services, including funding the procedure for low-income women who come to California for abortions. Twenty-one conservative states already had abortion bans in place that were triggered when the court overturned Roe.
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Sources
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What the Feminist Cats Want in 2024-2027:
- Democratic Majorities in Both House of Congress
- Re-election of Joe Biden as President
- Restoration of a Woman’s Right to Choose
- A Universal Healthcare System
- Ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment
Can We Do It? Yes, We Can!
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If you want to dive deeper, the extended
list of this week’s Women Trailblazers
and Events in Women’s History is here: