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WOW2: October 2023 Women Trailblazers and Activists – 10-1 thru 10-7 [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-10-07  

I became a part of the struggle … for better working conditions, for more pay, for improvements in the deplorable conditions of women workers, Negro workers, Mexican workers. Sometimes the struggle was mean. We fought in the midst of KKK terror. We were jailed for daring to strike. We fought desperately for the right to organize! – Luisa Moreno, Guatemalan-born American labor organizer ______________________

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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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We especially need imagination in science. It is not all logic, nor all mathematics, but is somewhat beauty and poetry.

– Maria Mitchell, First American woman professional astronomer ______________________

It was the 31st of August in 1962 that eighteen of us traveled twenty-six miles to the county courthouse in Indianola to try to register to become first-class citizens. We was met in Indianola by policemen, Highway Patrolmen, and they only allowed two of us in to take the literacy test at the time.

– Fannie Lou Hamer, Mississippi voting rights crusader

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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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October 1, 1526 – Dorothy Stafford born, Lady Stafford, who married her distant cousin Sir Henry Stafford. A staunch Protestant, she and her family went into exile in Switzerland during the reign of Mary I, but she returned to England with her children in 1559, after the coronation of Elizabeth I. She was appointed as Mistress of the Robes to Queen Elizabeth, holding the office until Elizabeth’s death in 1603, becoming the queen’s trusted confidant, and having considerable influence with her. Her son Edward became the English Ambassador to France in 1578, largely due to her influence. Noted as a “ doing good, all she could, to every Body, never hurt any ; a continual Remembrancer of the Suits of the Poor” on her funeral monument.

Upper portion of Lady Dorothy Stafford’s funeral monument

October 1, 1832 – Caroline Scott Harrison born, U.S. First Lady (1889-1892); student at the Oxford Female Institute in Ohio, founded by her father, graduating with a degree in music in 1852. She married Benjamin Harrison in 1853. During the U.S. Civil War, she joined the Ladies Sanitary Committee, nursing wounded soldiers and raising money for medical supplies. The family moved to Washington DC after Benjamin Harrison was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1881. A severe bout of pneumonia weakened her health, so she seldom participated in social events, but did support the Garfield Hospital Aid Society. In 1888, Harrison ran for president, and defeated incumbent Grover Cleveland. Their daughter, Mary Harrison McKee, and her family also moved into the White House. Caroline Harrison lobbied Congress successfully for $35,000 in appropriations to get the executive mansion purged of rodents and insects, add more bathrooms, install new plumbing, replace some flooring, and paint and wallpaper. In 1891, electricity was installed, but she was afraid to use the switches, so a building engineer turned the lights on in the evening, which were left on all night, and then turned off in the morning. In 1889 Caroline Harrison had the first Christmas tree installed in the White House. A talented artist, she taught classes for women in china-painting in the White House, a popular craft of the day, and had an interest in the history of the White House. She used her influence to help raise funds for the Johns Hopkins University Medical School on the condition that it admit women. But in 1891, she contracted tuberculosis, and as her condition worsened, her daughter Mary took over her duties. She died at age 50 in October, 1892, and Mary became the unofficial First Lady until her father left office in March, 1893.

October 1, 1847 – Maria Mitchell becomes the second woman to discover a comet, after Caroline Herschel. She submitted an article (under her father’s name) about her discovery to Silliman’s Journal in January of 1848, and the following month submitted a paper with her calculations of the comet’s orbit, proving that she was the comet’s discoverer, and it was named Miss Mitchell’s Comet. She won a prize established by King Frederick VI of Denmark, a gold medal, which was inscribed with a line from the Roman poet Virgil: Non Frustra Signorum Obitus Speculamur et Ortus (Not in vain do we watch the setting and the rising [of the stars]) . She was later appointed as head of the Vassar College Observatory (1865-1888), making her the first professional woman astronomer in the U.S., but she had to persuade the administration to allow her students to be outside at night for observing. When she discovered her pay was less than younger male professors at Vassar, she insisted on, and got, a salary increase.

October 1, 1847 – Annie Besant born, British socialist, women’s rights activist, theosophist, author, and orator. A notable speaker for the Fabian Society, the National Secular Society (NSS) and later for the Theosophist Society. Prosecuted for publishing a book advocating birth control in 1877, but the case was thrown out on a technicality. However, her estranged husband used the case to gain sole custody of their children, claiming she was an unfit mother. She supported labor movement actions, including the 1887 Bloody Sunday march which became a clash between protesters and police – she organized legal aid for the jailed workers and raised funds to support their families. Also helped organize the successful 1888 London matchgirls strike. Elected to the London School Board for Tower Hamlets in 1888, even though only a few women could vote in some local elections at the time. Besant also supported home-rule for Ireland and India, and became a member of the Indian National Congress. In 1902, she wrote, "India is not ruled for the prospering of the people, but rather for the profit of her conquerors, and her sons are being treated as a conquered race." However, she also attacked the caste system and child marriage, and was a strong advocate for expanding educational opportunities in India. In 1916, she was in India and became co-founder of the All India Home Rule League, holding public meetings, and mobilizing demonstrations. She was arrested in 1917 and interned at a hill station. The Indian National Congress and the Muslim League joined forces and threatened mass protests if she wasn’t set free. The British government gave way and made vague but significant concessions, announcing that the “ultimate aim” of British rule was Indian self-government, and moves in that direction were promised. Besant was freed in September 1917, welcomed by crowds all over India. In December, she took over as president of the Indian National Congress for a year. Both Nehru and Gandhi spoke of Besant’s influence with admiration.

October 1, 1856 – Henry W. Nevinson born, British journalist, war correspondent, and social reformer; he published Neighbors of Ours: Slum Stories of London, and A Modern Slavery, an exposé on slavery in Angola in 1904. In 1907, he co-founded the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage, and co-authored “Women’s Vote and Men,” published by Women’s Press of the Women’s Freedom League in 1909.

October 1, 1859 – Clarissa M Thompson Allen born, African-American educator and author who wrote fictional stories based on real-life wealthy African-American families in the Southern U.S. Noted for a collection of short stories, Treading the Winepress, also called A Mountain of Misfortune.

October 1, 1861 – Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management sells 60,000 copies in its first year after publication. It remains in print in revised editions to the present day. The original full title was: The Book of Household Management, comprising information for the Mistress, Housekeeper, Cook, Kitchen-Maid, Butler, Footman, Coachman, Valet, Upper and Under House-Maids, Lady's-Maid, Maid-of-all-Work, Laundry-Maid, Nurse and Nurse-Maid, Monthly Wet and Sick Nurses, etc. etc.—also Sanitary, Medical, & Legal Memoranda: with a History of the Origin, Properties, and Uses of all Things Connected with Home Life and Comfort.

October 1, 1862 – Esther Boise Van Deman born, a leading American archaeologist; first woman to specialize in Roman field archaeology, establishing standards for dating ancient constructions using variations in building materials, which advanced the study of Roman architecture; author of The Building of the Roman Aqueducts and The Atrium Vestae.

October 1, 1868 – The first volume of Louisa May Alcott’s best-known book, Little Women, was published, followed by the last half of the story in a second volume. It was such a long-lasting bestseller that it was re-issued as a single volume in 1880.

October 1, 1891 – Stanford University opens its doors a coeducational, nondenominational tuition-free (until 1920) institution. The school was founded near Palo Alto, California, by Leland and Jane Stanford. After Leland Stanford’s death in 1893, Jane Lathrop Stanford funded and operated the university almost single-handedly, until her murder by strychnine poisoning in 1905. Her murder was covered up by Stanford president David Starr Jordan (he and Jane Stanford were at odds, and as president of the board of trustees she reportedly was going to fire him). The crime remains unsolved to this day.

October 1, 1893 – Faith Baldwin born, author of over 85 popular novels, frequently using themes of women juggling career and family; her last book, Adam’s Eden, was published in 1977, the year before she died at age 84.

October 1, 1894 – Margaret Scattergood born, into a well-off Philadelphia Quaker family; peace and civil rights activist. In 1926, worked for the American Federation of Labor in Washington DC. She and co-worker Florence Thorne became friends, bought a house with outbuildings together in Virginia, and moved in. Fifteen years later, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) began buying land in their area to build a research facility. Deciding this was just the beginning of Federal expansion into Virginia, they made a deal: they would sell FHWA their property for $54,189 upfront, but Scattergood and Thorne would remain in their house as long as either of them remained alive. The Central Intelligence Agency needed a much larger headquarters building, in an open-land setting affording greater security, yet close to Washington DC. CIA Director Allen Dulles decided the land surrounding the women’s home was the most suitable of all available sites in the Washington area. CIA Deputy Director for Administration (DDA) Lawrence White assured them that the CIA location would be “a considerable distance removed from your residence” and “that everything possible will be done to avoid inconvenience to you.” The CIA obtained 225 acres owned by the FHWA, including the women’s property, for its new headquarters. In 1961, the first employees began working at the new compound. Scattergood considered the organization’s mission to be in violation of her pacifist beliefs, so she lobbied Congress to cut the U.S. intelligence and military budgets, and used her trust fund to contribute to antiwar causes. In the 1980s, she opened her home to Sandinistas from Nicaragua. Meanwhile, the CIA supported the opposition, spending an authorized $100 million for agency support to the Contras under the 1987 Department of Defense and Military Construction Appropriations Act. More than once, Sandinistas arrived at the CIA’s main entrance in search of Scattergood’s house. In 1973, Florence Thorne died at age 95. CIA Deputy Direector Harry Fitzwater, concerned for Margaret, instructed CIA security officers to check on her as part of their regular patrols. In 1984, during planning to expand the headquarters building, managers of the construction project were given a firm ‘no’ by the CIA’s Office of General Counsel when they asked about using a corner of Scattergood’s property. Several agency officers befriended her, doing yard work and grocery shopping. Margaret Scattergood suffered a stroke and passed away at age 92 in November, 1986 — over 25 years after the CIA began operating out of Langley.

Scattergood-Thorne House — Margaret Scattergood

October 1, 1903 – Mary Katherine Herbert born; she was a WWII agent of the UK’s Special Operations Executive, the only known agent to give birth while undercover in France. Trained as a courier, in October 1942 she traveled by submarine to Gibraltar, then by felucca (a lateen-rigged sailboat) to Cannes, and by train to Bordeaux, where she met Claude de Baissac, leader of the Scientist network. He became her lover, and fathered her child. As a courier, she traveled by bicycle and train carrying messages, documents, money, and wireless parts, as well as collecting information and seeking out potential recruits and safe houses. Once, as she struggled with a heavy suitcase containing a wireless set, a German officer courteously carried it for her onto the train . In June 1943, the Nazis penetrated the Prosper network in Paris, and then the Scientist network, so Herbert and others went into hiding. De Baissac, with his sister Lise, another SOE agent, were flown safely to England to avoid arrest. When Herbert revealed her pregnancy after learning that de Baissac was not returning to Bordeaux, she was ordered to cease all clandestine activities. She gave birth to her daughter Claudine in a nursing home in a Bordeaux suburb in December 1943, then moved to a Poitiers apartment with the baby. Herbert was arrested in February 1944 by the German Gestapo. Her daughter was left with her maid, but French social services put her in an orphanage. Under interrogation, Herbert maintained her cover story – she was innocent, and spoke accented French because she had lived in Egypt, and it was hardly likely that an agent would give birth to a baby. She was imprisoned in solitary confinement until Easter, when she was given back her belongings and released. After months of searching, she found her child in a convent. By September, 1944, France was liberated from German control, and Claude and Lise de Baissac returned as part of the Judex mission, to locate lost and captured SOE agents and the French people who helped them. They tracked down Herbert living with her child in a farm house, and took them to England, where De Baissac married Herbert, but they did not live together. They divorced in 1960.

October 1, 1912 – Kathleen Ollerenshaw born, English mathematician and politician, worked on lattices and pandiagonal magic squares. She was President of the Institute of Mathematics and Its Applications (1978-1979). Ollerenshaw had a successful political career in spite of being deaf since the age of eight and only receiving an effective hearing aid at age 37. She was Lord Mayor of Manchester (1975-1976), and High Sheriff of Greater Manchester (1978-1979), while serving as Councilor for Rushholme (1956-1981). An amateur astronomer, she donated her telescope to Lancaster University, where an observatory is named for her.

October 1, 1924 – Leonie Gibson Kramer born; Australian academic. In 1968, became the first woman full professor of English in Australia. Also the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s first woman chair (1982-1983), and first woman chancellor of the University of Sydney (1991-2001). Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (1982) and a Companion of the Order of Australia (1993).

October 1, 1931 – Spanish women won the right to vote ; the suffrage article in Spain’s new constitution took effect on this date, but women could run for office in June 1931, so Clara Campoamore Rodriguez, the main mover behind getting enfranchisement of women into the new Spanish constitution, with Victoria Kent Siano and Margarita Nelken y Mansbergen won congressional seats before women could vote. Ironically, only socialist Rodriguez was a supporter of women’s suffrage. Spain was the first Latin country to offer universal suffrage: "Citizens of either sex, over twenty-three years of age, shall have the same electoral rights as determined by the laws."

Spanish Women going to polls — Clara Campoamore Rodriguez speaking

October 1, 1935 – Julie Andrews born, singer and actress; she had four-octave vocal range, and won an Academy Award for Best Actress for Mary Poppins. Still works as an actress after botched surgery for nodules in 1997 damaged her vocal cords, limiting her range and ability to hold notes. Andrews is also a theatre director, and author of children’s books, including The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles, and Little Bo and Dumpy the Dump Truck. She was an advocate and fundraiser for Operation USA during the Haitian relief campaign after the devastating 2010 earthquake. Also supports the UN International Fund for Women, Operation USA; the Alzheimer’s Association; Human Rights Campaign; and the Foundation for Hereditary Disease.

October 1, 1938 – Stella Stevens born, American actress, director and producer in film and television; producer/director of the documentary The American Heroine, and directed the comedy movie The Ranch.

October 1, 1940 – Phyllis Chesler born, American writer, psychotherapist, and feminist; bestselling author of Women and Madness; her other work covers gender issues, mental illness, divorce and child custody, surrogacy, second-wave feminism, pornography, prostitution, incest, violence against women, and honor killings. Co-founder of the International Committee for Women of the Wall, which promotes Jewish women’s religious rights in Jerusalem.

October 1, 1950 – Susan Greenfield born, Baroness Greenfield of Ot Moor, British scientist, author, broadcaster, Life Peer and House of Lords member since 2001; works on treatments for Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease, also studies the neuroscience of consciousness and technology’s effect on the brain; senior research fellow at Lincoln College, Oxford; chancellor of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh (2005-2013); director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain (1998-2010).

October 1, 1953 – Grete Waitz born, Norwegian marathon runner; in 1979, she was the first woman to run a marathon in under 2 ½ hours; holds the record for most New York City Marathon wins – nine times between 1978 and 1988; Olympic silver medalist at the 1984 games, and gold medalist in the 1983 World Championships.

October 1, 1957 – Éva Tardos born, Hungarian mathematician; Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University; Chair of Cornell’s Department of Computer Science (2006-2010). Noted for research on algorithms, focusing on design and analysis of efficient methods for combinatorial optimization problems on graphs or networks. Also worked on network flow algorithms like approximation algorithms for network flows, cut, and clustering problems; and on algorithmic game theory. Elected to the National Academy of Engineering (2007), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences (2013). Winner of the Fulkerson Prize (1988), the George B. Dantzig Prize (2006), the Van Wijngaarden Award (2011), the Gödel Prize (2012), the EATCS Award (2017), and the IEEE John von Neumann Medal (2019).

October 1, 1965 – Mia Mottley born, Barbados Labour Party politician and attorney; Prime Minister of Barbados since 2018; first woman Leader of the Opposition (2008-2010, and 2013-2018); in 2001, she was the first woman appointed as Attorney-General and Minister of Home Affairs; Member of Parliament since 1994 . In 2021, she gave an impassioned speech before the UN General Assembly for access to Covid-19 vaccines to millions of people living outside of the “developed nations” who are also more impacted by the climate crisis. She invoked Bob Marley: “Who will get up, stand up” for their rights?

October 1, 1989 – Denmark introduces the world's first legal same-sex registered partnerships .

October 1, 1991 – Abby Chava Stein born, American transgender author and activist. A former rabbi, she is the first openly transgender woman raised in a Hasidic community. Noted for her book , Becoming Eve: My Journey from Ultra Orthodox Rabbi to Transgender Woman .

October 1, 20 17 – A report by the Doctors of the World charitable organization calls for more pre- and post-natal care and safe deliveries for refugee women across Europe, arguing that it is not only humanitarian but also cost-effective. Dr Nikitas Kanakis, president of Doctors of the World Greece warned if Europe did not take care of refugee women and their babies, “we will face new problems that cost a lot ... people talk about the cost of medical care in Europe. They forget that not giving care has a cost. Antenatal care costs much less than a handicapped child.” The report, drawing on experiences of 14,000 refugee women, shows that medical care was inadequate or non-existent for 72% of their health problems. Less than 47% of the women had access to any reproductive healthcare before they arrived at one of the Doctors of the World’s eight polyclinics or 15 mobile units across Greece.

October 1, 20 19 – Hillary Clinton, on the media circuit to promote The Book of Gutsy Women, which she co-wrote with her daughter Chelsea, was asked about the gutsiest thing she had ever done. “Personally, make the decision to stay in my marriage,” she answered, and added: “Publicly, politically, run for president. And keep going. Just get up every day and keep going.”

October 1, 20 20 – A new report by the National Women’s Law Center shows women were disproportionately impacted by Covid-19’s economic fallout. In August and September, nearly 1.1 million workers age 20 and older were no longer working or looking for work. 865,000 of them were women, four times the number of unemployed men. African American and Latina women had the highest rates of unemployment, over 11% in September, compared to 6.9% for white women. “This is the devastating impact of the ongoing breakdown of our nation’s caregiving infrastructure in the face of Covid-19,” said Emily Martin, vice president for workplace justice at NWLC, “As families across the country struggle to figure out how to keep their jobs while also making sure their children are cared for, safe and learning every day, it’s women who are being pushed out of work.” Lack of childcare is a key issue, forcing many women to leave the workforce to stay at home with their children.

October 1, 20 21 – In the UK, after conviction of a serving Metropolitan police officer who used his authority to kidnap, rape, and murder Sarah Everard, the government is facing hard questions about what they are doing to tackle men’s violence against women. There was outrage about the advice published on the Metropolitan police’s website that fearful women could flag down a bus, while a pilot program to put plainclothes police officers in bars to protect women was derided by women’s groups. More street lighting and CCTV (closed-circuit surveillance on streets) have been promised, but critics called that a ‘band-aid” that didn’t address the root problem. Labour MP Stella Creasy has spearheaded efforts to have misogyny dealt with as a hate crime.

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October 2, 1470 – Isabella of Aragon and Naples born, ‘unique in misfortune’ – Duchess consort of Milan (1489-1494) and Duchess of Bari (1500-1524). In 1489, betrothed at age 9, she married her cousin, Gian Galeazzo Sforza, Duke of Milan, when she was 18 and he was 19. Gian’s uncle, Ludivico Sforza, regent during his nephew’s minority, never relinquished his power, and denied not only Gian his birthright, but also Isabella and Gian’s son, Francesco. He treated his own son, Massimiliano, as the heir, keeping Isabella and Gian virtual prisoners. Wars between the Italian city-states and the French, with intervention by the Swiss, and later invasion by the Spanish, further complicated matters. Gian Galeazzo Sforza died in captivity, in 1494, at age 25. Ludovico usurped the title, displacing Isabella's son. Ludovico allowed Isabella to live in the ducal apartment, but she lost the father of her children, and her son was denied his birthright. In 1499, Ludovico was toppled from power by Louis XII of France, and Isabella petitioned Louis to name her son the Duke of Bari, one of the titles which belonged to the Milanese family. Louis responded by taking her 8-year-old son to France, assuring Isabella that he planned to marry him to his daughter, but instead, he put Francesco in a monastery. Isabella petitioned Emperor Maximilian to liberate her son from France, but this effort proved fruitless. She never saw her son again. He died in France, after falling from a horse, in 1512. Fearing for her own safety, she left Milan for Naples, taking her two daughters with her, but it was no safer there, where her uncle was the nominal head after her brother Frederick died childless in 1496. Frederick’s death made Isabella the heir to his claim as King of Jerusalem, but that too was taken by Louis XII. She was granted the title of suo jure (in her own right) Duchess of Bari, which Louis had denied her son. She ruled in Bari (a city on the Adriatic Sea in southern Italy), enlarging the castle, enhancing its defenses, and keeping a sharp eye on public officials, which limited their notorious corruption, and prevented them from plotting against her. She also formed a court that was a center of the arts and literature. Her daughter Ippolita died at age eight, and Isabella dedicated herself to her sole surviving child, Bona, who was given an advanced education, including lessons in statecraft. Bona was married in 1517 to Sigismund, King of Poland, almost twice her age. She inherited the title of Duchess of Bari when her mother died at age 53 in 1524. When widowed Queen Bona of Poland returned to Bari in 1557, she was poisoned by a trusted officer, most likely acting for Philip II of Spain, who owed a sizeable debt to her.

October 2, 1718 – Elizabeth Montagu born, English reformer, “Queen of the Blues” (Bluestockings, literary intellectuals), celebrated for her literary salon which included Samuel Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, Elizabeth Carter, David Garrick, Fanny Burney, Sarah Fielding, and Horace Walpole. She was also a patron of the arts, up-and-coming writers in particular. In 1760, she wrote and contributed anonymously three sections to Dialogues of the Dead, and in 1769, published under her name An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespear. When her much older husband died in 1775, she inherited his substantial fortune, and the following year, adopted her orphaned nephew Matthew Robinson, making him her heir. She devoted much of her wealth to fostering British literature and relief for the poor, especially the workers in the Newcastle coal mines, an important source of the Montagu fortune. A collection of her letters was published posthumously, many of them written to her sister, Sarah Scott, who was a novelist and translator.

October 2, 1755 – Hannah Adams born, gained knowledge of Greek and Latin from divinity students boarding with her father, then tutored others to earn a living when her father went bankrupt. She turned to writing for additional income, and became the first U.S. woman to earn a living as an author, mainly writing about religion and history, including An Alphabetical Compendium of the Various Sects (1784), an encyclopedic outline of world religions, and A Summary History of New England (1799), which caused a scandal when she squared off with Reverend Jedidiah Morse, an orthodox Calvinist, over publication rights for their competing history textbooks, which eventually ruined Morse's reputation, as Adams's coterie of liberal Bostonians rallied to her defense.

October 2, 1846 – Eliza Maria Mosher born, physician and educator, held positions as a prison physician, prison superintendent, college physician, college professor, and women's dean at the University of Michigan (1896-1902); founder of the American Posture League; designer of safer, orthopedically sound chairs for rapid-transit streetcars and kindergarten classrooms, and lectured on the health benefits of physical education.

October 2, 1871 – Martha Brookes Hutcheson born, American landscape architect; enrolled in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s first course in Landscape Architecture, but had to leave after two years of study. She designed grounds for a number of residential estates, including the garden at Alice Mary Longfellow’s Cambridge MA home; after marriage, she retired from commercial practice, but landscaped her five acre garden at their 100 acre farm, now a New Jersey Historic Trust property, the Bamboo Brook Education Center. She was the third woman named a fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects; author of The Spirit of the Garden (1923).

October 2, 1875 – Pattie Ruffner Jacobs born; American suffragist and progressive reformer; her family lost their income during the deep economic depression caused by the Panic of 1893, and her parents’ marriage dissolved. Unable to pay her tuition at Ward’s Seminary for Young Ladies, she and mother lived with her maternal aunt’s family in Birmingham, Alabama. She married Solon Jacobs, a man of comfortable means, allowing her to travel, and take voice lessons. Active in progressive reform causes, including ending prostitution and child labor, she also supported the Jefferson County Anti-Tuberculosis Association. After several failed efforts to improve public schools, Jacobs concluded that women's suffrage was necessary to achieve social reforms through the political process. She founded the Birmingham Equal Suffrage Association in 1910, followed by the Alabama Equal Suffrage Association in 1911. In 1913, Jacobs spoke on behalf of Southern women's suffragists at the Annual Convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association in Washington DC, and was elected as an NWSA officer in 1915. After the 19th Amendment was passed, Jacobs led the transition of her local organizations into the League of Women Voters. She also became national secretary for the League of Women Voters. Jacobs was a leader in a campaign for an 8-hour workday, which was unsuccessful. Both Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt appointed her to commissions, including the Consumer Advisory Board of the National Recovery Administration, and as a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Valley Authority. In 1933, she was the first woman appointed to the Democratic National Committee from Alabama, a position she held until her death at age 60 in 1935.

October 2, 1885 – Ruth Bryan Owen born, first southern woman representative in U.S. Congress, (Democrat-Florida, 1929-1933); first woman on House Foreign Affairs Committee, and the first woman appointed as a U.S. Ambassador (1933-1936, to Denmark).

Congresswoman Ruth Bryan Owen

October 2, 1889 – Margaret Chung born in the U.S. to Chinese immigrant parents, oldest of 11 children. She won a Los Angeles Times scholarship by selling newspaper subscriptions, then paid the rest of her expenses by waiting tables and winning speech contests. Chung was the first Chinese heritage woman student at the University of Southern California Medical School, graduating in 1916. Then she completed her internship and residency in Illinois, becoming the first known American woman physician of Chinese descent. She started her practice in San Francisco in 1922, then founded one of the first Western medical clinics in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Some of her patients came from outside Chinatown, including U.S. Navy reserve pilots, and other naval officers, whom she not only treated, but also fed, becoming their “Mom Chung.” She gave them jade Buddhas to wear around their necks, and during WWII, pilots wearing them would recognize each other as “Mom Chung’s adopted sons.” When Japan invaded China in 1937, Chung volunteered as a front-line surgeon, but was also secretly assigned to recruit pilots for the American volunteers, known as the “Flying Tigers.” During WWII, she held Thanksgiving gatherings for up to 175 people at her home, and gave thousands of Christmas gifts. Her “sons” included high ranking officers, U.S. senators, and congressmen; these connections helped her establish the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, but she was not permitted to join them, because the FBI suspected that she was a lesbian. Mom Chung adopted the entire VF-2 squadron, nicknamed "The Rippers" for their logo, which showed a Chinese dragon ripping a flag. When she retired from practice in the mid-1950s, her “adopted sons” bought a house for her in Marin County, north of San Francisco. She died of cancer in 1959, and Admiral Chester W. Nimitz was one of her pallbearers.

October 2, 1895 – Ruth Cheney Streeter born, first director of the United States Marine Corps Women’s Reserve, and first woman to become a major in the USMC. In 1942, at age 47, she earned a commercial pilot’s license, hoping to serve as a ferry pilot with the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPS), but she was rejected five times because of her age. In 1943, she was commissioned as a major and appointed director of the United States Marine Corps Women's Reserve. Streeter was in office on the official MCWR creation date of February 13, 1943, which grew to a total of 831 officers and 17,714 enlisted before she retired in 1945 as a lieutenant colonel. In 1946, she was awarded the Legion of Merit, for “... distinctive service in directing the planning and organization of the Women's Reserve of the Marine Corps and skillfully integrating women into the basic structure of the Corps …”

October 2, 1902 – The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter goes on sale to the public in England. Beatrix Potter, after several initial rejections, had published 250 copies privately in December 1901. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle bought one of her privately printed editions for his children.

October 2, 1912 – Alice Bourneuf born, economist, contributed to the Marshall Plan for the Post-WWII European recovery; taught economics at Boston College (1959-1977).

October 2, 1919 – Shirley Clarke born, filmmaker; won an Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary, Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel with the World.

October 2, 1926 – Jan Morris born James Humphrey Morris, Welsh historian, author, and travel writer; known particularly for the Pax Britannica trilogy (1968–1978), a history of the British Empire, and for portraits of cities, notably Oxford, Venice, Hong Kong, and New York City. Morris, the L ondon Times correspondent with the British Mount Everest Expedition, broke the story when Edmond Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers to reach the summit. Morris began medical transition in 1964, then travelled to Morocco in 1972 to undergo sex reassignment surgery, because doctors in Britain refused to allow the procedure unless Morris and his wife divorced, something Morris was not prepared to do. Morris published as James until after her surgery in 1972.

October 2, 1929 – Tanaquil La Clercq born, New York City Ballet principal dancer until she contracted polio while on tour in Copenhagen in 1956, which paralyzed her from the waist down. She later taught ballet and wrote Mourka: The Autobiography of a Cat and The Ballet Cook Book.

Tanaquil La Clercq in ‘La Valse’

October 2, 1948 – Donna Karan born as Donna Ivy Faske; American fashion designer and head of the multi-million dollar Donna Karan fashion empire. After attending the Parsons School of Design, she went to work for Anne Klein. Upon Klein’s death in 1974, she became head of the Anne Klein design-team. In 1976, she married Mark Karan, but they divorced in 1978. In 1984, she left Anne Klein to launch her own Donna Karan label, first known for her “Essentials” line, beginning with seven mix-and-match knit pieces centered around a bodysuit. In 1988, she expanded with DKNY, her more affordable clothing line for younger women, followed by DKNY Jeans, and DKNY for Men. She left her position as CEO in 1997, but remained chair of the board and head designer. French luxury giant LVMH bought Karan’s company in 2001, though she continued as titular head. She was honored in 2004 with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Coty American Fashion Critics. In 2015, Karan announced she was going to focus on her lifestyle brand Urban Zen.

October 2, 1949 – Annie Leibovitz born, portrait photographer; first woman to hold an exhibition at Washington’s National Portrait Gallery (1991).

October 2, 1955 – Nancy Rothwell born, British physiologist, President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Manchester since 2010; one of the directors of AstraZeneca, the pharmaceuticals company; co-chair of the Council for Science and Technology; noted for research on brown adipose tissue and cytokines; Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire since 2005.

October 2, 1973 – Melissa Harris-Perry born, American writer, academic, and political commentator, focused on African-American politics; host of Melissa Harris-Perry, an MSNBC weekend news and opinion program (2012-2016). A regular columnist for The Nation, and editor-at-large at ELLE.com. She also taught political science at the University of Chicago (1999-2006) and political science and African-American Studies at Princeton (2006-2011). Founding Director of the Anna Julia Cooper Project (2012?), a center for race, gender, and Southern politics studies, at Tulane University. The Anna Julia Cooper Project moved with her to Wake Forest in 2014, when she accepted the university’s Maya Angelou Presidential Chair Professor of Political and International Affairs.

October 2, 20 06 – In Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, a 32-year-old gunman took ten girls, ages 6-13, hostage at the West Nickel Mines School, an Amish one-room schoolhouse. He shot 8 girls, killing 5 of them, before he fatally shot himself. The shooter, who drove a milk tanker collecting milk from Amish farms, had left separate suicide notes for his wife and each of his three children. He confessed to having fantasies about molesting young girls, and spoke of the anger he held against God. The school’s teacher, Emma Mae Zook, ran to a nearby farm to summon help as the hostage-taker told the other adults and all 15 male students to leave. The shooter arranged the bound girls in front of the chalkboard, then made two cell phone calls, one to his wife and one to police. He warned the 911 dispatcher that if state police were not off the property in two seconds, he would kill the children. The dispatcher attempted to delay him and put him in touch with the State Police, but he hung up. Two of the girls then began negotiating with Roberts. They pleaded for him to shoot them first. This allowed the girls a little extra time for possible rescue. At approximately 11:07 a.m., he followed through with his threats and the sound of rapid gunfire was heard. His wife arrived home just minutes before he started shooting, found the suicide notes, and called 911. Two girls were dead when the police entered the building, and one was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. Two sisters died during the early hours of the next day. Amish neighbors went to comfort the shooter’s family, and 30 members of the Amish community attended his funeral, expressing condolences for the family. The West Nickel Mines School was torn down, and a new one-room schoolhouse was built at another location. The five girls who died were: Naomi Rose Ebersol, age 7; Marian Stoltzfus Fisher, age 13; Anna Mae Stoltzfus, age 12; Lena Zook Miller, age 8; and Mary Liz Miller, age 8. Of the wounded survivors, Sarah Ann Stoltzfus, age 12, lost full vision in her left eye; and Rosanna King, age 6, has permanent brain injuries, and is unable to walk, talk, or feed herself.

October 2, 20 18 – Canadian physicist Donna Strickland shares the 2018 Nobel Prize for Physics with American Arthur Ashkin and Frenchman Gérard Mourou, for her work with Mourou, which led to development of the shortest, most intense laser beams ever created. Their technique, chirped pulse amplication, is now used in laser machining, and enables doctors to perform millions of corrective laser eye surgeries every year.

October 2, 20 19 – In the UK, Diane Abbott, Labour MP, represented her party at the prime minister’s questions, a first for a parliamentarian of color, standing in for Jeremy Corbyn. The shadow home secretary, Emily Thornberry, who had been Corbyn’s regular stand-in, was dropped after her fierce criticism of Labour’s campaign during the European elections in May. In announcing Abbott’s appearance, Corbyn highlighted that October is Black History Month in Great Britain.

October 2, 2020 – Indigenous rights groups are calling for an investigation, after Canadian Joyce Echaquan, a 37-year-old Atikamekw woman, recorded seven of the last minutes of her life on September 28, begging for help on Facebook. As she lay dying in a Quebec hospital bed, the nurses who were supposed to be caring for her instead called her "stupid," saying she was "only good for sex," and that their tax dollars were "paying for" her health care. Echaquan had a history of heart problems, and was trying to prevent the staff from giving her more morphine. One nurse was fired. "Only when governments recognize the harms that are being perpetrated against Indigenous people, take steps to correct them, and make the necessary reparations, will repugnant incidents like the one endured by Joyce Echaquan be prevented," said Lorraine Whitman, president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada, and she called for the 2019 recommendations of the Viens Commission to be carried out. The Grand Council of the Cree Nation said in a statement, "Let the death of Joyce Echaquan not be in vain. Let it be the shock that ends the culture of impunity and establishes accountability throughout the public services in their dealings with Indigenous persons."

October 2, 2021 – Since Sarah Everard’s murder in March 2021, at least 81 other UK women have been killed, and the likely suspects are men. Karen Ingala Smith, who started “Counting Dead Women” in 2012, after the murder of 20-year-old Kirsty Treloar, says, “It is absolutely ludicrous that we know this because of my work, a random northern woman in east London, not the government, not the National Police Chiefs Council … Men’s fatal violence against women cuts across all sections of society, across ages, class and ethnicity.” She and Clarrie O’Callagan developed the Femicide Census, using the UK Freedom of Information Act. They found that 92% of women killed by men are killed by a man that they know, and 62% of murdered women are killed by their partner or ex-partner.

Karen Ingala Smith — Clarrie O’Callagan — Femicide Census Report: “If I’m not in on Friday, I might be dead.”

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October 3, 1292 – Eleanor de Clare born, Anglo-Welsh noblewoman, suo jure (in her own right) Lady of Glamorgan, and granddaughter of Edward I of England. When her only brother died in battle in 1314, she and her two younger sisters inherited their father’s great wealth and estates. But at age 13 in 1306, she was given in marriage to Hugh le Despenser the Younger, to settle a debt owed to him by her royal grandfather. Hugh became royal chamberlain and a favourite of Edward II of England. By 1325, Eleanor had given birth to nine surviving children. Edward was a very unpopular king, and in 1326 his estranged wife, Queen Isabella, and her lover, Roger Mortimer, overthrew him. Hugh le Despenser was arrested, convicted of high treason, then hanged, drawn and quartered. Eleanor was confined in the Tower of London with her youngest children, her eldest son was also imprisoned, and three of her daughters were forcibly veiled as nuns. Her eldest daughter, Isabel, and her youngest daughter, Elizabeth, escaped this fate because Isabel was married and Elizabeth was an infant still being breast-fed. In 1328, Eleanor was freed from the tower, then restored to possession of her lands. But in January 1329, she was abducted by William la Zouche, 1st Baron Zouche of Mortimer, who had been one of her first husband's captors. The abduction may have been an elopement; in any case, Eleanor's lands were seized by King Edward III (her first cousin), and the couple's arrest was ordered. At the same time, Eleanor was accused of stealing jewels from the Tower of London. Sometime after February 1329, she was imprisoned a second time in the Tower, then later moved to Devizes Castle. In January 1330, she was released and pardoned after agreeing to sign away the most valuable part of her share of the lucrative Clare inheritance to the crown. She could recover her lands only on payment of the impossible sum of 50,000 pounds in a single day. Within the year, however, the young Edward III overthrew Queen Isabella's paramour, Roger Mortimer, and had him executed. She then petitioned the king for restoration of her lands, which she had signed away because Roger Mortimer threatened that she would never be freed if she did not. In 1331 Edward III granted her petition "to ease the king's conscience" and allowed her to recover the lands on the condition that she should pay a fine of 10,000 pounds, later reduced to 5,000 pounds, in installments. Eleanor made part-payments of the fine, but the bulk of it was not paid until after her death. Eleanor's troubles weren’t over –her marriage to William la Zouche, forced or not, was disputed by John, 1st Baron Grey de Rotherfield, who claimed he had married her first, and the case was appealed to the Pope. Ultimately, Zouche won the dispute. Eleanor died at age 44 in 1337, just months after Zouche. They had one surviving son, who became a monk at Glastonbury Abbey.

October 3, 1373? – (date uncertain) Jadwiga of Poland born, the first woman monarch of the Kingdom of Poland. She reigned from 1384 to 1399.

October 3, 1648 – Élisabeth Sophie Chéron born, French painter, poet, musician and academicienne.

‘Self-Portrait’ (1672) — by Elisabeth Sophie Cheron

October 3, 1849 – Jeannette Leonard Gilder born, pioneering American woman journalist; using the pen name “Brunswick,” she wrote for The Boston Evening Transcript and was their New York Correspondent; co-founder with her brother Richard of The Critic (1881-1906), a literary magazine, and also joint editor with him of Scribner’s Monthly.

October 3, 1858 – Eleonora Duse born into an Italian theatrical troupe, regarded as one of the greatest actors of all time; remembered for roles in plays by Gabriele d’Annunzio and Henrik Ibsen. She formed her own company as actor-manager, and was Sarah Bernhardt’s chief rival. Duse gave generous help to many young performers in advancing their careers, including Eva Le Gallienne and Martha Graham . First Lady Frances Cleveland shocked Washington society by honoring Duse with the first-ever White House tea held for an actress in 1896. Duse retired from acting in 1909, suffering from respiratory problems, but returned to the stage in 1921 for a series of engagements in Europe and America. She was the first woman to be featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1923. She died in 1924 of pneumonia at age 65, and her body was returned to Italy, where she was buried in Asolo.

October 3, 1860 – Annie Horniman born, British theatre manager, co-founder of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, and the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester, promoted new playwrights.

Abbey Theatre and ‘Red Queen‘ portrait of Horniman by Emma Magnus

October 3, 1885 – Sophie Treadwell born, American playwright, novelist, and journalist; Machinal is the best-known of her plays that were produced on Broadway.

Sophie Treadwell — photo by Bachrach

October 3, 1896 – Auvergne Doherty born, first Western Australian woman, and one of the first nine women, to be called to the English bar. Doherty passed the Responsions exams for Oxford University in 1916, then graduated and matriculated in October 1920. Auvergne was called to the Bar in England in 1922, following the enactment of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act. Although she gained admission to Middle Temple, she returned to Australia in 1930, then took over the family cattle business when her father died in 1935. She resigned as director in 1946, and died in 1961 at age 64.

October 3, 1897 – Ruth Muskrat Bronson born; first Guidance and Placement Officer (1931-1943) of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, helping Indian students get loans and scholarships, and to find jobs after graduation. As executive secretary of the National Congress of American Indians, she helped force authorities to honor treaties. After her work for the BIA in Washington DC, she became a health education specialist for the Indian Health Service. She wrote books and articles, including, Indians are People Too; The Church in Indian Life; and Shall We Repeat Indian History in Alaska?

October 3, 1899 – Gertrude Edelstein Berg born as Tillie Edelstein, American pioneer in radio, who wrote, produced, and starred in the long-running serial comedy-drama The Rise of the Goldbergs, later called The Goldbergs, about the Jewish family of Molly and Jake Goldberg who live in a Bronx tenement. The first 15-minute episode aired on November 20, 1929 on the NBC radio network. She wrote almost all 5,000 of the show’s radio episodes, and a 1948 Broadway adaptation, Me and Molly. In 1949, CBS put The Goldbergs on television. Gertrude Berg won the very first Emmy Award for Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for the show’s debut season. In 1951, her co-star Philip Loeb, who played Jake Goldberg, was blacklisted when his name appeared in Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television. The series was canceled as a result of Loeb’s participation, and both networks and sponsors insisted Loeb be fired as a condition of the show returning to air, despite Gertrude Berg’s protests. Loeb resigned rather than cause Berg trouble. He reportedly received a generous severance package from the show, but he sank into a depression that ultimately drove him to suicide in 1955. The Goldbergs returned a year after Loeb departed the show and continued until 1954, after which Berg also wrote and produced a syndicated film version.

October 3, 1904 – Mary McLeod Bethune opened her first school for African-American students in Daytona Beach, Florida.

October 3, 1916 – María de los Ángeles Alvariño González born, Spanish oceanographer and fishery research biologist; authority on plankton.

October 3, 1922 – Governor Hardwick of Georgia appointed Rebecca Felton to fill a vacancy in the U.S. Senate, the first female U.S. Senator. She served just 24 hours. At 87 years, nine months, and 22 days old, she was the oldest freshman senator to enter the Senate. Felton was the only woman to serve as a U.S. Senator from Georgia until 2020, when Kelly Loeffler was elected. Felton was the last person to serve in either house who had been a slave owner before the Civil War. She was an outspoken white supremacist and racist.

October 3, 1925 – Simone Segouin born, WWII French Resistance fighter, nom de guerre ‘Nicole Minet.’ One of her first acts was stealing a bicycle from a German female military messenger, so she could carry messages for the French Partisans. She was 17 when she became part of the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans, an armed resistance group founded by the French Communist Party. Though she was instructed in the use of a submachine gun, she was first assigned to small jobs and messenger work, but then took part in a “train-exploding expedition.” After that, she was involved in capturing 25 German soldiers, and the liberations of Chartres and Paris. She was awarded the French military Croix de Guerre, given for heroism. After the war, she became a pediatric nurse, and lived on a street named after her in Courville-sur-Eure. She died at age 97 in April 2023.

October 3, 1949 – Laurie Simmons born, American artist, photographer, and filmmaker; part of The Pictures Generation, a group of artists exhibited in a 2009 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art; notable for her Black Series, photographs of rooms she constructed with dollhouse furniture and replicas of iconic, easily recognizable artworks, and her 2006 film, The Music of Regret.

October 3, 1951 – Kathryn D. Sullivan born, American geologist, oceanographer, and NASA astronaut; a crew member on three Space Shuttle missions, the first American woman to walk in space on October 11, 1984. Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans, and Atmosphere Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (2014-2017).

October 3, 1955 – Buket Uzuner born, Turkish best-selling novelist, and travelogue and short story writer; writes travelogues about being a solo woman backpacker, including Travel Notes of An Urban Romantic, and her 2013 novel İstanbullular ( I Am Istanbul). H er first novel, İki Yeşil Susamuru, Anneleri, Babaları, Sevgilileri ve Diğerleri ( Two Green Otters, Mothers, Fathers, Lovers and All the Others) was published in 1991. Uzuner was awarded Turkey’s Yunus Nadi prize for her novel Balık İzlerinin Sesi ( The Sound of Fishsteps).

October 3, 1958 – Chen Yanyin born, Chinese sculptor; her first solo show, Box Series, was at the Shanghai Oil Painting and Sculpture Institute in 1994; she has participated in several collaborative shows around the world, and some of her work was shown in Between Ego and Society: An Exhibition of Contemporary Female Artists in China at the Chicago Cultural Center.

October 3, 1958 – Louise Lecavalier born, Canadian contemporary dance icon; began her professional career as a member of Le Groupe Nouvelle Aire; joined Édouard Lock’s dance group, Lock Danseurs, in 1980, which quickly became La La La Human Steps, where she was the company’s principal dancer; her first work as a choreographer was So Blue, which premiered in Düsseldorf in 2012. Lecavalier was honored with the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement in dance in 2014.

October 3, 1961 – Rebecca Stephens born, British mountaineer, writer, motivational speaker, leadership coach, and journalist; first British woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest; third woman and first British woman to climb the Seven Summits. She founded the leadership development company Seven Summits Performance Ltd. Stevens was a presenter on the BBC television science series Tomorrow’s World (1994-1996).

October 3, 1969 – Gwen Stefani born, American singer-songwriter, actress, and record producer; winner of three Grammy Awards. Stefani donated $1 million to Save the Children’s Japan Earthquake-Tsunami Children in Emergency Fund after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, has auctioned off clothing for several charities, and hosted a fundraiser with First Lady Michelle Obama in 2012. She supports the American Foundation for AIDS Research, Artists for Peace and Justice, Baby2Baby, Feeding America, and UNICEF.

October 3, 1971 – Billie Jean King becomes first woman athlete to earn $100,000 in a single season.

October 3, 1991 – South African writer and anti-apartheid activist Nadine Gordimer was announced as the 1991 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, recognizing her as a writer whose work has “been of very great benefit to humanity.”

October 3, 2020 – UN-appointed independent human rights experts urged authorities in Iraq to investigate the murder of Dr. Reham Yacoub , and the attempted murder of Lodya Remon Albarti , both rights defenders who led women’s marches as part of protests against corruption and unemployment that began in Basra in 2018. On August 17, 2020, unidentified gunmen opened fire on a car carrying Ms. Albarti, after she was subjected to a long smear campaign forced her to flee the city for her safety. She survived the shooting, but sustained leg injuries, and has continued to be threatened and slandered online. On August 19, 2020, Dr. Yaquob, a physician who has also been an advocate for the right of women to exercise in public and use sports facilities, was killed by two unidentified gunmen riding a scooter as she drove through the centre of Basra. “Clearly the Iraqi government has little regard for the lives of human rights defenders. Both of these attacks were entirely preventable. Both women had received threats in the past and the State had done nothing to keep them safe,” the UN experts said. “Women are a leading force in the human rights community but – as in many countries – they face additional threats simply because they are women.”

Dr. Reham Yacoub — Lodya Remon Albarti

October 3, 2021 – Data scientist Frances Haugen appeared on 60 minutes. She had worked at Facebook for almost two years, and studied the social networks’ algorithm, which she says amplified misinformation, was exploited by foreign adversaries of the U.S., and Facebook deliberately “ hid vital information from the public, from the U.S. government, and from governments around the world." Before she left Facebook, she copied thousands of pages of confidential documents which back up her allegations that Facebook consistently placed profits over user safety or accuracy. She also said that Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, has a negative impact on children – one Facebook study found that 13.5% of UK teenage girls surveyed said their suicidal thoughts became more frequent after starting on Instagram, and another study found 17% of teen girls with eating disorders got worse after using Instagram. Haugen testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee on October 5, and shared her copies of documents with lawmakers, regulators, and The Wall Street Journal, which published a series called the Facebook Files. Haugen told Congress when outside researchers and lawmakers asked how Facebook affected the health and safety of children, the company was never forthcoming: "Facebook chooses to mislead and misdirect. Facebook has not earned our blind faith." Haugen urged lawmakers to examine the algorithms that drive popular features, like the main feeds in Facebook and Instagram. The algorithms reward engagement. In other words, when a post receives comments, "likes" and other interactions, it is spread more widely and is featured more prominently in feeds, instead of just featuring posts in chronological order. The engagement-based formula helps sensational content, such as posts that feature rage, hate, or misinformation, and they travel far and wide. "It is causing teenagers to be exposed to more anorexia content. It is pulling families apart. And in places like Ethiopia, it's literally fanning ethnic violence," Haugen told lawmakers. She added that reforms should make "the platforms themselves safer, less twitchy, less reactive, less viral." Haugen’s lawyers also filed eight complaints with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission alleging that Facebook violated U.S. securities laws by lying to investors. The documents were shared with state prosecutors, including California’s Attorney General. Facebook responded by saying that the documents that Haugen has were “stolen.” Federal whistleblower protections give her legal cover for providing private Facebook documents to the SEC and Congress. On November 12, 2021, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost filed a lawsuit against Meta Platforms (formerly known as Facebook) on behalf of investors, alleging repeated false representations by executives, including chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, CFO David Wehner, and global affairs and communications executive Nick Clegg, about the safety of the platform.

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October 4, 1582 – Teresa of Avila dies, mystic writer, Roman Catholic nun, and saint. Saint Teresa one of only four women recognized by the Roman Catholic Church as Doctors of the Church.

October 4, 1625 – Jacqueline Pascal born, French nun and composer; sister of the polymath Blaise Pascal. The youngest child of three, Jacqueline Pascal became the caregiver for her father during his last years. She struck an agreement with him: she would take care of him until his death and then enter a convent. At his death, however, her sickly brother Blaise insisted that Jacqueline remain home as his caregiver. In a letter to Blaise, Jacqueline refused to be trapped in the domestic role and insisted on the right to follow her own vocation. “It’s no longer reasonable to continue my deference to other’s feelings over my own. It’s their turn to do some violence to their own feelings in return for the violence I did to my own inclinations during four years. It is from you, in particular, that I expect this token of affection.”

October 4, 1835 – Jenny Twitchell Kempton born, American contralto opera soloist and supporter of women’s suffrage who gave numerous benefit concerts for the cause between 1890 and 1910.

October 4, 1836 – Juliette Lambert Adam born, French author and feminist, Les provinciaux à Paris, Laide, Grecque, and L'Angleterre en Egypte; member of the Avant-Courrière (Forerunner) association, which campaigned for women’s rights to control over the product of their labor and to be witnesses.

October 4, 1864 – Eliza Kellas born, American educator; principal (1911-1916) of the Emma Willard School, the first U.S. women’s higher education institution (founded in 1814 as the Troy Female Seminary); co-founder of Russell Sage College, originally part of the Emma Willard School. She secured a separate charter for Russell Sage in 1917, stressing science education for women.

October 4, 1876 – Florence Eliza Allen born, American mathematician and suffrage activist; second woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she became an instructor and assistant professor; Allen published papers on transcendental curves and the rational plane cubic.

October 4, 1888 – Lucy Tayiah Eads born, aka Cha-me, first woman tribal chief of the Kaw tribe (1922-1928) and nurse at the Haskell Indian College; mother of nine children.

October 4, 1896 – Dorothy Lawrence born, English reporter; disguised as a man, she posed as a soldier at the front during WWI for ten days before turning herself in and being interrogated as a suspected spy; after the war, her book, Dorothy Lawrence: The Only English Woman Soldier, was heavily censored by the British War Office.

October 4, 1906 – Sister Mary Celine Fasenmyer born, American mathematician and a sister of the Sisters of Mercy, a Catholic religious congregation, known for her work on recurrence relations in hypergeometric series, and linear algebra. The hypergeometric polynomials she studied are called Sister Celine's polynomials.

October 4, 1906 – Alice Stewart born, English epidemiologist, the first to demonstrate the connection between foetal X-rays and childhood leukemia. Her research in 1950s proved there was a greater danger from exposure to low-level radiation, but this was resisted by officials of the British and U.S. governments. After a visit to the U.S. in 1974, Stewart consulted on a major investigation of the health of workers in the nuclear industry there. She astounded the scientific world with a study showing that the U.S. nuclear weapons industry to be about twenty times more dangerous than safety regulations permit, placing her squarely at the center of the international controversy over radiation risk. Starting in WWII, she also investigated the health effects of exposure to TNT in munitions factories, of carbon tetrachloride, and a prevalence of tuberculosis among shoe industry workers. Her biography, The Woman Who Knew Too Much, written by Gayle Green, was published in 1999, then revised and reissued in 2017.

October 4, 1908 – Eleanor Flexner born, author, pioneer in the field of Women’s Studies and historian – Century of Struggle: The Women’s Rights Movement in the United States, and Mary Wollstonecraft: A Biography.

October 4, 1917 – Violeta Parra born, Chilean singer-songwriter, folklorist, ethnomusicologist, and visual artist.

October 4, 1920 – The Mannerheim League for Child Welfare is co-founded in Finland by General C.G.E. Mannerheim and his sister Sophie Mannerheim, a pioneer of modern nursing in Finland. She was the head nurse of Helsinki Surgical Hospital, president of the Finnish Nurses Association for 24 years, served as President of the International Council of Nurses, and co-founded with Dr. Arvo Yippö of Lastenlinna (Children’s Castle) Hospital, which was also a shelter for single mothers. The Mannerheim League worked to prevent infant mortality, assisted war orphans, trained housekeepers, and promoted healthy living. In the 1970s, the league developed welfare services for children’s healthcare, including a nursing service, and daycare facilities.

October 4, 1941 – Ann Rice born, American author; Interview with the Vampire is the first book in her series The Vampire Chronicles.

October 4, 1941 – Karen Cushman born, American author of historical fiction; her children’s books, The Midwife’s Apprentice won the 1996 Newbery Medal, and Catherine, Called Birdy was a 1995 Newbery Honor Book.

October 4, 194 2 – Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir born, Icelandic Social Democratic Alliance politician; Prime Minister of Iceland (2009-2013); Minister of Social Affairs and Social Security (2007-2009). During her tenure as PM, the country was in an economic crisis caused by the default of Iceland’s major privately owned commercial banks, the worst banking collapse in the nation’s history. Iceland’s gross domestic product fell by 10% between 2007 and 2010. But by 2011, a new era with a positive GDP emerged, the unemployment rate declined, and the government deficit went from 9.7% in 2009-2010 to .02% in 2014. The failed banks were restructured, divided into old and new state-owned banks, which were recapitalized by the Icelandic government. The Icelandic Constitution was put under review by a Constitutional Council, which included 25 non-political members of the public elected by the people. In 2010, Iceland became the first Western democratic country to ban strip clubs, paying for nudity in restaurants, and other means of employers profiting from employees' nudity. Sigurðardóttir said, "The Nordic countries are leading the way on women's equality, recognizing women as equal citizens rather than commodities for sale."

October 4, 195 2 – Zinha Vaz born as Francisca Maria Monteira e Silva Vaz Turpin; women’s rights activist in Guinea-Bissau, a founding member of the Resistance of Guinea-Bissau-Bafatá Movement and a Plataforma Unida and Guinean Patriotic Union politician; served as her country’s Ambassador to Gambia (2012); National People’s Assembly member (1994-1999 and 2000-2003); Mayor of Bissau (1999); founder and president of the Women's Association of Economic Activity of Guinea-Bissau (1992-2002). After Guinea-Bissau became independent from Portugal in 1974, she was an outspoken critic of the one-party system which was put in place. She was arrested and imprisoned (1977-1980).

October 4, 1956 – Lesley Glaister born, British novelist, poet, and playwright; her novel Honour Thy Father won a 1991 Somerset Maughan Award.

October 4, 1976 – Barbara Walters debuts as the first woman evening news co-anchor (ABC News).

Barbara Walters with Harry Reasoner - ABC Evening News

October 4, 1980 – Sarah Fisher born, American race car driver; competed in IRL IndyCar Series (1999-2010), and several times in the Indy 500; also raced in the NASCAR West Series (2004-2005). Placed second in the 2001 Infiniti Grand Prix of Miami.

October 4, 1993 – Ruth Bader Ginsburg becomes the 2nd woman U.S. Supreme Court Justice.

October 4, 2010 – The U.S. Supreme Court begins a new era, with three women serving on the court for the first time, as Elena Kagan takes her place on the bench.

October 4, 2016 – The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that a state bill imposing new requirements on abortion providers is unconstitutional. The legislation, Senate Bill 642, was passed in 2015 but had not taken effect due to the court challenge. The bill would make it a felony to help a minor get an abortion without parental consent. It also authorized the state Bureau of Investigation to create new protocols for statutory rape cases, and would require abortion providers to preserve fetal tissue from abortions on girls under age 14. The Oklahoma Supreme Court said the bill violated the state constitution and placed "undue burdens on access to abortion under the guise of protecting the health of women."

October 4, 2019 – Diahann Carroll died of cancer at age 84. The actress and singer broke racial barriers and became a household name when she starred in Julia (1968-1971), as a single mother working as a nurse, the first TV show with a lead character who was a black professional woman. Before starring on television, Carroll often appeared in iconic stage roles traditionally portrayed by white actresses, and won a Tony Award for her performance in the hit 1962 Broadway musical No Strings, which Richard Rogers composed specifically for her. She was the co-organizer with James Garner of Hollywood’s large-scale turnout for the 1963 March on Washington, in spite of attempts by J. Edgar Hoover to intimidate Hollywood’s elite with phone calls claiming the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement were all Communists.

October 4, 2020 – Svetlana Tikhanovskaya , an opposition leader to the regime of Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus, spoke about her upcoming meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to “discuss ways to put pressure on Belarus, because Belarusians think that only with pressure can we force the authorities into dialogue with the people.” Tikhanovskaya was interviewed on Skype in her office in Vilnius. She has been based in the Lithuanian capital since she was forced to flee Belarus after being threatened by officials the night after the disputed August 9 election. Lukashenko, backed by Russian president Vladimir Putin, has flatly refused to negotiate with the opposition, in spite of massive protests – on this day, 100,000 people marched in Minsk, the nation’s capital, calling for Lukashenko’s resignation, and the release of all political prisoners. After her meeting with Angela Merkel, she told reporters, "I am very grateful to Germany and all the German parties who are so supportive of the Belarusian people in their fight for freedom, in their fight for new honest and transparent elections.” Representatives from Merkel's conservative bloc presented T ikhanovskaya with an original piece of the Berlin Wall, described as a "symbol of freedom."

October 4, 2021 – Dr. Paula Braveman, director of the Center on Social Disparities in Health at the University of California-San Francisco, says her latest research revealed an “astounding” level of evidence that racism is a decisive “upstream” cause of higher rates of preterm birth among Black women. Braveman studied the link between neighborhood wealth and children’s health, and how access to insurance influences prenatal care. A longtime advocate of translating research into policy, she has collaborated on major health initiatives with the health department in San Francisco, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization. Black women are about 1.6 times as likely as whites to give birth more than three weeks before the due date. That statistic bears alarming and costly health consequences, as infants born prematurely are at higher risk for breathing, heart and brain abnormalities, among other complications. Braveman co-authored the review with a group of experts convened by the March of Dimes that included geneticists, clinicians, epidemiologists, biomedical experts, and neurologists. They examined more than two dozen suspected causes of preterm births — including quality of prenatal care, environmental toxics, chronic stress, poverty, and obesity — and determined that racism, directly or indirectly, best explained the racial disparities in preterm birth rates.

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October 5, 1274 – Al-Dhahabi born, Syrian Shafi'i scholar and historian; one of his teachers was Zainab Bint ‘Umar Bin Kindi of Damascus, a woman scholar who taught him the beginnings of the Sahih Al-Bukhari, a major Sunni text, and the book of Al-Nikaah. Al-Dhahabi writes about her that she was "a righteous woman, generous, who possessed piety and (gave) charity. She built a hospice for the poor and she bequeathed religious endowments." Dhahabi also said she was "without parallel in the time (that she lived in)."

Damascus

October 5, 1524 – Rani Durgavati Maravi born, regent of Gondwana (1550-1564), a kingdom which straddled what are now the Indian states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, and Orissa in east central India. Her marriage to Dalpat Shah created an alliance between the Chadel and Rajgond dynasties. Her son, Vir Narayan, was only five years old when Dalpat Shah died in 1550, and Rani Durgavati became regent. The prosperity of the kingdom under her rule attracted the attention of Khwaja Abdul Majid Asaf Khan, a general of the Mughal Empire. In 1564, she rode an elephant to lead her much smaller army against an invasion by the Mughal general, who had a far greater number of experienced troops, armed with more modern weapons. She was wounded twice by arrows, but refused to leave the battlefield. On June 24, 1564, when she saw that defeat was inevitable, she took out her dagger and killed herself rather than be captured. The government of India issued a postage stamp commemorating her death, on June 24, 1988.

October 5, 1789 – Women’s March on Versailles : Parisiennes, mostly market women, protesting the scarcity and high cost of flour, marched to Versailles demanding bread from Louis XVI, insisting he and his court move back to Paris, and protested his refusal to issue decrees to abolish feudalism. Louis returns to Paris the next day.

October 5, 1817 – Catherine Cooper Hopley born, British author, artist, governess, and naturalist; wrote books on the American Civil War, and nature books for a general audience. She traveled in the U.S. (1855-1862) in Ohio, Indiana, and Virginia, where she spent two years, and was suspected of being a spy for the North because of her correspondence with the London press, and her frequent sketches of all she observed. Unable to cross the Union blockade, she was forced to travel further South, and became a tutor to the children of Florida governor John Milton. She left Florida in 1863, and returned to England, where she published her two-volume Life in the South, and a biography of Stonewall Jackson, whom she met during her time in Virginia. Her third book, Rambles and Adventures in the Wilds of the West, published in 1872, contained her observations on American birds, plants, and insects. She became increasingly interested in reptiles and amphibians, and worked in the Gardens of the London Zoological Society. Her 1882 book, Snakes: Curiosities and Wonders of Serpent Life, was the first popular book on snakes in English. Her detailed observations on the feeding habits of snakes included a description of the mechanism by which Xenodon snakes erect their teeth in a viper-like fashion, an observation that predates those by E. G. Boulenger (generally credited with the description) by over 30 years.

October 5, 1850 – Fanny Jane Butler born, pioneering English medical missionary to India, founded medical facilities in Srinagar and Bhagalpur.

October 5, 1858 – Helen Churchill Candee born, American author, journalist, interior decorator, and feminist; survivor of the sinking of the Titanic; her book How Women May Earn a Living (1900) was a best-seller, and Decorative Styles and Periods established her design credentials; board member of the National Woman Suffrage Association.

October 5, 1883 – Ida Rubinstein born into a wealthy Jewish family; Russian dancer, art patron, and Belle Époque figure. She went to Paris under the guise of continuing her education, but secretly intent on a stage career. Her first appearances in Paris were as an actress in small roles in “indecent” garb. When word got back to her Orthodox family in St. Petersburg, they were horrified. Her brother-in-law, a Parisian doctor, had her declared legally insane, and committed to an asylum, but her family demanded she be released and sent home, where she was chaperoned at all times by a governess. To gain her freedom and control of her fortune, she married her first cousin Vladimir Gorvits, who was madly in love with her and allowed her to travel and perform. She was tutored by Mikhail Fokine in ballet, and made her debut in 1908 in a private performance of Oscar Wilde's Salomé, in which she stripped nude in the course of the Dance of the Seven Veils. Sergei Diaghilev took her with the Ballet Russes back to Paris, where she danced the title role of Cléopâtre in the Paris season of 1909, and Zobéide in Scheherazade, partnered with Nijinsky, in 1910. She left the Ballet Russes in 1911 to form her own company, and used her wealth to commission lavish productions, including Le Martyre de Saint Sebastien. The creative team was Fokine (choreography); Bakst (design); Gabriele d'Annunzio (text); and score by Debussy. This was both a triumph for its stylized modernism and a scandal; the Archbishop of Paris prohibited Catholics from attending because St. Sebastian was being played by a woman and a Jew. After WWI, she appeared in plays, and in Istar at the Paris Opera in 1924. She directed her own dance company beginning in 1928, and commissioned Boléro by Maurice Ravel the same year. She closed the company in 1935, but often staged free ballet events and danced in some of them until the start of WWII. She converted to Roman Catholicism in 1936. In 1940, she left France during the German invasion, and made her way to England. There she helped wounded Free French soldiers until 1944. Walter Guinness (later Lord Moyne), her long-term lover and sponsor, remained supportive, providing a suite at the Ritz Hotel, until he was assassinated by Lehi (Zionist paramilitary fanatics) while serving as British Minister Resident in Palestine, in late 1944. She returned to France after the war, but died at Les Olivades in Venice at age 76 in 1960.

October 5, 1889 – Teresa de la Parra born, Venezuelan author; known for Iphigenia: Diary of a young lady who wrote because she was bored.

October 5, 1899 – Elda E. Anderson born, American physicist and health researcher; during WWII, worked on the Manhattan Project at Princeton University and the Los Alamos Laboratory, where she prepared the first sample of pure uranium-235. After the war, she was the first chief of education and training in the Health Physics Division of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and President of the Health Physics Society (1959-1960). She established the American Board of Health Physics, a professional certification agency, in 1960. She developed leukemia, then breast cancer, and died in 1961 at age 61.

October 5, 1900 – Bing Xin born as Xie Wanying, prolific Chinese poet, novelist, translator, and children’s author; elected as a member of the National Senate in 1940, Bing Xin literally translates as “ice heart,” meaning a morally pure heart; The Photograph is an English language translation of her novel, about an American music teacher at a missionary school who adopts an 8-year-old Chinese girl.

October 5, 1917 – Magda Szabó born , most translated Hungarian author and poet; censured by the Hungarian communist regime for not conforming to socialist realism; known for The Door, Für Elise , and An Old-Fashioned Story.

October 5, 1931 – Rosalie Cheeseman Gower born, Canadian nurse and political activist; a mother of four, married to an architect who flatly refused to help out at home, she still managed to work as a nurse and as a community activist. She was appointed as a commissioner of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC – 1980-1992), where she effectively advocated for public interest over industry profits, and improving media portrayals of women, while she maintained a working relationship with officials, advertisers, broadcasters, the public, and feminists demanding change. After she became chair of the commission, during public hearings held in a Vancouver theatre, a woman dressed in black leather wheeled her motorcycle up the aisle, pointed a finger at the stage and demanded to know why there were men on the panel. What could they possibly know about the stereotyping of women? “Well,” Gower said, “Professor Baker must know something about women. He had two grandmothers, a mother, two wives and four daughters.”

October 5, 1932 – Yvonne Brathwaite Burke born, African-American lawyer and Democratic politician; U.S. Representative from California (1973-1979); Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors member (1979-2008). She was one of the first black women to be admitted to the University of Southern California Law School, where she earned a J.D. degree in 1956. She was first elected to public office as the representative of the Los Angeles 63rd District in the California State Assembly (1966-1972).

October 5, 1936 – The Jarrow Crusade: Two hundred men, with Jarrow’s first woman Member of Parliament Ellen Wilkinson, marched from the town of Jarrow to London, carrying a petition for re-establishment of industry in their town, which had ended when Jarrow’s main employer, Palmer’s shipyard, closed in 1934, after building more than 1000 ships since 1851. While they were warmly welcomed by the London public, and Parliament received the petition, it was not debated, so the marchers believed they had failed. But the Jarrow March helped foster changes which did lead to major social reforms following WWII.

Jarrow Marchers in London’s Hyde Park — Ellen Wilkinson speaking

October 5, 1939 – Marie Claire Blais born, French Canadian novelist, poet, and playwright. She won the 1996 Governor General’s Literary Award. Blais died at age 92 in 2021.

October 5, 1939 – Consuelo Ynares-Santiago born, Filipina lawyer and judge; first woman who rose from the ranks to be appointed as a Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines (1999-2009); Court of Appeals (1990-1999); Regional Trial Court Judge (1986-1990); Municipal Judge (1973-1986).

October 5, 1944 – French women win the right to vote from the Provisional Government of the French Republic. They went to the polls for the first time in the local elections of April 1945.

October 5, 1946 – Pacita Abad born, Filipina visual artist; in 1972, she earned a master’s in Asian history at Lone Mountain College (now part of the University of San Francisco), then studied painting in Washington DC and New York City. She lived on six continents and worked in more than 50 countries, and created over 4,500 artworks. Known for her colorful abstract large-scale paintings. Her last major work was painting 2,350 multicolored circles on the 180 foot long (55-meters) Alkaff Bridge in Singapore, completed just a months before she died of lung cancer in December, 2004, at age 58.

October 5, 1946 – Zahida Hina born in India, Pakistani Urdu-language columnist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, playwright, and journalist for Jang (1988-2005) and the Daily express, Pakistan. Her weekly column appears in Rasrang, the Sunday magazine of Dainik Bhaskar, India’s largest Hindi newspaper. She is a critic of nuclear energy for any purpose. Her many awards include Saghir Siddiqui Adabi Award, Sindh Speaker Award, and the 2001 SAARC Literary Award given by the President of India.

October 5, 1946 – Michèle Pierre-Louis born, Haitian independent politician; second woman Prime Minister of Haiti (2008-2009), the first was Claudette Werleigh (1995-1996); Pierre-Louis became Executive Director of the Knowledge and Freedom Foundation in 1995.

October 5, 1950 – Joan Wesley Tysinger born, American artist and teacher. She contracted polio when she was just a few months old, which paralyzed both arms and one leg, left her with spinal scoliosis, and stunted her growth. Doctors predicted she would never walk and would not live past her mid-20s. But she learned to walk, if somewhat precariously, with a leg brace and special shoes. In 1976, Tysinger underwent spinal fusion surgery. That, plus months of halo traction therapy, relieved pressure on her lungs and straightened her back, adding 4 inches to her height, bringing her to 5 feet tall. She won respect and admiration as an artist and teacher at Georgia State University and the Atlanta College of Art. Joan Wesley Tysinger lived to age 63 before dying of pneumonia in November 2013.

October 5, 1959 – Maya Lin born, artist and architect of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C. (1980-1982) and other public sculptures; author of Boundaries.

October 5, 1964 – Korina Sánchez born, Filipina television journalist, news anchor, and newspaper columnist for The Philippine Star.

October 5, 1971 – Tonia Antoniazzi born, British Labour politician; Member of Parliament for Gower since 2017; she was one of Labour MPs who resigned as Labour front benchers to protest the party’s Brexit position: abstention in a vote on whether Britain would remain in the single market by joining the European Economic Area (EEA). The six renegade MPs voted in favour of the EEA.

October 5, 1972 – Annely Akkermann born, Estonian politician; Member of the Estonian parliament, Riigikogu, since 2011, and chair of the women’s association of IRL-Naiskogu (IREN).

October 5, 2002 – The first International Day of No Prostitution , started by the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women.

October 5, 2010 – Irish peace activist Mairead Maguire lost her appeal against being deported from Israel. She was denied entry into the country, and then held in a Tel Aviv airport detention facility since her arrival six days earlier for a Nobel women’s peace visit. The Israeli government instituted a 10-year ban against her for her participation in a Gaza-bound flotilla in 2009, attempting to bring humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Maguire co-founded Women for Peace with Betty Williams, now called the Community for Peace People. Maguire and Williams were jointly awarded the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to bring about a peaceful solution to ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland.

October 5, 2019 – Melinda Gates announced she had committed $1 billion over the next 10 years to promoting gender equality. She noted that in 2018, there were more men named James running Fortune 500 companies than there were women, and in 2019, only one CEO on the Fortune 500 list was a woman of color. Though American women are 51% of the population, only 24% of the seats in the U.S. Congress are held by women. Her company, Pivotal Ventures, is putting resources behind partners taking innovative and diverse approaches to dismantling barriers to women’s professional advancement; fast-tracking women in technology, media, and public office; and mobilizing shareholders, consumers, and employees to amplify external pressure on companies and organizations in need of reform. She also issued a challenge to others to join in funding this project.

October 5, 2020 – The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights was joined by 149 other rights and public interest groups in urging the U.S. Senate to reject the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Their letter reflected a broad range of problematic issues in Judge Barrett’s record – from health care and reproductive rights to criminal justice and LGBTQ rights – underscoring the rights at risk with this Supreme Court vacancy. The letter also highlighted the irresponsible and shameful process by which Senate Majority Leader McConnell rushed this nomination through. The letter declared that Barrett “is incapable of rendering equal justice under law,” and if confirmed, she “would grant President Trump nearly unchecked power to continue the devastating assault on civil and human rights in America, and it would cement an ultraconservative supermajority that could jeopardize critical rights and freedoms for generations – the very rights and freedoms that Justice Ginsburg helped secure during her nearly three decades of service on the Court … [this] will go down as one of the most infamous power grabs and acts of political hypocrisy in American history.” Immediately after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg was announced, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer tweeted: "The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president," echoing verbatim Mitch McConnell’s statement in 2016 regarding the vacancy left by Antonin Scalia's death. On October 25, 2020, cloture was invoked by a partisan vote of 51-48. Only Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins voted with the Democrats against the cloture motion, which limited subsequent debate on the nomination to 30 hours of floor debate, that continued overnight. On October 26, the Senate voted 52-48 in favor of confirming Amy Coney Barrett as an Associate Justice to the Supreme Court. Senator Collins was the only Republican to vote against the nominee, and no Democrats voted to confirm her.

October 5, 2021 – Janet Alkire elected as the leader the Standing Rock Sioux, the first woman leader in over 50 years. She pushed for action from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on the Dakota Access Pipeline, and there was a meeting March 2, 2022, regarding a genuinely comprehensive Environmental Impact Statement. “The fight is not over, the fight for our water, for the unborn and for Mother Earth,” said Chair Janet Alkire of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

October 5, 2021 – Nadia Wassef’s memoir, Shelf Life: Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller, is published. Wassef is co-owner with her sister Hind of Diwan, Egypt’s first modern bookstore, which opened on International Women’s Day in 2002. It has grown into Egypt’s fiercely independent leading chain of bookstores, with 10 branches, and a publishing house. She also co-edited with her sister a photographic collection of Egyptian women entitled, Daughters of the Nile: Photographs of Egyptian Women’s Movements, 1900-1960. Before Diwan, Wassef worked in research and advocacy for the Female Genital Mutilation Taskforce and in the Women and Memory Forum. She currently lives in London.

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October 6, 1565 – Marie de Gournay born, French protofeminist writer; noted for The Equality of Men and Women (1622) and The Ladies’ Grievance ( Les femmes et Grief des dames , 1626). She was an advocate for women’s education.

October 6, 1591 – Settimia Caccini born, Italian singer and composer, one of the first women to have a successful music career, but her compositions were not published during her lifetime, so most of her work has been lost.

October 6 , 1729 – Sarah Crosby born, considered the first female Methodist preacher. She and Mary Bosanquet were the most popular women preachers of Methodism of their day, and worked together, co-founding an orphanage, first in Leytonstone, and then moving to Yorkshire. Crosby continued traveling and preaching, writing she had traveled 960 miles in the year 1777 alone, until rheumatism curtailed her travels, but she was still teaching and preaching at local meetings the week before her death in 1804.

October 6, 1820 – Jenny Lind born, Swedish opera star, known as the “Swedish Nightingale.” She became Royal Swedish Academy of Music member in 1840. In 1850, she gave 93 large-scale concerts in the U.S., earning over $350,000 USD, which she donated to charities, mainly for the endowment of free schools in Sweden. After retirement from the stage, she became a professor of singing at the newly founded Royal College of Music in London (1882-1887). She died in 1887, bequeathing a considerable part of her fortune to help poor students in Sweden receive an education.

Jenny Lind (1862) — by Eduard Magnus

October 6, 1895 – Caroline Gordon born, American novelist, short story writer, and literary critic; associated with the 1930s Southern Agrarian writers. Awarded the O. Henry Award second-place prize for her 1934 short story “Old Red,” which placed higher than short stories by William Saroyan, Pearl S. Buck, Erskine Caldwell, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, and Thomas Wolfe. Also noted as the mentor of novelists Walker Percy and Brainard Cheney.

October 6, 1897 – Florence B. Seibert born, American biochemist who discovered the fever in many patients after being given intravenous injections was caused by contamination during the distillation of water being used in the injections, and developed a device to prevent contamination. Best known for identifying the active agent in the antigen tuberculin as a protein, and isolating a purified form which became the basis of development and use of the first reliable test for TB, and which was adopted by the World Health Organization, and quickly became the international standard tuberculin test still in use today. For this breakthrough, she received the Trudeau Medal from the National Tuberculosis Association in 1938, the American Chemical Society’s Francis P. Garvan Medal in 1942, and the first Achievement Award given by the American Association of University Women in 1943. She was at the Henry Phipps Institute at the University of Pennsylvania (1932-1959), and was finally made a full professor of biochemistry in 1955, just four years before her retirement. Her later research was on bacteria associated with some types of cancers. Seibert was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1990.

October 6, 1900 – Vivion Lenon Brewer born, American activist for desegregation. A graduate in 1917 of the high school which later was called Little Rock Central High School, in Little Rock, Arkansas, she earned degrees in sociology and the law. In 1957, Governor Orval Faubus called out the Arkansas National Guard to prevent nine black students from entering Central High School, and a majority of citizens of Little Rock voted to close the city’s public high schools rather than integrate them. In 1958, Brewer and Adolphine Fletcher Terry were founding members of the Women’s Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools (WEC). Brewer was the chair and spokesperson for the WEC, making her the target of threats and offensive phone calls and mail. The schools were re-opened in 1959, and she resigned as chair of the WEC in 1960. She wrote about the WEC in The Embattled Ladies of Little Rock: 1958-1963, The Struggle to Save Public Education at Central High.

October 6, 1901 – Eveline Du Bois-Reymond Marcus born, German-Brazilian zoologist, artist, and academic; she and her husband, Ernst Marcus, collaborated in studies of several invertebrate groups (1924-1936), but after he was dismissed from his professorship at Berlin University due to the rise of Nazism, they moved to São Paulo, Brazil, where he taught at the University of São Paulo. They then mainly studied freshwater and land invertebrates. After her husband's death in 1968, she continued their studies, publishing about 30 papers, mostly on opistobranch molluscs. In 1973, she was elected an Honorary Member of the Brazilian Malacological Society and in 1979 of the Malacological Society of London. Awarded the title of Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of São Paulo in 1976.

October 6, 1905 – Helen Wills Moody born, American tennis player, author, and artist, who dominated women’s tennis in the 1920s and 1930s with 8 Wimbledon titles and 7 U.S. singles titles. The first American woman athlete to become an international celebrity, she introduced the knee-length pleated skirt and the visor to tennis fashion. She wrote Tennis, a coaching manual, as well as articles for The Saturday Evening Post, a mystery called Death Serves an Ace with co-author Robert Murphy, and her autobiography, Fifteen-Thirty: The Story of a Tennis Player . Wills also painted, showing exhibitions of her paintings and etchings in New York galleries. She drew all of the illustrations in her book Tennis. In 1929, the first exhibition of her drawings opened at the Cooling Gallery in London. Her work was part of a painting event at the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

October 6, 1910 – Barbara Castle born, UK Labour politician, Member of Parliament (1945-1979); one of the longest-serving women MPs in the House of Commons, and to date the only woman who has served as First Secretary of State (1968-1970). In 1990, she was created a life peer as Baroness Castle of Blackburn. She died at age 91 in 2002.

October 6, 1914 – Joan Littlewood born, English theatre director, known for work on developing the Theatre Workshop group, called "Mother of Modern Theatre" — remembered for her 1963 production of "Oh, What a Lovely War!"

October 6, 1914 – Mary Louise Smith born, U.S. Republican Party committeewoman, elementary school teacher, and second woman to chair a major political party (1974-1977). Smith organized the 1976 Republican National Convention in Kansas City. She supported the Equal Rights Amendment and was pro-choice.

October 6, 1915 – Carolyn D. Goodman born, American clinical psychologist, opponent to McCarthyism in the 1950s, and prominent civil rights advocate after her son Andrew and two other civil rights workers were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in Neshoba County, Mississippi, in 1964; co-author with Brad Herzog of My Mantelpiece: A Memoir of Survival and Social Justice. Goodman, at age 90, testified at the murder trial of Edgar Ray Killen, a former Klan leader finally indicted in the case. On June 21, 2005, the 41st anniversary of the killings, a jury acquitted Killen of murder, but found him guilty of manslaughter in the deaths of Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner.

October 6, 1915 – Alice Timander born, Swedish dentist; the youngest woman dentist in Sweden in 1937 at age 21. After she married actor Bengt Logardt, she sometimes appeared as an extra in plays and movies. In 1949, the Swedish Dental Association considered expelling her because she appeared publicly in a bikini. With her second husband, dentist Torsten Timander, she set up volunteer dental practices in Morocco and Egypt. She became a ‘red carpet’ celebrity, appearing at major theatrical premieres. Timander was an advocate for free dental care for homeless and elderly people. She was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2006, and died in 2007 at age 91.

October 6, 1917 – Fannie Lou Hamer born, civil rights leader, voting rights crusader, women’s rights activist, community organizer, and singer; co-founder of the Freedom Democratic Party. A key organizer of the Mississippi Freedom Summer (1964), and on the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Also a co-founder of the National Women’s Political Caucus to recruit, support, and 

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