March 16, 2020

In honor of Women’s History Month in the United States, World Book travels to New York City’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and its special exhibition on the American photographer Dorothea Lange, “Words & Pictures.” Lange was best known for her pictures of migratory farmworkers of the 1930′s. “Words and Pictures” features iconic Lange works from the MoMA collection as well as some lesser known photographs of street scenes and from her series on criminal justice reform. The exhibition began February 9 and runs through May 9.

Dorothea Lange poses with her camera along a highway in California. credit: Library of Congress

Lange’s photographs were known for honestly and sympathetically portraying families who were victims of drought and the Great Depression, a global economic slump of the 1930′s. Her pictures, which appeared in several newspapers and magazines, helped create support for government relief programs for migrant workers. Many of Lange’s photographs were published in her book An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion (1939).

Migrant Mother, a photograph taken by Dorothea Lange in 1936, captures the despair of a migrant family during the Great Depression in the United States. credit: Library of Congress

Lange was born on May 25 or 26, 1895, in Hoboken, New Jersey. She studied photography at Columbia University. In 1919, she opened a portrait studio in San Francisco. During World War II (1939-1945), Lange photographed Japanese-Americans whom the government moved to relocation camps from their homes on the West Coast. After the war, she photographed Mormon towns, life in California, and other subjects. She also took photographs in Asia, Egypt, Ireland, and South America. Lange died on Oct. 11, 1965.

March 13, 2019

March is Women’s History Month in the United States. In honor of the celebration, World Book looks at U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In 2018, AOC—she is often referred to by her initials—became the youngest woman ever elected to the U.S. Congress. She turned 29 less than one month before her election victory in November 2018. Ocasio-Cortez is a Democrat from the Bronx borough of New York City.

In 2018, U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. She is 29 years old. Credit: U.S. House of Representatives

Ocasio-Cortez was born on Oct. 13, 1989, in the Bronx. Her father was from the Bronx, and her mother came from Puerto Rico. The family later moved to Westchester County, New York. Ocasio-Cortez graduated from high school in 2007. She received a bachelor’s degree in international relations and economics at Boston University in 2011. While a college student, she worked as an intern for Senator Edward Kennedy, focusing on immigration issues. After college, AOC returned to the Bronx, where she worked for a nonprofit organization promoting education and literacy. She also started a company that published children’s books emphasizing positive aspects of the Bronx, much of which has historically been troubled by crime and poverty. For several years, Ocasio-Cortez also worked as a waitress and bartender.

Ocasio-Cortez later became an organizer for the 2016 presidential campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. In 2017, AOC announced that she would challenge incumbent Democratic U.S. Representative Joe Crowley for the party’s 2018 nomination for New York’s 14th Congressional District. The district includes parts of Bronx and Queens counties in New York City. During the campaign, Ocasio-Cortez described herself as a democratic socialist. In democratic socialism, a democratically elected government enacts policies that encourage private companies to act in the public interest. Millions of users of the social media site Twitter followed AOC because of her lively, confident personality and her criticisms of both President Donald J. Trump and her own Democratic Party.

Ocasio-Cortez defeated Crowley in the Democratic primary held in June 2018. As a candidate for Congress, she advocated for universal health care, tuition-free public college, and increasing the income tax rate paid by Americans who earn more than $10 million per year. Since taking her seat in the House in January 2019, AOC has promoted a number of major reforms, including a platform known as the “Green New Deal,” which calls for a system in which all the nation’s electricity would be produced by renewable sources such as the sun and wind.

March 29, 2018

The subject of World Book’s final installment for Women’s History Month is Geraldine A. Ferraro, a politician who was the Democratic Party’s nominee for vice president of the United States in 1984. Ferraro was the first woman chosen as a vice presidential candidate by a major U.S. political party. Ferraro and her presidential running mate, former Vice President Walter F. Mondale, were defeated by their Republican opponents, President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H. W. Bush. Previously, Ferraro had served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale and his running mate, Geraldine Ferraro, wave as they leave a campaign rally in Portland, Oregon, in September 1984. Credit: © Jack Smith, AP Photo

Geraldine Anne Ferraro was born on Aug. 26, 1935, in Newburgh, New York. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Marymount Manhattan College in 1956 and a law degree from Fordham University in 1960. Also in 1960, she married John A. Zaccaro. She and her husband had three children. From 1961 to 1974, Ferraro occasionally handled legal matters for her husband’s real estate business. She started her career in government service in 1974, when she became an assistant district attorney in Queens County, New York.

In 1978, Ferraro was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. She represented a district in Queens, from which she won reelection in 1980 and 1982. Ferraro served on the House committees on post office and civil service, public works and transportation, and budget. In 1981, she became a member of the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, which controls committee assignments for Democrats in the House. In Congress, she was known for her liberal views on domestic issues. She regularly voted for bills designed to benefit workers, women, and elderly people, and she opposed efforts to ban abortion. In 1992 and 1998, she tried unsuccessfully to win the Democratic nomination for one of New York’s U.S. Senate seats. Ferraro died of cancer on March 26, 2011.

In 2008, Republican presidential nominee John McCain chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate. In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton became the first woman to win the presidential nomination of a major American political party.

March 14, 2018

World Book’s celebration of Women’s History Month continues with a look at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) in Washington, D.C. The museum, which opened in 1987, exhibits the work of women artists of all periods and nationalities. The NMWA collection of more than 4,500 works includes paintings by such celebrated artists as American Mary Cassatt and Mexico’s Frida Kahlo. The museum emphasizes, however, works by lesser-known women artists who have often gone overlooked by larger galleries. The NMWA occupies Washington’s old Masonic Temple, a building that dates from 1903 and appears on the National Register of Historic Places.

The National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., is dedicated to celebrating women’s achievements in the literary, performing, and visual arts. Credit: U.S. Department of State

The NMWA is the only major museum in the world “solely dedicated to championing women through the arts.” It was founded by art collectors Wilhelmina Cole Holladay and her husband, Wallace Holladay. Inspired initially by a work by Flemish painter Clara Peeters (see below), the couple sought to collect and promote the works of women artists neglected by art museums as well as art history. After many years, the Holladay Collection became the core of the NMWA, which was incorporated in 1981. After giving private tours in the Holladay home, the NMWA purchased the Masonic Temple in 1983. After significant renovations, the museum opened there in 1987. The museum’s first exhibition was “American Women Artists, 1830-1930.”

Still Life of Fish and Cat by Flemish artist Clara Peeters caught the eye of collectors Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay, and inspired them to create the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Credit: Still life with fish and cat (1620′s), oil on panel by Clara Peeters; National Museum of Women in the Arts

In addition to its permanent collections, the NMWA features temporary exhibitions each year. (Chinese-American artist Hung Liu is currently featured in “Hung Liu In Print,” an exhibition running through early July.) The museum also runs a public program highlighting the power of women in the arts as catalysts for artistic, political, and social change. The NMWA’s 17,500-volume Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center serves as a leading resource on women artists as well as on gender disparity in the arts. The NWMA also publishes art history books and Women in the Arts magazine.

March 1, 2018

World Book kicks off March’s Women’s History Month with a profile of Brenda Hale, a British judge who is the president of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. Hale has served on the Supreme Court since 2009. She became the first woman president of the court in October 2017.

Brenda Hale became president of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom in October 2017. Credit: Supreme Court of the United Kingdom

The Supreme Court is the final court of appeal for civil cases in the United Kingdom, and for criminal cases in England, Northern Ireland, and Wales. The court has a president, a deputy president, and 10 permanent judges. The British monarch appoints Supreme Court judges with the recommendation of the prime minister and the Judicial Appointments Commission.

Women’s History Month is celebrated each March. This year’s theme, selected by the National Women’s History Project, is “Nevertheless she persisted: honoring all women who fight forms of discrimination against women.” Credit: © National Women’s History Project

Hale was born on Jan. 31, 1945, in Richmond, North Yorkshire, in northern England. She graduated from the Richmond High School for Girls before studying law at Girton College, Cambridge. Hale joined the University of Manchester law faculty in 1966, and she was called to the bar (qualified as a lawyer) in 1969. Hale taught at Manchester until 1984, when she became the first woman appointed to the Law Commission, a body that reviews laws in England and Wales. In 1994, Hale became a judge of the family division of the High Court of Justice (the United Kingdom’s main civil court). In 1999, she was appointed to the Court of Appeal.

Hale was made a life peer as Baroness Hale of Richmond in 2004 as she became the first woman Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, commonly known as a law lord. At that time, the House of Lords functioned as the highest court of appeal in the United Kingdom, except for criminal cases in Scotland. In 2009, a new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom took over the judicial functions previously held by the House of Lords. The sitting law lords—including Judge Hale—then became the first justices of the Supreme Court. Hale served as deputy president of the Supreme Court from 2013 to 2017.

March 29, 2017

World Book continues its celebration of Women’s History Month with a look at Jeannette Rankin, who in 1916—almost four years before women had the right to vote nationally in the United States—became the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress. A Republican, Rankin served from 1917 to 1919 as congresswoman at large from Montana. “I may be the first woman member of Congress,” she observed upon her election in 1916. “But I won’t be the last.” Rankin was prescient: today, more than 100 women serve in the U.S. Congress. In 2016, a century after Rankin’s historic win, former U.S. Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also made history by becoming the first woman to be a major party’s nominee for president of the United States. This Sunday, April 2, will mark 100 years since Rankin took office in 1917.

Jeannette Rankin. Credit: Library of Congress

Rankin was born on June 11, 1880, near Missoula, Montana. She was the oldest daughter of eight children born to a rancher father and a schoolteacher mother. Rankin graduated from Montana State University (now the University of Montana) in 1902 with a B.S. degree in biology. She later attended the New York School of Philanthropy (later the Columbia University School of Social Work). She worked briefly as a social worker in Spokane, Washington, before entering the University of Washington in Seattle. While there, Rankin became involved in the woman suffrage (right to vote) movement. In 1910, women in Washington state gained the right to vote. Around this time, Rankin became a professional lobbyist for the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). In 1911, Rankin became the first woman to speak before the Montana legislature, in which she made her case for woman suffrage. Her speaking and organizing efforts helped Montana women win the right to vote in 1914. Along with Nevada, where women also won the vote that year, only 11 states had granted full voting rights to women by this time.

Rankin’s work as a social activist—as well as financial assistance from her brother Wellington, an influential member of the Montana Republican Party—helped her 1916 campaign for one of two at-large seats for the U.S. House of Representatives in her home state. Rankin ran as a progressive, emphasizing social welfare issues and pledging to work for a constitutional woman suffrage amendment. She came in second to Democratic Representative John M. Evans, winning Montana’s second House seat and becoming the first woman to serve in Congress.

Rankin began her service on April 2, 1917, when a special joint session of Congress was called after Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare on all Atlantic shipping. That evening, President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war against Germany, stating that “the world must be made safe for democracy.“ A committed pacifist, Rankin voted against U.S. participation in World War I (1914-1918). “I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war,” she told the House.

Later in 1917, Rankin advocated the creation of, and was appointed to, a Committee on Woman Suffrage. In early January 1918, Rankin opened the first House floor debate on a constitutional amendment on woman suffrage. “How shall we explain … the meaning of democracy if the same Congress that voted for war to make the world safe for democracy refuses to give this small measure of democracy to the women of our country?” The resolution narrowly passed in the House, but it died in the Senate. American women finally won the vote in August 1920 when the 19th Amendment became part of the U.S. Constitution.

In 1940, Rankin was elected to the House of Representatives for one term. She won fame in 1941 as the only member of Congress to vote against U.S. entry into World War II (1939-1945). “As a woman I can’t go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else,” she said. Rankin’s votes against the nation’s entry into each world war ultimately earned her widespread respect for upholding her pacifist principles.

As a private citizen, Rankin also opposed U.S. involvement in the Korean War (1950-1953) and the Vietnam War (1957-1975). In January 1968, inspired by the nonviolent protest tactics of the Indian leader Mohandas K. Gandhi, Rankin led the Jeannette Rankin Brigade, in which some 5,000 Vietnam War protesters marched on Wash­ington, D.C. The marchers presented a peace petition to House Speaker John McCormack of Massachusetts.

Rankin never married. She died on May 18, 1973, in Carmel, California. At the time of her death, at age 92, Rankin was considering another run for a House seat to protest the Vietnam War. A statue of Rankin represents Montana in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.

Websites:

• United States House of Representatives – History, Art & Archives/Jeannette Rankin’s Historic Election: A Century of Women in Congress
• United States House of Representatives – History, Art & Archives/Historical Highlights: Representative Jeannette Rankin of Montana

Other Behind the Headlines posts:  

• Women’s History Month: International Women’s Day (March 8, 2017)

March 14, 2017

World Book continues its celebration of Women’s History Month with a look at Australian feminist (promoter of women’s rights) and campaigner for woman suffrage (voting rights) Vida Goldstein (VY duh GOHLD styn). Goldstein was instrumental in helping to win the right to vote for Australian women in 1902—the second country to grant women full voting rights after New Zealand (1893). In 1903, Goldstein became the first woman to be nominated for election to the Australian Parliament.

Vida Goldstein was an Australian feminist and campaigner for woman suffrage.
Credit: National Library of Australia

Vida Jane Mary Goldstein was born on April 13, 1869, in Portland, Victoria. Her parents were campaigners for social reform. The family moved to Melbourne in 1877. In 1886, Goldstein graduated from Presbyterian Ladies’ College in Melbourne.

Goldstein began her suffrage work by collecting signatures with her mother for the Women’s Suffrage Petition. The petition, signed by 30,000 women, was presented to the Parliament of Victoria in 1891. In 1899, Goldstein became an organizer for the United Council for Women’s Suffrage. From 1900 to 1905, she produced and edited the monthly feminist journal The Australian Woman’s Sphere.

The Commonwealth Franchise Act of 1902 granted all non-Aboriginal Australian women the right to vote on a national level. In 1903, Goldstein founded the Women’s Federal Political Association (later the Women’s Political Association) to educate women in political matters. She became the group’s president. In 1903, with the group’s support, Goldstein became the first woman in the British Empire to run for election to a national parliament. Although her campaign for a seat in the Senate was unsuccessful, she received nearly 51,500 votes. Goldstein ran unsuccessfully for the Australian federal Parliament four more times: in 1910 and 1917 for the Senate, and in 1913 and 1914 for the House of Representatives.

In 1909, Goldstein launched the journal, The Woman Voter. In 1911, she visited England at the invitation of the Women’s Social and Political Union and spoke to huge crowds on the suffragist cause.

With the outbreak of World War I (1914-1918), Goldstein shifted her attention to the pacifist movement. A pacifist is a person who is opposed to war. She campaigned against the war and conscription (compulsory military service). Goldstein became chairperson of the Australian Peace Alliance. In 1915, she cofounded the Women’s Peace Army, which mobilized women against war. In 1919, Goldstein attended the Women’s Peace Conference in Zurich, Switzerland. Afterward, Goldstein took on a less prominent role and devoted much of her time to providing counseling services. She continued to write in favor of women’s rights and in opposition to war. She died on Aug. 15, 1949, in South Yarra, a suburb of Melbourne.

World Book articles:

• Australia, History of (The struggle for women’s rights)
• Australia, History of (Social reforms)
• Women’s movement

March 8, 2017

Today is International Women’s Day (IWD), and in honor of Women’s History Month, we look at this global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. In recent years, the day has also become a call to action for accelerating gender parity. IWD is celebrated around the world with arts performances, conferences, marches, rallies, talks, and networking events.

Women’s History Month is celebrated each March in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. This year’s theme in the United States, selected by the National Women’s History Project, is “Honoring Trailblazing Women in Labor and Business.” The 2017 poster for Women’s History Month depicts “Rosie the Riveter,” a symbol of the contributions of women to the Allied military manufacturing effort during World War II (1939-1945).
Credit: © National Women’s History Project

Begun in Europe in the early 1900’s, today IWD is celebrated in more than 100 countries, including Australia, Canada, India, Japan, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Africa, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It is also an official holiday in many countries, including Afghanistan, Armenia, China (for women only), Cuba, Russia, Uganda, Ukraine, Vietnam, and Zambia, as well as in the region of Palestine.

The first national Women’s Day observance was on Feb. 28, 1909, in New York City. It was organized by the Socialist Party of America in remembrance of the 1908 strike of the International Ladies Garment Worker’s Union, in which women protested against working conditions. The first IWD was on March 19, 1911, and was observed by over a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland. Women participated in hundreds of demonstrations and demanded that they be given the right to vote and to hold public office. They also protested against sex discrimination in employment. IWD was held on March 8 for the first time in Germany in 1914. The day was intended to promote suffrage (the right to vote) for German women. After that, many countries began observing IWD on March 8.

In 1975, as part of International Women’s Year, the United Nations (UN) began officially recognizing and sponsoring IWD on March 8 and it became a national holiday in even more nations. Each year, the UN designates an official campaign theme for IWD. The theme for IWD 2017 is “Women in the Changing World of Work: Planet 50-50 by 2030.” Also known by the Twitter hashtag #BeBoldForChange, the campaign encourages people to take bold action to help form a more gender-inclusive world. Participating countries may also choose their own themes.

A group celebrates International Women’s Day in 2009 at the statue of “La Pola” in the Candelaria district of Bogotá, Colombia. Policarpa Salavarrieta, known as “La Pola,” was a heroine of the Colombian Independence Movement of the early 1800′s. Credit: Alex Torrenegra (licensed under CC BY 2.0)

Recognition of IWD in March led to the entire month being declared Women’s History Month in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. It is a time to recognize women’s achievements and contributions to society. Women’s History Month traces its beginnings to an effort begun by a school district in Sonoma County, California, in 1978. Earlier in that decade, women historians in the United States had begun to increase their focus on the contributions of women throughout history. In 1978, the school district organized a Women’s History Week to promote the teaching of women’s history. School officials chose the week of March 8 to include IWD. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter proclaimed the first national Women’s History Week for March 2-8. Women’s History Week was so popular that in 1981, the U.S. Congress passed a joint resolution requesting the president to make the week a country-wide celebration beginning in 1982.

Over the next five years, Congress continued to pass joint resolutions designating a week in March as Women’s History Week. In the meantime, a number of states began their own efforts. By 1986, 14 states had declared March as Women’s History Month. Finally, in 1987, after receiving a petition from the National Women’s History Project, Congress passed a public law that designated the month of March 1987 as Women’s History Month. From 1988 to 1994, Congress passed additional resolutions authorizing the president to proclaim March of each year Women’s History Month. Since 1995, each U.S. president has issued annual proclamations to that effect.

Each year, Women’s History Month in the United States also celebrates a different theme. This year’s theme, selected by the National Women’s History Project, is “Honoring Trailblazing Women in Labor and Business.” The theme honors “women who have successfully challenged the role of women in both business and the paid labor force. Women have always worked, but often their work has been undervalued and unpaid.”

Women’s History Month has been celebrated in March in Australia since 2000, and in the United Kingdom since 2011.

In Canada, Women’s History Month has been celebrated in October since 1992. It coincides with a commemoration of the Persons Case. The case involved a legal decision on Oct. 18, 1929, that changed the political status of Canadian women. Some other countries celebrate a similar month dedicated to women’s achievements. For example, the Philippines celebrates Women’s Month in March. South Africa commemorates a women’s protest march that took place in August 1956 with Women’s Day on August 9 and Women’s Month in August each year.

Websites:

• https://www.internationalwomensday.com/Theme
• http://www.un.org/en/events/womensday/history.shtml
• http://www.un.org/en/events/womensday/index.shtml
• http://womenshistorymonth.gov
• http://www.nwhp.org/womens-history-month/womens-history-month-history/

World Book articles:

• Women’s movement

Other Behind the Headlines posts:  

• Millions Join Women’s March (Jan. 24, 2017)

March 8, 2016

Since 1913, today, March 8, has been International Women’s Day, a part of Women’s History Month. The day is a time to reflect on the progress of women’s rights and of the ending of discrimination against women, and the celebration of women’s achievements and acts of courage and determination. As part of International Women’s Day, today we look at the American “Hello Girls” of World War I.

Hello Girls of World War I
Credit: Library of Congress

In 1917, United States troops began shipping out to France in large numbers to fight in World War I. After years of warfare, the French telephone service—still a fairly new technology at that time—was struggling, and few operators spoke English. To improve communications, the U.S. Army Signal Corps created its own telephone system. In November 1917, the Army asked for American women who spoke French to serve in France as operators. At that time, nearly all telephone operators were women.

Thousands of American women responded to newspaper ads asking for operators to serve overseas. The Army chose 450 women for special training with rugged field telephones and switchboards and other military technology. The women also received basic military training. A first group of 33 women shipped to France in March 1918. Women began operating Army switchboards throughout the American lines, which included many dangerous spots in combat zones.

By war’s end in November 1918, 223 women had served overseas as “Hello Girls” (a dated colloquial term we would not use today). Many of these women then served with occupation forces in Germany or remained in France until the end of peace talks in June 1919. Thousands of other American women served the war effort in France as nurses, clerks, drivers, and many other important occupations.

After the Hello Girls returned to the United States, the women were considered civilians working for the Army and denied veteran’s status, including medals and benefits. For decades, legislation to right this wrong stalled in Congress. Finally, largely through the tireless efforts of one Hello Girl from Montana, Merle Egan Anderson, Congress awarded veteran’s status to the operators in 1978, 60 years after the end of World War I.

Other link

• Montana Women’s History Matters