MORE ON WOMEN IN HISTORY MONTH

Written by: Daniel

Heidi provided everyone with a wonderful Blog on Women in History for the always exciting celebration Women in History Month. Is that real? Anyway, about a year after we moved to Vegas I was listening to NPR and the following trivia question was asked: “What is the only Western Industrial nation to never elect or appoint a female as the country’s top leader?” Yep, it’s us. Even India, Pakistan, Israel, a couple other Middle Eastern nations, and several in South America have respected and trusted a woman enough to lead their nation. I don’t know why but that concept really stuck and combined with graduate work in history and social work I have become a bigger Feminist than most of the women I know. This is not an endorsement of Hillary Clinton but I think it would be nice to have a female commander-in-chief because let’s be honest, all of our recent male presidents don’t have the best track record. Why not give a woman a chance? To prove my point I want to add to Heidi’s admirable list of Women in History that I feel have made a difference.

This is Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643) during her 1637 trial while living in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. She was tried as a heretic for doing something so outrageous, she openly read and discussed the Holy Bible and not only that but she was so out of control that she insisted all people, men and women, could receive “divine inspiration.” A couple years ago Heidi and I spent a day in Salem, Massachusetts where we saw the locations where women were executed and buried for being “heretics” about 50 years after Anne H.’s trial. She got lucky and was merely banished, but she left with these words for those that judged her: “You have no power over my body, neither can you do me any harm. I fear none but the great Jehovah, which hath foretold me of these things, and I do verily believe that he will deliver me out of your hands.” YEAH!! She fled with her family and followers where she co-founded the Rhode Island colony, making her the only woman in US History to establish a colony or state. Unfortunately, Anne and her entire family (except one daughter) were killed by Indians about a decade later. In 1987 Gov. Michael Dukakis pardoned Anne and repealed her 350-year-old banishment from Massachusetts.

Do you know who this is? She is the spouse of the greatest US president in American History. If you guessed this woman was Mary Todd Lincoln (1818-1882), you guessed right. Setting aside her notable spending sprees and her fondness to contact the dead by inviting mediums to the White House, this woman deserves our utmost respect. During the American Civil War she worked as a volunteer nurse in Union hospitals, offered advice on military personnel, toured Union Army camps and reviewed troops with her husband. There are endless stories where she sat next to injured Union soldiers and literally held their hands until they died. Let’s see a modern first lady do that! Furthermore, this poor woman put up with so much criticism as her loyalty was constantly called into question (she was from Kentucky and had a brother and two half-brothers fight in the war but not for the north). And come on, this is the same woman that chased her husband out the front door and down the street with a butcher’s knife in hand. That is about as close to my own wife as it can get and it shows she was no wimp. But most importantly she was faithfully sitting by her husband as a dark haired actor slipped into their private box and shot him in the head. She stayed close to her husband until he died the next morning.

Meet Larysa Petrivna Kosach-Kvitka, better known as Lesya Ukrainka (1871-1913). I first learned of this talented, brave, and rebellious Ukrainian woman while living in that far-off Slavic nation. She was one of those unique individuals born into a wealthy, educated family but spent her life tearing that unfair, dictatorial system down through peaceful opposition in the form of literature, poetry, and play-writing. She wrote her first poem when she was eight, published her first writing at thirteen, and released her first book in 1893. But wait there's more, she wrote it in Ukrainian, which was against the law at the time in the Russian Empire-occupied Ukraine. She had the books printed in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and smuggled them into the Russian Empire, an act she continued until it landed her in jail in 1907. Tsarist prison in the early twentieth century was not a happy place for anyone, especially a woman. Oh, by the way, she did all of this after contracting a chronic form of tuberculosis as a child that resulted in a life full of pain and sickness that eventually led to a rather agonizing death in 1913.

There is nothing more awesome than a woman with passion, fire, and the talents to change a nation. The founder of social work, my chosen field, is Jane Addams (1860-1935). Like Ukrainka she used her fortunate birth into a wealthy, educated family to change an unfair, racially/economically biased social system that so readily prevailed in the US. Her father encouraged her to pursue a higher education, but not at the expense of losing her femininity and the prospect of marriage and motherhood. What?! You mean to tell me this is possible?! She established the Hull-Houses, continuing education programs still used today, a girl’s club, a public kitchen, immigrant protection organizations, and the first juvenile court in America among many other noble, ground-breaking ventures. She was a passionate believer in peace and a brave, outspoken opponent of WWI, a position that resulted in her expulsion from the Daughters of the American Revolution. Addams was also the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. I’ll let her words say it all, “What after all has maintained the human race on this old globe despite all the calamities of nature and all the tragic failings of mankind, if not faith in new possibilities and courage to advocate them.”

Did you know this woman was named in 2007 by Forbes Magazine as the third most powerful woman in the world? Her name is Yulia Tymochenko and she was voted the first female Prime Minister of Ukraine in 2005. You see, Ukraine is a very corrupt nation and in the 2005 Presidential Election it was pretty obvious that the election had been rigged. Mrs. Tymoshenko led hundreds of thousands if not millions of Ukrainians to stand up to a system that had failed them once again into what became known as the Orange Revolution. They peacefully protested until an internationally monitored re-election named Victor Yushechenko president and Tymoshenko Prime Minister. Granted she has been accused and probably did sell millions of dollars in stolen oil and metals during the ‘90s but as my Mission President once said, “it is impossible to be honest all of the time in Ukraine.” Two things I really like about Prime Minister Tymoshenko, first her symbolic hairstyle and wardrobe, it is so Ukrainian, and second, she first graduated college in 1979 but continued in her studies until she was awarded a PhD in 1999, long after she had become extremely wealthy and such achievement was arguably pointless. This is an example of the life-long pursuit of education that I greatly admire and wish more people would follow.

Finally, Heidi forgot to post a picture of my mom (this is a really old one but it was handy). I’ve never met a man that was diagnosed with three types of terminal cancer and survive for almost two more years. Now that is one tough woman. Enough said.

My appreciation of women has changed greatly over the past few years; quite truthfully I think it altered as a result of leaving the unfortunately frequent sexist Utah culture (sorry...I couldn’t resist it). This is just a sample of the women from history that I greatly admire and I would encourage the one or two men that may have possibly read this far to think of a few of the women that have altered their thinking or changed their lives and remember to give these women the credit and honor they so greatly deserve; please comment, I’d love to hear who they are.