Category: sexism
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The first in her village to vote
In this country, Susan B. Anthony was arrested in 1872 for trying to vote. Many decades later, in November of this year, Fouzia Talib, 29, was the first and only woman in her farming village in Pakistan to vote since her country was created in 1947. “My brothers and sisters are receiving calls from members…
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Why Susan Anthony was fired
During an economic depression in the late 1830s, Susan B. Anthony, who campaigned for women’s right to vote and was arrested in 1872 for trying to vote, quit school and found a job as a teacher. She was 19 when she was fired from her teaching job, says Mary Kay Carson in her book Why…
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Remember Susan B. Anthony
As you listen to the never-ending coverage of the presidential candidates, remember Susan B. Anthony. Anthony, who campaigned for women’s rights, was arrested for trying to vote during the 1872 presidential election. When she appeared in court, the judge wouldn’t let her testify. “He said women were incompetent, and not smart or trustworthy enough,” says…
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Anne Whitney and Lady Godiva
I was intrigued when I saw a statue of Lady Godiva recently at the Dallas Museum of Art and noticed that the sculptor was Anne Whitney, who was born in 1821 and died in 1915. The museum’s information explained that Lady Godiva rode naked through the streets in midday in an effort to get her…
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No choice in the affair
What’s to happen now to Miss Morton since Edward is engaged to someone else? “We think now,” said Mr. Dashwood, after a short pause, “of Robert’s marrying Miss Morton.” If you’ve read Jane Austin’s Sense and Sensibility, published in 1811, you know that Robert is Edward’s brother. “The lady, I supposed, has no choice in…
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A brain and a uterus
If you sometimes wonder how much progress women have made, read an interesting book called Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross. Pope Joan, a ninth-century woman who disguised herself as a man and eventually became the only female to serve as pope, lived during what definitely was the Dark Ages for women. For example, when…
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My trip to Middlemarch
I have been traveling to Middlemarch with George Eliot. It has been a long trip since Eliot’s book Middlemarch is 781 pages long. However, even though I am enjoying a visit to a provincial English town, I’m happy that my stay is temporary. The life of women in England in 1832 was restricted. As Eliot…
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The Western woman’s harem
Fratema Mernissi, a professor of sociology at the University of Mohammed V in Rabat, Morocco, remembers trips to visit her grandmother, “who was illiterate and lived in a harem with locked gates that women were not supposed to open.” In her book Scheherazade Goes West—Different Cultures, Different Harems, Mernissi describes visiting an American department store,…
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The opportunity to get over it
Major General Jessica Wright, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, remembers when she was a brand-new lieutenant, and a superior told her that he didn’t like females in the military. “There were 500 things going through my head,” the major told Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, who write about the incident in their book…
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The soft war on women
Gender discrimination, conclude Rosalind Barnett and Caryl Rivers, has gone underground, where it is more subtle, harder to spot and often more dangerous than the old in-your-face bias. Today, women are judged on what they have actually accomplished. But promising men, research shows, are judged on their potential. In business, the male member of a…