Celebrating Women's History Month
By: Cassandra C. Rich, Esq.

Women’s History Month was created to celebrate the many and varied contributions of women – since women did not and do not appear in history books in the same way men do. In many history books there is a pervasive lack of women’s stories.  Feminists in the 1970s pushed for recognition and equal treatment.  I can proudly say that am a product of this movement: I played school sports in programs created under Title IX and had parents who fully supported all of my endeavors, academic, athletic or otherwise. 

In school I gravitated towards learning about women trailblazers, including a high school report about:

• Eleanor of Aquitaine – ruler of a wealthy duchy at the age of 15 in 1137 and later Queen of France and then Queen of England, ruling for years while her son Richard the Lionheart was off fighting in the crusades;
• Joan of Arc – leader of the French army at Orléan in 1429; and
• Elizabeth Blackwell – America’s first woman doctor.

There is an advertising campaign of #SeeHer | If you can see her, you can be her™ and the campaign is right: seeing role models is a powerful thing, letting young people know that any path in life that they dream can be open to them.

Even today, the bulletin board in my home office features:

• Ruth Bader Ginsburg – my favorite liberal justice who advocated for equal rights before the court she eventually joined;
• Michelle Obama – our former first lady, a role model on so many levels;
• Anne Frank – a young diarist who exposed the horrors of war;
• Frieda Kahlo – a Mexican artist famed for her portraits and self-portraits; and
• Maya Angelou – an amazing poet and civil rights activist.

I especially love stories of women in STEM (which is probably why I obtained my BS in chemistry before going to law school). I have another section devoted to women in science:

• Ada Lovelace – she was an expert on the Analytical Engine, a machine programmed using punch-cards, created by Charles Babbage.  While editing notes from one of his lectures, she expanded upon the notes and published the first computer program in 1843, an algorithm to calculate Bernoulli Numbers.  She imagined and described the first general-use computer more than 100 years before one was actually built.
• Alice Ball – at 23 this African-American chemist developed the first effective treatment for leprosy.  She died at 24 (in 1916) and her male advisor took credit for her work publishing it under his own name.  Her scientific contributions were discovered and credited to her in the 1970s.
• Rosalind Franklin – she was able to determine that DNA had a double helix structure using X-ray diffraction photography, including precise measurements of the helix and that the two sides of a DNA molecule run in opposite directions matching one another.  Without her knowledge, her colleague shared her research with James Watson and Francis Crick, which enabled them to build an accurate model for the structure of DNA.  Watson, Crick and Franklin’s colleague shared a Nobel Prize in 1962, four years after Franklin’s death.
• Grace Hopper – born in 1906, she earned degrees in mathematics and physics.  She was one of the first modern computer programmers.  She worked for the US Navy based at Harvard University and created “plain language programming” in an advance past binary code.
• Hedy Lamarr – a famous film actress and inventor who created frequency hopping technology during WWII – the basis for today’s cellular and Wi-Fi technology.

I also have local inspirations:

• Susan B. Anthony –a tireless champion of women’s suffrage from Rochester, internationally known for her civil rights work (abolition and temperance in addition to suffrage).
• Fannie Barrier Williams – hailing from Brockport (my hometown), she was a founder of the National League of Colored Women and a lifelong advocate for education, breaking color barriers and opening educational avenues for others, including the Provident Hospital and its training school for nurses.

During their lifetimes, and even now, very few of these women are given the credit they deserve for their accomplishments.  I am pleased to say that it is getting better, but we still have a long way to go. 

During each Women’s History Month, I urge you to learn more about a woman in history that you have never heard of before, maybe even one of the women I mentioned above. Here are a couple of websites to help you get started: 50 Women Heroes Who Changed the World and National Geographic’s Women Heroes. I’d love to hear from our members – who are the women that inspire you? Send me a note at crich@barclaydamon.com.