café historia

the first feminists – and catholics as well

Ever heard of the Beguines? Thought not. Well an article in the Herald Tribune draws attention to their long past and precarious present. As a Roman Catholic women's order that began in the 13th century and branched across northwest Europe the Beguine religious order represents, perhaps, the world's oldest women's movement.

The item shows how although they lived and prayed together within an enclave, partly as a form of mutual protection some historians believe they banded together after losing their men to the Crusades, Beguines worked outside monastic norms with the general population helping the needy. They could also leave the order and marry. As time went on this greater freedom bred distrust

After the 18th century the numbers of beguines rapidly declined. Belgium where most could be found, once had 94 beguinages, had only 20 in 1856; the members of the sisterhood fell by more than half between 1631 and 1828. Today, according to the Tourist Office of Flanders, Belgium, the order has only one surviving member, 88-year-old Sister Marcella who lives in a Belgian rest home.

The article concludes by saying the beguines should not be viewed though as an avant-garde wing of 20th-century feminism. They were a religious, not a secular movement. Nonetheless, for centuries they managed to live independently from overweening male control. It argues that their legacy is deserving of respect and can still be felt in the unusual communities they devised, even as they themselves have all but vanished.

Interested in reading more? Go to the article by clicking below on "post source".

Information about the beguinages of Belgium (and elsewhere) can be found on the Unesco Web site, whc.unesco.org/en/list/855 . Includes aerial views, maps, restoration status and bibliography.

The Belgium Tourist Office, www.visitbelgium.com/belfrybeg.htm , has a list of the beguinages in Belgian cities.

image origin                 post source:  Herald Tribune 

linked casahistoria site: Women's History

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female (gender equality) = better (maths girl performance) + continued superiority (in other study areas)

It has been clear, certainly in the Uk at least that over the last 20 years, girls have performed increasingly better than boys at public high school public examination level. Usually this is seen most in subject areas such as the humanities and language that many consider to be traditional "girl" biased areas of study rather than in more abstract areas such as mathematics. The sources of these differences are a matter of controversy.Luigi Guiso of the European University Institute in Florence and his colleagues have just published the results of a study which suggests that culture explains most of the difference in maths, at least.

Interested in reading more? Go to the article by clicking below on "post source".

In other words, girls may acquire an absolute intellectual advantage over boys as a result of equal treatment, regardless of subject area (and they can always use a satnav to get over the geometry issues...). So what about research now on comparative performance/attitudes to ambition, compassion and leadership?

image origin                 post source: The Economist

linked young casahistoria site: Women's History 

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back to the kitchen!!

Just as I have updated the most popular women's history site: Women's Suffrage (into two pages now:
Women's suffrage worldwide & in Great Britain and Womens suffrage in the USA), I read a review of a book (published no doubt with the christmas market in mind) - You Mean A Woman Can Open It?: The Woman's Place In The Classic Age Of Advertising - which is bound to raise a few hackles...

If you click through to the source page in the Daily Mail  you will se what in n a politically correct age, seems like outrageous anachronisms. The ads - many taken from the first half of the last century - reveal just how much women used to be caricatured as downtrodden housewives or hair-brained office girls.

Not that this happens today.........

casahistoria site:  Women's suffrage                                image origin

 

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click for casahistoria home          source: Daily Mail

middle aged women more liberated than thought

New research by medieval historians has revealed women enjoyed greater freedom and independence in the Middle Ages than previously thought.

Dr Sue Niebrzydowski stated: "We found women running priories, commissioning books, taking early package tours to visit the Holy Land.” She added: “Women were often widowed by the age of 30 and it gave them greater freedom. They could be more sexually liberated as there would be no child as evidence of their fornication or adultery.”

The evidence from legal records, literature and oral history from the 12th-15th centuries will form part of a conference at Bangor University this week. (Sept 11th).

Once further details are published the café will provide source links....

casahistoria site: women's history                                        image origin 

 

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click for casahistoria home         

"josie" the riveter gets a ride in plane she built 65 years ago

Six "Rosie the Riveters" who performed wartime factory work will gather at what is now Republic Airport in Farmingdale, New York State this Friday and take rides in a B-17 Flying Fortress and a B-24 Liberator "as a tribute to their war efforts".

Exhibitions of vintage aircraft are holiday fixtures at the museum, but this is the first time any of the women, the "Rosie the Riveters'' who helped to build World War II aircraft, have had a chance to fly in them, a museum spokeswoman said.

On the tribute flight will be Josephine Rachiele, 82, of West Babylon. Rachiele recalled that when she first went to work as a riveter at Republic (where she was known both as "Josie the Riveter" and "Rosie the Riveter") in 1943, "I didn't know a rivet from a nail, and it was so noisy that I was really frightened. The rivet guns shooting rivets and the drill press stomping on metal -- it was pandemonium.'' At war's end, she said, the women were given the choice of staying or leaving so that returning servicemen could have the jobs.

Georgette Feller, 86, of Levittown, said she was "already one step ahead'' when she joined Republic Aviation as a riveter. "My father was an excellent mechanic, and I already knew how to use a rivet gun, and I could tell aluminum from steel,'' she said. "It was a great job, but I had trouble with the man who was my first partner -- he said he wasn't happy working with a dizzy broad.'' Feller knows the flight on Friday is a great opportunity. "I'm at the end of my days and I want every good experience I can have,'' she said. "That sounds like a good one for me.''

While the actual number of women employed in US armaments plants is uncertain, historians say the war brought about six million women into the work force for the first time. In 1943 a promotional film, using an actual riveter named Rose at Michigan's Willow Run bomber plant as its model, popularized the "Rosie the Riveter'' image. A song furthered the cause, as did a Saturday Evening Post cover by illustrator Norman Rockwell, depicting Rosie with Hitler's book underfoot.

casahistoria site: Womens History                                        image origin

 

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click for casahistoria home          source: 1010 WINS

the importance of diaries - and their women!!

This weekend the British equivalent of a TV Oscar was awarded to an actress who starred in and wrote a (excellent) drama - Housewife 49 - based on a diary kept by a Nella Last in the 1940's.

Coincidentally a new history of Britain, Austerity Britain 1945-51, has just been published to critical acclaim and its author, David Kynaston, makes it clear that the use of diaries written by women was crucial to his research. He describes how it gradually dawned on him that although such diaries contained full and shrewdly observed accounts of  busy, purposeful lives, there was almost nothing about the wider world beyond family, work and romantic aspirations.

He quickly reached two conclusions. First, that if he was going to write an authentically democratic, inclusive history, reflecting the concerns of society as a whole, he had to move the primary focus away from politicians. Second, that he had to get to grips with the daily lives of women - lives often led at a considerable remove from male-driven agendas. It was not to renounce the world of policy-makers and opinion-formers; rather, to no longer take that world on its own (male) self-referring, self-privileging terms. Realising that little had been made to record women at this time he searched out valuable diaries, finding more than 30, of which about three-quarters were by women, quite often unmarried.

In an article about this work he outlines who the key diarists were and why they are significant. He concludes with his belief that, cumulatively, the diaries move us towards a rather different type of history - more intimate, less top-down, less one-sided, more real - than is often presented. Ultimately, he writes, the historian's job is to tell it how it was, as unsentimentally as possible. These tenacious women, on the front line during intensely trying times, make that a much more plausible endeavour for him.

The book has had good reviews so far - hopefully I can comment on it later in the year.

casahistoria site: Women's History                                     image origin

 

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click for casahistoria home          source: Guardian

the unknown mercury 13 - because the were women

Nearly 50 years ago American astronauts captured imaginations worldwide when they were selected to be part of Project Mercury, the first of a series of manned spacecraft missions. But a lesser-known group of aspiring astronauts never was given a chance to join the program for one primary reason: They were women.

Today, 13 women, all renowned pilots, will be granted honorary degrees at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh for their pioneering efforts to join the space program. The Mercury 13, as they became known, underwent a series of rigorous tests in 1961 to see whether they would be fit for spaceflight. Two days before the women were to leave for spaceflight simulation tests at the Naval School of Aviation Medicine in Pensacola, Fla., everything was canceled. The pilots were told that NASA was discontinuing the women's program.

"People back then were dead-set against women doing anything," said Irene Leverton, one of the Mercury 13 team. Leverton was 34 when she was selected to take the tests. "I remember saying, 'Well, what else is new?' I had gotten so much discrimination against me as a woman pilot."

According to NASA, a special subcommittee of the House Committee on Science and Astronauts held hearings in July 1962, but no action resulted. Although the Soviet Union sent astronaut Valentina Tereshkova into space in 1963, the American space program did not launch a female astronaut until Sally Ride's flight in 1983.

"The 1960s were a different time," recalled Stumbough Jessen, another of the 13. "There were some real pioneers in aviation, but NASA was a little slow to catch up."

Not only slow to catch up but slow to reveal much about the (lack of a) women's programe. Any more information anyone?

casahistoria site: Women's history                                      image origin

 

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click for casahistoria home          source: Chicago Tribune

tiffany lamps really designed by women

Despite his reputation, Louis Comfort Tiffany had only a minor role in his famous glass lamp masterpieces. He left the designs and handcrafting to his "Tiffany Girls," some 50 artisans who did the creative work and got none of the glory.

"A New Light on Tiffany," which opened Friday at the New-York Historical Society, sets the record straight for the first time. The exhibition runs until May 28 and illustrates the women's artisanship in displays of 51 Tiffany lamps largely from the museum's own collection.

Hundreds of recently discovered letters from Clara Driscoll (1861-1944) document the role of the Women's Glass Cutting Department she supervised for a decade at Tiffany Studios in Manhattan. The letters "identify Driscoll as the designer of many of the firm's iconic lampshades and numerous other objects," a wallboard notes. Driscoll's letters also detail how the Tiffany Girls handled the painstaking work of "selecting and cutting glass for windows, mosaics and lampshades."

The women's glass cutting department came about in 1892 when the men-only Lead Glaziers and Glass Cutters Union went on strike. Tiffany hired women from art schools as replacements, and kept them on because they proved adept at glass selection and cutting. Working in pairs, one woman selected the area of a sheet of glass that best represented the detail of the design, while the other cut the glass and wrapped the piece with a strip of copper foil for the leading process. As many as 35 women worked at the Tiffany Studio at one time, but numbers declined as the popularity of the lamps ebbed. When Driscoll left in 1909 to marry, the lamp business was dim

Desite their lack of artistic acknowledgement Tiffany was an enlightened employer for his time, paying his men and women artisans the same wages. Novice glass-cutters earned $7 weekly and top-scale artisans $11-$12 weekly, according to curator Margaret K. Hofer. Driscoll, an Ohio native, was the highest paid woman at $35 weekly, allowing her a residence in a rooming house, Metropolitan Opera tickets and a bicycle for trips around town. Workers were segregated by sex, and only single women could work in his Manhattan studios. The final assembly of Tiffany glass creations was handled by the men's department in Queens.

Still, Driscoll could not afford the top-tier Tiffany lamps she designed for sale at $250 to $400 or higher.

casahistoria site: Womens history                                        image origin

 

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click for casahistoria home   source article: AP/Yahoo News

the secret life of nuns

Since recently reading Antonia Fraser's "feminine" history of Louis XIV the extravagant use of convents to put away troublesome or nuisance-value elite female family members has intrigued me. This weeks Economist reviews a new book by Silvia Evangelisti, who specialises in “gender history” at the University of East Anglia in England, which adds to the intrigue.

As the reviewer (always anonymous in the Economist, but usually a period expert) writes: "Her nuns, observed mostly in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, are independent, jolly, productive and determined. They never needed men anyway, and rejoiced in the only life that could give them a proper social standing outside marriage. (“A husband or a wall” were the alternatives.) They wrote, painted, put on theatrical shows, sang like angels and ran their own communities as competently as any male—so competently that if any bishop tried to saddle them with rules they did not like, they had a good go at defying him."

"Nor were convents dreary places. They were often sited next to palaces and catered for the elite. Noble girls were sent there because it was cheaper and easier than finding a husband for them: the dowry due was sometimes as little as one-tenth of the average marriage-portion in a wealthy house. The girls trooped in in crowds. In Florence, between 1500 and 1800, almost half of the female elite lived in convents; in Milan, three-quarters of the daughters of the aristocracy could be found with rosaries and wimples, piously enclosed"

However the reviewer indicates some problems with Evangelisti's account. In particular the lack of insight into the internal feelings of those incarcerated often at such a young age.

"A life of enclosed virginity is not natural, and many were forced into it, with their hair cropped short and the door slammed behind them. Some no doubt adjusted and thrived; others did not. Deprived of loving human company, they were supposed to talk instead to medallions of Christ on their breasts. Robbed of the chance to be mothers, they would dress and dandle “Jesus dolls”. In the wilds of Canada an Ursuline nun lamented that native Indian girls, brought into the convent to learn French and wear long dresses, would scale the fence “like squirrels” and run off into the woods. One wonders how many of Ms Evangelisti's feisty, empowered, intelligent nuns secretly longed to do the same."

Click here to read the full review.

casahistoria site: Womens history                                        image origin

 

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click for casahistoria home   source article: The Economist

witches or the unseen enemy...

Henry Miller's "The Crucible" drew our attention to the Salem witch trials of the 17th century and alluded to the McCarthy persecution of the 1950's. However, half a century later, another tale of supposed witchcraft and actual persecution has emerged.

In April 1944, at the height of Britain's war with Germany. Mrs Duncan, a grandmother, was branded by a London jury as a witch and spy guilty of revealing wartime secrets. She was charged and convicted of witchcraft only under an act dating back to 1735 - the first such charge in over a century. She was jailed for nine months at Holloway women's prison.

Mrs Duncan, travelled the country holding seances and was one of Britain's best-known mediums, reputedly numbering Winston Churchill and George VI among her clients. She was arrested in January 1944 by two naval officers at a seance in Portsmouth. The military authorities, secretly preparing for the D-day landings and then in a heightened state of paranoia, were alarmed by reports that she had disclosed in seances - allegedly via contacts with the spirit world - the sinking of two British battleships long before they became public. The most serious disclosure came when she told the parents of a missing sailor that his ship, HMS Barham, had sunk. It was true, but news of the tragedy had been suppressed to preserve morale.

Churchill, then prime minister, visited her in prison and denounced her paranoid conviction as "tomfoolery". Now her grand daughter, Mary Martin is petitioning the government for a pardon: "The arrest was silly really. If they'd spoken to her she would've stopped giving seances until the war was over. Let's be honest: she'd two sons in the navy, and one in the RAF, and my father in the army. So why would she turn around and put the country at risk?" "It's hardly credible that a 20th century court would be prepared to convict someone of witchcraft - within living memory of many in this present government. As well as the deprivations suffered by Helen Duncan in prison, the effect of the stigma on her family was and remains considerable."

Mrs Martin insists her grandmother was a genuine spiritualist, "an ordinary woman with a gift. I just want her name cleared. She was never given the chance to defend herself at the trial. It was such an injustice. While all this was happening, our troops were preparing for D-day. Why did they spend 10 days trying an old lady for witchcraft?"

The government being petitioned is well aware of how war can change a country's sense of perspective and distort views about other's beliefs, viewpoints and loyalties. Hopefully it is also just as aware of how such an environment can erode civil liberties.

casahistoria site: Women and witchcraft  

 

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click for casahistoria home            source article: The Guardian

"most of all, I wanted to be wicked..."

The latest update to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography includes Susan Travers, the first woman to manage to join the French Foreign Legion, and a holder of the Croix de Guerre, the Médaille Militaire, and the Légion d'Honneur. She had the French military medal pinned on her chest by the Gaullist defence minister who had been her general and lover when she earned it.

Looking back at herself at the age of 16 she described herself as "A wicked lady, flirting with danger and scandal."

Travers was born into an unhappy English military family. Sent to finishing school in Florence, she was seduced aged 17 on a school visit to Rome by a middle-aged hotel manager.She decided, she wrote in her autobiography, Tomorrow To Be Brave, published in 2000, that "men would become my salvation ... my ticket to travel and wealth and happiness".

In the second world war she trained as an ambulance driver, joined the Free French as a nurse with the rank of sergeant and served in Dakar, Eritrea, Syria, Egypt and Palestine. She found time for affairs with, among others, a Foreign Legion officer and Russian prince Dmitri Amilakvari. In 1941 she became driver to another lover, Colonel (later General) Pierre Koenig, whose brigade was sent to hold Bir Hakeim, south of Tobruk, against German desert forces.

After withstanding attack for four months, the brigade broke out, with Travers driving Amilakvari and Koenig under fire to British lines in what was hailed as a symbolic victory for the Free French.

When the war ended she served three years in the Foreign Legion in Tunisia and Indo-China. The legion's recruiting officer - who was a friend - did not require her to submit to a medical examination or specify her gender on the application form!

She was 94 when she died in 2003. She was added to the ODNB website Friday to be consulted by scholars all over the world.....

casahistoria related site: Womens history

 

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click for casahistoria home       source article: The Guardian 

the rubble women

Having just read "A Woman in Berlin" (see "Being read on the Terrace....." lower down this page), I came across an excellent review by Linda Grant who played a role in publicising the mass rapes of Croatian and Bosnian women by Serb militias in the 1990's.

Her review gives many examples from the book of the dehumanising process of the initial Red Army occupation as well as placing the effect on Berlin's women in the context of modern war. Like her I was left with the impression that it is in fact women who pay the real price of defeat in total war.

Finally it looks at the question of the evidence - how trustworthy is it (the familiar question to students .......) and comes up with an uneasy parallel.

If you can't read the book, read this review. Read it here

Related casahistoria sites: Women in Totalitarian States; Hitler's Germany, and new the section under construction Women & Modern War

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Ms President?

As the next US election looms (!!), more and more coverage is being given to the debate over whether a female President is possible/likely/a joke.... A couple of items of interest on this:

The Ascent of a Woman by Anne Kornblut which appeared in the NY Times on June 11th looks at why the US has not had a female leader. This is developed further by John McKay, in "Where are All the Girls? Part CCXLVIII." 

(See casahistoria site: Women's Suffrage campaign in USA)

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