Women

[Woody]

March is National Women's History Month.

Please share with us some of your favorite women who have made a mark on the nation and world.

I will start:

http://www.history.com/topics/sojourner-truth

[phkrause]

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an African-American civil rights activist, whom the U.S. Congress called "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement".[1]

On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. Parks' action was not the first of its kind to impact the civil rights issue. Others had taken similar steps, including Lizzie Jennings in 1854, Homer Plessy in 1892, Irene Morgan in 1946, Sarah Louise Keys in 1955, and Claudette Colvin on the same bus system nine months before Parks, but Parks' civil disobedience had the effect of sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Parks' act of defiance became an important symbol of the modern Civil Rights Movement and Parks became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including boycott leader Martin Luther King, Jr., helping to launch him to national prominence in the civil rights movement.

At the time of her action, Parks was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and had recently attended the Highlander Folk School, a Tennessee center for workers' rights and racial equality. Nonetheless, she took her action as a private citizen "tired of giving in". Although widely honored in later years for her action, she suffered for it, losing her job as a seamstress in a local department store. Eventually, she moved to Detroit, Michigan, where she found similar work. From 1965 to 1988 she served as secretary and receptionist to African-American U.S. Representative John Conyers. After retirement from this position, she wrote an autobiography and lived a largely private life in Detroit. In her final years she suffered from dementia, and became involved in a lawsuit filed on her behalf against American hip-hop duo OutKast.

Parks eventually received many honors ranging from the 1979 Spingarn Medal to the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal and a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall. Upon her death in 2005, she was the first woman and second non-U.S. government official granted the posthumous honor of lying in honor at the Capitol Rotunda. She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 2008.[2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks

[phkrause]

Here's another link:

http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/par0bio-1

[Bravus]

It's definitely not a 'men vs women' thing, but sometimes very deserving women didn't get the recognition they deserved, and this is a chance to redress some of that.

Lise Meitner played a huge part in the development of nuclear physics, and ought to have got the Nobel Prize along with her collaborators, but didn't.

She's worth celebrating!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lise_Meitner

[Bravus]

And, of course, I live with 3 women who are very much worth celebrating!

Sue, my wife of 25 years (soon), is amazing. She has worked 2 jobs through most of our married life, and somehow, with small children, studied for degrees in business and psychology and a certificate in adult education. She's incredibly strong and smart and has amazing problem-solving abilities - leaves me in the dust. And has been willing to travel all around the world with me, braving new situations and challenges. And has raised, with me, the other two amazing women.

Cassie is 21 now, and in her final year of studying science teaching (psychology major, physics minor). In fact, she's in my class this year, which is fun! She's very bright, and (like me) very laid back, and just enjoys life. She loves her fashion, and dresses in a different style every day, but it's all done on a budget, mostly from op shops. One of her favourite dresses is adorned with zombie unicorns... She's going to be an amazing teacher, because she's excellent at reading people and communicating.

Alex is 18 and is in her second year of law at another university. She's 18 going on 25, and has always been a person who knows what she wants and has gone for it. She decided to become vegetarian, and then vegan, mostly out of concern for animal welfare, and did all the research to find her own recipes and cook her own meals. She's a kid who was reading philosophy for her own enjoyment at 16, but who also enjoys a good fashion magazine, and is independent but still loves hanging out with us.

So, gotta say, I'm very blessed indeed... and can totally get behind the concept of celebrating women!

[Woody]

Quote:

can totally get behind the concept of celebrating women!

Praise God for that Bravus.

WE and I mean all of us including our church - needs to do more of lifting up the women that contribute so much to the world and to our church.

[Liz]

Irena Sendler--smuggled 2500 Jewish babies and children out of the Warsaw ghetto.

[rudywoofs (Pam)]

I hold quite a number of women in high esteem..

Here is one:

[Kevin H]

Thank you for sharing these stories!!! And Bravus thank you for celebrating those women in your life. I envy you. I wish I was married and in a job that used a lot of teaching, instead of being single, working like crazy to pay my educational loans, and working with mostly preparing and giving medications, a job I like but not where my passion lies.

I'd like to celebrate my Grandma and mom, I was raised by them, however my mom worked. Grandma, coming from Norway to a new country, raised her family (she had 12 children, however she had the pain of one dieing at 5 months, one who's clothes caught fire shortly before his 5th birthday, one who died of a sports injury at 14 and her firstborn died from exposure to chemicals at his job at age 30)then took care of the 2 children of a friend when the mother had an injury that left her in a perminate vegatitive state while giving birth, then raised 4 of her grandchildren. And also would babysit for neighbors. Two neighbor children are Christians and said that they became Christians because of her. My mom worked to send her brothers and sisters through college and to rais us.

Also my Aunt Judith who also worked with sending her brothers and sisters through college, raised her daughter, and helped the Cambodian Refugees from the Killing Fields. And her daughter Linda with discovering Zyban and other ways to help free people from tobacco.