Clarissa&#039;s Blog

Well, the fact that they don’t know US history and that some of the obvious examples are Democrats was probably a problem. Eleanor Roosevelt is an obvious example (she was far more than just FDR’s wife). However, rather than rattle off a list, here’s http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1551.html

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Clarissa

September 17, 2015

No, no wives allowed. 🙂

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1. Dreidel
  
  September 17, 2015
  
  Does Hillary fall in the “wife” category? 🙂
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    September 17, 2015
    
    I keep saying that she is a fairly young, inexperienced politician because counting the years she was married to Bill as experience in politics is beyond bizarre.
    
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    1. Dreidel
      
      September 17, 2015
      
      But would she have ever dared to move to New York as a carpetbagger from (wherever she’d have been living if she hadn’t followed her husband to Arkansas), and then tried to run for an extremely high-profile Senate seat as a totally unknown lawyer named Rodham?
      
      The only other non-New Yorker that I’m aware of who swept into the state and promptly got elected Senator was Bobby Kennedy.
      
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    2. cliff arroyo
      
      September 17, 2015
      
      “counting the years she was married to Bill as experience in politics is beyond bizarre”
      
      Well, being first lady is a real thing in the US much more so than in any other country that I know of. And it’s recognized that some first ladies are involved in policy decisions (as weird as that might sound). And that’s bipartisan Rosalynn Carter and Nancy Reagan were both involved in their husband’s administration.
      
      Weird, but….
      
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      1. Clarissa
        
        September 17, 2015
        
        Yes, I’m sure they are very involved serving the tea and providing adulation.
        
        As for Carter and Reagan, both were so vapid and useless that I wouldn’t be surprised if they asked cleaning stuff for advice.
        
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        cliff arroyo
        
        September 17, 2015
        
        “I’m sure they are very involved serving the tea and providing adulation.”
        
        You’re projecting your biases on to a different system.
        
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        Clarissa
        
        September 18, 2015
        
        Well, who knows, maybe the US foreign policy sucks so bad because Obama handed it over to Michelle to make her feel important.
        
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      2. Dreidel
        
        September 17, 2015
        
        ..but they would never have been first ladies if not for their husbands. Remember Lurleen Wallace, who served as her husband’s ersatz governor of Alabama after he was term-limited, until she died of cancer in 1968, and he ran for President?
        
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        cliff arroyo
        
        September 18, 2015
        
        Widow’s succession also used to be a thing. Where in a politican who died in office was succeeded by his widow usually until the next election (where she may or may not run for the office herself) or until a special election could be called (at the state level she was often appointed by the governor).
        
        It seems to be mostly an english speaking thing and seems to have been most common in the US. I remember hearing about cases as late as the 1970s.
        
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widow's_succession
        
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hkatz

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper

“or do these great women really not exist?’

Of course they exist.

For starters – since we’re having this exchange using computer software, at least one worth mentioning is Grace Hopper and her ground-breaking accomplishments.

And another great American computer scientist I can think of off the top of my head – Radia Perlman (who helped make the Internet as we know it possible).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radia_Perlman

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Clarissa

September 17, 2015

Here is the problem, though. I’ve never heard of these names. This is not necessarily significant since I’m an immigrant but do you believe that these are generally recognizable names? How many people would know them?

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1. hkatz
  
  September 17, 2015
  
  “do you believe that these are generally recognizable names? How many people would know them?”
  
  Not as recognizable as they should be, unfortunately (because the general public can’t name many great scientists & tech people). But as we’re living in the digital age – in part thanks to their genius – there’s no excuse not to know them; they certainly deserve the recognition.
  
  But if you’re limiting the discussion to people that the general American public will find recognizable, that makes things more difficult… I think people in the entertainment industry, music and movies, would be most recognizable (and there have been some greats there too, like Ella Fitzgerald). There are also some humanitarians & activists I can think of, like Harriet Tubman, Clara Barton (founder of the American Red Cross and famous Civil War nurse), and hopefully people would know of Ida B. Wells, though I’m not sure. Maybe some poets too with name recognition – like Emily Dickinson, Maya Angelou. And people would be likely to recognize Amelia Earhart.
  
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  1. hkatz
    
    September 17, 2015
    
    At least one other American female scientist with fairly good public recognition is Rachel Carson (though good luck getting a Republican candidate to speak positively of her!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Carson
    
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    1. Dreidel
      
      September 17, 2015
      
      I’d be willing to bet you’d have a hard time finding an American under 40 who would recognize the name Rachel Carson, although she was briefly a well-known household name in the mid-Sixties because of her highly controversial book .
      
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      1. hkatz
        
        September 17, 2015
        
        I’m not the best judge of how recognizable people are, it’s true; I spend a lot of time in the company of nerds, of which I am one 🙂
        
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  2. Bob Basil
    
    September 18, 2015
    
    Can’t go wrong with Ella Fitzgerald or Harriet Tubman!
    
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David P. Bellamy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Harris_Jones

Mary Harris Jones.

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Shakti

Ida B. Wells
Annie Jean Easley

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SacagaweaSacagawea

Hedy Lamar a movie star and an inventor of a frequency hopping system

Emily Dickinsonpoet
Helen Keller Way more interesting than her popular biographies let on.

Mother Jones
Very famous union leader.
Soujourner Truth
Harriet Tubman

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Shakti

September 17, 2015

I suppose it’s difficult to find a woman who is 1) generally recognizable, 2)not super feisty and 3) helps the politician pander to the audience in a particular way.

Helen Keller was extremely liberal. Most people only learn about how she learned to speak and write.
Mother Jones is a union leader so that’s verboten among anti-union people.
Emily Dickinson finds favor with older people and more literary people.
Hedy Lamarr might not be recognized by younger people.

Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman were extremely brave women, but way too threatening and assertive for some of the primary voters.

Rosa Parks is comparatively ladylike with the myth that she was just a tired seamstress who just decided one day not to get up from her seat.

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1. hkatz
  
  September 17, 2015
  
  “I suppose it’s difficult to find a woman who is 1) generally recognizable, 2)not super feisty and 3) helps the politician pander to the audience in a particular way.”
  
  This is an excellent point.
  
  And there are areas that the general public doesn’t seem to take a deep interest in, like science… I can think of great female scientists and doctors from the U.S., but relatively few people will know about them even though people benefit widely from their contributions (and this can happen to great male scientists too. Very few people know about Norman Borlaug, for instance – for environmental issues, they’re likely to think of Al Gore and his documentary).
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    September 17, 2015
    
    Difficult in the US but quite easy in many other countries, even some pretty backwards ones. This is an interesting phenomenon that, I believe, deserves to be analyzed.
    
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Clarissa

September 17, 2015

Emily Dickinson definitely works.

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Vic Crain

September 17, 2015

There are a bunch of women missing from this discussion. The fact that they might not currently be famous speaks more to the illiteracy of the current generation than to the importance of what they did:
Margaret Brent, thought to be America’s first feminist
Molly Pitcher, Revolutionary War heroine, took over a canon when her husband was disabled
Mother (Elizabeth Ann) Seton, Roman Catholic Saint
Lucretia Mott
Dorothea Dix
Julia Ward Howe
Elizabeth Blackwell (1st female physician in US)
Mary Baker Eddy
Louisa May Alcott
Jane Addams
Grandma Moses
Nellie Bly
Anne Sullivan
Emily Green Balch (1947 Nobel Peace Prize)
Margaret Sanger
Jeannette Ranken (1st female in Congress)
Frances Perkins (FDR Secretary of Labor)
Georgia O’Keeffe
Zora Hurston
Pearl Buck
Marian Anderson
Margaret Chase Smith
Margaret Mead
Clare Boothe Luce
Margaret Bourke-White
Ayn Rand
Babe Didrikson Zaharias (Olympic gold and professional golfer)
Barbara Tuchman, Harvard historian and Pulitzer winner
Katherine Graham (publisher, Washington Post)
Betty Friedan
Helen Gurley Brown
Marilyn Monroe
Sarah Caldwell
Audrey Hepburn
Sandra Day O’Conner
Alice Rivlin, economist
Barbara Walters
Ruth Bader Ginsberg
Sylvia Plath
Wilma Rudolph, Olympian

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1. Dreidel
  
  September 17, 2015
  
  You left off Gloria Steinem and Lizzie Borden…
  
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2. Clarissa
  
  September 17, 2015
  
  Not Louisa May Alcott, though. She wrote that vomit – inducing novel that I still can’t get over.
  
  But this is a good, valuable list, thank you.
  
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  1. Dreidel
    
    September 17, 2015
    
    You should have read Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights” instead (and probably have).
    Here’s the cover of the currently in-print edition of that 1847 novel.
    
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Anonymous

It isn’t surprising that you can’t think of any “great” American women. I can’t think of any great Russian or Ukrainian woman, and that surely isn’t because they never existed.

The problem with naming “great woman” of any nationality who have global name-recognition is that international name-recognition is usually achieved only by being a national political leader (Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi) or by trivial celebrity status (Beyonce), and the later category can’t genuinely be called “great.”

Until very recently in America, the country hasn’t had internationally known female political figures. (Our first female Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, is the first example that pops into my mind.) Also, because of prior educational restrictions on women, we haven’t produced internationally known (or even nationally known) scientists like Marie Curie, and I can’t think of any internationally known American female authors like Emily Bronte.

But surely the Republican candidates could have come up with a few non-controversial names like Suffragette Susan B. Anthony (whose face was first real woman’s on a U.S. coin in the late 1970s) and aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart, for starters.

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Shakti

The question pretty much came from Women on the 20

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Dreidel

Clarissa, it isn’t surprising that you can’t think of any “great” American women. I can’t think of any great Russian or Ukrainian woman, and it’s not because they don’t exist.

Until the digital information age started, most people, male or female, achieved international name-recognition only when they were political leaders with worldwide influence (the first Queen Elizabeth, Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi). Internationally known women in other fields (French scientist Marie Cure, British author Emile Bronte) were and are rare.

In America, internationally known female political figures (Madeline Albright, Condoleezza Rice) were non-existent until very recently because our culture kept them out of politics, as well as most other professions where they might have gained prominence. The majority of Americans today would have a hard time recognizing most of the names that your other readers have mentioned above.

But the Republican candidates should have at least been able to come up with a few non-controversial nationally known women like Suffragette Susan B. Anthony (the first American woman to have her face on a U.S. coin) and aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart, for starters.

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Clarissa

September 17, 2015

For how many years have you lived in Ukraine and Russia to make this a valid comparison??

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1. Dreidel
  
  September 17, 2015
  
  The point is that if certain Ukrainian or Russian women were INTERNATIONALLY known, I would have heard of them. I’ve never resided in England or France, but I’m aware of Bronte and Curie and Joan of Arc.
  
  Most of the NATIONALLY known American women listed in your readers’ posts are now ancient history as far as the U.S. news cycle, and aren’t mentioned in American schools or even universities. So most Americans your age won’t recognize their names. (It really pains me to type that, but it’s true.)
  
  The only reason anybody remembers Amelia Earhart is because every few years some publicity seeker claims to have found her airplane.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    September 17, 2015
    
    The news cycle is the same everywhere.
    
    Anyways, N just came up with 2 more: Edith Wharton and somebody called something like Grace Hopper.
    
    And I came up with the amazing Betty Friedan.
    
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    1. Dreidel
      
      September 17, 2015
      
      “The news cycle is the same everywhere.”
      
      Actually, it’s not. How much news about purely internal domestic Russian or Ukrainian affairs — or ANY overseas location — do you ever see on your American television channels, or even in the extremely thick Sunday edition of the New York Times?
      
      Did you see ANY news reports in mainstream American news media about the Canadian elections, or about how the Australian prime minister just got canned by his own party last week? When is the last time you saw/read anything about the U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy?
      
      America is important to the rest of the world because it’s the last remaining superpower — and the cowering abdication of that responsibility makes fearful news worldwide. But most Americans couldn’t care less what happens beyond our shores, or our northern and southern borders, and the American news media reports accordingly.
      
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      1. Clarissa
        
        September 17, 2015
        
        Believe me, the interest in and awareness of what happens in the US by other countries is vastly exaggerated. Everybody is just as self-involved and ignorant about everybody else.
        
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        Dreidel
        
        September 17, 2015
        
        When I was stationed in Germany and Italy in the 1980’s, I saw a lot more news about America on the German and Italian language stations than I saw about those countries on the U.S. English-language military channel (no satellite TV at the time).
        
        If nobody cares anymore…well, I really don’t blame them.
        
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    2. hkatz
      
      September 17, 2015
      
      Grace Hopper was the first I mentioned on the thread 🙂 Glad N reminded you of her… if he works in a field related to computers or tech I’m not surprised he knows about her, but more people should.
      
      There are also Nobel Laureates in science like Barbara McClintock, Gertrude B. Elion, and Rosalyn Yalow, and people who made major contributions to NASA like Margaret Hamilton (pioneering software engineer for the Apollo Space program) – and astronauts like Sally Ride. Physicians like Virginia Apgar and Jane C. Wright, geneticists like Mary-Claire King…
      
      And few people have mentioned ground-breaking musicians (e.g. Mary Lou Williams, Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, Rosetta Tharpe).
      
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      1. Clarissa
        
        September 17, 2015
        
        Sorry, I suck at names. It will maybe take about a dozen more repetitions for me to hold it down permanently.
        
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        Dreidel
        
        September 17, 2015
        
        Grace Hopper was a pioneering computer genius. She discovered the first computer bug — a real moth that had shorted out a connection between the analog electrical wiring of the barn-sized computers of her time.
        
        She had the misfortune of being in the Navy instead of the Army or Air Force. The U.S. Navy kept geniuses like her on active duty until they were geriatric, at yeoman’s wages. If she’d been in the Army or Air force, she’d have been retired in her early 60’s, and then would have made a fortune as a civilian consultant.
        
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        hkatz
        
        September 18, 2015
        
        “She discovered the first computer bug — a real moth”
        
        Though it was her work on compilers and programming languages that marked her as a genius, I love reading about a time when de-bugging could involve actual bugs.
        
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      2. hkatz
        
        September 18, 2015
        
        It also struck me that there’s no one here listed from dance – in which case there’s Martha Graham as a giant in dance.
        
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Graham
        
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No love for Shirley Chisolm? She was a serious candidate for the democratic nomination in 1972 and kept her bid alive through the first round of voting at the convention.

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raddledoldtart

Emma Goldman!

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Just a few off the top of my head in no particular order

Politics

Dixy Lee Ray
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixy_Lee_Ray

Phyllis Schafly (I’m sure no one here likes her, but her stature is very real)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllis_Schlafly

Ann Richards
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Richards

Barbara Jordan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Jordan

Shirley Chisolm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Chisholm

Journalism and/or political writing

Helen Thomas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Thomas

Florence King
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_King

Molly Ivins
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Ivins

Adela Rogers St. Johns
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adela_Rogers_St._Johns

You’ll probably loathe it, but for several decades in the 20th century there was an unrecognized genre in American writing that might be called housewife humor (though popular with male readers too) based on humorous descriptions of daily middle class life, usually slightly fictionalized versions of their own lives.

All told, they offer a pretty good introduction to mainstream post WWII american society and values.

Shirley Jackson (who sort of pioneered the genre iinm with “life among the savages”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Jackson

Betty MacDonald
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_MacDonald

Jean Kerr
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Kerr

Erma Bombeck
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erma_Bombeck

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I put a bunch of links in a comment and it’s in moderation (in case you haven’t seen it already).

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