03-05-95 Women of Achievement and Herstory - March is Women's History Month :

      "Discussing the position of women in ancient Egypt, theologian and
archaeologist Roland de Vaux wrote in 1965 that "In Egypt the wife was
often the head of the family, with all the rights such a position entailed."
Obedience was urged upon husbands in the maxims of Ptah-Hotep. 
Marriage contracts of all periods attest the extremely independent social
and economic position of women. 
      According to E. Meyer, who is quoted in the Vaertings' study,
"Among the Egyptians the women were remarkably free ... as late as the
fourth century BC there existed side by side with patriarchal marriage, a
form of marriage in which the wife chose the husband and could divorce
him up payment of compensation."
      Love poems, discovered in Egyptian tombs, strongly hint that is was
the Egyptian women who did the courting, ofttimes wooing the male by
plying him with intoxicants to weaken his protestations.  Robert Briffault
wrote of an Egyptian woman clerk who later became a governor and
eventually the commander-in-chief of an army."
      -- Stone, Merlin.  WHEN GOD WAS A WOMAN. San Diego, New York,
London: Harvest Harcout Brace Jovanovich. 1976.  ISBN 0-15-696158-X. 

03-05 Anniversaries -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

      B. 03-05-1852, Lady Isabella Gregory, Irish playwright and founder
of the Abbey Theatre and mainstay of the Irish Literary Renaissance, Irish
playwright and folklorist.

      B. 03-05-1854, Mary Elizabeth Garrett*, philanthropist who endowed
Bryn Mawr School for Girls and later donated more than $450,000 to John
Hopkins University medical school on the condition that it accept women
students. She guaranteed M. Carey Thomas would head Bryn Mawr College
with donations that eventually surpassed $350,000. Garrett, like Thomas,
was an active suffrager. (Lived with Thomas from about 1904 to her death
in 1915 and Thomas was her heir.) Thomas proved to be one of the great
educators of all time and set academic standards at Bryn Mawr that made
it equal or better than any other college in America with entrance exams
that were tougher than at Harvard.

      B. 03-05-1924 - Sarah Caldwell, *The Divine Miss Sarah*, founder of
the highly successful and artistically marvelous Boston Opera Company, the
second woman in the history of the New York Philharmonic to conduct its
orchestra (1975) and in 1976 she became the first woman to conduct an
opera at the Metropolitan, Verdi's  La Traviata 01-13-1976.  Devoted to her
Boston Opera company and opera in general, she uses off-beat methods to
draw customers by using stage innovations which included such things as
motorcycles and circus acts.  It has led some misogynists to say she's a
better stage director than conductor, but Bostonians know better. One can
be both !!!

      Event 03-05-1974, Helen Thomas, was named UPI White House
reporter, the first woman ever named to cover the White House beat. She
had been an award-winning reporter in Washington for 30 years.

Quote du jour -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

      "I may be dressing like a traditional bimbo, whatever, but I'm in
charge ... And isn't that what feminism is all about; you know, equality for
men and women?  And aren't I in charge of my life, doing the things I
want to do?"
      -- Madonna in a Boston Globe article written by Suzanne Gordon,
December 26, 1990.


      >> (C) 1995 Irene Stuber, PO Box 6185, Hot Springs National Park, AR
71902, irenestuber@delphi.com. Distribute verbatim copies freely with
copyright notice for non-profit use. Don't let anyone tell you there weren't
notable and effective women throughout history.  They were always there,
but historians failed to note them in our histories so that each generation
of women has had to reinvent themselves.