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Morning Open Thread: Women's History - Spain's Patron Saint, Lady Gaga, and Women's Rights in Qatar [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-03-28
March is National Women’s History Month
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“Women, they have minds, and they have
souls, as well as just hearts. And they’ve got
ambition, and they’ve got talent, as well as
just beauty. I’m so sick of people saying
that love is all a woman is fit for.”
― Louisa May Alcott
from Little Women
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"They’ll tell you you’re too loud—that you
need to wait your turn and ask the right
people for permission. Do it anyway."
― Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
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Welcome to Morning Open Thread, a daily post
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Women’s History for March 28th:
1515 – Teresa of Ávila born, Spanish noblewoman who became a Carmelite nun; prominent Spanish mystic, religious reformer, author, and theologian; canonized in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV; one of the four Roman Catholic women to be declared a Doctor of the Church, over four centuries after her death; Patron Saint of Spain.
1613 – Borjigit Bumbutai born, of the Khorchin Mongol Borjigit clan, one of the five consorts of Emperor Hong Taiji of the Qing dynasty; during the reign of her grandson, the Kangxi Emperor, whom she had raised after his mother died, she had significant influence in the imperial court and was respected for her political wisdom and insight. Honored as Grand Empress Dowager Xiao Zhuang.
1708 – Hannah Glasse born, English cookery author; noted for The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, a bestseller which was originally published anonymously but remained in print well into the 19th century. It contained the first known curry recipe written in English. She also coined the name Yorkshire pudding. Her other books, The Servants’ Directory, and The Compleat Confectioner, were not as successful, and her dressmaking enterprise after her husband died ran deeply into debt. She went bankrupt in 1754 and was forced to sell the copyright of The Art of Cookery to a booksellers’ syndicate, which held the rights for the next fifty years.
1743 – Yekaterina Vorontsova-Dashkova born, Russian courtier, academic, author and art patron; major figure of the Russian Enlightenment, and part of the coup d’etat that put Empress Catherine the Great on the throne in 1762. She was the first woman in the world to head a national academy of sciences and helped to found the Russian Academy, where she oversaw the compilation of a Russian dictionary. She wrote dramas, edited a monthly magazine, and also maintained a voluminous correspondence with notable figures of the day, including British actor-manager David Garrick and Benjamin Franklin, who invited her to become the first woman member of the American Philosophical Society – she was also the only woman member of the society for its first 80 years.
1886 – Clara Lemlich born, American labor organizer, leader of the Uprising of 20,000, the massive shirtwaist workers strike in New York’s garment industry in 1909. She was later blacklisted from the clothing industry for her labor union work, so she joined the Communist Party USA, and founded the Wage Earner’s Suffrage League in 1911 to fight for the vote for working-class women. After her marriage in 1911, she focused on raising a family, but also began to organize homemakers to protest against high food prices and rents, evictions, and for better housing and schools. In 1929, she launched the United Council of Working Class Women, which grew to have multiple branches in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles. A boycott of butcher shops to protest high meat prices spread nation-wide, and won support outside the Jewish and African-American communities where it started.
1895 – Ángela Ruiz Robles born, Spanish teacher and inventor; wanting to lighten the weight of textbooks carried by her students, she made a device out of a series of text and illustrations on reels, all under a sheet of magnifying glass with a light for reading in the dark, with spoken descriptions of each topic, it was the mechanical precursor to the electronic book.
1904 – Margaret Lilardia Tucker born, pioneering Australian Aboriginal rights activist. In 1917, she was forcibly removed from her mother, and sent to the Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls, where she was badly treated. After two years of training in white domestic practices, in 1919 she was sent to work for a white family in Sydney, where she was abused. The Aborigines Protection Board intervened, and she was given another placement from which she ran away. In 1925, the Board released her and she moved to Melbourne. In the 1930s, she began campaigning for Indigenous rights, and in 1932, was a founding member of the Australian Aborigines’ League. In the 1960s, she founded the United Council of Aboriginal and Islander Women, and in 1964, she was the first indigenous appointee to the Victorian Aborigines Welfare Board. She published her autobiography, If Everybody Cared, in 1977.
1906 – Dorothy Knowles born in South Africa, British academic and expert on French theatre, author of French Drama of Inter-War Years 1918-39 and The Censor, the Drama and the Film, which was against censorship; she was also a pioneer and champion in British women’s fencing, and founder of the Liverpool University Fencing Club (1936).
1912 – Marina Raskova born, Russian navigator, instrumental in the formation of combat regiments of women who were pilots, support staff and engineers.
1915 – Selma Rubin born, pioneering American environmental activist; after the 1969 Santa Barbara Channel oil spill, which polluted the channel with almost 100,000 barrels of crude oil, she was one of thousands of volunteers trying to save seabirds smothered in oil. In 1970, she led a successful voter campaign to defeat a proposal to build 1,535 condos on the Gaviota Coast of California. She co-founded both the Community Environmental Council (1974), and the Environmental Defense Center (1977).
1919 – Eileen Crofton born, British physician and author; best known for her anti-smoking campaigns. During WWII, she joined the Royal Army Medical Corps as a Captain. In 1962, she became a research assistant in medical epidemiology, and in 1963 she became the county medical officer for the Midlothian branch of the British Red Cross Society. In 1973, she and her husband, a professor of tuberculosis and lung disease, were founding members of ASH Scotland, an anti-smoking charity. She served as the charity’s first medical director. She was also on the World Health Organization’s expert committee on smoking, working on international campaigns for increasing regulation of tobacco, educating people on its harmful effects, and in favor of banning smoking in public places. Crofton was awarded an MBE for services in public health in 1984. While attending a medical conference at Royaumont, a former Cistercian abbey, she found a plaque commemorating a Scottish women's hospital which operated out of the Abbey during the WWI. She researched the story, and published a book on the hospital called Angels of Mercy: A Woman’s Hospital on the Western Front 1914-1918. She died at the age of 91 in 2010.
1922 – Grace Hartigan born, American Abstract Expressionist painter of the ‘New York School.’ She was noted for her exploration of what she called ‘empty rituals’ including a series based on mannequins dressed in bridal gowns.
Grace Hartigan - LIFE Magazine May 1957
1924 – Byrd Baylor born, American novelist, essayist, author of children’s books and text for picture books, including four Caldecott Honor books: The Desert is Theirs; Hawk, I’m Your Brother; When Clay Sings and The Way to Start a Day.
1927 – Vina Mazumdar born, Indian academic, feminist and major figure in India’s women’s movement; pioneer in women’s studies programs in India; secretary of the first Committee on the Status of Women in India, which brought out the first report on the condition of women in the country, Towards Equality (1974). Mazumdar was the founding director of the Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS), an autonomous organisation established in 1980, under the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR). Author of Memories of a Rolling Stone.
1931 – The National Woman’s Party sent telegrams to all 48 U.S. state governments, part of a campaign to fight discrimination against women workers: “National Woman’s Party calls your attention to nationwide efforts to throw women out of night work and otherwise handicap them by legislation or regulation restricting their conditions of labor but not those of their male competitors. We urge you to oppose every such effort in your own State. Women work because of necessity and should have equal opportunity with men to get and hold a job.” In the midst of increasing attacks on employed women, especially those who are married, the Cotton-Textile Institute in 1930 had urged mill executives to stop employing women for night work as of March 1, 1931, and announced that 83% of the industry had complied. Though restrictive legislation was often called “protective,” Ida Slack, a member of the Women’s Press Club, disagreed in her testimony at hearings before the New York State Senate and Assembly Committees last year on Labor and Industry: “We are being ‘protected’ in this manner by the very same influences that ‘protected’ us against the suffrage, a college education, and a place in the professions.” The “fire a woman / hire a man” philosophy was even more widespread, while women’s rights advocates valiantly fought an uphill battle against those who discriminated against women in general and married women in particular. Even women who had jobs were usually working for about half the wages paid to men.
Employers turned single women against married women in the scramble for jobs —
and cut their wages even more
1944 – Astrid Lindgren begins writing Pippi Longstocking.
1956 – Susan Ershler born, American mountaineer and public speaker; she was the fourth American woman to climb the Seven Summits; co-author with her husband Phil of Together on Top of the World: The Remarkable Story of the First Couple to Climb the Fabled Seven Summits, which was published in 2007.
1959 – Laura Chinchilla born, Costa Rican politician; first woman President of Costa Rica (2010-2014); Vice President and Minister of Justice (2006-2008); National Assembly Deputy for San José (2002-2006).
1959 – Chiaki Morosawa born, Japanese anime screenwriter; creator of the fictional universe “Cosmic Era.” She died in 2016, at the age of 56, from Aortic dissection (AD).
1968 – Iris Chang born, daughter of Taiwanese emigrants, American journalist and historical nonfiction author. Noted for Thread of the Silkworm; The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II; and The Chinese in America.
1970 – Jennifer Weiner born, American screenwriter, television producer, humorist and novelist; noted for In Her Shoes. She is a vocal critic of gender bias in both the publishing industry and the media.
1971 – Christianne Meneses Jacobs born, Nicaraguan writer, publisher, editor and bi-lingual teacher; her family came to America when she was 17 years old. In 2005, she co-founded with her husband Iguana, a Spanish language educational magazine for children ages 7-12, which won the 2009 Multicultural Children’s Publication Award from the National Association for Multicultural Education, and ¡YO SÉ! (I Know!), a Spanish language children’s magazine featuring pop culture and young Latinos making a difference in society, which debuted in 2008.
1976 – Ada Limón born, in 2022, she was appointed as the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States, the first woman of Mexican American heritage to be appointed to the post. She is a poet, magazine contributor, and educator. Her 2015 poetry collection, Bright Dead Things, was a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry, and in 2018, her book ,The Carrying: Poems, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry.
1977 – Lauren Weisberger, American author; best known for her 2003 bestseller, The Devil Wears Prada, largely based on her 10-month experience as an assistant to Vogue magazine editor-in-chief Anna Wintour.
1978 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Stump v. Sparkman in favor of judicial immunity, overturning the decision by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals that held Judge Harold D. Stump had lost his immunity because he had failed to observe “elementary principles of due process.” In 1971, Ora Spitler McFarlin of Auburn, Indiana, through her attorney Warren G. Sunday, presented a petition to Judge Harold D. Stump of the DeKalb County Circuit Court asking to have her 15-year-old daughter, Linda Spitler, surgically sterilized. The petition alleged that the daughter was "somewhat retarded," was associating with "older youth and young men," and that it would be in the daughter's best interest to undergo a tubal ligation "to prevent unfortunate circumstances." Judge Stump signed the requested order ex parte the same day that he received the petition. The daughter had no notice of it. No guardian ad litem was appointed to represent her interest, and no hearing was held. Neither the petition nor the order was filed with the clerk of the circuit court, nor did the order cite any statutory authority for the action being taken. On July 15, Linda Spitler entered DeKalb Memorial Hospital, just four blocks from her home. She was told that she was to have her appendix removed. The next day a tubal ligation was performed on her by Dr. John H. Hines, M.D., assisted by Dr. Harry M. Covell, M.D., and anesthesiologist Dr. John C. Harvey, M.D. In 1973, Linda Spitler married Leo Sparkman. Failing to become pregnant, she learned from Dr. Hines in 1975 that she had been sterilized. The Sparkmans brought action for damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and 42 U.S.C. § 1985(3) for alleged deprivation of Linda Sparkman's civil rights against Ora McFarlin, her attorney, Judge Stump, the doctors who performed the operation, and the hospital where it was performed. Leo Sparkman asserted a pendent claim under state law for loss of potential fatherhood. Linda Sparkman also asserted pendent state claims for assault and battery and medical malpractice. The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana. The district court judge, Jesse E. Eschbach, dismissed the case, holding that the only state action, which was necessary to the federal claims, was Judge Stump's approval of the petition and that he was "clothed with absolute judicial immunity", thereby cutting off the claims against the other defendants as well. The Sparkmans appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which reversed the dismissal. Although Indiana statute law permitted the sterilization of institutionalized persons under certain circumstances, it provided for the right to notice, the opportunity to defend and the right to appeal. The Court of Appeals found no basis in statutory or common law for a court to order the sterilization of a minor child simply upon a parent's petition. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the decision. Justice Byron White wrote, “A judge is absolutely immune from liability for his judicial acts even if his exercise of authority is flawed by the commission of grave procedural errors.” The decision has been called one of the most controversial decisions in U.S. Supreme Court history. Indiana repealed all laws concerning sterilization of the mentally ill in 1974.
Linda Spitler Sparkman
1986 – Lady Gaga born as Stefani Germanotta, American singer-songwriter, one of the best-selling music artists in history. Also known for her philanthropy and activism, including donating the proceeds from her January 2010 Radio City Music Hall concert as well as that day’s profits from her online store to the Haitian reconstruction relief fund, a total of $500,000, and donated $1.5 million from sales of a bracelet she designed to the Japan relief fund after the devastating 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. She is also a member of Artists Against Fracking, donated $1 million to the American Red Cross for victims of Hurricane Sandy, and has raised over $202 million to fight HIV and AIDS. Her music was banned by the Chinese government as the work of a ‘hostile foreign force’ after she appeared with the Dalai Lama at the 2016 U.S. Conference of Mayors to talk about the power of kindness and compassion.
2013 – Pope Francis becomes the first Pope to wash the feet of women in the Maundy Thursday service.
2020 – The UK had a shortage of midwives on National Health Service maternity units even before the coronavirus outbreak, but now one in five midwifery posts is unfilled, raising concerns about the safety of pregnant women, new mothers, and newborn babies. The Royal College of Midwives is urging NHS leaders to ‘ringfence’ maternity services so midwives will not be redeployed to care for people with Covid-19, fall sick themselves, or be forced to self-isolate because of illness within their household. Gill Walton, chief executive of the RCM, said: “While other areas of the health service can postpone and cancel procedures, there is still an ongoing need for maternity services. Women are still pregnant, still having babies, and they need the care and support of properly resourced maternity services.” A survey carried out by the RCM, covering every region of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, found the 10% vacancy rate in midwifery posts before the crisis had doubled to 20%. More than a fifth – 22% – of survey respondents also reported that local midwife-led maternity units had closed. Almost a third (32%) stopped offering home births, and a further 4% limited the home birth option. In 11 cases, midwife-led maternity units had closed in order to increase facilities for assessing or caring for coronavirus patients. The vast majority (78%) of midwifery leaders who responded to the survey said routine face-to-face antenatal and postnatal visits had ended, with a further 9% restricting face-to-face postnatal visits.
Gil Walton of the RCM
2021 – Human Rights Watch (HRW) researchers reviewed 27 laws in Qatar on male guardianship covering work, accommodation, and status, then interviewed Qatari women, to determine how the system actually works in practice. Their report says that women must get permission from male guardians – fathers, brothers, uncles, or husbands – to exercise many basic rights. Women cannot be primary carers of their children, even if they are divorced or the children’s father has died. If the child has no male relative to act as guardian, the government takes on this role. Women interviewed for the report described how their guardians denied them permission to drive, travel, study, work, or marry someone of their own choosing. “Girls are [constantly] in quarantine,” said one woman. “What the whole world experiences now, this is normal life for girls in Qatar.” A spokesperson for the Qatari government responded: “Gender equality and female empowerment are central to Qatar’s success and vision. Qatar is an outspoken advocate for women’s rights at home and abroad. The Human Rights Watch report inaccurately portrays Qatar’s laws, policies and practices related to women. The accounts mentioned in the report are not aligned with our constitution, laws or policies. The government will investigate these cases and prosecute anyone who has broken the law.” The government statement said that women could act as guardians to obtain passports or ID cards for their children, that women did not need permission to accept a scholarship or to work at ministries, government institutions, or schools. Rothna Begum, women’s rights researcher at HRW, said, “The government in Qatar don’t want women to know the rules. They want men to have power and control. So if laws are changed, the government don’t inform women and when they introduce restrictions they don’t tell them that clearly, either. These laws exist in a nefarious way and women have to base decisions on an assumption that they must be obedient to men. Women are often asked to have permission from a male guardian even if it’s not written in the regulations. So, the government told us that women don’t need male permission to work, yet in many government jobs HR [human resources departments] were saying: ‘Show us a letter from a man.’ Or, passport law says a woman can get her own passport but there have been instances where officials say a father must approve the application.” Begum added, “There are no anti-discrimination laws in Qatar, no agency you can go to if you want to complain. There are no functioning women’s rights organisations who can monitor how women are treated or hold the government to account.” Some of the women interviewed reported being asked for proof of marriage in order to access women’s healthcare, such as antenatal care, vaginal ultrasounds, and smear tests. In January, 2020, the government had lifted the requirement that women must have a guardian’s permission to obtain driving licences.
Human Rights Watch — Rothna Begum, women’s rights researcher in Qatar
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G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies!
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