Tag: feminism

A short herstory lesson

Several decades ago, I saw on some TV show, one of those battle-of-the-sexes “comedy” bits that have long since grown tiresome. In it, the female of the duo was talking up women by asserting that tissue paper was invented by one Kimberly Clark and plate glass by her compatriot Libby Owens Ford. People chuckled, hearts were blessed and women’s genuine accomplishments stayed hidden.

We’ve made some progress in more recent times. One popular example is the movie “Hidden Figures,” which finally brought credit to Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan for their vital roles in the U.S. space program.

Less well-known is their predecessor, Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), an English mathematician credited with being the world’s first computer programmer. Her notes on Babbage’s Analytical Engine are known as the first description for computer software. She gets some recognition via Ada Lovelace Day that celebrates women in STEM on the second Tuesday in October.

An internet search for “women making significant contributions” will yield a number of familiar names but even more that you haven’t heard of.

Here’s a partial list of the latter.

I’ll start with one that’s really important to me and maybe you, too. American chef Ruth Wakefield invented chocolate chip cookies. I realize that since that involves baking, it may be too close to old stereotypes, but it does say “chef.” And I can’t imagine a world without chocolate cookies. Still, women have given us a lot more than baked goods.

The first car heater was invented by Margaret A. Wilcox, an American engineer. And those windshield wipers? Invented by American Mary Anderson.

Marie Van Brittain Brown, an African-American inventor, created the first home security system. Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson is another African-American inventor to whom we are indebted — for portable fax, touchtone phone, call waiting and caller id.

Here’s another for those of you who know computers better than I. Grace Hopper, American computer scientist, invented the first compiler.

And for those of us who made mistakes back in the days of typewriters, thank goodness for Bette Nesmith Graham, who invented liquid paper. The American artist and inventor also was the mother of musician Michael Nesmith.

Here are two more: Caroline Herschel, a German astronomer, discovered several comets, including the periodic comet 35P/Herschel–Rigollet. Stephanie Kwolek, American chemist, invented Kevlar, a material used in bulletproof vests.

These are just some random examples. Maybe the limited information makes you want to know more about each of these people. It does that for me. You also can do your own search and find a lot more names.

Who can own a football?

A recent family conversation about gender brought to mind a touch football game from the late ’50s. We were visiting relatives in Georgia. As I recall, we were there for Thanksgiving. On Friday or Saturday afternoon, some friends of my aunt and uncle came by. While the adults chatted, the kids went out to play. This included the visitors’ son and daughter, who were about my age, as well as my sister, my cousin and me. My sister is nearly five years and my cousin a couple of years older than I. We probably were joined by a few other kids in her neighborhood.

It was a lot of fun. The daughter of the visitors seemed especially to enjoy it.

At this point, let me throw in a background anecdote. A few years before this, my sister had asked for and received a football for Christmas. It seemed better than any of the two or three that belonged to me. At least it was newer. It was used by my sister and the other big kids. So I rarely got to play with it early on. But that’s really beside the point. The point being that in my world, boys and girls both played touch football, and either could own footballs.

I’m not sure I realized that was anything other than the norm. But there were pressures to conform to society’s gender roles. We, no doubt, acquiesced in certain areas. I think we’ve made some progress, but my use of the past tense two sentences back may have been wishful thinking.

There was the time when my wife was upbraided by some random older woman because our then-infant daughter was wearing blue.

Not long ago, I sat in a medical waiting room, a young father was looking at a magazine with his pre-teen daughter. At one point he asked, “Is that a boy’s room of a girl’s room?” She guessed “girl’s.” So he gently pointed out items (he) associated with boys, concluding that it was a boy’s room.

Anyway, back to that Thanksgiving game. When we returned to the house, the visiting girl said to her parents, “I want a football for Christmas!”

The reply, from her mom: “Well, that’s too bad.”

The girl was about the same age my sister had been when she got a football for Christmas. Her mom’s reply shocked me then and continues to annoy me to this day.