#writeaboutwomen

[victoriamartinezwriter]

By the time Cuban women won the right to vote in 1933, Amalia Mallén de Ostolaza had been at the forefront of her country’s women’s suffrage movement for more than 20 years. During that time, she founded three organizations in support of women’s rights: Partido Nacional Feminista (National Feminist Party) in 1912, and Partido Sufgragista (Suffragist Party) and Partido Nacional Sufragista (National Suffragist Party) in 1913. She was also a writer and the editor of two women’s rights publications, including El Sufragista, the official publication of Partido Nacional Sufragista.

It was in her capacity of president of Partido Nacional Sufragista that she spoke at the Pan American Conference of Women in Baltimore, Maryland, in April 1922. This image has been preserved in the records of the National Woman’s Party and is part of The Library of Congress’ (@librarycongress ) “Women of Protest” online photograph collection (https://www.loc.gov/collections/women-of-protest/).

Amalia is one of the six women featured in my article, “Faces of Diversity in American First-Wave Feminism” (https://wp.me/p95c4A-fT).

Image credit, including original caption: “Amalia E. Mallen de Ostalaza [sic], Pres. of Nat[ional] Suffrage Party of Cuba.” Dated circa 1910-1920. Courtesy Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/item/mnwp000144/).

#History #WomensHistory #FirstWaveFeminism #Feminism #WomensRights #WomensSuffrage #UnitedStates #Cuba #AmaliaMallendeOstalaza #NationalWomansParty #LibraryofCongress #photographs #femalefriday #writeaboutwomen https://www.instagram.com/p/Bp9t-ndA1XJ/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1tj5938r4rs0h

[victoriamartinezwriter]

One of the ways American Lucie Bigelow Rosen, née Dodge (1890-1968), used her tremendous social and financial privilege was to sponsor Léon Theremin, a Russian scientist who invented one of the first electronic musical instruments, the eponymous "theremin." She also became one of his pupils, learning to expertly play the unique instrument and performing in the U.S. and Europe. This beautiful portrait shows Lucie posing with her theremin, possibly at Caramoor, the country estate she and her husband, Walter Tower Rosen, built in New York. Per the couple's wishes, the estate became after their deaths a center for music and the arts, and is today known as the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts (https://www.caramoor.org/). Lucie is one of the many women in history whose lives have never been properly studied and documented. From an episode in 1913 when she made international news for "running away" (this is the term that was used despite the fact that she was in her early 20s) from her mother's home to live an independent life, to her somewhat unconventional marriage, to her passionate dedication to music and art, Lucie's life is one that I believe is worthy of far more attention than it has received. Image courtesy Alchetron (https://alchetron.com/Lucie-Bigelow-Rosen#-), which also has many other photos of Lucie and some good background on her. Further background can be found at the following links: https://www.caramoor.org/about/history/ http://www.thereminworld.com/Article/13920/lucie-bigelow-rosen---getting-to-know-her http://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-walter-tower-rosen-house-no-35-west.html #FemaleFriday #WriteAboutWomen #LucieBigelowRosen #Theremin #womenshistory #musichistory #Caramoor https://www.instagram.com/p/BzBLQvqIHS9/?igshid=1hpu9eez79hnm

[victoriamartinezwriter]

I found it incredible, though not terribly surprising, that Ester Blenda Nordström (1891-1948), who wrote what has been called "the first democratic girls' book in Sweden" and is hailed as Sweden's first undercover investigative journalist, was virtually forgotten to mainstream history until just a few years ago. Nordström was a pioneer of investigative journalism in Sweden and made history when she became the first journalist of either gender in that country to go undercover. As I wrote in my latest short history for The Local Sweden: "In the summer of 1914, she created a false identity for herself, complete with a fictional fiancé, and took a job as a maid on a farm near Nyköping to investigate the working conditions that were driving young Swedish women in the profession to leave Sweden for North America. Her experience and findings were published in a series of articles in Svenska Dagbladet under the title 'En månad som tjänstflicka på en bondgård i Södermanland' (A Month as a Servant Girl on a Farm in Södermanland)." She also created Sweden's first norm-defying young female character in her 1919 novel "En rackarunge" - a precursor to and inspiration of Astrid Lindgren's "Pippi Longstocking." In researching this article, I read the familiar words "she died virtually forgotten by the public." It was just three years ago that Swedish filmmaker Anna Hylander rescued Nordström from obscurity with her documentary film, "Ester Blenda." This was followed in 2017 by Swedish journalist and author Fatima Bremmer’s book "Ett jävla solsken," which won the Swedish literary award The August Prize for Nonfiction that same year (though not yet published in English, it has been given the English title The Lone Woman). My article, "The woman who introduced undercover journalism to Sweden" can be found at https://tinyurl.com/y2sk8bft (please note that the article is premium content). Photo of Ester Blenda Nordström courtesy Riksarkivet (Sweden's National Archives). #Sweden #history #womenshistory #journalism #writeaboutwomen #EsterBlendaNordström #EsterBlenda #Ettjävlasolsken https://www.instagram.com/victoriamartinezwriter/p/BxSKdERJDSt/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=30ov3o5uwea5

[victoriamartinezwriter]

Esther (sometimes spelled Ester) Ellqvist-Bauer (b. 1880) was a Swedish artist whose life was cut short in 1918, when she, her husband (the artist John Bauer), their young son, and 39 others drowned following a ferry accident on Sweden's Lake Vättern. Esther studied art at the University of Arts, Crafts and Design (Konstfack) and The Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Kungliga Akademien för de fria konsterna), both in Stockholm. It was at the Royal Academy that she met John Bauer, whom she married in 1906. Following the marriage and the birth of the couple's son in 1915, Esther's career took a backseat to John's, but there is evidence that she was planning to resume her artistic endeavors in 1918, when the family boarded the ill-fated steam ferry Per Brahe bound for a new life in Stockholm. I wrote recently about the sinking of the Per Brahe in an article for The Local Sweden (subscriber content), which can be found here: https://www.thelocal.se/20190404/the-day-swedens-trolls-and-fairies-wept Image: Self Portrait, Esther Ellqvist, 1910, courtesy Wikimedia Commons. #FemaleFriday #EstherEllqvist #art #WriteAboutWomen #Sweden https://www.instagram.com/victoriamartinezwriter/p/BwKHHEwAb0f/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=ssxn99y9524t

[victoriamartinezwriter]

For the final #FemaleFriday of Women's History Month, I'm highlighting another women whose work in the field of women's history has and does inspire me in my historical research and writing. British historian Sheila Rowbotham's (b. 1943) 1973 book "Hidden From History: Rediscovering Women in History From the 17th Century to the Present" was one of the first I read on the subject that just absolutely blew me away. I even sent her a gushing email, and was thrilled to get a very thoughtful response. The book remains a well-read, much-marked, and frequently-cited volume on my bookshelf. Like the other women I have featured, she is a prolific writer, with many great works to her name; I only single out "Hidden From History" here because it remains my favorite. Below I quote a passage from the Introduction to the American Edition, the volume I own, which was published in 1976. It is not an inspirational quote, per se, but rather one that I follow as a principle in my research and writing in general: "We need to combine popular enthusiasm and directness of style with painstaking research, even though present-day society, with its pressures of work, money and political activity, makes it difficult for one person to supply both." The image Sheila Rowbotham in the graphic I've created is courtesy Pluto Press (https://www.plutobooks.com/author/sheila-rowbotham/). You can find more about Sheila here (https://www.manchester.ac.uk/research/sheila.rowbotham/publications) and here (https://www.bl.uk/people/sheila-rowbotham). #WomensHistoryMonth #SheilaRowbotham #WomensHistory #WriteAboutWomen #Feminism https://www.instagram.com/victoriamartinezwriter/p/BvmWZ2ZAyu3/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1th9asxmn91pe

[victoriamartinezwriter]

By now, you've undoubtedly heard of "The Green Book" - and by that, I don't just mean the film, I mean the actual guidebook that helped African Americans literally and figuratively navigate Jim Crow America. But while this important part of American history is actively being written, little more than a few lines have ever been dedicated to the "mother" of the Green Book, Alma Duke Green. Her life and her contributions to the Green Book were and still are obscured by the double burden of racism and sexism, and primary source material on her is correspondingly scarce. But after seeing Alma's name briefly mentioned in an article, I began doing research on her to see what I could find. It turned out to be a glorious rabbit hole in which I was immediately immersed in following a paper trail that enabled me to begin to sketch out this remarkable woman. I had hoped that a mainstream magazine might be interested in her story, but - alas - though I was told more than once it was a great story, not a single outlet I contacted would publish it. So, as I often do, I have published it on my blog, and hope that it will help to begin the writing of a new narrative of the Green Book that includes its "mother." https://abitofhistoryblog.com/2019/03/25/the-mother-of-the-green-book-ignored-by-history/ Image of Alma Duke Green, pictured in the 1961 edition of “The Green Book” (courtesy New York Public Library). #WomensHistoryMonth #WriteAboutWomen #TheGreenBook #AlmaDukeGreen https://www.instagram.com/victoriamartinezwriter/p/BveeKolgccM/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=z5g648hegwmr

[victoriamartinezwriter]

While researching a recent article about "mixed bathing" in the early 1900s, I came across an article from 1920 that made me both cringe and laugh. I couldn't use it in the article, so I'm sharing an excerpt of it here. Definitely a "you've come a long way, baby" read. “The short-haired woman has the decided advantage in sea bathing. She need not wear those appalling rubber caps which are hideous enough to justify divorce on the spot. And, by the way, it is surprising to notice how few women show to advantage when bathing. An English magistrate has just been advocating separate bathing beaches for men and women at seaside resorts. He does not seem to be an uplifter or a purist. He bases his demand on public policy. Broken engagements, he says, and therefore a lowered marriage rate result from mixed bathing. Women do not show to advantage when they are in the water or after they leave it. A wet woman is usually uncharming to the eye. She is unattractive when covered by an adequate bathing dress. She is apt to be still more uncharming if the bathing dress is inadequate, as it usually is.” -excerpt from an article in "The Argonaut" (San Francisco, Calif.) July 10, 1920. Image credit: "Bathing Beach, 1920," (public domain) courtesy U.S. Library of Congress (http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2016828042/) The article I wrote about mixed bathing, "The Swedish beach that was the Ibiza of the early 1900s" (subscriber content), can be found at https://www.thelocal.se/20190307/the-swedish-beach-that-was-the-ibiza-of-the-early-1900s #womenshistorymonth #womenshistory #writeaboutwomen #swimsuits #mixedbathing #1920sfashion #1920s https://www.instagram.com/victoriamartinezwriter/p/Bu30rb9AiVq/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1wwq23td6ti6l

[victoriamartinezwriter]

Today, on International Women's Day, as so many posts celebrate women of the past and present, it's important to remember that the World Economic Forum has estimated that gender parity is still 200 years away. To give some perspective, it's been almost that long since Swedish writer Fredrika Bremer wrote in her 1856 novel Hertha the following words, which still ring true: “Women… are not yet all that they might be. Their full day is not yet come.” It is a day that might come a lot sooner than 200 years if the level of interest and enthusiasm expressed on March 8 were sustained throughout the year. You can read more about Bremer and her groundbreaking novel in an article I wrote last year, "The 19th Century Novel Missing from the Feminist Literary Canon" (https://viva.media/the-19th-century-swedish-novel-missing-from-the-feminist-literary-canon). #IWD2019 #BalanceforBetter #WriteAboutWomen #WomensHistory #FredrikaBremer #Hertha https://www.instagram.com/victoriamartinezwriter/p/Buvo7oTAhNo/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=130u8oi9kj6p3