Mary Engle Pennington, of the United States, and Marie Curie, of Poland, defied all odds against women during the late 1800s to become renowned scientists within their respective fields.
Mary Engle Pennington was 12 years old when she came across a book on medical chemistry that sparked her curiosity. Years later, in an interview with the New Yorker she would describe this as a milestone in her life; “…to know that oxygen and nitrogen, things I couldn’t touch, taste, or smell, really existed…lickety hoop…this was amazing and I wanted to know more, much more, and so I asked the headmistress at my school for a course in chemistry.” Pennington was denied. This was 1884 and such pursuits by women were considered wholly inappropriate and unladylike. Curiosity, imagination, and higher education were not encouraged for women, whose choices for life pursuits were very constricted to marriage, often arranged.
Pennington was raised in a Quaker family with a tradition that recognized men and women as equals and encouraged women to speak up and write, activities denied to women in general. Undaunted, and not to be denied, in 1890 she asked to be admitted to the University of Pennsylvania School of Science and was accepted. She completed her degree in two years but was denied a diploma because the Board of Trustees disapproved of a woman’s presence in the university. This disapproval was circumvented by a university statute that allowed students in extraordinary cases to be enrolled in graduate studies. So it is, that Pennington entered the University Electro Chemical School and graduated in 1895 with a PHD. M.E. As she was reluctantly known much of her life to obscure her identity as a woman on job applications, she went on to become the nation’s authority on refrigeration and the means of protecting us from the bacteria that accumulated in milk, eggs, fish, and poultry responsible for sickness and death.
Five years her senior on the other side of the Atlantic, Marie Sklodowska Curie, born in 1867 into a scholarly and genius mathematics family, had been denied entrance to universities in her native Poland and in France. Doggedly, and not to be denied, she persistently pursued education in the Flying University, available to women and eventually the University of Paris. The discoverer of radium and polonium, she would become the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics and another in Chemistry. Asked to speak with her husband on radioactivity, she, as a woman and for the skeptics of women’s capacity, was denied the speaker’s platform.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Coffin Mott would become two of the most prominent women’s rights activists in the United States upon planning the first ever women’s rights conference in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848.
However, as the 20th century arrived, changes for women’s rights were in the wind. With courage and fortitude and perseverance, women worldwide were pursuing the right to vote, though efforts began years earlier. In the United States, after decades of hearings before the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on resolutions extending the right to vote to women in federal elections were rebuffed, women, led by Alice Paul, a Quaker from New Jersey, were marching in the streets and picketing the White House and President Woodrow Wilson. Beaten, jailed, jeered at, and force-fed on hunger strikes, women committed to the fight for freedom and fair representation of the governed continued.
Years earlier in 1892, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in a
speech titled “Solitude of Self,” she delivered before the House Judiciary Committee, described the satire of a woman’s position described in Shakespeare’s Titus and Andronicus thusly: “Rude men seized the King’s daughter, cut out her tongue, cut off her hands, and then bid her to call for water and wash her hands.” This, she said, was the condition of women today, robbed of natural rights to be all that they could be, denied education, denied employment, and handicapped by law and custom. Ostracized, denied the right to vote and inclusion in a representative government, and robbed of self-respect, women felt compelled to fight for their benefit, happiness, and the general good.
In 1868 and 1870, after the Civil War, the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution extended citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the U.S. and specified “that the right to vote shall not be denied on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Half the nation’s population, women, were not, however, included as entitled citizens born or naturalized in the United States. Finally, on June 4th, 1919, Congress passed a resolution supported reluctantly by President Wilson that stated “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied…on account of sex.” It would take a full year and by a final one vote in the Tennessee legislature for the 19th Amendment to be ratified.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, caring, committed citizens can change the world,” opined cultural anthropologist Margaret Meade. Indeed, the ratification of the 19th Amendment—which was set in motion half a century earlier by a committee of five and the signatures of 68 women in the first women’s conference in human history to discuss the social, civil, and religious conditions and rights of women, held in Seneca, New York, in 1848—proved her right.
Walt Longmire, the fictional Wyoming sheriff introduced in Craig Johnson’s Longmire western series, reflects on “how it is a women’s lot to be dismissed by men.” Where did this begin?
Gone, But Not Forgotten
In 1478 BC, Hatshepsut, daughter, sister, and wife of a king, became the Pharaoh in Egypt’s 18th Dynasty. She reigned for 21 years and is considered by Egyptologists as one the most successful Pharaohs. She was successful in war, established important trade routes, and commissioned hundreds of construction projects. Yet after her death and toward the end of her stepson’s reign, Hatshepsut’s name was erased and her images chiseled off monuments, causing her to disappear from Egyptian history until rediscovered in 1822. The ancients believed that if you were invisible and forgotten, you ceased to be.
Some have conjectured that, while it was unusual for a woman to be Pharaoh, a successful and glorious reign as Hatshepsut’s demonstrated that a woman was as capable of governing as a male, and was a threat to future kings. Men preferred women to be content with their traditional lot as wife, sister, and eventual mother of a king. And so, it has been for centuries that powerful and contributing women have been relegated to the dust bin and forgotten in history.
Fast forward to the New World…Massachusetts in 1692. For 15 months, mass hysteria ruled the colony in what would later be described as the deadliest witch hunt in history. For 60 years, women had worked side by side with men to forge a home and community out of the wilderness of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Taming the wilderness and facing Native Americans was no small task, yet the Colony had become prosperous. But when Preacher Cotton Mather tried to prove that demons were alive and among us and that all who did not believe in ghosts were heretics, life for women changed. In the Puritan-based religious community, women were believed to be inherently sinful and weak in body and soul and, therefore, more susceptible to the tricks of Satan than men. So, it followed that women, after centuries of dismissal as capable equals, became the target for every incident outside of church behavior norms. Unmarried women and women without children were targets of neighbor arguments, and the confusion of teenage girls as they struggled with growing up. Over 15 months, 200 were accused of witchcraft. Nineteen were convicted and 14 women were hung before this march against the devil, identified as the culprit in simple small infractions, was thwarted in 1693.
Annapolis bears the name of Queen Anne of Great Britain, who was sometimes described as a weak Monarch (1702–1714) by male counterparts. Yet, Anne united Scotland and England, was successful in war with France and Spain, created thoroughbred racing as an industry celebrated annually at Ascot, regularly attended meetings of Parliament, and “presided over an age of artistic, literary, scientific, economic and political advancement made possible by the stability and prosperity of her reign.” She also left the monarchy fiscally solvent for 100 years. Not a bad legacy.
On April 26th, 1777, 16-year-old Sybil Ludington rode through a dark and rainy night 40 miles to summon the militia for her father, Colonel Ludington, to protect Danbury, Connecticut, from the British. The militia arrived too late to prevent some burning, but was able to drive the British back to the sea at Cape Cod. Sybil rode alone and further than Paul Revere, a middle-aged respected and wealthy silver smith accompanied by other men. He was eulogized by author John Greenleaf Whittier in 1861 in his poem “Paul Revere’s Ride.” Sybil Ludington was rediscovered 200 years later by Artist Anne Huntington of Connecticut, who memorialized her in bronze statues riding her horse; a statue, among the few of women (8 percent of all memorial monuments), is placed in Danbury and Washington, D.C. Still, Paul Revere is the name publicly remembered with rousing the battle cry of “the British are coming” for his courageous venture in 1775. There were others.
The First Sirens
Abigail Adams, painted by Gilbert Stuart, pleaded with her husband John, to “remember the ladies” when draftingthe Declaration of Independence.
Abigail Adams—the wife of John, a patriot and founder of the new United States—issued the first siren cry for women’s rights. In March of 1776 in a long letter to her husband in Philadelphia she writes:
Though John Adams, our second President, sought the advice and counsel of his wife, his semi-humorous remark to her letter on “Despotism of the Petticoat” indicated he would not be fighting for women’s rights. Abigail, a supporter of education for women and recognition of equality with men, however, had thrown down the gauntlet. One hundred fifty years later, after fomenting rebellion, the rights of Ladies would be remembered.
The issue of slavery was also avoided by the authors of our Declaration. In 1832, when journalist William Lloyd Garrison organized an anti-slavery association, he invited the full participation of women. Women, particularly of the Quaker faith, where women and men were considered equals, had begun to gain fame as writers and speakers, actions not permitted in the social culture for women in general. Other abolitionists did not welcome Garrison’s ideas. For Quaker women, such as Lucretia Mott and the Grimke sisters, speaking in public on the issue of slavery was also a noteworthy stand for women’s rights and social reform.
Queen Anne of Great Britain and Ireland, from whom the City of Annapolis was named, painted by Michael Dahl.
Addressing this threat to societal norms, the General Assembly of the Congregational Church warned women that such action, speaking in public, directly defied St. Paul’s instruction to women to be silent in church (1 Timothy 2:12). Speaking to mixed crowds was considered promiscuous by some. Other were just uncertain as to what was proper, as the writings of the Grimke sisters were becoming increasingly popular and striking a chord to the tyranny of men over women’s lives. The Grimke sisters, Sarah and Angelina, had witnessed slavery first-hand growing up on the family plantation in South Carolina and were among the first to speak out on social reform. They also preached “that women were not created as a gift or for the possession of men, but rather as unique, intelligent, capable beings.” They and Lucretia Mott and their followers were ridiculed and threatened for their public abolitionist stands. Nevertheless, they would not be silenced.
In 1840, the first World Anti-Slavery Convention was held in London. Lucretia Mott, Quaker preacher, teacher, and outstanding public speaker, was selected with five other women to attend the conference. But, as the first day and swearing in of delegates transpired and after a day of debate, the women were excluded from the conference participation. They were allowed to sit in the gallery and watch the proceedings, but not allowed to speak.
Nevertheless, Mott was described by an Irish reporter as “the Lioness of the Convention.” The men that convened did not know what they had wrought. This humiliating action of excluding women intimately involved with the anti-slavery movement, would inspire the women to other actions. Also attending the convention was Elizabeth Cady Stanton, on her honeymoon with her lawyer husband. Stanton and Mott met for the first time, became fast friends, and went on to turn their attention to the rights of women. They planned the first ever conference for women, in 1848 in Seneca, New York.
Upcoming Year of the Woman Events
Anne Arundel Women Giving Together Wednesday, March 4, 2020, 6 - 8 pm, Location TBD Joined by speaker Maggie Gunther Osborn, Sr. VP and Chief Strategy Officer for United Philanthropy Forum—her topic is: Looking to the Future: Census 2020. Let’s look into the future together! Givingtogether.org. Admission is free and open to the entire community.
Women Of The World Festival Baltimore Saturday, March 7, 2020, 10 am - 4 pm, Columbus Center Celebrating all women who are gaining momentum to collectively make change, the WOW Festival will feature artists, writers, politicians, performers and activists to promote inclusivity, honor the strength and inventiveness of women, and actively break down societal barriers through events, workshops, lectures, debates, activities, and performances. Presented by Notre Dame of Maryland University. Admission is $10-30.
2020 Anne Arundel County Trust for Preservation Lecture Series Monday, March 9, 2020, 6 pm, AACC Robert E. Kauffman Theater Kacy Rohn will be discussing the outstanding digital story map program she created for the Maryland Historical Trust that provides a tour highlighting the people and places of the Maryland women’s suffrage movement. Her storymap program can be accessed under “Related Pieces” at Yearofthewoman.net. Admission is free and open to the entire community.
Fly Girls: Women Aviators in WWI Monday, March 16, 2020, 10 am - 4 pm, Severna Park Community Library Join lecturer Bruce Kagan for this stirring historical presentation on the little known heroic contribution brave women made to win WW II. These women were the first female pilots of US military aircraft. Their story is of women past, present, and future. Admission is free and open to the entire community.
