Joyita Mondal - trans trailblazer

In July 2017, Joyita Mondal was appointed as a judge on a Lok Adalat (a type of civil court) in West Bengal, India, making her the first transgender person to serve in such a role in that country. This comes after years of hard work fighting for the rights of the LGBT community, as well as for the rights of other marginalized communities -- the elderly, the disabled, and anyone else facing discrimination.

She didn't set out to become an activist. When she left home, she was simply trying to escape the oppressive environment of her small Hindu community, where she faced bullying by her peers and had few opportunities to live life on her own terms. She dropped out of school and moved to Islampur, a small city in the Uttar Dinajpur region, where, although she was able to find some work as a dancer in wedding ceremonies, she still had trouble finding a safe place to live and was often forced to beg for money to survive.

But she began to meet other transpeople, and after talking to them she founded her activist organization, 'Dinajpur Notun Alo Society' (Notun Alo means "new light") to help address some of their needs. "I started counseling sessions in hopes of reducing stigma by inviting relatives and family members of transgender persons. We showed films on the problems faced by the community. Further, sensitization of teachers and students in government and private schools and colleges started, and street plays at bus stands and other popular spaces were performed." She also began taking correspondence classes, and eventually earned a degree in law.

Her organization began looking for ways to assist other marginalized groups, and extend their outreach efforts beyond LGBT issues. "When I came to Islampur around nine years ago, my job was restricted to working for the rights and development of the transgender and LGBT community. But as I slowly progressed and got in touch with district administration officials, I felt the urge to work for all people and not just [the trans] community."

They began by addressing the needs of sex workers in local brothels, helping them register to vote and obtain identity cards, as well as locating services to help them with food and lodging. Then they began talking with the elderly members of their community. "We visited every house in the area for six months and shortlisted around 200 needy elderly people. We have submitted a proposal to the government for the construction of shelter home for elderly people."

Her work caught the attention of Judge Subroto Pole who appointed her as a Lok Adalat judge last year. Through her dedication to improving the lives of others, she has also made a huge change in her own life. "It gives me great satisfaction to know I have broken gender stereotypes. It is also gratifying to see those who once taunted me about my gender, stand before me with folded hands waiting for a judgment on their case."

For more reading:

Women's eNews "Meet the First Transgender Judge in India"

She The People "Meet Joyita Mondal, India’s First Transgender Lok Adalat Judge"

I can't do the work of SRPS without your your support!
If you like what you read, please share this post with your friends.

Read More

Harriet Brooks - Canada's first woman of nuclear science

Harriet Brooks (July 2, 1876 – April 17, 1933) enrolled at McGill University in Montreal in the mid-1890s, just a few years after they'd started admitting women. She knew from the start she wanted to study mathematics, and graduated in 1898 with a bachelor's degree in both in mathematics and natural philosophy -- the precursor to the field of physics.

Impressed with her scientific ability, Ernest Rutherford, the "father" of nuclear physics, and future Nobel winner (with much of his work being built on her research) accepted her as his first graduate student. With him, she studied electricity and magnetism, and graduated with a Master's in Electromagnetism in 1901, making her the first woman in Canada to earn a Master's degree.

After graduation, she left Montreal for the US, where she first served as a fellow at Bryn Mawr and then at Cambridge. She returned to Rutherford's lab, though, where she made a crucial scientific discovery. Working with the element thorium, she discovered that its radioactive decay emissions weren't the expected alpha, beta, or gamma rays, but instead were another element in the form of a gas "transmuted" from the parent element.

This new element was radon, which has a lower molecular weight than the thorium from which it was emitted. In fact, it was this discovery that laid the foundation for the development of the entire field of nuclear science, and created the basis for the work Rutherford did to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908.

In 1904 she moved again, this time to New York City where she took a position as a physics tutor at Barnard College, the women's college associated with Columbia. It was while there that she fell in love with a male physicist from Columbia, and the two planned to marry. When the Dean of Barnard found out, it was made clear that she was expect to resign on the date of her wedding. Instead, Harriet Brooks wrote a stern letter stating her opposition to such a ridiculous practice. "I think it is a duty I owe to my profession and to my sex to show that a woman has a right to the practice of her profession and cannot be condemned to abandon it merely because she marries. I cannot conceive how women’s colleges, inviting and encouraging women to enter professions can be justly founded or maintained denying such a principle."

Sadly, the policy wasn't changed, and she had to make a tough decision. She broke off the engagement, and eventually left Barnard entirely.

In 1906, she studied at the Curie Institute, where she discovered the recoil of radioactive atoms, using the radium Dr. Marie Curie had discovered. Her research showed that when a radioactive atom undergoes decay, a large alpha particle is released, and the atom is propelled in the opposite direction, proving Newton's Third Law applied to atomic particles as well.

Unexpectedly, considering her previous fight against women being forced to choose between marriage and academic research, in 1907 she married and retired from science completely. After nearly a decade of ground-breaking research where she was frequently compared to Marie Curie, she seemed content to leave future research to others. Perhaps she saw first hand the exhausting schedule of Marie Curie, busy juggling a family and a scientific career, when she was in Paris, and decided she was satisfied with her contributions in one area and was eager to explore the other.

You can read more about her work in her McGill profile, "Remembering Harriet Brooks: Canada’s first female nuclear physicist"

I can't do the work of SRPS without your your support!
If you like what you read here, please share this post with your friends.

Read More

Women in Sports: Anna Lee Aldred

Anna Lee Aldred - The first female jockey
(April 19, 1921 – June 12, 2006)

Anne Lee grew up around horses and learned to ride when she three years old, and was racing ponies at state fairs and amateur tracks around Colorado and Wyoming while she was still in grade school. As the daughter of a prominent race horse trainer, and with an older brother working as a jockey, it seemed natural to her to look for a career as a rider, even if it other folks didn't think it was appropriate for a young woman in the 1930s.

While she was growing up, her family traveled around the West to different race tracks where her brother would ride the family's prized racehorses. Following in his footsteps, when she turned 18 in 1939 Anna Lee applied for a professional jockey's license from the Agua Caliente Racetrack, a popular racetrack in Tijuana, Mexico, that drew people from all over Southern California. The staff tried everything they could think of to keep her out, but since there wasn't any rule expressly forbidding women jockeys they had to let her ride. Like the other jockeys she received a small wooden badge that served as a license, making her the first American woman to work as a professional jockey.

She worked as a jockey for six years, racking up an impressive number of wins. But in 1945, she finally hit her finally height and weight, which was just a bit too tall and heavy to continue working as a jockey. Undaunted, she simply switched horses, so to speak, and became a rodeo rider. She performed impressive stunts on a galloping horse like back bends or standing on a saddle. For her prowess, she was inducted into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame in 1983.

Even after she married and settled down to raise a family, she continued to work with horses. She started a riding school in Southern California, teaching others the joy of horseback riding.

Read more about her in this Denver Post story from last year: "Aldred galloped into history as first female jockey in U.S."

I can't do the work of SRPS without your your support!
If you like what you read here, please share this post with your friends.

Read More

Women in Sports: Alice Greenough Orr

Alice Greenough Orr - Rodeo Queen
(March 17, 1902 – August 20, 1995)

Alice Greenough Orr claimed she was "born liberated" and she spent the rest of her life proving it. She grew up on a ranch in Montana where her father often let her work with the wild horses. Her stubbornness came in handy -- he figured if they got tired of trying to kick her off, they'd be tame enough for anyone else. While she was taming horses, she was also honing the skills needed to become an internationally celebrated rodeo star, and earn herself four saddle bronc championships.

Strong-willed as a teenager, she dropped out of school to deliver mail by horseback, covering a 35-mile route on horseback through three winters. Her goal at the time was to become a forest ranger, but when servicemen returned after WWI the government stopped hiring women.

Instead, in 1919 she and her sister Marge answered an ad looking for saddle bronc riders - an event deemed too dangerous for women riders in modern rodeos. After all those years taming wild horses, she easily earned a spot, and began what became her life's work: rodeo. She criss-crossed the US, covering nearly every state. She continued to win championships, her fame grew, and her touring schedule was expanded to include Europe and Australia. While touring Europe in the 1930s, she had tea with the Queen of England, then visited Spain where she rode fighting bulls into arenas before hopping off and leaving them for the matadors.

Back in the US, she continued touring, but broadened her involvement in rodeo organization, and branched out into stunt work in films and television. In 1936, she helped organize the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association to help performers negotiate better treatment by tour operators, who sometimes shortchanged them. In the 1940s, she established her own rodeo tour, offering the first women's barrel racing events.

She was the first woman inducted into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame, and one of the first women inducted into the rodeo division of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.

Read more about her and other pioneering cowgirls

I can't do the work of SRPS without your your support!
If you like what you read here, please share this post with your friends.

Read More

Uncovering Stories: Raye Montague - Navy Engineer

Raye Montague made up her mind about her career when she was seven years old. Her grandfather took her to see a one-person submarine captured from the Germans, and when she was looking inside of it, she knew exactly what she was going to do when she grew up. "I always knew I wanted to build ships."

And she did. That day with her grandfather was the spark that drove her to do everything she could to become an engineer. Which was already a challenge for pretty much anyone in the 1950s, but it was infinitely more difficult for Raye. Her mother told her she already had three strikes against her -- she was female, she was black, and her educational opportunities were severely limited by segregation -- but that wouldn't be enough to stop her if she was determined. Raye came from a long line of determined people (she was to be the third generation in her family to graduate from college) and it was with their support that she pushed herself to do well in school and find ways to work around the barriers society set for her because of her race and gender.

She finished high school with top grades, but couldn't attend the university she wanted to because it didn't admit black students. So she found a way around that barrier and attended the local black college. They didn't offer a degree in engineering, so she worked toward a degree in business, and took every math and science class she could. By the time she graduated she already had her eye on a job in the Navy.

"I graduated from AM&N on a Tuesday and went to Washington, DC, on Wednesday to take my resume to the US Navy. Arkansas did not have any computers at the time, and I knew that I wanted to work on one."

She started out as a computer systems operator, but kept pushing to advance. When she was told she would need to take night classes in programming, she bought a car, taught herself to drive, and made sure she got to those classes. She knew computers were the key to her career advancement. She also knew the technology was continually changing, and she was determined to keep pace.

Eventually, she earned the attention of her superiors, who recognized her brilliance and her dedication. They started giving her more challenging projects, and she continued to impress them. And she began earning awards. She also earned the title of registered professional engineer (RPE), proving that her seven-year-old self knew what she was talking about.


Along the way she got a lot of negative attention because of her race and gender, but she was used to that. She had already learned how to work around more challenging roadblocks. When her boss told her she couldn't work on the computer by herself, she brought her 3-year-old son in to the office with her. When she was told by a white colleague that she shouldn't accept an award that hadn't already been earned by a white woman, she scoffed at him and reminded him of how hard she's worked.

Eventually she was promoted into a civilian position with the equivalent rank as a captain, working as the Program Manager of Ships, in charge of the entire process of building a ship -- a dream job that combined her engineering talents with her business degree. She was the first woman to earn that position and she took it very seriously.

"I carried the weight of minorities and women on my shoulders at times. Regardless of what happened, I had to try harder."

When President Nixon wanted to see plans for a new ship in two months, no one thought it was possible. Until then, new designs took months to draft by hand. But they turned to Raye and asked her if she had any ideas. She did: computers. Her bosses gave her one month to prove it was possible to use computers to design a ship. She came back with a rough draft in less than a week. And in the process created the first computer design system for building ships.

In 1972, she was awarded the U.S. Navy’s Meritorious Civilian Service Award. In 1978, she was the first female professional engineer to receive the Society of Manufacturing Engineers Achievement Award.

Watch a short video about her life and work.
Check out a series of interviews with her talking about growing up in Little Rock and Pine Buff and how she became a ground breaking engineer, organizations she belonged to as an adult, working for the Navy, and advice from her life.

I can't do the work of SRPS without your your support!
If you like what you read, please share this post with your friends.

Read More