Oveta Culp Hobby - military trailblazer

During World War II, like the other branches of the military, the US Army started a program to recruit women into non-combat positions to free up more (white) men for the front lines. Houston newspaper editor and philanthropist Oveta Culp Hobby (January 19, 1905 – August 16, 1995) was tapped to be the first director of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (later the Women's Army Corps, or WACs), a position she used to promote the right of all women to serve their country during its time of need.

Prior to the war, she'd studied law, served as a clerk for the Texas Legislature's judiciary committee, and helped plan the 1928 Democratic National Convention in Houston. She eventually married the former governor of Texas and owner of the Houston Post-Dispatch, where she took a position on the editorial board and used her position to make changes in how the newspaper covered stories important to women and minorities. She also wrote a couple of books about her time working in state government, and was quite active in state and federal activities.

In 1941, while she was visiting Washington, D.C., she was asked to head a section on women's activities for the army. While the US had not officially entered the war yet, the army was actively drafting men into its ranks, and many women were also eager to find a way to serve. She studied the women's branches of the French and British armies and used their successes and failures as a guide for creating something similar for the US Army.

The women who served in the WAC were the first women other than nurses to wear U.S. Army uniforms and, thanks to her tireless work to integrate them within the military, they were the first women to receive military benefits through the GI Bill. She used her extensive knowledge of publicity and organization to promote and protect the importance of the women serving to the overall military goals.

Unlike the WAVES (the Navy's women's branch), the WAAC/WAC was integrated from the outset, although only at 10% representation of African American women (supposedly to match the level of representation in the overall population). Not only did Oveta Culp Hobby insist that black women be included in the corps, but she worked to make sure they were also invited to be part of the first class of officers.

She served as director for the duration of the war, ultimately achieving the rank of colonel, and was the first woman in the Army awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for efforts.

After the war, she returned to Houston and to her work with the newspaper and her philanthropic and political pursuits, continuing her support of civil rights issues as well as improving the lives of women across Texas.

You can listen to an interview with her from January 16, 1944 (starts at 10:00). It's interesting to note how important it is for her to address the fitness, the safety, and the domesticity of the WACs. Clearly she knew these were concerns many Americans had when thinking about women serving in the military, and they generally echo the same types of issues brought up in other areas such as women work in shipyards and munitions plants, and how women were treated during and after the war.

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Betty Gillies - flight leader

Betty Gillies (January 7, 1908 – October 14, 1998) was a pioneering American aviatrix who worked to promote the role of women in aviation, and the first pilot to qualify for the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (which became the Women Airforce Service Pilots, WASPs) during World War II.

She began taking flying lessons in 1928, and earned her license in 1929. Later that year, she attended a meeting of other female pilots, where they formed The Ninety-Nines (so named because there were 99 charter members) led by flying pioneer Amelia Earhart. In 1930 she married Bud Gillies, vice president at Grumman Aircraft Corporation. And she continued flying, working to earn a commercial pilot's license.

In 1939, she served as president of the 99s and organized efforts to convince the Civil Aeronautics Authority to repeal its ban on women flying during pregnancy. This was a personal issue for Betty, as she was a young mother and anticipated having more children. If pregnant and postpartum women couldn't fly, they wouldn't be able to meet the required 10 hours of flight every six months to maintain their commercial license, forcing them to retake all their tests again after their child was born, at considerable expense.

When the US finally entered World War II, women pilots were ready to step in as needed. When Betty received a telegram from her friend and fellow pilot Nancy Love to join her new wartime program, the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, Betty left immediately. By this time she'd been flying for 14 years, with over 1400 flying hours and several aeronautical ratings, and she became the first pilot to qualify. When Nancy Love left to start another branch in Texas shortly thereafter, Betty was promoted to squadron leader assigned to the 2nd Ferrying Group, based out of Wilmington, Delaware, on the New Castle Army Air Base, where she served during the duration of the war.

Her job was to organize ferrying missions from the factories where the planes were assembled to air bases across North America where they would then be flown into service by male soldiers. This enabled more men to be sent overseas, while women would perform as many stateside duties as possible.

Ferrying was an often grueling job, requiring pilots to fly long distances in all kinds of weather, with only short breaks to refuel the planes and let the pilots rest. One mission required four legs between Maryland and Alberta, Canada. Betty's squadron ferried four fighters and were back on base two days later.

But there was adventure too. During this time she got to fly a variety of planes commissioned by the Navy. She was the first woman to fly the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighter, and at the other end of the flying spectrum, she and Nancy Love were the first women to fly the Boeing B-17s Flying Fortress.

After the war, she and her family moved to California, where Betty operated a ham radio, connecting phone calls to ships in the Pacific, as well as communicating regularly with staff and Navy personnel in the Antarctic, and participating in the Navy MARS program (Military Auxiliary Radio System, where civilians assisted the military with communication efforts during times of emergency). She continued flying, and remained active in promoting the role of women in aviation. From 1953 to 1961, she served as the Chair of the All Woman Transcontinental Air Race, and in 1964 she served on the first Federal Aviation Administration Women's Advisory Committee.

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Ola Mildred Rexroat - brave pilot

Ola Mildred "Millie" Rexroat (August 28, 1917 – June 28, 2017) was born in Argonia, Kansas, in 1917. Her father was a white man who worked as a publisher and editor, and her mother was an Oglala-Lakota Indian who grew up on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. While Millie's family moved from town to town as she was growing up, she spent plenty of time visiting her grandmother on the reservation in South Dakota. In 1932, she graduated from St. Mary's Indian High School for Girls in Springfield, South Dakota, but didn't have much of an idea of what she wanted to do with her life. Over the next few years she bounced around from location to location, and job to job, before finally settling down to complete her bachelor's degree in art from the University of New Mexico in 1939.

When the US finally entered World War II, Millie and her mother and sisters moved to Washington, DC, where they found work at the Army War College. But Millie wasn't content to spend the war working in an office. She wanted to do something more. At first she considered joining the Women's Army Corps (WAC), or maybe the United States Naval Reserve (WAVES), but when she learned of the WASPs, she was sure that was where she belonged.

Millie had no prior flying experience, but that didn't stop her. She found a local flight school that offered a series of lesson for only $8 an hour. After 35 hours of flying, she was qualified to apply. After graduating from training in Sweetwater, Texas, in 1944, she became the only Native American woman to serve in the WASPs. She was stationed at Eagle Pass Army Airfield where she took on the dangerous job of towing aerial gunnery targets to help new recruits learn to operate the big machinery.

"You didn't have time to be frightened or scared or anything like that. I was usually more concerned about my landings."

Sadly for Millie, the WASP program was disbanded later that same year. But she had found her place. Even if she wasn't able to fly, she could still work with other pilots. She joined the Air Force Reserves, where she was called into active duty during the Korean War, and later served for ten years as an air traffic controller.

For more information about her life and career, check out her bio on the Fly Girls series site.

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Hazel Ying Lee - fearless flyer

In 1932, Hazel Ying Lee (August 24, 1912 – November 25, 1944) became one of the first Chinese-American women to earn a pilot's license. It was only months after her first airplane ride, when she'd been so thrilled by the experience she immediately joined the Chinese Flying Club of Portland, Oregon, where she'd lived her entire life. At the time, she was working as an elevator operator at a department store, one of the few jobs a Chinese-American woman could get at the time. Her mother tried to talk her out of flying, but Hazel wasn't having it. She was going to become a pilot and find a way to fly as often as possible.

The very next year, when Japanese forces began to make incursions into China, Hazel traveled all the way to China planning on volunteering for the Chinese Air Force. They turned her away because of her gender, despite their dire need for trained pilots. She stayed in China, working for a private airline. In 1937, when Japan finally invaded China, with large scale bombings, it was Hazel's ability to remain calm in a crisis that likely saved the lives of many of her friends and family, as she was able to locate a safe shelter for them during the attacks. In 1938, she escaped to Hong Kong, and then made her way to New York, where she worked for the Chinese government as a buyer to help them secure materials for their war effort.

When the US joined the war, Hazel looked for opportunities to serve, but there were few openings for women. In 1943, though, with the creation of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP), she found a job that suited her perfectly. She enlisted as soon as she could, and was in the 4th class of pilots accepted and sent to Sweetwater, Texas, for training. She was then assigned to the third Ferrying Group, based out of Michigan, where the auto factories were now building aircraft for the war. Her group was tasked with flying the planes from the factory to central locations around the country where they would then be shipped to the either the European or Pacific fronts.

Hazel was well respected by her fellow service pilots as well as her superiors. She was often heard saying she'd "take and delivery anything." No risk was too much for her. During her time as a WASP, she had two forced landings -- where she had to land a plane under less than ideal circumstances -- and in both cases it was her cool demeanor that probably saved her life. In one case, she had to set the plane down in a Kansas wheat field, and then fend off an angry farmer who was convinced she was a Japanese invader.

Photo caption: WASPs being briefed in ready-room, Avenger Field, Sweetwater, Texas, May 1943. Front row, l to r: Group Commander Charles M. Sproul, Irma Cleveland, Faith Buchner, Martha Lundy, Mary Jane Stevens, Anabelle Kekic. Back row, l to r: Ruby Mullins, Hazel Ying Lee, Virginia Harris Mullins. Source: Texas Women's University.

In 1944, she was selected for a prestigious series of intensive training classes at the Pursuit School at Brownsville, Texas, where she and a handful of other women pilots who flew the faster, higher powered fighters.

Unfortunately, her flying career ended entirely too soon. In November 1944 she was sent to upstate New York to pick up a plane to deliver to Montana. As she was approaching the runway for her final landing on this multi-leg journey, there was a mix up in the control tower, and she collided with another plane. Both went up in flames, and while they were able to pull her from the wreck, she died two days later from her burns.

I wonder what would have become of her after the war had she lived? Would she have gone on to become one of the female pilots who continued flying for either private or military projects, like WASP director Jackie Cochran? Would she have traveled the world with her husband, another Chinese-American pilot she'd met in Portland, while he served as a Chinese diplomat? Would she have been the first Asian American selected as a candidate for the Mercury 13 group of possible female astronauts? Who knows?

Even though she died young, she had already established herself as a brave young woman unafraid of taking risks and using her skills for the greater good. It's telling that the one of the first things she decided to do once she'd earned her license was to head off to a war front to serve. And for that, she's definitely a Self-Rescuing Princess Society role model.

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Lyudmila Pavlichenko - Badass with a gun

It's all well and good to punch Nazis, but Lyudmila Pavlichenko (July 12, 1916 – October 10, 1974) did more than that. She shot Nazis. And not just a few. As a soldier for the Soviet Army in World War II she sniped 309 of them.

As gruesome as it might be to consider for many of us, at the time killing Nazis seemed to be the only way to stop their march across Europe, killing anyone they didn't deem worthy of living in their 'Großdeutsches Reich.' When the Nazis invaded the USSR in 1941, in addition to reneging on their pact to not to invade (a pact they clearly hadn't actually planned to keep), they went in with the full intention of taking over the western part of the Soviet Union so they could fill it with Germans and use anyone left as forced labor to support their war effort.

Naturally, the Soviets didn't like this idea and immediately began to enlist in large numbers, men and women, to fight against this invasion. Lyudmila Pavlichenko was no exception. She wanted to use her skills as a sharpshooter to defend her country. She was a college student at the time studying history, but she was also handy with a rifle. As a teen she'd joined a shooting club when a boy friend of hers boasted about his achievements. She set out to prove to him that girls could shoot as well, and by the time she was in college, she'd earned a reputation as a proficient markswoman.

When she showed up at the recruitment office, she was initially offered a job as a nurse, but they agreed to let her prove herself with a gun. They handed her a rifle and showed her a couple of enemy fighters across the field of battle. She convinced them by handily dispatching both, earning her place as a sniper. In fact, there were over 2,000 female snipers in the Soviet Army. But Pavlichenko was the best. Her successes in the field earned her the respect of her superiors and the admiration of civilians near and far. In fact, after just over a year of battle (in which she'd killed 309 Nazis or their collaborators) she was removed from the front when she was injured because her notoriety had made her a target for the enemy.

She took a position as instructor for other snipers, teaching them what she'd learned in the field, and eventually rose to the rank of General. She used her newfound status to bring international attention to the situation along the Soviet front line -- the "second" front -- where resources were scarce and funds were desperately needed for basic equipment like x-ray machines. She was invited to the US by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to travel throughout the US telling Americans about her experience.

I'm more than a little annoyed by, but totally unsurprised at, the ridiculously misogynistic questions and comments she received during her tour. "One reporter even criticized the length of the skirt of my uniform, saying that in America women wear shorter skirts and besides my uniform made me look fat." But I am absolutely energized by her amazing response to the treatment she received from American men. "Gentlemen, I am 25 years old and I have killed 309 fascist invaders by now. Don’t you think, gentlemen, that you have been hiding behind my back for too long?" Boom!

After the war, she returned to her study of history, and spent the rest of her life working as a historian with the Soviet Navy.

You can read more about her relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt in the Smithsonian Magazine story "Eleanor Roosevelt and the Soviet Sniper"

There was a Russian film made about her life, released in 2015, Battle for Sevastopol [trailer]

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Amazing Grace Hopper: life advice from a remarkable woman

One of the reasons I enjoy researching the lives of women in history is the sense of perspective I get on my own life and the problems I face. There are so many amazing women who've led fascinating lives, overcome tremendous obstacles, and made a positive and lasting impact on the world around them. Grace Hopper is certainly counted among them.

As the inventor the first computer compiler and one of the developers of COBOL, she's been a source of inspiration for folks working in computer science for decades. As one of the most prominent women founders of what is still largely a male field, she has become an important role model for women and girls striving to break down their own gender barriers, no matter what field they pursue.

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Movie Night - REBEL: Loreta Velazquez, Secret Soldier of the American Civil War

I came across REBEL: Loreta Velazquez, Secret Soldier of the American Civil War while perusing the DVD shelves at my local library a couple of weeks ago. Having just finished watching Mercy Street, I was looking for other shows or books about the many different roles women played during the Civil War. The blurb from the back of the case certainly piqued my interest:

In 1861, at the outbreak of the American Civil War, a teenager from New Orleans headed to the front lines. Under the alias Harry T. Buford, he fought at First Bull Run, was wounded at Shiloh, and served as a Confederate spy. But Buford harbored a secret -- he was really Loreta Velazquez, a Cuban immigrant from New Orleans. By 1863, Velazquez was spying for the Union. She scandalized American when she revealed her story in her 1876 memoir, The Woman in Battle. Attacked not only for her criticism of war, but her sexuality and social rule-breaking, Velazquez was dismissed as a hoax for 150 years. But evidence confirms she existed, one of over 1,000 women soldiers who served in the Civil War.

As did this quote from the documentary's website:

With the triple digit explosion of Latino immigrants throughout the South, along with a dizzying increase in hate crimes against Latinos, and the increase in numbers of Latino and women service personnel in the nation’s military, I believe this story about a southern woman Civil War soldier who struggled with difficult decisions about nationhood and patriotism in a country racked with the scourge and legacy of slavery will resonate with contemporary audiences. As we commemorate the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War in the 21st century, it behooves us to broaden our understandings of the meaning of this pivotal struggle forged in blood, that sought to establish citizenship for all Americans.

So, yeah. A woman passing as a man so she could fight in the war? A discussion about Cubans living in New Orleans in the 19th century? Scandal, sex, and social impropriety? Yes, please! Sounds like my kind of story.

I have watched the documentary and the "Behind the Scenes" clip (the documentary about the documentary?) a couple of times since bringing it home, and I find that it is so chock full of information that I truly needed to watch it several times to really get a handle on her story.

Filmmaker María Agui Carter does an excellent job addressing the ways race, gender, and ethnicity influenced Loreta's life, and the how she clearly went out of her way to defy many of the social expectations related to these same concepts.

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Ettie Rout - A problematic hero

I came across this picture of Ettie Annie Rout the other day and decided to do a little research. What I have learned since has inspired me. And saddened me. She was a brave woman who traveled the world during wartime, took an active role addressing serious social issues, and promoted family planning and distributed advice and devices to prevent STDs and unwanted pregnancies at the risk of her social standing, and often even her personal safety. And much of writings were most certainly classist, if not completely racist.

As often happens when discussing humans, and especially those from other eras, the person who does amazing works is still likely to be a flawed character. The dilemma for any historian, even a part-time history blogger like myself, is how to simultaneously celebrate the parts we like and honestly address the parts we do not. How does one write about the remarkable life of a woman who risked so much to promote safe sex and family planning, while also acknowledging the terrible influence eugenics had on her beliefs? When discussing it on twitter, it was referred to as the "Margaret Sanger problem." Bascially, how do you celebrate a woman who did amazing work, but for ugly reasons?

The best answer I've come up with is to do my best to explore both the positive and negative aspects of a person's life and work. When it comes to white women in the late-19th and early-20th century, too often there is at least a tinge of colonialism, racism, and classism to be dealt with. In some cases, it is a full-on stain, and many times I leave those women for a different discussion. But sometimes, even those whose motivations were the very things we rail against today, their story is still one I find inspirational.

Such is the case with Ettie Rout. From what I can find online, her work prior to World War I was already quite impressive, and while some of the ideas behind her work as a sexual educator during and after the war are, frankly, revolting, her work itself was revolutionary.

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Kickstart This!

I'm just now starting to get into RPGing after never having tried it before in my 40-something years of playing games. Whoa! Is it fun! Anyway, while I'm enjoying my goblin-massacring dwarf healer-fighter hybrid, I've been curious about getting out of the fantasy worlds and looking for things based in the real world.

That's where War Birds comes in. It sounds like a perfect next level RPG for the women's history nerd in me!

Designed by an international team of women writers, War Birds presents fun-to-play, easy-to-run games that let you explore exciting stories you might not have heard before: Striking factory workers torn apart by hatred, or women aviators struggling to find sisterhood and freedom in the skies.These games are designed to give you everything you need to know to run or play them - with no research required.

I was fortunate to be able to chat with the brilliant game designer behind War Birds, Moyra Turkington of Unruly Designs. Seriously, go back this series ASAP!

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The Rabbit Hole

I don't know if it's the sickness or what, but the last couple of days, instead of doing my usual research for posts here, I've been practically obsessed with this photograph.

I found it on Pinterest, which is filled with similar images with a short caption, just enough to give you some info, but not enough to do much with. In this case, the caption is:

"Sue J. Roller was the 1st WAC to hold the rank of Master Sgt. at Fort Benning, Georgia on 14 July 1944. U.S. Army Signal Corps photograph, Gift in Memory of Maurice T. White, from The Digital Collections of the National WWII Museum, 2011.065.1486"

It's an image that was original found on the National WWII Museum's digital collection.

My search started, naturally, with a simple name search online, which brought up a couple of old newspaper clippings of the same story recounting how she was the first non-com personnel to serve as a Master Sergeant, and that she'd enlisted in the WAACs early in the war.

The text, from the July 27, 1944 Elmira Star-Gazette, reads:

Top Non-Com Wac. After 17 months in the Women's Army Corps, M-Sgt. Sue J. Roller, stationed at Fort Benning, Ga., attained the top rating possible for a non-commissioned officer. She heads the grade-reports section of the Infantry School, and all-WAC section.

OK, so that's something. But not much. Where is she from? What's her story? I kept looking. Then I found this fascinating piece in the Ukrainian Weekly, WACs with the Infantry School [PDF].

The progress of all students at The Infantry School, including that of the officer candidates, is recorded in the grade records section at TIS headquarters. Here, Master Sergeant Sue Roller, of 2511 Pike Avenue, Little Rock, Arkansas, is in charge of an all-WAC staff, the work of which is confidential.

Sergeant Roller, formerly an assistant office manager in an ordnance plant in Arkansas and one of the few master sergeants with cute dimples, joined up, when the WAC was the WAAC, on December 23, 1942. No one at the school ever wheedles information as to his grades from the Wacs who work with Sgt Roller.

She's from Arkansas! That's a good piece of information. From there, I found that in 1938 she married Arthur F. Roller, also from Arkansas. Strangely, in 1940 they show up in Los Angeles for the census. I wonder why? Was this related to the Great Depression? How long did they stay there? It can't have been too long if she was back in Arkansas working in an ordnance plant.

I see that her husband had a child, who had his own children. But is he her child as well? There are no available records, since some of these people are still living.

But not her. There are few records of Sue Jane Roller aside from these above. But there is a Sue Dorher (her maiden name) buried alongside her parents in a small cemetery in a small town in Arkansas. Leaving me with plenty more questions. Her tombstone only has her name and her birth date.

I can't explain my fascination with learning more about her life. I guess part of it has to do with the paucity of information included in this one snap shot, and the mystery of there being so very little info about her.

Did she divorce Arthur? Is she the mother of his child? When did she die? What happened to that smart Master Sergeant with the "cute dimples" in the photo above? Is her story lost to history? Does it matter?

I don't know if I'll keep researching once I'm over this sickness. But for the last couple of days, thoughts of Sue Jane Dorher Roller have been keeping me company while I doze off and on. I hope she was proud of her achievement, brief though it may have been.

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Weekend Reading

Welcome to the weekend! We made it! As celebration, here's a collection of longer reads for your pleasure!


Wonder Woman, introduced in 1941, was a creation of utopian feminism, inspired by Margaret Sanger and the ideals of free love. Jill Lepore uncovers the remarkable and complex feminist background of Wonder Woman in her New Yorker piece, The Last Amazon

Superman débuted in 1938, Batman in 1939, Wonder Woman in 1941. She was created by William Moulton Marston, a psychologist with a Ph.D. from Harvard. A press release explained, “ ‘Wonder Woman’ was conceived by Dr. Marston to set up a standard among children and young people of strong, free, courageous womanhood; to combat the idea that women are inferior to men, and to inspire girls to self-confidence and achievement in athletics, occupations and professions monopolized by men” because “the only hope for civilization is the greater freedom, development and equality of women in all fields of human activity.” Marston put it this way: “Frankly, Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world.”

For another fantastic and detailed piece about women in comics, check out Lisa Hix's piece Women Who Conquered the Comics World in Collectors Weekly.

Messick’s sexy and stylish character, which took great inspiration from Nell Brinkley, eluded kidnappers, jumped from airplanes with a parachute, and got stranded on desert islands. “One of my favorites is where Brenda Starr joins this teenage gang,” Robbins says. “The gang leader is a blonde, and all the other members wear blonde wigs. She disguises herself with blonde hair and pretends to be a teenager so that she can join this gang of girl juvenile delinquents. Another time, she’s kidnapped by this albino Polynesian princess and winds up on this island where she discovers that her true love, the Mystery Man, Basil St. John, who is also being held prisoner by the Polynesian princess because she wants him to marry her. Messick came up with great stuff.”

[TW: rape, sexual assault, domestic violence]
Sara Bernard has a poignant story about a group of folks in rural Alaska who are taking on abusers in their midst: Rape Culture in the Alaskan Wilderness

Then, last year, Jane joined the Tanana 4-H club, a newly minted outlet for local youth of all ages to gather and play games and craft things like blueberry jam and beaver hats. It’s run by Cynthia Erickson, owner of Tanana’s general store and native of Ruby, a village 100 miles downriver. Erickson says she started the program because of suicide: Three years ago, there were six in Tanana. At first, she just wanted to give Tanana’s kids a place to do things with their hands, to go on field trips, to feel supported. But what began as a diversion quickly became a safe place for kids to share all kinds of traumas they were witnessing and experiencing: sexual and domestic violence, alcohol and drug abuse, death after brutal death. The discussions they’d have were rarely prearranged, Erickson says. Instead, the kids would launch the conversation by saying, “Did you hear what happened?”

Joann Weiner has a fantastic interview with up-and-coming Rwandan activists, Nadine Niyitegeka: I’ve seen the future of Rwanda, and her name is Nadine

Spend just a few minutes with a charismatic 22-year-old Rwandan woman with bright, sparkling eyes and a lilt in her voice and you’ll know you’ve seen the future of Rwanda.

That beacon of hope is Nadine Niyitegeka, a woman whose photograph as a shy 2-year-old is displayed on the wall of Kigali’s Genocide Memorial Center as one of the thousands of innocent children slaughtered in Rwanda’s genocide 20 years ago.

“I’m still alive,” Nadine needlessly explained during our hour-long interview. “And I’m going places!”

In his photo essay, The Women of West Point, Damon Winter captures the daily life for the U.S. Military Academy’s 786 female cadets.

From its founding in 1802, on George Washington’s earlier recommendation, until 1976, West Point admitted no women. Since then, more than 4,100 have followed in the steps of the first 62 female graduates in 1980. Many more are on the way, too, now that the American military will be opening combat positions to qualifying women by 2016. The 263 female cadets who started at West Point this year made up 22 percent of the incoming class, a record number, up from 16 percent last year.

They and their fellow first-year cadets, or plebes, reported for Reception Day on July 2, which marked the beginning of six weeks of cadet basic training, a k a Beast Barracks, and the end of their civilian lifestyles. “I knew I was going to need to step it up in the physical realm,” Danilack says, referring to her own early days on campus. “But I never knew it was going to be as hard as it turned out to be.” Upon graduating, she and her classmates received their commissions — and their bars — as second lieutenants in the U.S. Army.

Meet CEO Martine Rothblatt, a transwoman who founded Sirius radio, pioneered AI, and so much more!

In person, Martine is magnificent, like a tall lanky teenage boy with breasts. She wears no makeup or jewelry, and she inhabits her muted clothing—cargo pants, a T-shirt, a floppy button-down thrown on top—in the youthful, offhand way of the tech elite. Martine is transgender, a power trans, which makes her an even rarer species in the corporate jungle than a female CEO. And she seems genuinely to revel in her self-built in-betweenness. Just after her sex-reassignment surgery in 1994, her appearance was more feminine than it is today—old photos show her wearing lipstick, her long, curly hair loose about her shoulders. But in the years since she has developed her own unisexual style. She is a person for whom gender matters enough to have undergone radical surgery, but not enough to care whether she’s called he or she by people, like her 83-year-old mother, who occasionally lose track of which pronoun to use.

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SRPS - Blog Around

King Golden Hair by Barbara Stefan

In my most favorite class this semester, we spent a lot of time discussing stories communities tell about themselves and how that can be directly tied to their beliefs. We read several texts, and we were asked each time to not only talk about the story itself, but the reason the author chose that particular story, how it reflects his/her own purposes, and what was left out, and how that also reveals his/her purposes.

I was reminded of this lesson in media literacy when I saw this blog post by Maria Tatar in The New Yorker, about other articles celebrating newly discovered, unpublished folk stories curated by Franz Xaver von Schönwerth, and seemingly left out of the infamous Grimm Fairytale collection. As it turns out, these stories have been recorded, and exist in libraries today. But I'm curious to know why these stories were not included the Brothers Grimm collection, and why they fell out of common usage? And what does that say about them and their beliefs?

Even more importantly, the Brothers Grimm, who were responsible for establishing the folklore canon we have today in Anglo-American cultures, may have been wary of telling stories of persecuted boys, having suffered much in their own early lives. It is no accident that we refer these days to Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm almost as if they were a couple. The brothers lost their father at a young age and worked hard to educate themselves and to keep their fragile family intact. They studied law together and worked side by side for decades, taking notes, copying manuscripts, editing texts, and famously creating index card entries for their monumental dictionary of the German language. Is it any surprise that they might have found tales about quarreling brothers or male-sibling rivals less than congenial?

While they may not be ancient folktales passed down over generations, these drawings by koralie have a magical fairytale aspect

I am terribly sorry that I neglected to blog about Wollstonecraft, the fantastic kickstarter project for a series of pro-girl, pro-math, pro-science, pro-awesomeness novels for young women. But, it looks like enough of you saw it anyway, since they more than met their goal!

For Women's History Month, I wrote a three part series about Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States. Recently, the Georgian Gentleman wrote about Dr. James Barry, who rose to the rank of Inspector General of Hospitals in Great Britain, after serving in the British Army medical corps. Only he was a she. And her secret went with her to her grave.

Dr Barry was a fiery and bombastic red-head who had a reputation for being prickly: frequently taunted for being effeminate and for having a high pitched voice Barry responded with angry outbursts. She compensated for her lack of stature (she was five foot tall in her stocking-ed feet) by wearing three inch risers in her shoes, and wore over-sized clothing. Anyone getting too personal in their remarks was likely to be challenged to a duel – reportedly she fought on several occasions and is believed to have been injured in one and reportedly shot an opponent in another. Unbelievably, the dashing young doctor even nurtured a reputation as a ladies’ man – perhaps to deflect attention.

It's a couple of years old, but this clip of Snow White offering advice to young girls tickled my humor bone after my recent review of Mirror Mirror.

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SPRS Shout Out - Major Tammy Duckworth

April is Asian American History Month. There are so many stories of amazing Asian American women I'd like to share this month, and the first is the very brave, inspirational, and amazing soldier and public servant.

She was born in Bangkok, Thailand, in 1968. Her father's job working for the United Nations took the family around the world while she was growing up. They finally settled in Hawaii, and she attended the University of Hawaii, where she received a BA in political science. Honoring her father's long military career from World War II to the Vietnam War, she proudly joined the ROTC in graduate school at George Washington University, where she was studying international affairs. In 1992, she became a commissioned officer in the US Army Reserve and chose one of the few combat jobs open to women -- flying helicopters. She attended flight school, and joined the Illinois National Guard in 1996.

In 2004, while studying for a Ph.D. in political science with a focus on political economy and public health in southeast Asian at Northern Illinois University, she was deployed to Iraq. On November 12, 2004, the Black Hawk helicopter she was co-piloting was hit by a rocket propelled grenade. She fought to land the helicopter as safely as possible, which she did. But the explosion changed her life forever. Her injuries were substantial. She lost the lower part of bother her legs, and her right arm was nearly destroyed, having been broken in three places and losing most of the tissue from the back. She was awarded the Purple Heart, and was presented with t an Air Medal and Army Commendation Medal.

She credits her pilot, Dan Milberg for saving her life, and she strives to live every day to the fullness of its possibilities. “I get up every day and say thank you to my crew for saving my life... I was missing two limbs, and my arm was essentially severed. I was a bloody, pulpy person with one limb to hang onto… He knew I was dead but he wasn’t going to leave me behind. I have to be worthy of that effort.”

Duckworth narrates the Salute to Fallen Asian Pacific
Islander Heroes in Arlington, Virginia, June 2, 2005.

On returning home, she did not waste any time becoming active in politics and veterans affairs. She is one of the founders of the Intrepid Foundation, which works to helps rehabilitate injured soldiers.

Inspired by Former Senator Bob Dole during her stay at Walter Reed Medical Center, she began to pursue a career in public service. In fact, he dedicated his biography One Soldier's Story in part to her for her continued bravery.

My experience in Iraq made me realize, and during the recovery, that I could have died. And I just had to do more with my life.

In 2006, she was appointed Director of the Illinois Department of Veterans' Affairs, where she worked to develop programs to encourage employers to hire veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as other programs to assist veterans returning to civilian life. Also in 2006, she ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in Illinois' 6th Congressional District, but lost to her opponent, Peter Roskam.

Taking the oath-of-office as Assistant Secretary of Public and Intergovernmental
Affairs for the United States Department of Veterans Affairs,
with her husband Bryan Bowlsbey standing beside her.

In 2009, she was nominated to be the Assistant Secretary of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs for the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, and was confirmed her for the position by the US Senate.

"It's about change on so many levels. If being a woman underscores that, makes it clear that I'm going to be an effective agent of change, that's great."

Preparing for the Wounded Warrior Soldier Ride at the White House.

She remains quite active in the political sphere and in her efforts of activism. In 2011, she resigned her position of Assistant Secretary of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs for the United States Department of Veterans Affairs in order to launch her campaign for the newly-reorganized Illinois' 8th Congressional District.

Whether you agree with her politics or not, she is an amazing woman and deserves to be recognized as  the Self-Rescuing Princess she so clearly is!

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Women's History Month - Mildred H. McAfee

"If you have a great ambition, take as big a step as possible in the direction of fulfilling it. The step may only be a tiny one, but trust that it may be the largest one possible for now."

Mildred Helen McAfee Horton was born in Park College, Missouri, on May 12, 1900. Very little is known about her early life. It is clear through her life's work, though, that both faith and education were highly valued in her home and would be the guiding principles of her life. Her father was theologian Cleland Boyd McAfee, and her grandfather was the founder of Park College.

She grew up in Parkville, Missouri, but when she was an adolescent, her family moved to Chicago, where she attended the Francis W. Parker School.

She attended college at Vassar, where she studied economics, sociology, and English. She was active in extracurricular activities, and developed a reputation as a leader. She enjoyed playing basketball and hockey, was on the debate team, and involved in student government. She also volunteered with the school's Christian Association, where she served as president during her senior year. She graduated as Phi Beta Kappa in 1920.

Commissioning ceremonies at the new training school for female Navy (WAVES) and Coast Guard (SPARS) Officers, circa early 1943.
Shown in front (shaking hands) are Lieutenant Commander Mildred McAfee, USNR, Director of the WAVES
and Rear Admiral Randall Jacobs, USN, Chief of Naval Personnel.

After graduating, she taught elementary and middle school aged girls, but in the fall of 1923, she become an acting professor of economics and sociology at Tusculum College in Greenville, Tennessee, and in 1928, she moved to Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, where she become Dean of Women and professor of Sociology. During the summers, though, she studied at the University of Chicago, where she earned her M.A. in Sociology in 1928. She remained at Centre College until 1932, when she returned to Vassar as the Executive Secretary of the Associate Alumnae of Vassar College.

In her postion at Vassar, she worked to raise money for the construction of Kenyon Hall and became involved in revisions to the school’s social regulations to give women more independence. In 1934, she accepted the position of Dean of College Women at Oberlin College.

In 1936, at the age of 36, she became president of Wellesley College. The criteria they were looking for were “intellectual honesty, leadership, tolerance, savoir-faire, sympathetic understanding of youth, vision, and a sense of humor.”

As president of Wellesley, she was able to draw upon all that she had learned at the various colleges she had been a part of over the previous 16 years. In particular, she emphasized truth, and called it the greatest and most precious object of scholarly pursuit. She was a staunch advocate for the importance of a liberal arts education, and spoke out against accusations of impracticality and indulgence from many critics during the great depression. She believed quite strongly in the value of individual achievement, and the importance of internal and external awareness of the world. She defended the belief that the liberal arts were more than merely a preparation for a career, but instead were a preparation for life. In particular, she considered a liberal arts education to be an invaluable tool to gain social equity for women.

Captain Erl C.B. Gould and Captain Mildred McAfee during inspection.

"I envisage the function of this college, or any college, to prepare an oncoming generation of students to disseminate truth. It is my conviction that truth is more easily given a hearing if it is presented by a healthy, well-adjusted, effective human being who sees the truth in the light of a world-philosophy which gives it meaning."
Mildred McAfee in an address to Wellesley students

As a measure of her tremendous ability, when she took her leave of absence in 1942 to become the first Director of the WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service), three women had to divide up the tasks she had done as president. As director of the WAVES, she was appointed to the rank of Lieutenant-Commander, becoming the first woman to be commissioned as an officer in the United States Navy. For nearly three years she divided her time between Wellesley and Washington, DC.

During the war, women volunteers were needed to perform non-combat domestic war jobs, enabling more male officers to serve in combat. Under her guidance, the WAVES grew to 80,000 women, working as flight instructors, weather observers, truck drivers and air traffic controllers. Their service during wartime paved the way for the expanding role of women in the armed services.

A newsman's joke that WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) actually meant "Women Are Very Essential, Sometimes" might grate on some women, but Capt. Mildred H. McAfee took the jest with a grain of salt and adapted it as one of her own bon mots. Horton, the first director of the WAVES, was appointed the first female line officer in the Navy on Aug. 3, 1942.

McAfee brought this formidable competence to her new military duties. The Navy wasn't at all sure it needed women. Most of the men "Capt. Mac" dealt with outranked her, yet she was "a brilliant, articulate person with a sense of humor and no phony affectations," wrote Maj. Gen. Jeanne Holm. "She could disarm everyone from the lowliest yardarm to the top brass of the Navy—and did."
(source: military.com)

US Navy WAVES Captain Mildred McAfee listening to Storekeeper 2nd Class Dorothy Oates, Naval Air Station Pearl Harbor,
US Territory of Hawaii, 4 Jul 1945 Source: United States National Archive

"All we women wanted to do was to get the war over with and get back to our other lives."

While serving as Director, she worked to change the Navy's policy against inviting African American women to serve. While Asian, Hispanic, and Native American women were allowed to join the WAVES from the beginning, African American women were barred from serving in the Navy and Coast Guard until late 1944, because of a literal reading of the statement that women were “freeing a man to fight.” Since African American soldiers still were only allowed to serve their country by working in the mess hall or the laundry instead of being sent to the front lines, the Navy's thinking was that African American women would not be needed to fulfill that duty. This deeply offended Captain McAfee, and she lobbied against it.

Col. Streeter poses with two other women's reserve directors: Capt Dorothy Stratton, head of the Coast Guard SPARS, left,
and Capt Mildred McAfee, of the WAVEs.

"At that stage in this outrageous situation of civil rights and wrongs, there was just no thought about admitting a black woman to replace a white man. There had been a great pressure from the black community as to why women couldn't be in the service… Leaders of the negro community were just awfully hurt that in this call for service to the nation their women couldn't be included."

By the time she finished her tour of duty with the WAVES in 1946, she had been promoted to the rank of Captain, and been awarded the Distinguished Service Medal.

After the war, she married the Rev. Douglas Horton, dean emeritus of the Harvard Divinity School and Minister of the General Council of Congregational Christian Churches, and returned to her position at Wellesley, where she remained until her retirement in 1949.

It was during this time that she worked to improve the opportunities for minority women applying to Wellesley, but removing the questions about race and religious affiliation from their application forms.

After retiring , she stayed active in the fight for more opportunities for women in education and the military, serving on a number of corporate, civic, and educational boards, and served as president of the American Association of Colleges. She served as a UNESCO delegate, was a director of the New York Life Insurance Company, the National Broadcasting Company, Radio Corporation of America, and the Ford Foundation's Fund for the Advancement of Education. Later, she co-chaired the National Women’s Conference on Civil Rights.

After the war, Mrs. Horton continued to be an outspoken advocate for improving the position of women in the military. In one speech, she criticized the "folly of a national policy of discussing manpower in a national emergency as though it were only male power," adding that such an attitude put women in the "category of a national luxury instead of a national asset."
(source: nytimes.com)

She also used her time to become more active in her religious faith. She worked with her husband in his church and civic work, and served in many leadership roles within various religious associations, including as the Vice President of the Federal Council of Churches, the National Council of Churches, and President of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.

Having written her master’s thesis on the “The Young Women’s Christian Association; a Case Study of a Religious Movement,” McAfee was interested in the role that religious organizations could play in the world, and she worked as an influential member of the General Council of Congregational Christian Churches. She considered religion a tool that could bridge gaps, something capable of bringing a greater understanding to people through common devotion, whether Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or Muslim.
(source: http://vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu)

After her husband died in 1968, she continued her social and religious work until her death in 1994. By that time, she had more then 31 honorary degrees for her achievements.

"Being a woman is interesting, but it shouldn’t stop you from being a person."

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