Jeremy Knowles, discussing the complete lack of recognition Cecilia Payne gets, even today, for her revolutionary discovery. (via alliterate)

OH WAIT LEMME TELL YOU ABOUT CECILIA PAYNE.

Cecilia Payne’s mother refused to spend money on her college education, so she won a scholarship to Cambridge.

Cecilia Payne completed her studies, but Cambridge wouldn’t give her a degree because she was a woman, so she said fuck that and moved to the United States to work at Harvard.

Cecilia Payne was the first person ever to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy from Radcliffe College, with what Otto Strauve called “the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy.”

Not only did Cecilia Payne discover what the universe is made of, she also discovered what the sun is made of (Henry Norris Russell, a fellow astronomer, is usually given credit for discovering that the sun’s composition is different from the Earth’s, but he came to his conclusions four years later than Payne—after telling her not to publish).

Cecilia Payne is the reason we know basically anything about variable stars (stars whose brightness as seen from earth fluctuates). Literally every other study on variable stars is based on her work.

Cecilia Payne was the first woman to be promoted to full professor from within Harvard, and is often credited with breaking the glass ceiling for women in the Harvard science department and in astronomy, as well as inspiring entire generations of women to take up science.

Cecilia Payne is awesome and everyone should know her.

(via bansheewhale)

im setting myself on fire goodbye 

I made you a sandwich put it in your mouth

TELL THAT TO MOTHERFUCKING QUEEN VICTORIA AND HER HUGE ASS EMPIRE BITCH

I’m sorry.

I couldn’t hear you.

Over all the voices of amazing women.

Throughout history.

Who could have

kicked

your

ignorant

ass.

Reblogging this for the gender studies we’re doing in my history course.

No important discoveries of course because discovering what the sun is made of isn’t important at all OH NO.

Whaaat a douchetit fucknugget. I’d love to practice my crotch kicking skills on this dude.

my favorite part is at the end. obviously your completely truthful when you say “i am not sexist, anti-feminine, or whetever but this is brilliant”

just somethings that women invented:

We wouldn’t know what we do about radiation without Marie Curie. Oh and what about Roseline Franklin, who figured out what DNA looked like?

And guess who took on the empty jobs when all the men were in the army in WW2?

Arg, posts like this.

Also Re: “never forced to die in a war”, Libya, Benin, Chad, Malaysia, Tunisia, Cuba, Eritrea, Taiwan, and Israel’s mandatory military services would like to have a word with you.

I’m going to go point by point here:

Joan of Arc led an army 600 YEARS AGO what do you mean women have never fought in wars?  COUNTLESS women have been killed in battle.  HOW DARE YOU disregard their courage and their sacrifice.  And let’s not forget all the women who contributed to war efforts before they were allowed to fight by working in factories, nursing, spying, and making sure the industries back home didn’t die completely.

“Women have never lead a nation”?  Yeah, everyone from Margaret Thatcher to Ruth Dreifuss would like to have a word with you about that.  The Chancellor of Germany (generally considered one of the most powerful people in Europe and in the world) is a woman.  The Presidents of Liberia, Argentina, Lithuania, Costa Rica, Brazil, Kosovo, Malawi, and South Korea are women, as are the Prime Ministers of Bangladesh, Iceland, Trinidad and Tobago, Australia, Slovakia, Thailand, Denmark, and Jamaica.  The US Secretary of State, the President of the Indian National Congress Party, the General Secretary of the Burmese National League for Democracy, and the monarchs of England and Jordan are women. 

Facebook’s COO, the CEOs of Pepsi, Kraft, Xerox, IBM, Yahoo, WellPoint, Avon, the President of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, and the co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment are women, just to name a few.  There are now a million more female college graduates in America than there are male college grads.  So no, I would not say that women are incapable of succeeding at their jobs.  I think we can all agree that idiots like you are the reason women get paid less than their male counterparts.

RE the voting thing and the thing about women not being able to make difficult decisions: The ghosts of Susan B. Anthony, Amelia Bloomer, Emily Davison, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Mary Richardson, Emmeline Pankhurst,  Frances Ellen Watkins, Maria W. Stewart, Christabel Pankhurst, Lucy Stone, and all the other suffragettes and abolitionists who fought for their rights despite how radical and dangerous it was are coming to haunt you.

The things about wimpy support groups and physical beauty make so little sense that I don’t even know what to say in response

A further list of things invented by women:

Toilet paper holder

Submarine lamp and telescope

Ironing board

Home solar heating system

Gas heating furnace

Foldaway bed

Disposable diaper

Cobol (first computer language)

Circular saw

Rolling pin

Kevlar

Electric hot water heater

Elevated railway

Engine muffler

You conveniently forgot to mention literature, but let me just remind everyone that the 5th, 6th, 12th, 14th, 16th, 17th, 18th, and 21st best-selling books of all time were written by women.  The 1st, 2nd and 6th best-selling authors of 2012 are women, while the 3rd best-selling book of 2011 was written by a woman…do I really need to continue?

Women have not contributed to science or mathematics or the building blocks of modern society?  Tell that to the 43 female Nobel Prize winners.  Tell that to Emilie du Chatelet, Caroline Herschel, Mary Anning, Mary Somerville, Maria Mitchell, Lise Meitner, Irène Curie-Joliot, Barbara McClintock, Dorothy Hodgkin, Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin, any of the people mentioned in the previous comments, or any of the other women who made significant scientific or mathematical advances despite being oppressed by people like you.  Oh, and RE the philosophy, here’s a list of people who prove you wrong: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_philosophers.

And women did all that in a society ruled by thinking like yours.  While bearing your children and wearing corsets.

I never claimed we were superior, but don’t you dare tell me we are not EQUAL.  

I LOVE THIS POST

I would honestly just like to Add that if you think women are not strong mentally or physically, TRY CHILD BIRTH.

And we have to deal with uneducated men making bold and brash generalizations that only promote a culture of oppression towards women while you cannot make yourself a goddamn sandwich. 

Ooh it got better! <33

A toast to these great astronomers!

Read about Annie Jump Cannon, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, and Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

Wine and honoring women in science. Cosmos doing science education right.

I keep meaning to add, because no one seems to mention it: both Annie Jump Cannon and Henrietta Swan Leavitt were both Deaf.

I feel like it’s important to acknowledge that part of their histories, because I don’t often see folks talking about disability history wrt science stuffs (without having to look for it), and it’s even more rare to see it wrt women in science.

Got A Girl Crush Obsession On: The Forgotten Lumberjills of WWII

Like the many other amazing heroines of their time, the ladies of the Women’s Timber Corps, aka the Lumberjills, stepped into unconventional britches in order to keep the industry, and country, moving while the men were off at war. Of course, there were also some major stereotypes which had to chopped down along the way:

Seriously, though. When someone inevitably makes a movie out of this, will someone please get a hold of me? I’ll need to raid the wardrobe.

Read more about the Lumberjills here!

THERE IS ALCOHOL, FREE LUNCH, DOGS, AND FUDGE. WHERE IS THIS FUTURE??

I'm on board! Looks like it could be my next fave joint.

A Random Viking Fact I Found Out

When a viking mistreats his lady, she may cut off his junk and hang it in her home.

Also:

VIKINGS

i want to be a viking

Pat Jennings Hitchcock of Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin, served as a “clubmobile girl” for the American Red Cross during World War II.

Intended to improve morale and provide a connection home, clubmobiles were converted buses staffed by women who prepared and served coffee and donuts to American soldiers stationed in Europe. In 2012, the volunteer service of Red Cross women who operated Clubmobiles during World War II was recognized by the US Senate. 

read more: letters home from Pat to her family, 1945; David Medaris, “Pat Hitchcock: Land Lover,” Isthmus, May 29, 2008

via: World War II Veterans of Mount Horeb, Mt. Horeb Public Library by way of University of Wisconsin Digital Collections

Women in Ancient China

Women’s roles in  family and society

Ancient Chinese women were subordinate to men for most of their lives. First she would obey her father, and after marriage she answered to her husband. According to K’ung Fu-tze, also known as Confucius, a woman’s duty was to look after her husband, sons and the other men in her life. As such, her greatest duty was to have a son. That didn’t mean that she shouldn’t respected: her role as mother and mother-in-law was very important and she should be honoured by her offspring. In their old age, women were often respected by their families as the oldest living member, especially if they survived their husbands.

Marriage was an arranged affair that was set up in such a way that both families would profit from the union. The bride’s family would provide her with a dowry. Because of this, the father of the bride always had the last say in who his daughter married; the girl in question wouldn’t have any input in this, regardless of whether she was a noble or a peasant girl.

Women could be sold by their male relatives for a variety of reasons, though this usually happened in the lower classes. If there had been a bad harvest, a peasant could sell his daughter to get the rest of the family through the winter. It was also possible for a father to sell his youngest daughter after marrying off her other sisters; multiple dowries could, in the case of the working class, get rather expensive or unaffordable. The women sold this way would usually end up in brothels.

Education and occupation

Because of the subservience of women, education was mostly out of the question. Daughters of nobles could be literate, but this was, especially in early Imperial China, more an exception than a rule. Their occupations were centred around home and hearth: from cooking and cleaning to nurturing the children. Weaving, spinning and sewing were common, home-based occupations for women of the working class. Their husbands would sell the products as additional income for the household. Some farmer’s wives helped their spouses on the fields.

There were of course, less savoury professions such as prostitution. The bulk of these girls were your regular, run-of-the-mill prostitutes who had to give their bodies to whoever paid the price. Talented girls could end up becoming a courtesan, a Yiji. As a Yiji, the woman would not often engage in sex trade, but was instead a songstress, poetess, dancer and companion in one. Rich and influential men often had favourite courtesans, and sometimes such a man would buy the lady in question free and take her as concubine or even a wife (in ancient China, men of standing were allowed to have more wives).

Women’s dress and makeup

The prevalent mode of clothing for millennia was the Hanfu, or silk robe, in use for both men and women alike, but with some difference in composition of garments for each gender. Each dynasty would develop its own style of Hanfu. For women, a Hanfu was made up out of a qun or qang, a skirt; yi, an open cross-collar garment; ru, an open cross-collar shirt; and the shan, an open cross-collar jacket that was worn over the yi. There were women-specific styles as well, such as the quju version of the shenyi, which was a mode of dress in use mostly in the pre-Shang periods (before the second millennium B.C.). The quju had wider sleeves than the male zhiju, a longer, pointed lapel, and had a curved hem.

The Hanfus of the upper class could be as elaborate as their rank in society allowed, with ornaments of jade or precious metal hanging from the sashes of the garment. Working class women wore less elaborate versions of the Hanfu, or, if they were doing manual labour, might have preferred loose trousers and simple open cross-collar jackets. These women aren’t likely to have worn makeup, though it’s not possible to say for certain. The makeup trends that were in vogue among daughters and wives of the nobility were mostly focussed on the eyebrows: there are quite a few legends wherein the Emperor or another man of high standing falls in love with a lady because of her elegant eyebrows.

Apart from painstakingly painting their eyebrows in blueish black (a practice that had many different styles, each with its own name), Chinese women applied foundation for a smooth, pale look and reddened their lips and their cheeks. Dimples were enhanced or painted on, and often a flower ornament was painted on the forehead, between the eyebrows. Legend goes that a princess once fell asleep under a cherry tree, and when she woke up a blossom had fallen on her forehead. The princess and the ladies of the court were so taken by this, that they started painting the flower patterns on their skin.

That most infamous beauty practice of China, foot binding or chanzu, had not yet gained widespread use in antiquity. The exact origins are unknown, but it is thought that it originated with the dancers of the early Song dynasty, around 960 A.D. 

Maria Lokke looks into “A Secret History of Women and Tattoo”: “Though tattoos are an increasingly common, and visible, element of personal style these days, it’s some of the more hidden and historic examples—from Victorian women to circus attractions—that are the most surprising.”

Click-through for a slideshow: http://nyr.kr/Y9ZuB2

im setting myself on fire goodbye 

I made you a sandwich put it in your mouth

TELL THAT TO MOTHERFUCKING QUEEN VICTORIA AND HER HUGE ASS EMPIRE BITCH

I’m sorry.

I couldn’t hear you.

Over all the voices of amazing women.

Throughout history.

Who could have

kicked

your

ignorant

ass.

Reblogging this for the gender studies we’re doing in my history course.

AMERICAN WOMEN DURING WW2

Sandi Toksvig. (via learninglog)

Jane M. Bolin was the first Black woman graduate of Yale Law School and the first Black woman in the United States to become a judge. She is pictured here in July 1939, shortly after her appointment by New York City mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, which made news all over the world. Judge Bolin retired in 1979 after 40 years as a judge - but only because she had reached the mandatory retirement age of 70. She died at age 98 in 2007.

I thought I would share Judge Bolin again since the post I wrote last year is floating around Pinterest… ;)

Own it, honey. Aw man how did I not know about her?! 

Members of the Wardens’ Women’s Auxiliary making for the scene of an incident. Sydney, Australia. ca 1943 

They look amazingly smashing, too.

Archaeologists Find World’s Oldest Bra

This looks like most of mine... worn to death due to a lack of fucks given. >>

December 10, 1815: Ada Lovelace is born.

Today’s Google Doodle honors Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron’s only legitimate child and the woman who is popularly credited as “the world’s first computer programmer”. Lady Byron, who separated from Ada’s father just a month after she was born, sought to raise her daughter in a manner that ensured she would not end up like her volatile poet father. Ada, often ill as a child, began studying mathematics at a young age and soon discovered her natural flair for the subject, so strong that one of her tutors, Augustus De Morgan, suggested that she become a mathematician “of first-rate eminence” later in life. In 1833, Ada attempted to elope with another one of her tutors, although her attempt failed, and the entire incident was covered up.

That year, she also met Charles Babbage, a mathematician and inventor with whom Ada shared a close correspondence for the rest of her life. Over a nine-month-long period in 1842 and 1843, Ada translated an Italian memoir regarding Babbage’s Analytical Engine; she supplemented her translation with her own set of notes (which actually ended up longer than the memoir itself) explaining in detail the differences between Babbage’s machine and his Difference Engine. Ada was optimistic about the future of these engines and machines. Although a mathematician, she was not limited by numbers and predicted that someday a more complex descendant of Babbage’s engines “might act upon other things besides number… the Engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent”. She also provided what is today recognized as “the world’s first computer program” - a proposed algorithm that would generate Bernoulli numbers using the analytical machine. Whether Ada formulated the plan herself, or whether it was the product of close collaboration between herself, Babbage, and associates, or whether it was someone else’s work entirely, remains subject to debate to this day. Babbage, at least, was as impressed by Ada as she was by him; in 1843 he wrote of her:

Fun fact: Grendel shares a birthday with a wildly cool woman of history.

tansyrr.com» Historically Authentic Sexism in Fantasy. Let’s Unpack That. / A great post from Tansy Rayner Roberts; read the whole thing, share it. (via gwendabond)

Yes, exactly!

(via malindalo)

And see also Joanna Russ. From How To Suppress Women’s Writing: ”In a nominally egalitarian society the ideal situation (socially speaking) is one in which the members of the ‘wrong’ groups have the freedom to engage in literature (or equally significant activities) and yet do not do so, thus proving that they can’t. But, alas, give them the least real freedom and they will do it. The trick thus becomes to make the freedom as nominal as possible, and then — since some of the so-and-so’s will do it anyway — develop various strategies for ignoring, condemning, or belittling the artistic works that result. If properly done, these strategies result in a social situation in which the “wrong” people are (supposedly) free to commit literature, art, or whatever, but very few do, and those who do (it seems) do it badly, so we can all go home to lunch.”  

(via ryansara)

Anything that a lot of people are sneering at is worth a second look, is all I’m saying.

Also all of this is truth! So, some history.

HISTORIANS: The Vikings buried with their swords were warriors!

HISTORIANS: Oh some of these Vikings buried with their swords were WOMEN, so I guess not all people buried with their swords were warriors after all.

SOME DECADES LATER, SOME ENTERPRISING SOUL: I guess… the women could have been… warriors?

HISTORIANS: Oh my God—that never occurred to—this changes EVERYTHING!

(via sarahreesbrennan)