Science History Women

For fans of The Astronaut Wives Club, The Mercury 13 reveals the little-known true story of the remarkable women who trained for NASA space flight. In 1961, just as NASA launched its first man into space, a group of women underwent secret testing in the hopes of becoming America’s first female astronauts. They passed the same battery of tests at the legendary Lovelace Foundation as did the Mercury 7 astronauts, but they were summarily dismissed by the boys’ club at NASA and on Capitol Hill.

Between the 12th and 15th centuries in Europe, not all women fit the stereotype of passive housewife and mother. Many led bold and dynamic lives. In this collection of historical portraits, Maria Teresa Brolis tells the fascinating tales of fashion icons, art clients, businesswomen, saints, healers, lovers, and pilgrims - both famous and little known - who challenge conventional understandings of the medieval female experience. Drawing on evidence from literary works and archival documents, Brolis pieces together an intricate overview of 16 women's lives.

In the fall of 1973, the Greek oil shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, husband of President John F. Kennedy's widow, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and arguably the richest man in the world, proposed to build an oil refinery on the New Hampshire coast, in the town of Durham. But three women vehemently opposed the project. Small Town, Big Oil is the story of how the residents of Durham, led by three women, out-organized, out-witted, and out-maneuvered the governor, media, and Onassis cartel to hand the powerful Greek billionaire the most humiliating defeat of his business career.

Recuperando el título de un pequeño cuento con el que la puertorriqueña Rosario Ferré analizó la misoginia literaria en los años noventa, "El coloquio de las perras" pretende ser un homenaje a las escritoras hispanohablantes que sortearon todo tipo de obstáculos para hacer su literatura. Desde populares figuras como Elena Garro, Gabriela Mistral o Alejandra Pizarnik hasta otras más desconocidas como Alcira Soust Scaffo, Agustina González López o María Emilia Cornejo, la periodista y poeta Luna Miguel entabla una conversación llena de ladridos con una docena de mujeres...

Prostitution, gambling, and saloons were a vital, if not universally welcome, part of life in frontier boomtowns. In Saloons, Prostitutes, and Temperance in Alaska Territory, Catherine Holder Spude explores the rise and fall of these enterprises in Skagway, Alaska, between the gold rush of 1897 and the enactment of Prohibition in 1918. Her gritty account offers a case study in the clash between working-class men and middle-class women, and in the growth of women’s political and economic power in the West.

For forty years in the mid-nineteenth century, “Madame Restell,” the nom de guerre of the most successful female physician in America, sold birth-control medication, attended women during their pregnancies, delivered their children, and performed abortions in a series of clinics run out of her home in New York City. It was the abortions that made her famous. “Restellism” became the term her detractors used to indict her. A story that is all too relevant, The Trials of Madame Restell paints an unforgettable picture of the changing society of nineteenth-century New York.

Game On is a celebration of the trailblazing women opening doors for others, and a manifesto for women’s sports–a rallying cry to ensure the progress we are currently seeing goes from strength to strength.

In the wake of World War II, four agents were critical in helping build a new organisation now known as the CIA. Adelaide Hawkins, Mary Hutchison, Eloise Page, and Elizabeth Sudmeier, called the "wise gals" by their male colleagues because of their sharp sense of humour and even quicker intelligence, were not the stereotypical femme fatale of spy novels. They were smart, courageous, and groundbreaking agents at the top of their class, instrumental in both developing innovative tools for intelligence gathering—and insisting that they receive the credit and pay their expertise deserved.

So often, we remember war heroes as men completing great feats of strength on the battlefield, saving the lives of their fellow soldiers. The stories that are all too often forgotten are those of the women. These are true stories of female prisoners of war, courageous nurses taken prisoner while serving in the military to take care of those soldiers. They are the women who risked life and limb to do what they could to stop the spread of fascism. Within the minutes of this book lie the stories of five incredible women prisoners of war during World War Two.

Conversations about gender equity in the workplace accelerated in the 2010s, with debates inside Hollywood specifically pointing to broader systemic problems of employment disparities and exploitative labor practices. Compounded by the devastating #MeToo revelations, these problems led to a wide-scale call for change. The Value Gap traces female-driven filmmaking across development, financing, production, film festivals, marketing, and distribution, examining the realities facing women working in the industry during this transformative moment.

With insight and compassion, Pamela Stone shows convincingly that, far from representing a return to tradition, the decision of some women to relinquish high-powered careers is a reluctant and conflict-ridden response to the growing mismatch between privatized families and time-demanding jobs.

The Second World War changed the course of modern history. It is filled with incredible stories of daring risks and exceptional struggles, but in the popular imagination, these stories are more often than not the stories of men. There is, however, a hidden treasure trove of untold stories of heroic women who have risked their lives in the monumental battle against fascism. We’ve heard of women who became nurses treating soldiers with battlefield injuries, partisans who fought occupying armies, and skilled laborers who worked in wartime industries.

With characteristic verve and integrity, Ann Widdecombe recalls her life and highlights the people and events that most influenced her along the way. From her early family life in Singapore and her convent school days to her student ambitions at Birmingham and Oxford, and her long-serving years as an MP, this is the life story of one of our most outspoken and celebrated politicians. Offering unique insight into her time as a Minister in three Departments and the Shadow Cabinet in the 1990s, Ann also explains the roots of her conversion to Catholicism in 1993 and her deeply held views on abortion and gay marriage.

Westover, a girls' high school in Middlebury, Connecticut, has evolved from a finishing school for the Protestant elite, including F. Scott Fitzgerald's first love, to a meritocracy for pupils of many religions and races from all around the world.

In Wonder Women, author Sam Maggs tells the stories of the brilliant, brainy, and totally rad women in history who broke barriers as scientists, engineers, mathematicians, adventurers, and inventors. Also features interviews with real-life women in STEM careers, an extensive bibliography, and a guide to women-centric science and technology organizations - all to show the many ways the geeky girls of today can help to build the future.

With contributions from a wide array of scholars and activists, including leading Chicana feminists from the period, this groundbreaking anthology is the first collection of scholarly essays and testimonios that focuses on Chicana organizing, activism, and leadership in the movement years. The essays in Chicana Movidas: New Narratives of Activisim and Feminism in the Movement Era demonstrate how Chicanas enacted a new kind of politica at the intersection of race, class, gender, and sexuality, and developed innovative concepts, tactics, and methodologies that in turn generated new theories, art forms, organizational spaces, and strategies of alliance.

Shaking up New York and national politics by becoming the first African American congresswoman and, later, the first Black major-party presidential candidate, Shirley Chisholm left an indelible mark as an "unbought and unbossed" firebrand and a leader in politics for meaningful change. Chisholm spent her formative years moving between Barbados and Brooklyn, and the development of her political orientation did not follow the standard narratives of the civil rights or feminist establishments.

¿Qué papel tuvieron las primeras mujeres en la prehistoria? ¿De verdad eran ellas las que se quedaban cuidando a la prole? ¿Cómo eran realmente la maternidad y la educación de los hijos? ¿En qué momento empezaron las mujeres a perder poder? En el relato que se ha construido de las sociedades prehistóricas, las mujeres han ocupado un lugar secundario que la ciencia no se ha preocupado por entender y explicar en profundidad hasta ahora, cuando el feminismo reivindica el papel fundamental de las mujeres en la historia.

Frauen haben schon immer die Welt verändert: Sie haben geforscht, Weltliteratur geschrieben und neue Epochen in der Kunst eingeläutet. Doch die Namen dieser Frauen sucht man vergeblich in unseren Geschichtsbüchern. In Wahrheit hat nicht Walt Disney den Zeichentrickfilm erfunden, sondern eine Frau. Es waren auch Frauen, die die DNA, den ersten Algorithmus und die Kernspaltung beschrieben haben. Dank Vera Weidenbach erfahren wir nun endlich mehr über diese für die Weltgeschichte so wichtigen Frauen – wie Lilly Reich, Clara Immerwahr, Lucia Moholy, Nellie Bly und Margarete Steffin.

L'autrice del fortunato "Ragazza, donna, altro", racconta qui la schiavitù in un modo nuovo, diverso. Immagina un mondo in cui la tratta atlantica degli schiavi viene ribaltata lungo la linea del colore: sono i neri ad aver fondato un impero coloniale a partire dal Regno Unito di Grande Ambossa, e i bianchi a essere razziati dall'Europa e trasportati come schiavi al di là del mare, nelle Isole del Giappone Occidentale. Ripercorriamo la storia di Doris alternando la contemporaneità della protagonista e il suo personale viaggio verso la libertà.