Koeppel - Strong Women: 15 Biographies of Influential Women History Overlooked

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courtesy of Caitlin Cowie

ISBN: Print 978-1-64611-685-0 | eBook 978-1-64611-686-7

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To my parents, who always thought I would do something literary.

Contents

Choosing the women to include in this book was far more difficult than I ever could have anticipated. As a professional researcher, Ive spent my career going down rabbit holes of information, often about incredible women, many of whom were lost toor erased fromhistory. So, the chance to highlight all these stories in a single book? It was a dream project; I couldnt wait to discover and share the incredible strength exhibited by women throughout history. I had no idea just how deep the imprint of women on all aspects of human advancement truly is. Thats how much the patriarchy-written history has brainwashed even a self-described feminist like me: I was blown away to discover amazing women left and right in every time period, subject, and area of the world I looked. When my list had grown to more than 200 women, I had to draw a line, but I knew there were so many more women to discover. I could keep researching forever and never finish. The guilt crept in as I narrowed down my list to just 15 women. The overwhelming scale of the feats of women almost became desensitizing. I found myself thinking things like, Ah, she won a Nobel Prize, but aside from that, she isnt very interesting. Yes, she was the first woman in Japan to receive a bachelor of science degree, but she didnt do much afterward . Wait, what? Who did I think I was? Each and every woman Id discovered had accomplished incredible things against all odds and deserved her rightful place in the history books.

But I had a page limit and a deadline keeping me from writing the encyclopedia I could so easily have filled, and I had to select just 15. After several rounds of excruciating cuts, I finally settled on these truly stellar women, and Im honored and thrilled to share them with you. Im hopeful that this book will be a gateway to telling more womens stories.

What I learned from these 15 women is that ordinary women are extraordinary, and they always have been. Our society is richly textured and layered with so much history that many of us dont take the time to understand or marvel at. For many of these women, their extraordinary actions could boil down to the post-9/11 credo, If you see something, say something. If something is wrong, unfair, or unjustsay something. Its as simple and scary as that. Years ago, I read an interview with writer and director Lena Dunham in which she relayed advice her father had given her: Go where theres a you-shaped hole in the world. That has always stuck with me, and I kept thinking about it as I wrote about these women. The you-shaped hole was not always obvious. Sometimes they squeezed into a tiny opening, and it became you-shaped after the fact. But that space allowed other women climb through after them.

Women did not suddenly start advocating for themselves and making massive contributions to society in the 20th century. The 20th century is simply when the stranglehold of the patriarchy eased and women gained more freedom and legal rights to independence from their husbands and fathers. Did you know women werent allowed to apply for their own credit card or bank loan without a mail cosignor until 1974 ? Even today, married couples get certain benefitstax breaks, insurance cutsthat make life easier and less expensive. What purpose could the government have to incentivize marriage apart from encouraging women to tie themselves to men? This is one of the reasons legalizing same-sex marriage was so important. I dont think US government officials sat down one day and said, You know, wed like to subjugate women. Whats a good way of doing that? After thousands of years of subjugation, maybe men didnt even think it was an option for a woman to be treated as a whole person. The Constitution labeled black men as counting as three-fifths of a person. Abigail Adams (a candidate for this book who didnt make the cut) famously wrote to her husband, John Adams, while he was at the Constitutional Congress, I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. And yet, I dont see the ladies mentioned anywhere in that original document. Purposeful subjugation is real , people.

Some of the women included in this book had the courage to stand up to the law and work to amend the law to make it fairer. Following the law is not always the moral thing to do.

The quieting of women and their innate power is easily accomplished by simply letting their stories fade away. However valuable the accomplishments of women may be to society, time and again women themselves are deemed inconsequential. And the historical record reflects that. When white men predominantly shape the collective history as we know it, everyone else falls to the wayside. Other voices arent deemed valuable. But we can correct the record by bringing to light the facts as best as theyve been preserved and celebrating the people who took risks and created you-shaped holes for the rest of us. We can insert the names of unsung heroines into the pages of history books and make them household names. Ultimately, this book is about that hope.