Women Who Didn’t Make the History Books

— Sheryl Long

Science, activism, medicine, art, politics and physics. Women of all ages and all continents have excelled in these fields – and so many more – despite the barriers they’ve had to overcome.

History is packed with stories of women overcoming odds, defying expectations and shattering stereotypes. But all too often, the contribution has been overlooked, underplayed or just forgotten. Thankfully, what we’ve learned in many cases is that their names have not been lost, just mislaid or glossed over.

In a 1976 scholarly article about little-studied Puritan funeral services, Laurel Ulrich, a Pulitzer prize-winning historian at Harvard, included the phrase “well-behaved women seldom make history.” She intended to show that well-behaved women were not studied by historians.

This catchy phrase was taken out of context and went viral before viral, as we now use the term, even existed. It continues to be seen on greeting cards, T-shirts, mugs, and bumper stickers. Ulrich decided “In 2007, it seemed like a teaching moment and so I wrote a book using the title.” Well-Behaved Women examines the ways in which women shaped history, citing many, many examples.

Since that time there has been much research, and tons of books and papers filled with stories of amazing women. The younger generations are lucky to have this knowledge available to them, unlike my generation in our youth.

Annabelle Hirsch, in the intro to her book, A History of Women in 101 Objects, says, “Even today with inspirational women and their stories being pulled out of the swamp of oblivion, it can sometimes sound as though active, thinking, fighting, storytelling, tightrope-walking women are something quite new.”

We all know women have always been there, and they have always contributed. Not perfect and not without fault, the same as their male counterparts.

I like to believe OLLI classes on Women Who Didn’t Make the History Books are also helping pull some long ignored or forgotten females out of that “swamp.” I’ve profiled over 275 so it’s difficult to name just a few, but here’s a handful of very brief bios that might whet your curiosity about some incredible women in the past.

Ynes Mexia (1870-1938)

In her fifties she started serious hiking due to health issues. A love for the outdoors developed and it turned into a passion for botany. She studied at UC Berkeley on and off for 16 years and eventually reading about plants wasn’t enough. She wanted to go and find plants that no one had ever seen before.

When she was 55 years old she spent seven months in Mexico exploring and collecting plants, drying specimens and shipping them back to the states. For twelve years she explored highlands, wetlands, mountains and rainforests in Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador and Alaska.

Ynes is considered one of the most important and skilled botanists of the twentieth century even though she never received a college degree. She was the first person to collect plants from 500 new species and collected between 145,000 – 150,000 plant specimens. Today researchers still actively use her collections, which reside in museums and universities all over the world.

Annie Edson was widowed in her 30s and worked at various jobs and places to support herself. In her later years, she taught dance and etiquette lessons to children. Eventually students stopped coming and she had no savings. In her early 60s, she was worried about how to get by in her old age. Her solution was to make money by going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. (Go figure.)

On her 63rd birthday, thousands of people had come to watch as she (in her barrel) dropped 160 feet towards the water below.

She was the first person and the oldest person ever to accomplish it and the only woman to do it alone. Her tombstone reads “Annie Edson Taylor – First to go over the Horseshoe Falls in a barrel and live. October 24, 1901”

Noor Inayat Khan (1914 – 1944)

Noor was educated in Paris where she studied music and spoke English and French fluently. Then WW II broke out. Her father was a Sufi mystic who raised her to believe in peace and religious harmony. So, Noor became determined to work against Germany and to support efforts to end the war. She joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) and then was recruited by the British Secret Service (SOE). Noor received poor reports from her instructors, except as a wireless operator. Like many talented musicians – Noor played the harp – she was a natural signaler.

In 1943 she was sent to Paris to work for a resistance network, radioing intelligence back to London. Soon after she arrived, many of the women in the network were arrested and headquarters urged her to return. But Noor stayed on and ran the entire network for three months. She was arrested by the Gestapo after a double agent betrayed her.

Noor was moved to a prison in Germany, where she was chained and kept in solitary confinement. There they tortured her and starved her, but she never gave any information to her captors. Ten months later she was moved to the Dachau concentration camp and was killed by a firing squad. She cried out “Liberte’” as she was shot. She was 30 years old. Posthumously she was awarded the George Cross and the Croix de Guerre among many other medals and commendations.

Josephine Cochran (1839 – 1913)

After a dinner party some of her heirloom porcelain dating from the 1600s was chipped by the servants washing up. Josephine thought there must be a better and easier way to wash dishes.

She soon began working on her design. Working in a shed behind her home, Cochrane got to work with the help of a mechanic to build her design. In 1886, she patented the Garis-Cochran Dish-Washing Machine and began making them for friends. In 1893, Cochrane presented her machine at the Chicago World’s Fair, where she won the highest prize for “best mechanical construction, durability and adaptation to its line of work.” Restaurants and hotels became interested.

The machine’s domestic popularity skyrocketed in the 1950s, when women’s attitudes toward housework changed. Today, the dishwasher is a part of the typical American household. Cochran’s company eventually became KitchenAid, then part of the Whirlpool Corporation.

Sarah Josephine Baker (1873-1945)

Born into a wealthy Quaker family, Sarah decided on a career in medicine when her father and brother died of typhoid.

She eventually became director of the New York City health department’s Bureau of Child Hygiene. Her job covered the whole city, but she honed in on Hell’s Kitchen. It was considered the worst of the lower East Side slums, with as many as 4,500 people dying every week.

She focused on infant mortality because babies accounted for one third of the weekly deaths. Most of the infant deaths were caused by dysentery, though parental ignorance and poor hygiene were also to blame. She initiated classes, provided purer milk and invented a baby formula so mothers could work.

Infant blindness was common, caused by gonorrhea bacteria transmitted during birth. To prevent blindness, babies were given drops of silver nitrate in their eyes. To prevent overdoses and contamination, Baker designed tiny containers made out of antibiotic beeswax that each held a single dose of silver nitrate.

In 1917, Baker became the first woman to receive a doctorate in public health. When she retired in the 1930s, press reports estimated that she prevented the death of 90,000 infants in New York City.

If you want to learn more about the hardships and challenges these women faced – and there were many – enjoy googling them as well as the women cited in the photograph at the top of this page.

Sheryl Long graduated with a BA in Mass Communications from the University of South Florida. In the past she sewed custom clothing to earn money for college, managed an independent bookstore on Sanibel Island, was an artist assistant for Robert Rauschenberg, and produced an international TV series for PBS. After retiring as a communications and marketing manager, Sheryl began taking OLLI classes in 2016 and teaching there in 2019. As well as OLLI, she volunteers at a hospice and a hospital. She has a curious mind and loves a good story. This Fall she is teaching She Created What? Artistic Women Who Didn’t Make the History Books | Tue 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM • 9/16-9/23 • 2 mtgs • $40 • Online.