Gifts for International Women's Day!

[~Sagecloud~]

Tuesday, March 8th is International Women's Day!

♀

I'd like to start a thread discussing and appreciating the women in our lives who have inspired us and why

This can:

-Historical figures
-Artists
-Musicians
-Fictional characters
-Women in politics
-Scientists
-Women you know personally (family, friends, teachers, etc.)
- Or really anyone who inspires you!

All normal forum rules apply! I hope this can be a discussion as well as a list! Have fun!

Happy International Women's Day!!!

EDIT: Everyone who comments on this thread will recieve a gift!

[~Sagecloud~]

I'll go first!

A woman who inspires me is Jane Goodall! She is a primatologist and ethologist who lived with and studied the behavior of chimpanzees in the 1960s. She has done so much work in expanding the knowledge of chimp behavior as well as advocating for the growth of Conservation Biology! Even in her older age, 87, she continues to influence others through her writing and political advocation!

Jane Goodall inspires me to work hard as a woman in STEM and continue advocation for those who are not always given a voice such as our environment and those who reside within it.

(Your's does not need to be this long, I just like talking about women in science lol)

[Dezda]

Thank you for this topic!

I want to highlight one of my favorite artists - Zinaida Serebriakova. Aside from painting my absolute favorite self-portrait ("Self-portrait wearing a scarf"), her strength in the face of adversity is truly inspiring. She came from a well-connected artistic family and was well-educated but after the death of her husband in 1919 she was left broke, with a sick mom and four young children to look after. She was also separated from her children - two of them for more than 30 years - when she was unable to retrieve them from the USSR while working in Paris.

Despite these troubles, she was a prolific artist who experimented with color, texture, and form. She refused to change her style to those popular in the art of the early Soviet period, nor paint portraits of government ministers, instead focusing on nature, women and domestic scenes, and the working class.

[~Sagecloud~]

Thank you for this topic!

I want to highlight one of my favorite artists - Zinaida Serebriakova. Aside from painting my absolute favorite self-portrait ("Self-portrait wearing a scarf"), her strength in the face of adversity is truly inspiring. She came from a well-connected artistic family and was well-educated but after the death of her husband in 1919 she was left broke, with a sick mom and four young children to look after. She was also separated from her children - two of them for more than 30 years - when she was unable to retrieve them from the USSR while working in Paris.

Despite these troubles, she was a prolific artist who experimented with color, texture, and form. She refused to change her style to those popular in the art of the early Soviet period, nor paint portraits of government ministers, instead focusing on nature, women and domestic scenes, and the working class.

Thank you so much for this submission! I wasn't aware of Zinaida Serebriakova until now. Her story, her talent, and her paintings are so stunning and inspiring! Her use of harsh, direct lighting makes her paintings more immersive and lively!

Thank you again!

[~Sagecloud~]

bump!

[winx]

As a computer science major, I'd like to recognize the contributions of the "Top Secret Rosies"! The Rosies started off as a group of women hired during WWII to serve as human computers. The program manager Herman Goldstine selected the programmers from women who had been calculating ballistics tables with desk calculators. This basically means they were computing individual ballistic missile trajectories... by hand! Programming was considered a "clerical" task at the time which is why women were the targeted demographic. Because of the classified nature of their task, the work and progress made by these women went largely unrecognized by the world. Six of these women went on to program one of the earliest computers known as the ENIAC. The ENIAC would be used to calculate the projections for the hydrogen bomb. The women were in a rush, often working double shifts, due to the timely nature of their task. They did not receive credit for this task initially because it was developed by two male engineers... but imagine simply having a computer with no programming on it. The Rosies learned the intricate hardware of the system, programmed it to do a task, and ensured it ran correctly by initially checking its results by hand.
Here's a few articles if anyone wanted to learn more about them!
x x x

[Cygnetta]

Many people were exposed to famous female black mathematicians for the first time because of the movie Hidden Figures. One female black mathematician who inspires me is Euphemia Haynes. She was the first black woman to earn a PhD in mathematics and did so in 1943. Not only was she a pioneer in math, she was a pioneer in education as well. Haynes taught at various public schools and universities, including the District of Columbia Teachers College. She established several mathematics departments and worked tirelessly to desegregate the school system. She was also an advocate for poor students and contributed to the end of the track system in DC.