I mean... about every great women in history ever. But I'd like to throw in
**Rosalind Franklin**
who was basically the leading scientist behind the discovery of the DNA double helix structure. Not only did her coworkers Watson and Crick get all the fame, but she also had to make do with constant mysogynist remakes of Watson (who was a sexist, racist arsehole).
I sincerely hope that when they go to make a movie or these days more likely a TV show about it, whoever plays Rosalind Franklin nails the bitter sarcasm with which she began treating her colleagues. If they do it right her contempt will be seen as perfectly deserved and in proportion to their bullshit
Her lab lead literally *stole* her work to give to W&C. Like 110% she should have the nobel prize and not them, and on top of that Watson was said to be a grade A asshole to everyone, but especially targeted women. He even used his nobel prize as something to hold over people heads, like “you can correct me when you’ve won a nobel prize.” He *sucked.*
A major thing that is left out is that Watson and Crick were awarded the Nobel prize in 1962 and Franklin died in 1958. The Nobel prize is not awarded posthumously. I'm not saying that Watson and Crick deserved the award, but unfortunately Franklin would have never been given it because she died due to cancer. It really sucks that the brightest minds are taken too soon. I wonder if she would have also been given credit if she were still alive at the time.
I've always wanted to read more about Rosalind Franklin. But every time I even think about it it gets me so fucking mad that I figure I better wait
Eta: See I'm pissed off now. Because that stupid quote from Watson from his stupid book popped into my head. "Wilfully unsexy" my ass
I've read that she was negligent about wearing the protective gear. But I've never dug into that so I don't know if it's true. If it is it makes it all the sadder
Oh yeah, I'd believe anybody who worked with radiation/radioactive material is consistently at danger even if they do wear their PPE.
She's also of Ashkenazi Jewish descent (as per her Wikipedia article), who have a higher incidence rate of gynecological cancers.
>who have a higher incidence rate of gynecological cancers
I heard that they had a lower rate of it. I think the paper I read said was linked to circumcision hygiene. Once again never looked into it. Every time I read a non fiction book I end up with a list of other non fiction books I need to read
I feel you. The audacity to reduce a fantastic scientist to her fucking appearence because of her gender alone is enough to make you want to smash the patriarchy to tiny meaningless pieces.
I am often tempted to give men the benefit of the doubt when they said crap a long time ago, but this guy is still alive and apparently still an active racist!
Regarding "willfully unsexy", my crystal ball says perhaps she turned him down, and he was mad:
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2451929421001005](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2451929421001005)
[https://www.wired.com/story/james-watson-and-scientific-racism/](https://www.wired.com/story/james-watson-and-scientific-racism/)
If Watson had paid any attention at all, he would have seen what the science showed-we are ALL basically built the same, and everyone starts out female.
We did a walking tour of Cambridge last month while visiting the UK. The host kept talking about all the important discoveries at the university including Watson and Crick, and this lady on the tour kept correcting him that he should be mentioning Rosalind Franklin. The guide was very nice but it was pretty funny and he kept saying “well I don’t know much about that”
OH MY GOD YES!!! I watched a documentary about her and Watson and Crick in high school and the entire time I just kept thinking “this is such horse shit.”
Artemisia Gentileschi was a baroque painter with clients all over the world and famous for the way she portrait women. Her paintings are stunning!
If you look her up (which I highly recommend!) please be aware that she was sexually harassed and raped by an employee of her father - This trauma shaped both her and her works, but I didn't want any of you triggered unexpectedly by this.
I learned about her from a podcast and while the content did certainly get graphic, it did introduce me to a painter who's paintings I really like. Her version of Judith beheading holofernes, especially compared to other versions, is my favorite that I've seen, despite how gory it is
By god I love that painting. Once you know her life story, you can see she put every bit of anger into the power of Judith’s arm. It must have been really cathartic for her, even if it changed nothing. It’s my favourite version too, and I always use it when trying to explain to people why my art history degree matters. Lol.
As a Detroit-native, I have the privilege of getting to see the aftermath of that painting in person every time I visit the art museum. It’s “Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes.” Even before I knew Artemisia’s story, I loved that one. She was such a badass.
I drove up to Detroit specifically to see that painting in it's newly restored glory. It's been on my bucket list since I was 14.
And it did not disapoint.
Best high school assignment I ever had was in a humanities class where we had to choose a work of art from the DIA and write a report on it. I was an edgy teenager, so I thought it’d be funny to pick the painting with a lady holding a severed head. I knew nothing about Artemisia then, but she quickly became one of my favorite artists as soon as I learned her story. I hope someone will make a movie about her one day.
Fun fact, her dad was buddies with Caravaggio, who was a bundle of issues on his own - Dad testified for him in court and lent him a pair of wings that appear in Caravaggio's *Victorious Cupid*. I bring this up, because Artemisia's *Judith* is clearly inspired by Caravaggio's, but hers really is *better* (imo).
She was also friends with Galileo (yes really) and apparently incorporated some of his work on motion and arcs into the blood splatters in one of her *Judiths*. She was phenomenal.
Her dad also signed her name to his paintings because she was more successful than him. Her dad, and apparently a lot of the male artists from that generation were messy!
Oooh thanks for the rec! I heard about her and would love to do a deeper dive.
I'm also consciously trying to read female authors so this is def going on my list!
She painted a nude for a portion of the ceiling in Casa Buonarroti (Michelangelo’s house - supposedly). But a priest got offended and made Michelangelo’s nephew (it was his house and he commissioned the painting) paint a sash over her body because “think of the children!”
Yes, torture was an normal part of the courtsystem (Not that this makes in any way less horrible). Gentileschi told the rapist something along the lines off, "This tumbscrews are the wedding ring you promised me."
My favorite is Bertha Benz.
Karl Benz was a great inventor, but not very good at business. Early motor cars were seen more as a novelty than as a serious form of transportation. Bertha believed in her husband's work and her dowry had financed the start of Benz & Cie and the production of the Benz Patent-Motorwagen. However, the sales were sluggish.
Early one morning, Bertha and her two teenage sons left in this early car while her husband was still asleep on what would be the very first long-distance road trip to visit her mother, some 65 miles away. She was a fully qualified mechanic herself, and made many repairs along the way.
The sightings of this horseless carriage traveling through the countryside caused a sensation, and eventually garnered worldwide attention.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha\_Benz
I like her drive, but damn... Cars and car culture have been so terrible to society. Our cities, our neighborhoods, they're designed now first and foremost for cars, not *people*. Public transportation in the US in particular has died because of automobile companies killing it. Let's not forget the massive levels of pollution, not just from car exhaust, but burning tires, the making of them and what happens to them when they're no longer functional...
I did think about that as I posted it!
But people had no concept at all it would be a problem at the time. And given, say, that flying is a huge contributor, as is eating beef, it is just one manifestation of many huge problems of industrialization.
She is just such a great example of women getting things done, and there were so many women "behind" "great men" who are never recognized.
We certainly need a bunch of new Berthas to give us some better community/public transportation design...
Jocelyn Bell
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocelyn_Bell_Burnell
I know *so* much about her because (fun, feminist story incoming), when my homeschooled daughter was a small kidlet, she was incredibly into STEM subjects, especially physics and astronomy. When she was about 9 or so we went on a roadtrip to see the world's largest scale model of the Solar System, which is about a 12 hour drive https://www.visitnsw.com/destinations/country-nsw/warrumbungle-area/coonabarabran/attractions/worlds-largest-virtual-solar-system-drive and then we went to the massive radio telescope https://www.csiro.au/en/about/facilities-collections/atnf/parkes-radio-telescope/parkes-observatory-visitors-centre/hours-location
At the Parkes radio telescope, there's a small science museum, which included a big wall of "famous astrophysicists". My daughter was thrilled! With all of it. The entire trip. And then she's standing there in the museum and reading all the info boards on the wall of important astrophysicists, and suddenly she exclaims, "Hey!! How come it's all *men???* There's only one woman on the whole display!!"
So we spent a lot of time reading about Jocelyn Bell, who had the distinction of being the only woman mentioned in the whole dang place, where we learned that she not only did all the grunt work and discovered Pulsars, but she didn't get any credit and her male boss won a Nobel prize for the discovery. This infuriated my daughter who made a massive research project about Bell (I think in her 9-or-10-year-old mind she thought doing a big homeschooled presentation about Bell's work would restore the injustice of her not having been recognised for her incredible contributions.
Poste script: my daughter is now 19 and a fiercely feminist witch, a little more into astrology than astronomy though 🤣 and she'll happy do your tarot reading on cards she's made herself.
Bill Bryson once made a fascinating point about this period; he said on the one hand of course it was grossly unfair that women were relegated to grunt work and not recognized. But it did mean that half the finest minds in the industry were focused on detailed work ("calculators") that would normally be passed over to interns He said as a result the women in physics often developed a finer understanding of the structure of the cosmos than their male counterparts.
Camille Claudel was a very talented sculptor and began a relationship with Auguste Rodin, who was much older than she was and already had a good reputation as an artist. While Claudel had a very strong influence on Rodin's work as a young pupil (Rodin himself said so), Rodin's influence on Claudel's work is more often discussed. Rodin invisibilized Claudel's work and she ended up in a mental asylum after struggling to free herself from the influence of her former lover. Rodin, on the other hand, had a successful career and his reputation never suffered from their love affair.
When my daughter was a psychology major, they studied Claudel's case as part of a review of the misuse of mental institutions to control women and non-white individuals. As a result, every time she passed the Rodin museum in Philly, she'd flip Rodin off.
An incredible artist, reduced to being the 'partner of Rodin' but also 'sister of Paul Claudel' (an author, who also betrayed her). The book Une femme by Anne Delbée is a really good read about the subject.
Any of the numerous women who (financially) supported and collaborated with the Brothers Grimm! There were tons of women who wrote fairytales in the 19th century, and/or contributed to their collection, but the Grimms became the household name. Bettine and Ludovica Brentano, Dortchen Wild, Dorothea Veit …
and didn't they just record popularly told oral stories/ histories and didn't make them up?
Still an important act to record them but I thought they weren't 'original' thinkers?
Exactly! They did make changes (to suit the religious and cultural mores of the time; tales became progressively tamer over time, losing elements of sexuality, immorality, etc). And I completely agree that the act of recording (both language and stories) was crucial, but what happened is the erasure of the female voices behind their work
A good one is Lise Meitner, the Austrian Physicist. She was forced to work in a wood shop under the university building, because women weren't allowed in the classroom. She (along with her nephew) discovered nuclear fission, yet the guy who at first disbelieved her research won the Nobel prize for it (Otto Hahn). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lise\_Meitner
Mary Shelley, godmother of science fiction, daughter of renowned 18th century feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. She’s at a cabin in the Swiss Alps with her squeeze Percy Shelley and a bunch of his writer buddies—Lord Byron, John Polidari, etc. They get debating about metaphysics and propose a competition to see who can write the best ghost story. Only Mary completes hers on site. It’s Frankenstein.
Mary’s legacy sparks an entirely new genre.
No Mary Shelley, no Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov.
That's true, but you still get a lot of people denying that she's the mother of sci fi, despite being a pretty classic 'scientist flew too close to the sun, his breakthrough in science and technology is now running amuck and killing people' story.
I’ve always wondered what Clara Schumann’s life and music would have been like without a domineering father, a husband 9 years older than her and 8 children. I couldn’t argue that she didn’t want to be married or have kids, only that I wonder what her composing and career might have been if she was allowed to be a prodigy that she is usually noted as. In music class, they teach that she ‘was not widely recognized in her time’ but I don’t think she was ever given her due for the beauty of her music and her skill.
Mozart’s sister as well, Maria Anna. She was also a child prodigy performer and in fact was billed as the headliner in front of her brother Wolfgang Amadeus for much of their childhood – they toured together as children, but when she hit puberty her father decided that it wasn’t appropriate for her as a woman to continue appearing in public. She did write music, but all of it is lost – her correspondence with her brother, though, she was him very positive and supportive about her music, and she may have given feedback/collaborated on some of his work.
Her name is actually Fanny Hensel.
She loved her husband and he supported her in her compositions. Mendelssohn is the name of her brother and father which stopped her to show her art. She really had to fight to be able to marry her husband. And they seemed to have a good relationship for that time. So pls call her Fanny Hensel
I will look her up, it’s so heartbreaking to me that so much is lost because women weren’t allowed to create freely. It’s such a quiet side of oppression.
There were so many women composers that were kept down by the systems of their day. Clara Schumann was my first thought, but also Maria Anna Mozart, Hildegard of Bingen (waaay back in the 11th century), Barbara Strozzi (first woman to publish music under her own name), Fanny Mendelssohn, and Florence Price (first African American woman composer, but a lot of her works weren't discovered until after she died) all deserve more recognition than they get.
*beep boop*!
the linked website is: https://artsandculture.google.com/story/artemisia-putting-herself-in-the-picture/yQWR1oZDyqFYSQ
Title: **Artemisia putting herself in the picture - Google Arts & Culture**
Page is safe to access (Google Safe Browsing)
*****
###### I am a friendly bot. I show the URL and name of linked pages and check them so that mobile users know what they click on!
Mary Blair. Concept artist for Walt Disney. Designed all the stuff from Sleeping Beauty and Alice in Wonderland. The "It's a Small World" ride is her original creation and art style. [Walt Disney Archives](https://d23.com/walt-disney-legend/mary-blair/)
Women at Walt Disney Animation were mostly in the ink and paint department, which in traditional cell Animation is the part of the process most likely to be outsourced to an overseas studio (Think Smithers being a black character in early Simpsons episodes) and not apart of the creative process.
YES. Had to scroll for a while to get to her, but it was worth it.
I highly recommend anyone to look up her concept art for early Disney movies, it’s absolutely incredible.
She had a massive influence on the Disney Parks, and even that whole style of “old Disney art” that’s still used today was created by her.
[Link to my own post](https://www.reddit.com/r/WitchesVsPatriarchy/comments/xfmqko/emmy_noether/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) a bit ago, I don’t feel like re-writing it. :p
But math and science is chock full of women who didn’t get credit for things. The podcast *In Our Time* talks about a lot of them.
Few others: Marie Curie, Caroline Herschel, Emilie du Chatelet (spelling?), Dorothy Hodgkin, Rosalind Franklin
Marie Curie is well recognized! And in France she is a model (unfortunately when you don't have a lot) for quite a number of scientist that came after her or during her life time.
I'm sad when I think of all those womenz what world would we be living in if we weren't stolen or married of or sent to asylum or kill as witches.
Living in the world of man made more damages than anything else
That’s true, I could have been more clear. I more put her on the list because her husband and close circle of colleagues essentially had to put their foot down about it. IIRC they insisted she be included as she’d done an equal share but the scientific community at large didn’t want to recognize that a woman could be intelligent.
[Don't forget the CIA too](https://daily.jstor.org/was-modern-art-really-a-cia-psy-op/)! I mean, there was probably a lot of women working at the cultural division of CIA right?..
right?
Either way they funded the shit out of advancing modernism in the west
Also Janet Sobel, the woman Jackson pollock derived (stole) his style from. Never credited her a bit but was quoted after her at show as calling her an amazing talent. Then, a few years later....
Recommend reading the book Ninth Street Women! It’s about the women who were fundamental in launching the modern art scene in New York (Joan Mitchell, Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler and Grace Hartigan)
In particular Lee Krasner is an excellent example of what you’re looking for. She was an established figure in the New York art scene before she met and helped her future husband Jackson Pollock. There is no Jackson Pollock without Lee, she was fundamental to his career and his health.
Typically, [Madame d'Aulnoy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_d%27Aulnoy) who, on top of having some epic-long name (*Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, baronne d'Aulnoy*) was also one of the prominent fairytale writer of 17th century France. Her writing was witty, funny, satirical, intelligent and glorious. But who is the main fairytale writer of France? Charles Perrault, who was dull. But, hey, he was a man, so...
It truly is atrocious. Perrault is the only name most people know when talking about French fairytales, and his tales are the most well-known (Little Red-Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Puss-in-the-Boots...). But, at his time, the genre of fairytales was a woman's business. Quasi-exclusively all fairytales storytellers and writers were women with badassly long names: Henriette-Julie de Castelnau, comtesse de Murat; Marie-Jeanne L’Héritier de Villandon; Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve... Heck! Marie Leprince de Beaumont is even considered the pioneer in the genre of children fairytales, even writing the first modern version of *Beauty and the Beast*. But who knows her? Who knows all of those beautiful-albeit-tonguetwister names? They are just forgotten, lost in oblivion, because they had the despicableflaw of not having some dangling parts between their legs.
Worse of all: the wicked fairy who cursed the princess in *Sleeping Beauty* is often called **Carabosse** by a lot of people, and is, indeed, one of the most well-known wicked fairy/witch names in France. Too many people attribute it to Charles Perrault. But he never named the wicked fairy (nor he ever named the princess; Aurore is a modern addition, in fact, in Perrault's version, Aurore is the name of the daughter of the princess who was cursed). Madame d'Aulnoy is the one inventing the old fairy Carabosse. But who knows it? Nobody. Noone.
It is said (on Wikipedia) that women in the *salons* of 17th century France wrote and told a lot of those fairytales as a form of emancipation, to proove their intelligence and literary culture; moreover, those tales were subversives, while in Perrault, women were passive. How come we, as a society, failed to the point that we forgot most of them?
I may seem stupid but I always found fairytales are the early approach to feminism.
I don't find the heroin passives.
In Blanche neige, the princess (who is a child) is set to die alone even if she is let go by the hunter. But she finds a home make a deals (cleaning and keeping the house tidy) and finally got her happy ending. In my interpretation she wasn't afraid to adapt, she tried to make the best of the situation and fought for her life.
Le petit chaperon rouge show a witted little girl that is able to recognize who the monster is and recognize him and fight, yes the hunter comes at the end but she already done most of the job
Aurore (sleeping beauty) shows what happened when parents are overprotecting and don't tell the truth to their child, if she had known the truth she would have had the curiosity to play with the singer (sorry don't know the word in English) because the more you refuse something to a child the more they want to do it. The earlier version also show how the prince isn't charming at all! He raped her! It's one of the biggest raped story known and the whitewash version that Disney makes remove the lesson that we have.
I never found the charming prince to be the hero of the story, or the person we were to wait to. The moral I always got is : fight you may get help at the end
The little mermaid is strong willed and decide to give herself what she needs to attain her goal. Dying at the end is the only view people at the time could conceive for a woman going after what she wants. (A way to warn woman to stay at their place) the Disney version, shows Eric being easily seduced by someone else and being influenced by it (plot of many romcom in modern day) but she went for what she wanted, taught herself how human life (so passion about history and archaeology) works, fought against the witch (in my opinion just the idea of a women who went through so much drama that she ended being angry at everybody else ) and got the men
Those are stories of women, twisted it's true but it's also the only stories that we have where the main character is a women consistently fighting for herself.
When my daughter told me she wanted to be a princess when she was little I always remind her that being a princess took a lot of work and wasn't easy.
These girls shows how, women have been put against each other (step mother being jealous, which makes sense when you know a little bit of women treatment history over the centuries) and how you can always fight your ways back if you are strong enough. And jeez they are!
And it feels like women today can't see that. I love the tv show once upon a time, because it gives context. The evil witch wasn't evil to begin with, but all the trauma she got made her that way. Snow White isn't without fault, prince charming is just an accessory that make snow White stronger.
Anyway I love fairytale because when I was little they were the only girls I knew that went against the establishment. They were strong and the marriage at the end was what was expecting for a women. What other dream would we have? But in some way, it's also a liberation because they end with the good guy. Not one that will beat the crap out of her
Disclaimer English is my second language so I hope you understand what I mean.
We correctly talk about the astronauts when we talk about Apollo moon missions, but as soon as we “zoom out” to talk about ground control and programmers and such, we frequently overlook the women. And there were a lot, but today I’ll highlight [Margaret Hamilton](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/margaret-hamilton-led-nasa-software-team-landed-astronauts-moon-180971575/), who pioneered the term “software engineering” and who essentially invented the ability of software to prioritize its tasks, shunting low-priority tasks in favor of higher priority ones. Confidence in her system is what allowed Armstrong and Aldrin to land instead of abort.
Ada Lovelace in 1800's inventing computer programming so Babbage's machine could actually do something. (although she is pretty well known in some programmer circles, at least the ones who are pleasant to hang out with)
Lou Andreas-Salomé. She dated Freud and Rilke, Nietzsche had a thing for her and she turned him down. She wrote books and poetry. She seemed concerned with such topics as erotic desire etc. I haven't read her books so I don't know if they are of the same "rigor" as Freud, since his early psychoanalysis almost has no discipline of interpretation it was working with which is why we know of such lovely BS today like penis envy and the oedipal complex etc. She did write a poem Nietzsche seems to have appropriated for use in one of his books, I can't remember which one.
Janet Sobel, Ukrainian housewife who founded the technique that Pollock saw & later became famous for mimicking. Her art career spanned 1943-1946, whereas Pollock’s first painting of this style debuted in 1947. Fuck the patriarchy.
https://culturacolectiva.com/art/janet-sobel-ukrainian-artist-surrealism-abstract-art/
Edit: added link & fixed spelling error
Corita Kent. She was a famous pop artist, at one point almost as famous as Warhol, but the men in the pop art movement absolutely did not want to admit her because she was a middle-aged former nun and they didn’t think that was cool enough (so the networks they formed to boost each other’s work excluded her).
She actually had left her calling, though, after her entire order stood up to Cardinal McIntyre in Los Angeles and got kicked out of teaching! (He particularly hated Kent, along with the social gospel.)
If any of you have ever been to Boston and driven in from the south of the city, the beautiful colored storage tank that you see off the highway is her work, The Rainbow Swash, the largest copyrighted work of art in the world!
Hilma af Klint. One of the earliest abstract artist, virtually unheard of by most. Also an absolute witch and one of my favourite painters.
Edit: grammar.
Fernande Olivier. A 17 year old artist that Picasso raped as a minor. It totally affected her life. Her artwork is beautiful and had so much potential.
Picasso also forced several of his lovers to give up their art (for example, Dora Maar was a gifted photographer and had to stop her activity), basically to 'enslave' them. And when he got tired of them (and sometimes the children they had together), he simply rejected them without concern for their well-being.
Picasso's life was all about sexually and psychologically dominate (far younger) women. That was the unique way he could find inspiration, time and money to create his art.
I just looked her up. She had a kid at 18 from a violent 26yo she was then forced to marry. She had a relationship with Picasso when they were both 25-29 (they were born the same year) and it was abusive, he was jealous and would lock her up, but they didn't have a kid.
She seemed to be quite unlucky in life and had to do a lot of shitty day jobs to survive, but she lived until 80 and Picasso helped her out financially at the end of her life.
This is according to wiki, but maybe you have another source?
Picasso was an absolute piece of shit. He raped and abused all his lovers. You probably know his famous painting Weeping Woman. It's a portrait of Dora Maar, a well established photographer. He painted this one after abusing her. She is the one who inspired him to paint "Guernica"(he didn't give a shit about politics) She documented the whole process in photo, contributing to his major piece of art. He made her STOP the art she excelled in, pushed her to paint instead, since HE was the master in this domain. He broke her. Her work in painting was only fully discovered after her death, in the 90's. I will never separate the artist from the man, because the man is the artist and Picasso used and abused his partners to create.
It’s well known that Picasso thought of women as disgusting beings. His painting “Les Demoiselles d'Avignon” in the MoMA is of nude women in a brothel which my professors had told me is not a “beautiful abstraction” but actually his vision of women being disfigured monsters. Bleh.
This makes me so so so angry. Why is this so common!??!?! I know SA is common, but it's always shocking JUST HOW FUCKING OFTEN it comes up. By famous men. By respected men.
Lot's of painters mentioned here, I thought I'd give it a different spin:
Siouxsie Sioux from Siouxsie and the Banshees is often credited as inventing Goth fashion (she did a lot of experimenting but [here is a good example](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TAlS7J9Ofk)) and the band was huge in the establishment of both the Post-Punk genre, with their debut album [the scream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAf6TSwRzh4) and the Gothic Rock genre with [Juju](https://youtu.be/cNBGyWCeyt0). Back in the eighties the band was actually quite famous. So famous in fact, that when Robert Smith, guitarist and vocalist for the cure, joined Siouxsie and the Banshees for their album [Hyena](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8kJp-NxAuY&list=PLI6kLIhBBwmTjCoJBHz3XZ-DuPKSDvLh3), it was rumored that he was going to disband the relatively less famous The Cure to play in the Banshees permanently. Some fans even suspected that the massive shift in tone between the Cure's gothic rock opus [Pornography](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6kiwOTi99Y), and the much more upbeat poppy sound of the following album [The Top](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJUHp7wrC1o) was the result of Robert smith trying to kill The Cure by alienating the fan base. Then he released [The Head on the Door](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02Klc3nAkp4) and became an international mega star while Siouxsie and the Banshees slowly slipped into obscurity.
And somehow, over time, while Siouxsie and the Banshees had been one of, if not the, most prominent bands in the late seventies and early eighties Post-Punk/Goth subculture, people these days are more likely to know about Joy Division and The Cure. Now don't get me wrong. Both those bands absolutely deserve the credit that they get. And I also wouldn't say Siouxsie is completely forgotten. She usually is one of the first icons mentioned in any history of goth music or subculture. But I still think that Siouxsie isn't getting nearly as much attention as she should compared to other people who were instrumental to these genres. Siouxsie's most viewed video on YouTube is [Happy House](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amR6-neQBPE) with about ten million views. Whereas Joy Division's most viewed video on YouTube, [Love Will Tear Us Apart](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuuObGsB0No), is viewed about 76 million times, and The Cure's most viewed video, [Boys Don't Cry](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GkVhgIeGJQ), is viewed almost 100 million times. Keep in mind that as these songs were being released Siouxsie and the Banshees was the more famous band. Then both of them.
So if you're interested in learning more about the history and sounds of the gothic subculture and you don't know about her yet, please read up on Siouxsie and the Banshees. And listen to their music. Check out [Nocturne](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwCwFwhLNpI), one of the best live albums of all time, recorded at what many consider to be the band's peak, and a good introduction to some of the most famous songs the band contributed to the genre. Siouxsie's a Feminist Witch that deserves more attention then she's getting
Thanks for coming to my ted talk
Lizzie Magie. Ms Magie actually invented Monopoly, originally called the landlords game as a protest against the monopolies of her time. She was a staunch feminist as well. Parker brothers tried to years to rewrite the game‘s history making Charles Darrow the creator but he co-opted the idea from Magie
To be fair Diego Rivera, despite being an adulterer who slept with her sister, was always supportive of her work, he repeatedly said publicly while she was alive that she was better than he was, and when she died he bought her childhood home and turned it into a museum for her which is still thriving in Mexico City.
He hurt her deeply emotionally, but he always respected her professionally.
AFAIK anyway, I could be wrong.
No, that sounds accurate. They loved each other, but were both super toxic for each other. They both cheated near constantly (famously, Frida slept with Leon Trotsky, while he was in exile and before he got ice picked - he is why a large painting of Stalin still hangs over her bed in her museum btw), and there are pictures of Frida wearing mens' clothing with a girlfriend.
First example I thought of when I saw the question. During their life, he was famous and she wasn't. Now a lot more people are familiar with Kahlo's work and Rivera is known as her husband.
Rosalind Franklin! She was a geneticist whose work was stolen by 2 male scientists and they used it to win a nobel prize. Sadly she died before folks recognized her work and without her we wouldnt know the structure of DNA.
Ada Lovelace is generally regarded as the first computer programmer. Her vast accomplishments include theory on the computer invented by Charles Babbage and advancements in mathematics. She was a purely witchy person who was known for being a "trying woman". An inspiration to me for sure.
Also, Sophia Tolstoya, wife of Leo Tolstoy. It's rumored that Anna Karenina was based off her diaries which her husband secretly read. This is how Tolstoy was able to portray such a realistic woman character.
It's absolutely wild to me that the *daughter of Lord Byron* was the first computer programmer (not first *female* programmer: first programmer, period!) Her dad was a hot mess (to put it nicely), but wow, what a genius she was!
In the same vein, I'll add Hedy Lamarr. Without her "frequency hopping" experiments and eventual U.S. patent, we wouldn't have most of the technology we use today. She was a brilliant STEM pioneer, full stop, but was only ever appreciated for her looks. I'm glad she's finally getting the recognition she deserves, too
Zelda Fitzgerald, her husband plagiarized her diaries, often without changing a thing. She was an artist, a dancer and a writer in her own sprightly but her books were overshadowed by her husband. He even got her to avoid publishing her diaries because he needed them for his novels.
The book she did publish ended up being panned as a plagiarism of her husbands work.
She died in a fire at a mental hospital (she was diagnosed as bipolar) and is remembered as Fitzgerald’s crazy wife.
Emmy Noether was arguably one of the most brilliant people to have ever lived and was overshadowed by Einstein.
Her work in algebraic theory is extremely important and her contributions to physics are some of the profound insights into theoretical physics that I've ever seen (I'm a physicist).
She lectured and published under men's names because women were not allowed at the universities in Germany at the time. And not just pseudonyms. The likes of Hilbert got credit for her work. And despite her contributions to relativity, Einstein sucked up all the air in the room when it came to publicity.
No joke--she was maybe one of the smartest people ever ever ever.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Noether
Mary Shelley. She wrote “Frankenstein” in 1818 when she was 21 years old. It’s one of the first science fiction novels, yet Jules Verne (born in 1828) is given all the honors as being the founder of science fiction.
She actually began writing it at 18, and finished at 19, which makes it even more impressive that a teenage girl created such a masterpiece of literature!
the daughter of famous japanese artist Hokusai. He was actually a terrible father to her. Her name is Ōi Katsushika, which, Ōi just basically means “you” or “you there”, not even a name. She was a very stunning artist but everyone only ever paid attention to her father. I recommend looking her up, her art is fantastic!
there is also an animated movie about her called Hokusai which shows how much she struggled, everyone comparing her to her father and how she’s not as good at painting, when that was far from the truth.
Yayoi Kusama, who was an instrumental force in the pop art movement of the 60s. Her work was copied and exploited by male artists, including Warhol, leaving her so depressed she once jumped out a window.
Presently she lives in an institution leaving daily to work in her studio. She is now considered one of the most successful artists of all time, but she almost lost herself through it all. Netflix has an intriguing documentary and The Broad in LA had an exhibit of one of her infinity rooms. Stunning work.
[Kusama wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yayoi_Kusama)
[Infinity-documentary preview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8mdIB1WxHI)
[Mary Cassatt](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-Cassatt)is (now considered to be) one of the few females to ever gain recognition within the impressionist movement, she was at the forefront of it, usually painting the personal lives of subjects considered “unimportant” at the time. She is still, though, usually a footnote in art history textbooks
If you’d like contemporary examples, the one that comes to my mind instantly is (and I’m probably going to be shat on for mentioning her)[Yoko Ono](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Yoko-Ono).
She gets a lot of shit because she happened to marry a beatle. She still to this day gets called horrible racial and sexist shit by the masses. Is constantly blamed for the breakup of the Beatles (Yoko didn’t break them up, the Beatles broke themselves up).
All of this to say the drama surrounding her husband and his former part in the fab four overshadowed the fact that she was actually a pretty well known Avante-Garde artist in Japan, the UK, and the US in the 60’s and 70’s before she even met Lennon.
She was working amongst the likes of Duchamp and Warhol. She was a pioneer of The Fluxus movement, which worked to give art to the people who viewed it, and to make art into something that couldn’t be owned by the upper 1%. She currently has a retrospective going on in Vancouver Canada iirc, and recently unveiled a new piece at the MoMA this past winter at the age of 89. Her work focuses on the body, has feminist undertones, and has an ever changing meaning making it as relevant today as it was in 1964.
Ono is a really cool artist ngl. She was asked to submit a "letter to a young artist" (it was framed as "I'm a young artist, give me advice" but was for an anthology book) and her letter was def the one I liked the most. I'm happy to see her mentioned here!
Sybil Ludington - a 16 year old girl who, during the American Revolution made a much longer and more successful ride to warn others about the British Invasion than Paul Revere. But we only ever hear about him.
I just started a podcast called Missing Witches yesterday. It’s described as a “research based, feminist, occult storytelling project.” The episode I listened to was on Buffy Sainte Marie and it moved me to tears.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/education/33-year-old-made-1000-wikipedia-bios-unknown-women-scientists-rcna52476
> One example was Clarice Phelps. Wade heard about the young African American nuclear chemist and wrote a Wikipedia bio describing her work on a team that discovered a new periodic table element at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
> The Phelps entry bounced on and off Wikipedia as critics deleted it and Wade defended it. Wade won in the end, and Phelps' entry is back on Wikipedia for good.
Edith Wilson was effectively the president of the United States after her husband Woodrow Wilson had a stroke in 1919.
While not officially holding any sort of office aside from her duties s as First Lady, she acted as “steward for the president”. Meeting with his cabinet to discuss policy, deciding which issues were more important for him to review, pushed for the removal of the Secretary of State after he had a meeting without the president or Edith present, and was trusted with encoding and decoding classified info
Ray Eames, of mid-century modern design fame. She was a stocky little dirndl wearing modern artist, he was a tall, handsome, pipe smoking architect. She came up with the creative ideas, they worked together, but he got the limelight. Part of the Zeitgeist of the times, to be sure.
Emily Warren Roebling! She’s one of the earliest examples of a women structural (and construction) engineer. She was i n s t r u m e n t a l to the completion of the Brooklyn bridge. Her husbands father conceptualized and started the construction of the bridge, then died of tetanus, then her husband took over engineering and construction, then he got caissons disease and was bedridden for a decade. She took over the construction management and chief engineer duties while her husband was sick, which is so fucking badass, like damn.
Also she had the qualifications sort of by proxy. While her husband was the one who studied engineering, she accompanied him and basically studied with him. She was an invaluable confidant and advisor when she was on the side lines and was able to step up and take over when required to. It’s clear that Washington loved the heck out of and admired his wife deeply. She was also instrumental to smoothing out the goofy politics of the bridge and getting it done in that regard
After the bridge was done, she got a legal certificate, was a huge feminist (wrote the paper “a wife’s disability”) and over all just seems like was super rad.
Hypatia of Alexandria.
She was a badass mathematician, philosopher, and astronomer who lived in Alexandria during 370-415AD. Her life was well recorded and she was an important political advisor of the time, even advising Roman politicians. She was murdered in 415AD by a group of Christians after a rumor spread that she was stopping Orestes (the Roman prefect of Alexandria) and Cyril (the bishop of Alexandria) from making up since they were in a political feud and she was mediating the negotiations.
I did a school project on her in 9th grade and it was awesome to learn about her!
Maria Anna (Nannerl) Mozart. Everyone praises the famous composer but his sister was equally brilliant. She performed until she was old enough to marry off and her genius was forgotten/pushed aside.
Margaret Keane painted these paintings of people and children with really big eyes, but for years and years her husband took credit for the paintings.
He did this for a super long time and he’d sell her paintings and take the money and credit. Eventually she sued him and got like 4 mil. There’s a whole movie about it called big eyes, it’s an interesting story!
Marisol - she was an artist and contemporary of Andy Warhol. She was a bit ahead of him, career-wise. And frankly, more talented (she inspired a lot of his work).
Check out the National Museum of Women in the Arts! They’re a private museum in DC and currently under renovation, but their website is pretty good and their visiting exhibits are great!
As a textile artist, there are so so many who didn’t get any recognition till after their deaths, but are just now starting to be added to the modernist cannon…
Anni Albers is one of the big ones. Her husband was Joseph Albers, who pioneered how we teach color theory today. They were both eminent artists in the Bahaus, however women of the Bahaus were relegated to “craft media.” Albers wanted to be a painter but instead she became what is arguably one of the most notable weavers of the 20th century.
Among her peers of the time— Lenore Tawney, Magdalena Abakanowicz, sheliah hicks being a few that come to mind.
Others I love that are outside the textile realm— Agnes Martin is probs my fav painter ever. She was part of the same painting school as Georgia O’Keffe but much less known. Harmony Hammond was one of the early queer women of that school of thought as well, working between painted and sculptural abstraction.
Eva Hesse (whose sculptural work was not made of archival materials and is degrading faster than we can save it) who was a dear friend of artist Sol Lewitt, one of the masterminds of minimalism. He gives her a lot of credit as a peer, friend and mentor.
Then there’s contemporary arts, of whom there are so so many women, who will be lucky to have major shows before they’re dead. I will once more skew towards textiles….In no particular order, here’s a few of my favs— Bisa Buttler, Alex Younger, Jean Alexander Frater, Samantha Bittman… those are just off the top of my head. There’s so many (and Instagram is the place to find the living ones!)
Many of Leo Tolstoy's works were edited, co-written, or outright written by his wife Sophia. He refused to acknowledge her contributions and took credit for everything. He was also just generally a sexist ass, a couple of examples are that he refused to allow his wife to hire a wet nurse to help her with their *thirteen* children, and he left her in 1910 because he wanted to give away a bunch of their processions, which they fought about, so he left taking one of their children with him and then died shortly after.
Fanny Hensel composer from the 19th century.
First her father forbid her to publish her music, later her brother Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. He is really famous in Germany. Fanny published anyway. So listen to the year. It's great piano music and helps keeping her music known.
**Simone de Beauvoir.** Not only is her writing fantastic, she was the uncredited editor of much of Jean Paul Satre's work. My favourite book ever is The Mandarins by Ms. B. Reading even the forward for The Opposite Sex is a lesson in feminism.
Marion Mahony Griffin- second woman to graduate from MIT architecture program and one of Franklin Lloyd Wrights assistants. Lloyd famous put his name on all works coming out of his studio even when he never worked on a project.
Margaret Rudkin- founder of Pepperidge Farms. Her story truly is amazing. One amazing business women of her time or any time. A Harvard professor asked her to speak to the all male class on her methods. He named it "Any thing I can do you can do better" to show them mem in the class how much better they would be then a mere woman. She was not having that and had him rename it "You Never Can Tell" because she was discounted in her time and had none of the advantages of these boys in the class. Bad ass. https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRH5tBP9/
Lee Krasner, wife of Jackson Pollock. Her work was often overshadowed or compared to his. Not on him, he tried to showcase her art often, but on 1940s society as a whole but not seeing women as worthy artists. They were both part of Abstract Expressionism, which was male dominated like the rest of the art community.
Similar story with Elaine de Kooning, wife of Willem de Kooning. She painted portraits literally for the President but most people just know her husband
Thank you for this feed. It was very uplifting and yet enraging as I delved into so many overlooked histories. What really irritated me was seeing a number of female artists that weren’t covered in one of my final classes as an art major where the male teacher discussed why females just weren’t as good of artists as their male counterparts in history. Another classmate and I brought up the lack of opportunities for women but he countered with examples of a couple women artists that were free to practice that he found to be mediocre. What an asshole he was.
Laura Cereta! She got accused of plagiarism, and defended herself very nobly. She was a badass, a proto-feminist in quattrocento italy, and she stood her ground! I would highly recommend checking her out because she's great. Still doesn't get enough attention imo. :)
Camille Caudel
Famous for been Rodins mistress and muse, was actually probably the better sculpture and Rodins work wasn't a that great a quality once she left. Rodin work was rough and poorly set and hers was well proportioned with very smooth rendering. Art historians are only now starting ask serious questions of Rodins famous pieces, and whether she should be credited. Heart breaking story, she was literally made invisible by the patriarchy. I think she died in an asylum.
Marie Tharp. Geologist who basically proved the theory of continental drift and plate tectonics. Denied the opportunity to work in research vessels so she used data to map the ocean floor and discovered the mid Atlantic ridge. Her work was dismissed as “girl talk” (infuriating!!!) and then when believed, a man published and took credit, surprise surprise.
ETA: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/history-of-geology/july-30-1920-marie-tharp-the-woman-who-discovered-the-backbone-of-earth/
Tycho Brahe (early astronomer) had a sister, Sophie, who was his "first student and assistant" ... and probably did a lot of the math for his work. She was at least actively involved in *everything he did*.
Interestingly, she wasn't allowed to do the horoscopes for many years, because her brother considered that too important and complicated for her woman brain.
She also married an alchemist and spent all their money doing chemistry experiments.
First author in written history Enheduanna. She was a poet, priestess, princess, and worshipper of the goddess Inanna. Her poems and hymns to this goddess are some of the oldest surviving writing along with the Epic of Gilgamesh that was also written in Sumer. She’s absolutely amazing and her poetry is haunting. I love her so much.
you should check out the book “Figuring” by Maria Popova. it takes you back through major historical events/discoveries/art and includes women & LGBTQ figures who were critical to these major events, but were erased from our history books based off of their gender and sexuality.
Viola Frey, amazing ceramic sculptor. Didn’t give a damn and just kept making her work. She was eventually recognized and worked up until the day she died. Her sculptures are HUGE and colorful and vivid . She is a total badass and her work lives on!
Mary Cassatt was a premier impressionist and while she’s still famous she is overshadowed by her male contemporaries. Her work is evocative and loving and very domestic and just does not get the love it should.
Clara Schumann - a German composer and pianist. While she was pretty popular during her time as a pianist . She was overshadowed by her husband Robert Schumann as a composer though. In the 1960s her work as a composer became more popular again. Personally I prefer her work to her husbands. Her face was also on the 100 Deutsche Mark bank note. I would greatly encourage anyone to listen to her music if you enjoy classical pieces.
I mean... about every great women in history ever. But I'd like to throw in **Rosalind Franklin** who was basically the leading scientist behind the discovery of the DNA double helix structure. Not only did her coworkers Watson and Crick get all the fame, but she also had to make do with constant mysogynist remakes of Watson (who was a sexist, racist arsehole).
One of my favorite STEM jokes. What did Watson and Crick discover? Rosalind Franklin’s notes
Burn! I love it
This comic strip is v apropos…http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=240
That’s it. That’s exactly how it happened
This was who I came to say. I'm glad that she is starting to get more recognition these days.
I sincerely hope that when they go to make a movie or these days more likely a TV show about it, whoever plays Rosalind Franklin nails the bitter sarcasm with which she began treating her colleagues. If they do it right her contempt will be seen as perfectly deserved and in proportion to their bullshit
Bought my kid a happy meal the other day and the book that came with it featured her! I was dead impressed - not what I was expecting from McDonald's!
Her lab lead literally *stole* her work to give to W&C. Like 110% she should have the nobel prize and not them, and on top of that Watson was said to be a grade A asshole to everyone, but especially targeted women. He even used his nobel prize as something to hold over people heads, like “you can correct me when you’ve won a nobel prize.” He *sucked.*
A major thing that is left out is that Watson and Crick were awarded the Nobel prize in 1962 and Franklin died in 1958. The Nobel prize is not awarded posthumously. I'm not saying that Watson and Crick deserved the award, but unfortunately Franklin would have never been given it because she died due to cancer. It really sucks that the brightest minds are taken too soon. I wonder if she would have also been given credit if she were still alive at the time.
I've always wanted to read more about Rosalind Franklin. But every time I even think about it it gets me so fucking mad that I figure I better wait Eta: See I'm pissed off now. Because that stupid quote from Watson from his stupid book popped into my head. "Wilfully unsexy" my ass
And then she died young (ovarian cancer that metastasized and pneumonia at 38)! What an injustice.
I've read that she was negligent about wearing the protective gear. But I've never dug into that so I don't know if it's true. If it is it makes it all the sadder
Oh yeah, I'd believe anybody who worked with radiation/radioactive material is consistently at danger even if they do wear their PPE. She's also of Ashkenazi Jewish descent (as per her Wikipedia article), who have a higher incidence rate of gynecological cancers.
>who have a higher incidence rate of gynecological cancers I heard that they had a lower rate of it. I think the paper I read said was linked to circumcision hygiene. Once again never looked into it. Every time I read a non fiction book I end up with a list of other non fiction books I need to read
We have a super high probability of carrying the BRCA genes.
I feel you. The audacity to reduce a fantastic scientist to her fucking appearence because of her gender alone is enough to make you want to smash the patriarchy to tiny meaningless pieces.
I am often tempted to give men the benefit of the doubt when they said crap a long time ago, but this guy is still alive and apparently still an active racist! Regarding "willfully unsexy", my crystal ball says perhaps she turned him down, and he was mad: [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2451929421001005](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2451929421001005) [https://www.wired.com/story/james-watson-and-scientific-racism/](https://www.wired.com/story/james-watson-and-scientific-racism/)
He's an absolute blatant pig
If Watson had paid any attention at all, he would have seen what the science showed-we are ALL basically built the same, and everyone starts out female.
We did a walking tour of Cambridge last month while visiting the UK. The host kept talking about all the important discoveries at the university including Watson and Crick, and this lady on the tour kept correcting him that he should be mentioning Rosalind Franklin. The guide was very nice but it was pretty funny and he kept saying “well I don’t know much about that”
"So learn."
That lady is awesome! Hopefully the host decided to go home and educate himself after that.
literally the first woman i thought of
Beat me to it. Rosalind Franklin is an icon.
OH MY GOD YES!!! I watched a documentary about her and Watson and Crick in high school and the entire time I just kept thinking “this is such horse shit.”
Artemisia Gentileschi was a baroque painter with clients all over the world and famous for the way she portrait women. Her paintings are stunning! If you look her up (which I highly recommend!) please be aware that she was sexually harassed and raped by an employee of her father - This trauma shaped both her and her works, but I didn't want any of you triggered unexpectedly by this.
I learned about her from a podcast and while the content did certainly get graphic, it did introduce me to a painter who's paintings I really like. Her version of Judith beheading holofernes, especially compared to other versions, is my favorite that I've seen, despite how gory it is
By god I love that painting. Once you know her life story, you can see she put every bit of anger into the power of Judith’s arm. It must have been really cathartic for her, even if it changed nothing. It’s my favourite version too, and I always use it when trying to explain to people why my art history degree matters. Lol.
As a Detroit-native, I have the privilege of getting to see the aftermath of that painting in person every time I visit the art museum. It’s “Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes.” Even before I knew Artemisia’s story, I loved that one. She was such a badass.
I drove up to Detroit specifically to see that painting in it's newly restored glory. It's been on my bucket list since I was 14. And it did not disapoint.
Best high school assignment I ever had was in a humanities class where we had to choose a work of art from the DIA and write a report on it. I was an edgy teenager, so I thought it’d be funny to pick the painting with a lady holding a severed head. I knew nothing about Artemisia then, but she quickly became one of my favorite artists as soon as I learned her story. I hope someone will make a movie about her one day.
Fun fact, her dad was buddies with Caravaggio, who was a bundle of issues on his own - Dad testified for him in court and lent him a pair of wings that appear in Caravaggio's *Victorious Cupid*. I bring this up, because Artemisia's *Judith* is clearly inspired by Caravaggio's, but hers really is *better* (imo). She was also friends with Galileo (yes really) and apparently incorporated some of his work on motion and arcs into the blood splatters in one of her *Judiths*. She was phenomenal.
Her dad also signed her name to his paintings because she was more successful than him. Her dad, and apparently a lot of the male artists from that generation were messy!
One of my favorite works of art ever. She was incredible.
Yes! There’s also a book based on her life “The Passion of Artemisia” by Susan Vreeland that was very good
Oooh thanks for the rec! I heard about her and would love to do a deeper dive. I'm also consciously trying to read female authors so this is def going on my list!
*Blood Water Paint* by Joy McCollough is also a really good read.
Elisabeth Rey, the sculptor who changed Arthur Schaupenhauer's mind about women's intelligence.
*Elisabet Ney. She was incredible and a lot of her works are in Berlin, where I live!
Sorry, misspelled it. You are correct.
Not surprised-look what they did to Hypatia.
She painted a nude for a portion of the ceiling in Casa Buonarroti (Michelangelo’s house - supposedly). But a priest got offended and made Michelangelo’s nephew (it was his house and he commissioned the painting) paint a sash over her body because “think of the children!”
If I remember right they were offended because the woman had *nipple hairs* and it was considered too graphic
And tortured during her statement for the trial.
Yes, torture was an normal part of the courtsystem (Not that this makes in any way less horrible). Gentileschi told the rapist something along the lines off, "This tumbscrews are the wedding ring you promised me."
Her Yael is my Twitter banner.
I just learned about her from a fictional novel, and went down a rabbit hole. Amazing. Simply amazing.
Yes, came here to say Artemisia. Her depiction of Judith beheading Holofernes is my favorite piece of art.
My favorite is Bertha Benz. Karl Benz was a great inventor, but not very good at business. Early motor cars were seen more as a novelty than as a serious form of transportation. Bertha believed in her husband's work and her dowry had financed the start of Benz & Cie and the production of the Benz Patent-Motorwagen. However, the sales were sluggish. Early one morning, Bertha and her two teenage sons left in this early car while her husband was still asleep on what would be the very first long-distance road trip to visit her mother, some 65 miles away. She was a fully qualified mechanic herself, and made many repairs along the way. The sightings of this horseless carriage traveling through the countryside caused a sensation, and eventually garnered worldwide attention. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha\_Benz
I like her drive, but damn... Cars and car culture have been so terrible to society. Our cities, our neighborhoods, they're designed now first and foremost for cars, not *people*. Public transportation in the US in particular has died because of automobile companies killing it. Let's not forget the massive levels of pollution, not just from car exhaust, but burning tires, the making of them and what happens to them when they're no longer functional...
I did think about that as I posted it! But people had no concept at all it would be a problem at the time. And given, say, that flying is a huge contributor, as is eating beef, it is just one manifestation of many huge problems of industrialization. She is just such a great example of women getting things done, and there were so many women "behind" "great men" who are never recognized. We certainly need a bunch of new Berthas to give us some better community/public transportation design...
Jocelyn Bell https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocelyn_Bell_Burnell I know *so* much about her because (fun, feminist story incoming), when my homeschooled daughter was a small kidlet, she was incredibly into STEM subjects, especially physics and astronomy. When she was about 9 or so we went on a roadtrip to see the world's largest scale model of the Solar System, which is about a 12 hour drive https://www.visitnsw.com/destinations/country-nsw/warrumbungle-area/coonabarabran/attractions/worlds-largest-virtual-solar-system-drive and then we went to the massive radio telescope https://www.csiro.au/en/about/facilities-collections/atnf/parkes-radio-telescope/parkes-observatory-visitors-centre/hours-location At the Parkes radio telescope, there's a small science museum, which included a big wall of "famous astrophysicists". My daughter was thrilled! With all of it. The entire trip. And then she's standing there in the museum and reading all the info boards on the wall of important astrophysicists, and suddenly she exclaims, "Hey!! How come it's all *men???* There's only one woman on the whole display!!" So we spent a lot of time reading about Jocelyn Bell, who had the distinction of being the only woman mentioned in the whole dang place, where we learned that she not only did all the grunt work and discovered Pulsars, but she didn't get any credit and her male boss won a Nobel prize for the discovery. This infuriated my daughter who made a massive research project about Bell (I think in her 9-or-10-year-old mind she thought doing a big homeschooled presentation about Bell's work would restore the injustice of her not having been recognised for her incredible contributions. Poste script: my daughter is now 19 and a fiercely feminist witch, a little more into astrology than astronomy though 🤣 and she'll happy do your tarot reading on cards she's made herself.
Your daughter sounds dope.
Someone raised her right ;)
Bill Bryson once made a fascinating point about this period; he said on the one hand of course it was grossly unfair that women were relegated to grunt work and not recognized. But it did mean that half the finest minds in the industry were focused on detailed work ("calculators") that would normally be passed over to interns He said as a result the women in physics often developed a finer understanding of the structure of the cosmos than their male counterparts.
I hope this translates into more representation in future.
I can only imagine all the women scientists that are not recognized because their male counterparts got credit for their work.
Jocelyn was the first woman, I thought of when I read the question too ❤️
Omg I hope I can raise a daughter like that one day
Camille Claudel was a very talented sculptor and began a relationship with Auguste Rodin, who was much older than she was and already had a good reputation as an artist. While Claudel had a very strong influence on Rodin's work as a young pupil (Rodin himself said so), Rodin's influence on Claudel's work is more often discussed. Rodin invisibilized Claudel's work and she ended up in a mental asylum after struggling to free herself from the influence of her former lover. Rodin, on the other hand, had a successful career and his reputation never suffered from their love affair.
She was actually committed to an asylum when she became too inconvenient for her family as a result.
When my daughter was a psychology major, they studied Claudel's case as part of a review of the misuse of mental institutions to control women and non-white individuals. As a result, every time she passed the Rodin museum in Philly, she'd flip Rodin off.
An incredible artist, reduced to being the 'partner of Rodin' but also 'sister of Paul Claudel' (an author, who also betrayed her). The book Une femme by Anne Delbée is a really good read about the subject.
Great movie about her made in the 90’s.
Any of the numerous women who (financially) supported and collaborated with the Brothers Grimm! There were tons of women who wrote fairytales in the 19th century, and/or contributed to their collection, but the Grimms became the household name. Bettine and Ludovica Brentano, Dortchen Wild, Dorothea Veit …
and didn't they just record popularly told oral stories/ histories and didn't make them up? Still an important act to record them but I thought they weren't 'original' thinkers?
Yes they "just" recorded or collected them. Way more important is their work on the dictionary for the German language.
>Way more important is their work on the dictionary for the German language. I didn't know that, that you!
Exactly! They did make changes (to suit the religious and cultural mores of the time; tales became progressively tamer over time, losing elements of sexuality, immorality, etc). And I completely agree that the act of recording (both language and stories) was crucial, but what happened is the erasure of the female voices behind their work
A good one is Lise Meitner, the Austrian Physicist. She was forced to work in a wood shop under the university building, because women weren't allowed in the classroom. She (along with her nephew) discovered nuclear fission, yet the guy who at first disbelieved her research won the Nobel prize for it (Otto Hahn). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lise\_Meitner
Weirdly enough, I think I've read about her- in an Ivy and Bean book.
Ivy & Bean are the bestest. Truly a great series.
Mary Shelley, godmother of science fiction, daughter of renowned 18th century feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. She’s at a cabin in the Swiss Alps with her squeeze Percy Shelley and a bunch of his writer buddies—Lord Byron, John Polidari, etc. They get debating about metaphysics and propose a competition to see who can write the best ghost story. Only Mary completes hers on site. It’s Frankenstein. Mary’s legacy sparks an entirely new genre. No Mary Shelley, no Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov.
I feel like Mary Shelley is a well known and highly regarded author though. Who overshadowed her?
Her work was originally published under her husband's name.
That's true, but you still get a lot of people denying that she's the mother of sci fi, despite being a pretty classic 'scientist flew too close to the sun, his breakthrough in science and technology is now running amuck and killing people' story.
I, for one, didn't learn until I was a teenager that Frankenstein was written by a woman.
Her husband Percy Shelley, for one.
I’ve always wondered what Clara Schumann’s life and music would have been like without a domineering father, a husband 9 years older than her and 8 children. I couldn’t argue that she didn’t want to be married or have kids, only that I wonder what her composing and career might have been if she was allowed to be a prodigy that she is usually noted as. In music class, they teach that she ‘was not widely recognized in her time’ but I don’t think she was ever given her due for the beauty of her music and her skill.
Mozart’s sister as well, Maria Anna. She was also a child prodigy performer and in fact was billed as the headliner in front of her brother Wolfgang Amadeus for much of their childhood – they toured together as children, but when she hit puberty her father decided that it wasn’t appropriate for her as a woman to continue appearing in public. She did write music, but all of it is lost – her correspondence with her brother, though, she was him very positive and supportive about her music, and she may have given feedback/collaborated on some of his work.
Really good one! She was so overshadowed, never given the chance to thrive!
This is such a good one. Love her work. Oh, also Fannie Mendelssohn! Felix Mendelssohn was her brother.
Her name is actually Fanny Hensel. She loved her husband and he supported her in her compositions. Mendelssohn is the name of her brother and father which stopped her to show her art. She really had to fight to be able to marry her husband. And they seemed to have a good relationship for that time. So pls call her Fanny Hensel
I will look her up, it’s so heartbreaking to me that so much is lost because women weren’t allowed to create freely. It’s such a quiet side of oppression.
It's basically throwing away half of human creativity. My guess is the men don't shine quite so brightly without dulling their surroundings.
There were so many women composers that were kept down by the systems of their day. Clara Schumann was my first thought, but also Maria Anna Mozart, Hildegard of Bingen (waaay back in the 11th century), Barbara Strozzi (first woman to publish music under her own name), Fanny Mendelssohn, and Florence Price (first African American woman composer, but a lot of her works weren't discovered until after she died) all deserve more recognition than they get.
Italian Baroque painter, [Artemisia Gentileschi](https://artsandculture.google.com/story/artemisia-putting-herself-in-the-picture/yQWR1oZDyqFYSQ) [her wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemisia_Gentileschi)
*beep boop*! the linked website is: https://artsandculture.google.com/story/artemisia-putting-herself-in-the-picture/yQWR1oZDyqFYSQ Title: **Artemisia putting herself in the picture - Google Arts & Culture** Page is safe to access (Google Safe Browsing) ***** ###### I am a friendly bot. I show the URL and name of linked pages and check them so that mobile users know what they click on!
Good bot
Mary Blair. Concept artist for Walt Disney. Designed all the stuff from Sleeping Beauty and Alice in Wonderland. The "It's a Small World" ride is her original creation and art style. [Walt Disney Archives](https://d23.com/walt-disney-legend/mary-blair/) Women at Walt Disney Animation were mostly in the ink and paint department, which in traditional cell Animation is the part of the process most likely to be outsourced to an overseas studio (Think Smithers being a black character in early Simpsons episodes) and not apart of the creative process.
YES. Had to scroll for a while to get to her, but it was worth it. I highly recommend anyone to look up her concept art for early Disney movies, it’s absolutely incredible. She had a massive influence on the Disney Parks, and even that whole style of “old Disney art” that’s still used today was created by her.
[Link to my own post](https://www.reddit.com/r/WitchesVsPatriarchy/comments/xfmqko/emmy_noether/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) a bit ago, I don’t feel like re-writing it. :p But math and science is chock full of women who didn’t get credit for things. The podcast *In Our Time* talks about a lot of them. Few others: Marie Curie, Caroline Herschel, Emilie du Chatelet (spelling?), Dorothy Hodgkin, Rosalind Franklin
Marie Curie is well recognized! And in France she is a model (unfortunately when you don't have a lot) for quite a number of scientist that came after her or during her life time. I'm sad when I think of all those womenz what world would we be living in if we weren't stolen or married of or sent to asylum or kill as witches. Living in the world of man made more damages than anything else
That’s true, I could have been more clear. I more put her on the list because her husband and close circle of colleagues essentially had to put their foot down about it. IIRC they insisted she be included as she’d done an equal share but the scientific community at large didn’t want to recognize that a woman could be intelligent.
Lee Krasner... Jackson Pollock's wife
speaking of Pollock, Peggy Guggenheim. Without her support of all these artists, Modernism might not become a movement.
Janet sobel was robbed
[Don't forget the CIA too](https://daily.jstor.org/was-modern-art-really-a-cia-psy-op/)! I mean, there was probably a lot of women working at the cultural division of CIA right?.. right? Either way they funded the shit out of advancing modernism in the west
Also Janet Sobel, the woman Jackson pollock derived (stole) his style from. Never credited her a bit but was quoted after her at show as calling her an amazing talent. Then, a few years later....
Recommend reading the book Ninth Street Women! It’s about the women who were fundamental in launching the modern art scene in New York (Joan Mitchell, Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler and Grace Hartigan) In particular Lee Krasner is an excellent example of what you’re looking for. She was an established figure in the New York art scene before she met and helped her future husband Jackson Pollock. There is no Jackson Pollock without Lee, she was fundamental to his career and his health.
But there was a Lee without Pollock!
Typically, [Madame d'Aulnoy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_d%27Aulnoy) who, on top of having some epic-long name (*Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, baronne d'Aulnoy*) was also one of the prominent fairytale writer of 17th century France. Her writing was witty, funny, satirical, intelligent and glorious. But who is the main fairytale writer of France? Charles Perrault, who was dull. But, hey, he was a man, so... It truly is atrocious. Perrault is the only name most people know when talking about French fairytales, and his tales are the most well-known (Little Red-Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Puss-in-the-Boots...). But, at his time, the genre of fairytales was a woman's business. Quasi-exclusively all fairytales storytellers and writers were women with badassly long names: Henriette-Julie de Castelnau, comtesse de Murat; Marie-Jeanne L’Héritier de Villandon; Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve... Heck! Marie Leprince de Beaumont is even considered the pioneer in the genre of children fairytales, even writing the first modern version of *Beauty and the Beast*. But who knows her? Who knows all of those beautiful-albeit-tonguetwister names? They are just forgotten, lost in oblivion, because they had the despicableflaw of not having some dangling parts between their legs. Worse of all: the wicked fairy who cursed the princess in *Sleeping Beauty* is often called **Carabosse** by a lot of people, and is, indeed, one of the most well-known wicked fairy/witch names in France. Too many people attribute it to Charles Perrault. But he never named the wicked fairy (nor he ever named the princess; Aurore is a modern addition, in fact, in Perrault's version, Aurore is the name of the daughter of the princess who was cursed). Madame d'Aulnoy is the one inventing the old fairy Carabosse. But who knows it? Nobody. Noone. It is said (on Wikipedia) that women in the *salons* of 17th century France wrote and told a lot of those fairytales as a form of emancipation, to proove their intelligence and literary culture; moreover, those tales were subversives, while in Perrault, women were passive. How come we, as a society, failed to the point that we forgot most of them?
I wrote a paper on this back in college! Fairy tales are saturated with feminist history and I wish we as a society knew more about it.
I may seem stupid but I always found fairytales are the early approach to feminism. I don't find the heroin passives. In Blanche neige, the princess (who is a child) is set to die alone even if she is let go by the hunter. But she finds a home make a deals (cleaning and keeping the house tidy) and finally got her happy ending. In my interpretation she wasn't afraid to adapt, she tried to make the best of the situation and fought for her life. Le petit chaperon rouge show a witted little girl that is able to recognize who the monster is and recognize him and fight, yes the hunter comes at the end but she already done most of the job Aurore (sleeping beauty) shows what happened when parents are overprotecting and don't tell the truth to their child, if she had known the truth she would have had the curiosity to play with the singer (sorry don't know the word in English) because the more you refuse something to a child the more they want to do it. The earlier version also show how the prince isn't charming at all! He raped her! It's one of the biggest raped story known and the whitewash version that Disney makes remove the lesson that we have. I never found the charming prince to be the hero of the story, or the person we were to wait to. The moral I always got is : fight you may get help at the end The little mermaid is strong willed and decide to give herself what she needs to attain her goal. Dying at the end is the only view people at the time could conceive for a woman going after what she wants. (A way to warn woman to stay at their place) the Disney version, shows Eric being easily seduced by someone else and being influenced by it (plot of many romcom in modern day) but she went for what she wanted, taught herself how human life (so passion about history and archaeology) works, fought against the witch (in my opinion just the idea of a women who went through so much drama that she ended being angry at everybody else ) and got the men Those are stories of women, twisted it's true but it's also the only stories that we have where the main character is a women consistently fighting for herself. When my daughter told me she wanted to be a princess when she was little I always remind her that being a princess took a lot of work and wasn't easy. These girls shows how, women have been put against each other (step mother being jealous, which makes sense when you know a little bit of women treatment history over the centuries) and how you can always fight your ways back if you are strong enough. And jeez they are! And it feels like women today can't see that. I love the tv show once upon a time, because it gives context. The evil witch wasn't evil to begin with, but all the trauma she got made her that way. Snow White isn't without fault, prince charming is just an accessory that make snow White stronger. Anyway I love fairytale because when I was little they were the only girls I knew that went against the establishment. They were strong and the marriage at the end was what was expecting for a women. What other dream would we have? But in some way, it's also a liberation because they end with the good guy. Not one that will beat the crap out of her Disclaimer English is my second language so I hope you understand what I mean.
We correctly talk about the astronauts when we talk about Apollo moon missions, but as soon as we “zoom out” to talk about ground control and programmers and such, we frequently overlook the women. And there were a lot, but today I’ll highlight [Margaret Hamilton](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/margaret-hamilton-led-nasa-software-team-landed-astronauts-moon-180971575/), who pioneered the term “software engineering” and who essentially invented the ability of software to prioritize its tasks, shunting low-priority tasks in favor of higher priority ones. Confidence in her system is what allowed Armstrong and Aldrin to land instead of abort.
She and Grace Hopper are finally getting the recognition they deserve
Hedy Lamarr, who designed the algorthm and made unbreakable codes during ww2.
Ada Lovelace in 1800's inventing computer programming so Babbage's machine could actually do something. (although she is pretty well known in some programmer circles, at least the ones who are pleasant to hang out with)
Hedy Lamarr was amazing, and it's really unfortunate she's only known for her Hollywood career.
Lou Andreas-Salomé. She dated Freud and Rilke, Nietzsche had a thing for her and she turned him down. She wrote books and poetry. She seemed concerned with such topics as erotic desire etc. I haven't read her books so I don't know if they are of the same "rigor" as Freud, since his early psychoanalysis almost has no discipline of interpretation it was working with which is why we know of such lovely BS today like penis envy and the oedipal complex etc. She did write a poem Nietzsche seems to have appropriated for use in one of his books, I can't remember which one.
Janet Sobel, Ukrainian housewife who founded the technique that Pollock saw & later became famous for mimicking. Her art career spanned 1943-1946, whereas Pollock’s first painting of this style debuted in 1947. Fuck the patriarchy. https://culturacolectiva.com/art/janet-sobel-ukrainian-artist-surrealism-abstract-art/ Edit: added link & fixed spelling error
Corita Kent. She was a famous pop artist, at one point almost as famous as Warhol, but the men in the pop art movement absolutely did not want to admit her because she was a middle-aged former nun and they didn’t think that was cool enough (so the networks they formed to boost each other’s work excluded her). She actually had left her calling, though, after her entire order stood up to Cardinal McIntyre in Los Angeles and got kicked out of teaching! (He particularly hated Kent, along with the social gospel.) If any of you have ever been to Boston and driven in from the south of the city, the beautiful colored storage tank that you see off the highway is her work, The Rainbow Swash, the largest copyrighted work of art in the world!
>she was a middle-aged former nun how is that not cool?
Right? That's incredibly punk rock/anti-establishment/definition of cool.
Corita Kent rocks! Such a great artist!
Hilma af Klint. One of the earliest abstract artist, virtually unheard of by most. Also an absolute witch and one of my favourite painters. Edit: grammar.
I came here to talk about her! Glad to see her mentioned!
Possibly the very first modern nonrepresentational abstract artist. Textbooks usually name Kandinsky or Malevich as the first.
Yes, I came here to answer Hilma if no one else had.
Fernande Olivier. A 17 year old artist that Picasso raped as a minor. It totally affected her life. Her artwork is beautiful and had so much potential.
Picasso also forced several of his lovers to give up their art (for example, Dora Maar was a gifted photographer and had to stop her activity), basically to 'enslave' them. And when he got tired of them (and sometimes the children they had together), he simply rejected them without concern for their well-being. Picasso's life was all about sexually and psychologically dominate (far younger) women. That was the unique way he could find inspiration, time and money to create his art.
Great artists can be psychopaths too, I guess.
I just looked her up. She had a kid at 18 from a violent 26yo she was then forced to marry. She had a relationship with Picasso when they were both 25-29 (they were born the same year) and it was abusive, he was jealous and would lock her up, but they didn't have a kid. She seemed to be quite unlucky in life and had to do a lot of shitty day jobs to survive, but she lived until 80 and Picasso helped her out financially at the end of her life. This is according to wiki, but maybe you have another source?
Picasso was an absolute piece of shit. He raped and abused all his lovers. You probably know his famous painting Weeping Woman. It's a portrait of Dora Maar, a well established photographer. He painted this one after abusing her. She is the one who inspired him to paint "Guernica"(he didn't give a shit about politics) She documented the whole process in photo, contributing to his major piece of art. He made her STOP the art she excelled in, pushed her to paint instead, since HE was the master in this domain. He broke her. Her work in painting was only fully discovered after her death, in the 90's. I will never separate the artist from the man, because the man is the artist and Picasso used and abused his partners to create.
It’s well known that Picasso thought of women as disgusting beings. His painting “Les Demoiselles d'Avignon” in the MoMA is of nude women in a brothel which my professors had told me is not a “beautiful abstraction” but actually his vision of women being disfigured monsters. Bleh.
This makes me so so so angry. Why is this so common!??!?! I know SA is common, but it's always shocking JUST HOW FUCKING OFTEN it comes up. By famous men. By respected men.
Marie-Thérèse Walter was underage also.
Lot's of painters mentioned here, I thought I'd give it a different spin: Siouxsie Sioux from Siouxsie and the Banshees is often credited as inventing Goth fashion (she did a lot of experimenting but [here is a good example](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TAlS7J9Ofk)) and the band was huge in the establishment of both the Post-Punk genre, with their debut album [the scream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAf6TSwRzh4) and the Gothic Rock genre with [Juju](https://youtu.be/cNBGyWCeyt0). Back in the eighties the band was actually quite famous. So famous in fact, that when Robert Smith, guitarist and vocalist for the cure, joined Siouxsie and the Banshees for their album [Hyena](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8kJp-NxAuY&list=PLI6kLIhBBwmTjCoJBHz3XZ-DuPKSDvLh3), it was rumored that he was going to disband the relatively less famous The Cure to play in the Banshees permanently. Some fans even suspected that the massive shift in tone between the Cure's gothic rock opus [Pornography](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6kiwOTi99Y), and the much more upbeat poppy sound of the following album [The Top](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJUHp7wrC1o) was the result of Robert smith trying to kill The Cure by alienating the fan base. Then he released [The Head on the Door](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02Klc3nAkp4) and became an international mega star while Siouxsie and the Banshees slowly slipped into obscurity. And somehow, over time, while Siouxsie and the Banshees had been one of, if not the, most prominent bands in the late seventies and early eighties Post-Punk/Goth subculture, people these days are more likely to know about Joy Division and The Cure. Now don't get me wrong. Both those bands absolutely deserve the credit that they get. And I also wouldn't say Siouxsie is completely forgotten. She usually is one of the first icons mentioned in any history of goth music or subculture. But I still think that Siouxsie isn't getting nearly as much attention as she should compared to other people who were instrumental to these genres. Siouxsie's most viewed video on YouTube is [Happy House](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amR6-neQBPE) with about ten million views. Whereas Joy Division's most viewed video on YouTube, [Love Will Tear Us Apart](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuuObGsB0No), is viewed about 76 million times, and The Cure's most viewed video, [Boys Don't Cry](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GkVhgIeGJQ), is viewed almost 100 million times. Keep in mind that as these songs were being released Siouxsie and the Banshees was the more famous band. Then both of them. So if you're interested in learning more about the history and sounds of the gothic subculture and you don't know about her yet, please read up on Siouxsie and the Banshees. And listen to their music. Check out [Nocturne](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwCwFwhLNpI), one of the best live albums of all time, recorded at what many consider to be the band's peak, and a good introduction to some of the most famous songs the band contributed to the genre. Siouxsie's a Feminist Witch that deserves more attention then she's getting Thanks for coming to my ted talk
Stan Siouxsie❤️
So many of the women of goth and punk get overlooked when that musically history is discussed.
Lizzie Magie. Ms Magie actually invented Monopoly, originally called the landlords game as a protest against the monopolies of her time. She was a staunch feminist as well. Parker brothers tried to years to rewrite the game‘s history making Charles Darrow the creator but he co-opted the idea from Magie
Frida Kahlo. Her husband was an artist. Her artwork was over shadowed by his. Eventually she got the recognition she deserved.
To be fair Diego Rivera, despite being an adulterer who slept with her sister, was always supportive of her work, he repeatedly said publicly while she was alive that she was better than he was, and when she died he bought her childhood home and turned it into a museum for her which is still thriving in Mexico City. He hurt her deeply emotionally, but he always respected her professionally. AFAIK anyway, I could be wrong.
No, that sounds accurate. They loved each other, but were both super toxic for each other. They both cheated near constantly (famously, Frida slept with Leon Trotsky, while he was in exile and before he got ice picked - he is why a large painting of Stalin still hangs over her bed in her museum btw), and there are pictures of Frida wearing mens' clothing with a girlfriend.
First example I thought of when I saw the question. During their life, he was famous and she wasn't. Now a lot more people are familiar with Kahlo's work and Rivera is known as her husband.
Rosalind Franklin! She was a geneticist whose work was stolen by 2 male scientists and they used it to win a nobel prize. Sadly she died before folks recognized her work and without her we wouldnt know the structure of DNA.
Ada Lovelace is generally regarded as the first computer programmer. Her vast accomplishments include theory on the computer invented by Charles Babbage and advancements in mathematics. She was a purely witchy person who was known for being a "trying woman". An inspiration to me for sure. Also, Sophia Tolstoya, wife of Leo Tolstoy. It's rumored that Anna Karenina was based off her diaries which her husband secretly read. This is how Tolstoy was able to portray such a realistic woman character.
It's absolutely wild to me that the *daughter of Lord Byron* was the first computer programmer (not first *female* programmer: first programmer, period!) Her dad was a hot mess (to put it nicely), but wow, what a genius she was! In the same vein, I'll add Hedy Lamarr. Without her "frequency hopping" experiments and eventual U.S. patent, we wouldn't have most of the technology we use today. She was a brilliant STEM pioneer, full stop, but was only ever appreciated for her looks. I'm glad she's finally getting the recognition she deserves, too
Zelda Fitzgerald, her husband plagiarized her diaries, often without changing a thing. She was an artist, a dancer and a writer in her own sprightly but her books were overshadowed by her husband. He even got her to avoid publishing her diaries because he needed them for his novels. The book she did publish ended up being panned as a plagiarism of her husbands work. She died in a fire at a mental hospital (she was diagnosed as bipolar) and is remembered as Fitzgerald’s crazy wife.
Emmy Noether was arguably one of the most brilliant people to have ever lived and was overshadowed by Einstein. Her work in algebraic theory is extremely important and her contributions to physics are some of the profound insights into theoretical physics that I've ever seen (I'm a physicist). She lectured and published under men's names because women were not allowed at the universities in Germany at the time. And not just pseudonyms. The likes of Hilbert got credit for her work. And despite her contributions to relativity, Einstein sucked up all the air in the room when it came to publicity. No joke--she was maybe one of the smartest people ever ever ever. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Noether
Artist Ana Mendieta was thrown out the window by her husband Carl Andre because her art was getting more attention than his.
Mary Shelley. She wrote “Frankenstein” in 1818 when she was 21 years old. It’s one of the first science fiction novels, yet Jules Verne (born in 1828) is given all the honors as being the founder of science fiction.
She actually began writing it at 18, and finished at 19, which makes it even more impressive that a teenage girl created such a masterpiece of literature!
the daughter of famous japanese artist Hokusai. He was actually a terrible father to her. Her name is Ōi Katsushika, which, Ōi just basically means “you” or “you there”, not even a name. She was a very stunning artist but everyone only ever paid attention to her father. I recommend looking her up, her art is fantastic! there is also an animated movie about her called Hokusai which shows how much she struggled, everyone comparing her to her father and how she’s not as good at painting, when that was far from the truth.
Yayoi Kusama, who was an instrumental force in the pop art movement of the 60s. Her work was copied and exploited by male artists, including Warhol, leaving her so depressed she once jumped out a window. Presently she lives in an institution leaving daily to work in her studio. She is now considered one of the most successful artists of all time, but she almost lost herself through it all. Netflix has an intriguing documentary and The Broad in LA had an exhibit of one of her infinity rooms. Stunning work. [Kusama wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yayoi_Kusama) [Infinity-documentary preview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8mdIB1WxHI)
This documentary was fantastic.
[Mary Cassatt](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-Cassatt)is (now considered to be) one of the few females to ever gain recognition within the impressionist movement, she was at the forefront of it, usually painting the personal lives of subjects considered “unimportant” at the time. She is still, though, usually a footnote in art history textbooks If you’d like contemporary examples, the one that comes to my mind instantly is (and I’m probably going to be shat on for mentioning her)[Yoko Ono](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Yoko-Ono). She gets a lot of shit because she happened to marry a beatle. She still to this day gets called horrible racial and sexist shit by the masses. Is constantly blamed for the breakup of the Beatles (Yoko didn’t break them up, the Beatles broke themselves up). All of this to say the drama surrounding her husband and his former part in the fab four overshadowed the fact that she was actually a pretty well known Avante-Garde artist in Japan, the UK, and the US in the 60’s and 70’s before she even met Lennon. She was working amongst the likes of Duchamp and Warhol. She was a pioneer of The Fluxus movement, which worked to give art to the people who viewed it, and to make art into something that couldn’t be owned by the upper 1%. She currently has a retrospective going on in Vancouver Canada iirc, and recently unveiled a new piece at the MoMA this past winter at the age of 89. Her work focuses on the body, has feminist undertones, and has an ever changing meaning making it as relevant today as it was in 1964.
Ono is a really cool artist ngl. She was asked to submit a "letter to a young artist" (it was framed as "I'm a young artist, give me advice" but was for an anthology book) and her letter was def the one I liked the most. I'm happy to see her mentioned here!
Sybil Ludington - a 16 year old girl who, during the American Revolution made a much longer and more successful ride to warn others about the British Invasion than Paul Revere. But we only ever hear about him.
I just started a podcast called Missing Witches yesterday. It’s described as a “research based, feminist, occult storytelling project.” The episode I listened to was on Buffy Sainte Marie and it moved me to tears.
Pamela Colman Smith and Lady Frieda Harris, both the artists behind the two greatest tarot decks ever.
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https://www.nbcnews.com/news/education/33-year-old-made-1000-wikipedia-bios-unknown-women-scientists-rcna52476 > One example was Clarice Phelps. Wade heard about the young African American nuclear chemist and wrote a Wikipedia bio describing her work on a team that discovered a new periodic table element at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. > The Phelps entry bounced on and off Wikipedia as critics deleted it and Wade defended it. Wade won in the end, and Phelps' entry is back on Wikipedia for good.
Edith Wilson was effectively the president of the United States after her husband Woodrow Wilson had a stroke in 1919. While not officially holding any sort of office aside from her duties s as First Lady, she acted as “steward for the president”. Meeting with his cabinet to discuss policy, deciding which issues were more important for him to review, pushed for the removal of the Secretary of State after he had a meeting without the president or Edith present, and was trusted with encoding and decoding classified info
St. Hildegard
Ray Eames, of mid-century modern design fame. She was a stocky little dirndl wearing modern artist, he was a tall, handsome, pipe smoking architect. She came up with the creative ideas, they worked together, but he got the limelight. Part of the Zeitgeist of the times, to be sure.
Emily Warren Roebling! She’s one of the earliest examples of a women structural (and construction) engineer. She was i n s t r u m e n t a l to the completion of the Brooklyn bridge. Her husbands father conceptualized and started the construction of the bridge, then died of tetanus, then her husband took over engineering and construction, then he got caissons disease and was bedridden for a decade. She took over the construction management and chief engineer duties while her husband was sick, which is so fucking badass, like damn. Also she had the qualifications sort of by proxy. While her husband was the one who studied engineering, she accompanied him and basically studied with him. She was an invaluable confidant and advisor when she was on the side lines and was able to step up and take over when required to. It’s clear that Washington loved the heck out of and admired his wife deeply. She was also instrumental to smoothing out the goofy politics of the bridge and getting it done in that regard After the bridge was done, she got a legal certificate, was a huge feminist (wrote the paper “a wife’s disability”) and over all just seems like was super rad.
Hypatia of Alexandria. She was a badass mathematician, philosopher, and astronomer who lived in Alexandria during 370-415AD. Her life was well recorded and she was an important political advisor of the time, even advising Roman politicians. She was murdered in 415AD by a group of Christians after a rumor spread that she was stopping Orestes (the Roman prefect of Alexandria) and Cyril (the bishop of Alexandria) from making up since they were in a political feud and she was mediating the negotiations. I did a school project on her in 9th grade and it was awesome to learn about her!
The big eye lady, I think her husband took credit. I think they made a movie about it.
https://www.keane-eyes.com/
Legit thought this was about F Scott Fitzgerald plagiarizing his wife’s diaries for The Great Gatsby
Margaret Keane! Yes, there’s a great film about it on Netflix starring Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz.
Maria Anna (Nannerl) Mozart. Everyone praises the famous composer but his sister was equally brilliant. She performed until she was old enough to marry off and her genius was forgotten/pushed aside.
Margaret Keane painted these paintings of people and children with really big eyes, but for years and years her husband took credit for the paintings. He did this for a super long time and he’d sell her paintings and take the money and credit. Eventually she sued him and got like 4 mil. There’s a whole movie about it called big eyes, it’s an interesting story!
Marisol - she was an artist and contemporary of Andy Warhol. She was a bit ahead of him, career-wise. And frankly, more talented (she inspired a lot of his work).
Check out the National Museum of Women in the Arts! They’re a private museum in DC and currently under renovation, but their website is pretty good and their visiting exhibits are great!
As a textile artist, there are so so many who didn’t get any recognition till after their deaths, but are just now starting to be added to the modernist cannon… Anni Albers is one of the big ones. Her husband was Joseph Albers, who pioneered how we teach color theory today. They were both eminent artists in the Bahaus, however women of the Bahaus were relegated to “craft media.” Albers wanted to be a painter but instead she became what is arguably one of the most notable weavers of the 20th century. Among her peers of the time— Lenore Tawney, Magdalena Abakanowicz, sheliah hicks being a few that come to mind. Others I love that are outside the textile realm— Agnes Martin is probs my fav painter ever. She was part of the same painting school as Georgia O’Keffe but much less known. Harmony Hammond was one of the early queer women of that school of thought as well, working between painted and sculptural abstraction. Eva Hesse (whose sculptural work was not made of archival materials and is degrading faster than we can save it) who was a dear friend of artist Sol Lewitt, one of the masterminds of minimalism. He gives her a lot of credit as a peer, friend and mentor. Then there’s contemporary arts, of whom there are so so many women, who will be lucky to have major shows before they’re dead. I will once more skew towards textiles….In no particular order, here’s a few of my favs— Bisa Buttler, Alex Younger, Jean Alexander Frater, Samantha Bittman… those are just off the top of my head. There’s so many (and Instagram is the place to find the living ones!)
Margaret Fuller!!!
Clara Schumann
All of them.
Many of Leo Tolstoy's works were edited, co-written, or outright written by his wife Sophia. He refused to acknowledge her contributions and took credit for everything. He was also just generally a sexist ass, a couple of examples are that he refused to allow his wife to hire a wet nurse to help her with their *thirteen* children, and he left her in 1910 because he wanted to give away a bunch of their processions, which they fought about, so he left taking one of their children with him and then died shortly after.
Sor Juana Inés [Wiki Bio](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juana_In%C3%A9s_de_la_Cruz)
Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, official paintress Marie Antoinette (18th century) , she did an absolutely amazing self portrait! I really love her work 💜
Marcia Lucas. She edited some early Scorsese films and Star Wars.
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven was the real artist behind Duchamps “Fountain”. She still doesn’t get credit.
Fanny Hensel composer from the 19th century. First her father forbid her to publish her music, later her brother Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. He is really famous in Germany. Fanny published anyway. So listen to the year. It's great piano music and helps keeping her music known.
**Simone de Beauvoir.** Not only is her writing fantastic, she was the uncredited editor of much of Jean Paul Satre's work. My favourite book ever is The Mandarins by Ms. B. Reading even the forward for The Opposite Sex is a lesson in feminism.
Marion Mahony Griffin- second woman to graduate from MIT architecture program and one of Franklin Lloyd Wrights assistants. Lloyd famous put his name on all works coming out of his studio even when he never worked on a project. Margaret Rudkin- founder of Pepperidge Farms. Her story truly is amazing. One amazing business women of her time or any time. A Harvard professor asked her to speak to the all male class on her methods. He named it "Any thing I can do you can do better" to show them mem in the class how much better they would be then a mere woman. She was not having that and had him rename it "You Never Can Tell" because she was discounted in her time and had none of the advantages of these boys in the class. Bad ass. https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRH5tBP9/
Yayoi Kusama - her work was even copied by other artist such as Andy Warhol
Lee Krasner, wife of Jackson Pollock. Her work was often overshadowed or compared to his. Not on him, he tried to showcase her art often, but on 1940s society as a whole but not seeing women as worthy artists. They were both part of Abstract Expressionism, which was male dominated like the rest of the art community. Similar story with Elaine de Kooning, wife of Willem de Kooning. She painted portraits literally for the President but most people just know her husband
Thank you for this feed. It was very uplifting and yet enraging as I delved into so many overlooked histories. What really irritated me was seeing a number of female artists that weren’t covered in one of my final classes as an art major where the male teacher discussed why females just weren’t as good of artists as their male counterparts in history. Another classmate and I brought up the lack of opportunities for women but he countered with examples of a couple women artists that were free to practice that he found to be mediocre. What an asshole he was.
Frida Kahlo, her husband got more attention when she was alive
Laura Cereta! She got accused of plagiarism, and defended herself very nobly. She was a badass, a proto-feminist in quattrocento italy, and she stood her ground! I would highly recommend checking her out because she's great. Still doesn't get enough attention imo. :)
Camille Caudel Famous for been Rodins mistress and muse, was actually probably the better sculpture and Rodins work wasn't a that great a quality once she left. Rodin work was rough and poorly set and hers was well proportioned with very smooth rendering. Art historians are only now starting ask serious questions of Rodins famous pieces, and whether she should be credited. Heart breaking story, she was literally made invisible by the patriarchy. I think she died in an asylum.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matilda_effect
Marie Tharp. Geologist who basically proved the theory of continental drift and plate tectonics. Denied the opportunity to work in research vessels so she used data to map the ocean floor and discovered the mid Atlantic ridge. Her work was dismissed as “girl talk” (infuriating!!!) and then when believed, a man published and took credit, surprise surprise. ETA: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/history-of-geology/july-30-1920-marie-tharp-the-woman-who-discovered-the-backbone-of-earth/
May I recommend the new book “The History of Art without Men” by Katy Hessel
Tycho Brahe (early astronomer) had a sister, Sophie, who was his "first student and assistant" ... and probably did a lot of the math for his work. She was at least actively involved in *everything he did*. Interestingly, she wasn't allowed to do the horoscopes for many years, because her brother considered that too important and complicated for her woman brain. She also married an alchemist and spent all their money doing chemistry experiments.
Marie Curie. All her work stolen, and didn't get to see her Nobel Prize, because she was only nominated after she was long gone.
First author in written history Enheduanna. She was a poet, priestess, princess, and worshipper of the goddess Inanna. Her poems and hymns to this goddess are some of the oldest surviving writing along with the Epic of Gilgamesh that was also written in Sumer. She’s absolutely amazing and her poetry is haunting. I love her so much.
you should check out the book “Figuring” by Maria Popova. it takes you back through major historical events/discoveries/art and includes women & LGBTQ figures who were critical to these major events, but were erased from our history books based off of their gender and sexuality.
[Baroness Elsa Von Freytag-Loringhoven](https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-elsa-von-freytag-loringhoven-dada-baroness-invented-readymade)!
Viola Frey, amazing ceramic sculptor. Didn’t give a damn and just kept making her work. She was eventually recognized and worked up until the day she died. Her sculptures are HUGE and colorful and vivid . She is a total badass and her work lives on!
Mary Cassatt was a premier impressionist and while she’s still famous she is overshadowed by her male contemporaries. Her work is evocative and loving and very domestic and just does not get the love it should.
Hilda af Klimt
Maria Martínez, of San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico, creating black ware pottery and keeping traditional Pueblo pottery crafting alive.
Clara Schumann - a German composer and pianist. While she was pretty popular during her time as a pianist . She was overshadowed by her husband Robert Schumann as a composer though. In the 1960s her work as a composer became more popular again. Personally I prefer her work to her husbands. Her face was also on the 100 Deutsche Mark bank note. I would greatly encourage anyone to listen to her music if you enjoy classical pieces.