Epic Rap Battles of Women’s History!

Hello, your Fairy God-Librarian here, and if you ever saw a picture of me you’d know that I am not one who raps. This post is purely devoted to the women of the past and of today who have shaped history as we know it.

So, my lovely butterflies, I walked into a 5 Below with my mother a few months ago and walked out with a cheap but adorable book titled 101 Awesome Women Who Changed Our World by Julia Adams and illustrated by Louise Wright. It’s a children’s book so me being a teacher, I obviously loved it. The book sections into four chapters, two categories each, for a grand total of eight categories to which these awesome women contributed: Leaders and Activists, Scientists and Inventors, Artists and Writers, Athletes and Adventurers.

I’m going to pick one awesome woman from each field and discuss how they helped change our world, according to the author. Each woman is going to be at least someone I’ve A) heard of and B) think has influenced my life, even if in such a tiny way. That way, this post stays personal to me.

So, here goes!

First category:

A Leader

• Sheryl Sandberg, business woman, born 1969. When I was in college, I heard tell that a new book by said person had recently been published, titled Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, all about how a woman like her became the CEO of a major corporation. I was totally fascinated but for some reason, whenever I went to the bookstore to look for it, I couldn’t find it. I’ve decided to find it at a library one day.

  Anyway, Sheryl Sandberg is such an influential person due to her devotion to empowering women in the field of economics and business. She co-founded a group called Women in Economics and Government, worked in the World Bank and in the Treasury Department, and eventually joined Google in 2001 (Adams, p. 19). In 2008, she joined Mark Zuckerberg as second-in-command of Facebook. She’s currently in a lot of hot water with the issues plaguing Facebook’s poor decisions, but that doesn’t mean that she isn’t a huge role model for girls who want to be leaders in the fields of business, government, and economics. I’d vote for her for president 2020.

An Activist

• Malala Yousafsai, Education and Girls’ Rights Activist, born 1997. I love everything about this young woman. Not only can she speak several languages (Urdu, Pasto, and English) but she was deliberately shot in the face by a Taliban member when she was a teenager for encouraging other young women like herself to continue going to school, despite the fact that the Taliban in Pakistan at the time had been committing acts of violence against schools that taught girls. She survived, wrote a book about why and what happened on that fated day, and today speaks with the UN on a regular basis about promoting girls’ education in countries where being a girl in school is considered unholy. Before all of that, she wrote blogs that detailed to the world what it was like living in a country that was overtaken by a terrorist group who forbid girls to even leave their homes, much less get an education. This, and the human rights activism by her father for the promotion of schools for girls in Pakistan, led her to that fateful day where her life was forever changed.

  She also happens to be the youngest person to have won a Nobel Peace Prize, which she did in 2014 at the age of 17 (Adams, p. 16-17). She should have won it the first time she was nominated but the committee got there eventually.

  Other Leaders and Activists: Benazir Bhutto, Harriet Tubman, Helen Keller, Hillary 

  Rodham Clinton, Eufrosina Cruz Mendoza, Daumo Dayib, Diane von Furstenberg,

  Shirley Chisholm, indira Gandhi, Shirin Ebadi, Rosa Parks, Wangari Maathai, Gracas 

  Foster, Berta Caceres, Yaa Asantewaa, Eva Peron, Indra Nooyi, Leymah Gbowee, 

  Angela Merkel, Emmeline Pankhurst, Riboberta Menchu 

ANNNNDD Second Category:

A Scientist

• Ada Lovelace, Mathematician, (1815-1852). It’s so ridiculous that humans have existed for thousands of years but only in the last 30 has it been an acceptable viewpoint that women are capable of more than just cleaning, cooking, and giving birth. Ada Lovelace definitely existed during a time when women, especially poor and/or colored women, were considered mere property instead of human beings. Yet, in 1842, after learning about the earliest forms of mechanical calculators called the Difference Engine and of computation called the Analytical Engine from an inventor named Charles Babbage, she helped translate and expand an article about the device and other complex calculations needed for a fellow mathematician named Luigi Menabrea. A century later, Alan Turing used her notes to develop the first modern computers (Adams, ps. 42-43).

  I love the idea of a woman like Ada Lovelace contributing so much to the field of mathematics. A friend of mine, who is currently getting a Ph. D in the field, reminds me so much of her, and I am immensely proud. Though my intelligence in math only goes so far as Algebra and Pre-Calculus (finding literature and languages so much easier), I used to pretend when I was a child that I could write complex equations and would fool my classmates into thinking that the gibberish I was writing was correct, highly advanced formulas. I also loved to reread this book about science experiments that kids could do at home.

An Inventor

• Hedy Lamarr, inventor and actor, (1914-2000). I first heard the name Hedy Lamarr when I was a child watching Hey Arnold! all the time. I didn’t know who she was, I just knew that Grandpa Phil could have married her instead of Gertrude, Arnold’s Grandma, when he had the chance. It was a running joke in the show. I later re-watched the show again, actually several times, until I decided to research who she was. Holy cow, was I surprised to learn that she was an actual person AND an actress also known for being one of the earliest inventors of Wi-Fi.

  However, she first started out filming in big budget films for MGM and later became one of the first female movie producers. During WWII, she co-devised a secure communications system for warships to control their torpedoes, which used radio signals that kept switching frequency so that they could not be tracked or jammed. The wireless system later become what we know as GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth (Adams, p. 54).

  That would have been cool if Arnold was descended from a woman like that.

  Other Scientists and Inventors: Mamie Phipps Clark, Rita Levi-Montalcini, Nettie

  Stevens, Lise Meitner, Elizabeth Blackburn, May-Britt Moser, Katia Krafft, 

  Maryam Mirzakhani, Rosalind Franklin, Jane Goodall, Mary Anning, Marie Curie, Gerty

  Cori, Sylvia Earle, Valentina Tereshkova, Ruchi Sanghvi, Wang Zhenyi, Maria Telkes,

  Ada Yonath, Grace Hopper, Chien-Shiung Wu

Now the third category:

An Artist:

• Frida Kahlo, painter, (1907-1954). I’m not the biggest fan of Frida Kahlo’s art, but I do admire her determination to prove herself as a talented artist. In 1925, Kahlo survived a streetcar accident that left her in a cast for several weeks. She decided to use that downtime to paint on the cast, mostly portraits of herself, friends, and family. When she met the famous mural artist and her future husband Diego Rivera, he inspired her to embrace her Mexican ancestry in her art. Despite suffering from multiple surgeries, lasting pain from that fateful accident, and wearing steel corsets, she continued to paint about her Mayan heritage and even perfect the art of self-portrait and self-love, uni-brow and all. Her love for her heritage and her empowerment as a female artist is inspirational to millions of Mexican people today.

A Writer

• J. K. Rowling, writer/film producer/philanthropist, born 1965. Let’s just stop for a moment and bask in the glory and awe that is this woman. She is my most favorite hum—my ido—I love her—I’m going to have a breakdown; I can’t put into words how much I have admired this person for almost all my life and how much she has influenced me as a writer. I’d build a shrine to her if it wasn’t creepy. It’s cliche to say that J. K. Rowling is an inspiration for your own books, but it’s TRUE. If you’ve ever met me, enough said.

  Anyway, Rowling has been writing unofficially since she was a child. Her family grew up somewhat poor in England, but it wasn’t until her first marriage had failed and she was living in London with a small baby that she experienced true poverty (Adams, p. 84). If you ask her, she’ll tell you that she will never glorify the poverty of being a single mother, in the early 90s, in England (who were totally victim-shaming women who left abusive marriages and wouldn’t provide them government assistance). However, she can’t deny that it definitely had an influence on her as she used writing as an escape from the tragedy that was the real world. Harry Potter became her therapy and after it was published, so it was the same for millions of other little kids as well. Like me. Thank you so much, J. K. Rowling.

  Other Artists and Writers: Nina Simone, Sonita Alizadeh, Joan Armatrading, Anne 

  Frank, Kiri Te Kanawa, Angelina Jolie, Nadezda Petrovic, Melba Liston, Miriam

  Makeba, Bjork, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Xian Zhang, Arundhati Roy,

  Maya Angelou, Laverne Cox, Maria Callas, Millo Castro Zaldarriaga, Grace

  Cossington Smith, Coco Chanel, Zaha Hadid

And last but not least, the fourth category:

An Athlete

• Marta Vieria de Silva, soccer player, born 1986. I’ve always loved the sport of soccer. Playing it for all of my childhood and then dabbling a little in it and other sports in my adulthood have definitely been a great physical outlet for me. I whole-heartily support the U.S. Men’s and Women’s national soccer teams and have even enjoyed the experience of being in a soccer-loving country (Costa Rica) during a World Cup (Men’s, 2014).

  As for the Brazilian soccer legend, Marta (skills at soccer is in that country’s blood. I’m looking at you Pele) played soccer out in the streets with her younger brothers and without shoes. This, however, was not a pastime approved by her mother, who thought that girls should not be soccer players. This didn’t stop Marta; when she was 14, she was talent-spotted by a soccer couch and scout Helena Pacheco and eventually joined the Vasco da Gama soccer club in Rio de Janeiro. She played for Brazil in 2002 and was later voted Fifa Women’s World Player of the Year five years running from 2006 to 2010. Marta also fights to promote equality between men’s and women’s teams, where one male player can earn as much as 1, 693 female players combined.

An Adventurer

1. Sacagawea, explorer and interpreter, (1788-1812). I can’t not talk about a great woman who influenced topical maps and the eventual expansion westward of the United States. Without her, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark would not have lasted five days in the uncharted territory of the western half of the US, with food being scarce and Native American tribes not being friendly to invading Europeans like them. And being the bad*** that she is, Sacagawea agreed to guide and act as interpreter for these two men, under President Thomas Jefferson, a mere five weeks after giving birth. With her baby and her knowledge of the land, she led these man across thousands of miles of uncharted land, speaking with Native Americans they came across and helping them find edible food, while the two men journaled what they saw. She also fashioned moccasins for the men to wear. What an adventure!

   Other Athletes and Adventurers: Venus Williams, Serena Williams, Bessie Coleman, 

   Yusra Mardini, Terezinha Guilhermina, Krystyna Skarbek, Anne Bonny, Amna Al 

   Haddad, Jessica Watson, Marina Raskova, Gertrude Bell, Misty Copeland, Mary Kom,

   Noor Inayat Khan, Chantal Petitclerc, Alexandra David-Neel, Natalie Du Toit,

   Junko Tabei, Majlinda Kelmendi, Amelia Earhart, Simone Biles

And that’s it! All of these women have contributed exponentially to the benefit of society in their chosen fields. I just hope that one day I can have my name added to a list like this.

Love

Lacie 🙂

Notes:

Adams, J. (2018). 101 Awesome Women Who Changed the World. London: Arcturus Publishing

     Limited.