Is this a sign of the times? (The names have been changed)
A friend of ours, sent us a holiday card with a return address sticker in the upper left-hand corner of the envelope that read:
“Ms. & Mr. Jane Smith
“Smith’s home address”
I checked in with our friend to ask where they got that particular return address sticker. She replied that it came as part of a group of similar stickers along with a request for her to make a contribution to a particular charitable foundation.
At least 2,236 women, a record number, will be state lawmakers when America’s legislatures return for their next sessions. [GenderAvengerBlog 12/12/20]
If Janet Yellen is confirmed as Secretary of the Treasury, she will be the first female to hold that post in U.S. History. She was the first woman to chair the Federal Reserve. Yellen also served as Chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Yellen will be the first person to have held all three of these roles. [WP]
For the first time, all of the top aides speaking on behalf of the administration and shaping its message will be women.
Kate Bedingfield will serve as the White House communications director and Jennifer Psaki will be the press secretary. Karine Jean Pierre will be Principal Deputy Press Secretary, and Pili Tobar will be deputy White House Communications director.
Ashley Etienne will be Vice-president Harris’s communications director and Symone Sanders will become the chief spokesperson for Harris. [WP 11/29/20]
Sarah Fuller, a senior goalkeeper on Vanderbilt’s SEC’s 2020 championship women’s soccer team, became the first woman to play in a Power 5 football game when she delivered the opening kickoff of the second half of the game between Vanderbilt and Missouri on November 28th.
Two weeks later, on December 12th she became the first woman to score in a Power 5 football game when she kicked the point after touchdown. (The Power 5 includes 65 schools in the Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac 12 and Southeast conferences.)
The Vanderbilt football team lost its regular kickers to a variety of illnesses.
Fuller is not the first woman to play college football. A small number of women have played the game and scored points.
Liz Heaton was the first woman to score at any level of college football in 1997 for NAIA Willamette University. [CBSSports.com 11/28/20]
The NFL is working with 15 colleges to start a woman’s flag football league in 2021.
Inventions by Women
(Thanks to Peter Hart)
Ada Lovelace is essentially the first computer programmer due to her work with Charles Babbage at the University of London in 1842. In fact, her notes were an essential key to helping Alan Turing’s work on the first modern computers in the 1940’s.
The dishwasher was invented by Josephine Cochrane in 1887. She even marketed her machine to hotel owners and even opened her own factory without the help of a man.
Hedy Lamarr, a world-famous film star, invented a secret communications system during World War II for radio-controlling torpedoes. This technology also paved the way for everything from Wi-Fi to GPS.
Margaret Knight invented a machine that makes square bottomed paper bags in 1871. She almost didn’t get credit when Charles Anan tried to steal her work claiming that it wasn’t possible for a woman to create this brilliant invention. (Margaret also invented a safety device for cotton mills when she was 12. That invention is still being used today.)