The 50-year-old mother of five says that she always dreamed of following in her father’s footsteps and becoming a police officer; “I saw it as a way to help people, and I loved the uniform!” she laughs.…
Bayaz first trained during the Soviet occupation, working as a police officer until Taliban fighters invaded the capital. September 26, 1996, is a day she says she’ll never forget. “When I walked home, I changed from a police officer to an ordinary woman,” she says. “The Taliban stopped everything. It was as if they had stopped life itself.”
Twice she was beaten: once for showing an ankle and another time for taking off her burqa before she entered her house, unaware anyone was watching.
After the Taliban left, she went back to the police force.…
A few miles away from Bayaz’s police station is the Kabul stadium where the Taliban publicly lashed women.
It’s no secret that most social studies curricula in the United States are crammed full of narratives about white men. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard about George Washington crossing the Delaware River, yet every history class I’ve taken seems to come and go without any discussion of people who look like me.
There’s no mention of the Chinese laborers instrumental in constructing the transcontinental railroad; little discussion of the more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans wrongly placed in internment camps during World War II; and, critically, no commemoration of the countless Asian-Americans who changed the course of U.S. history.
Asian-Americans, especially Asian-American women, are often pigeonholed as meek or unassertive, rather than depicted as leaders. The roots of these stereotypes lie in the erasure of Asian trailblazers in history.
Tara Campbell prides herself on being prepared. At the end of 2018, the 25-year-old made history when she was appointed mayor of Yorba Linda, California, becoming the state’s youngest female mayor in history. Nearly three months into her term, she’s focused on leading the city where she grew up and proving that her youth is an asset to city governance.
She acknowledges that being a younger candidate comes with added pressure, more than people might expect. When she first ran for City Council in Yorba Linda, in 2016, Campbell had already served on the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission (during that time, she attended council meetings and diligently studied the city’s spending).
She was elected to the City Council in November of that year. After two years, the council appointed her mayor.
“Fighting” Shirley Chisholm didn’t want to be known solely as the first African-American woman in U.S. Congress and to run for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. Cristen and Caroline detail the inspiring, heart-wrenching biography and legacy of this Brooklyn educator ahead of her time.
On This Day in Herstory, January 21st 1895, Itō Noe (伊藤 野枝), a Japanese anarchist, social critic, author and feminist, was was born on the island of Kyushu near Fukuoka, Japan.
Itō was born on the island of Kyushu near Fukuoka, Japan on January 21st, 1895. She was born into an aristocratic family who paid for her education in Tokyo. While at school she developed a passion for literature, and was particularly fond of the progressive ideas from Western and Japanese writers. During the summer of 1910, Itō’s family pressured her into marrying a man named Suematsu Fukutaro. Despite this, she still wanted to continue her education, so she started to plot a way to escape and make her home in Tokyo. She soon ran away and began a romantic relationship with one of her former teachers, Tsuji Jun, and together they had two sons. They were officially married in 1915, though their relationship only lasted four years before Itō fell in love with Sakae Ōsugi.Sakae Ōsugi was already married while he engaged in relationships with Itō and the leading woman anarchist, Ichiko Kamichika. They all believed in the ideas of free love, and Ōsugi felt that he loved all three women equally and should not have to choose between them. However, the theoretical concepts of free love collided with human jealousy and each of the three women wanted him only for herself. Ōsugi continued to live with his wife while seeing both Ichiko and Itō until November 1916, when in a moment of jealousy Ichiko followed Ōsugi and Itō to a countryside inn and attacked Ōsugi with a knife as he emerged out of his room, stabbing him several times in the throat. Ōsugi was hospitalized as a result of his wounds and his wife left him during his stay in hospital. Itō and Ōsugi went on to have four children, and stayed together for the rest of their lives, though they never legally married. Their relationship was a political one as well; they worked together as publishing partners, and helped to further their ideas on anarchism through their writings. They both became targets of the state and critics through their unabashed loyalty to their cause.In 1913 Itō joined the Bluestocking Society (青鞜社 Seitō-sha), as producer of the feminist arts-and-culture magazine Seitō (青鞜). She was skilled in several languages, including English, and translated articles by the anarchist, Emma Goldman, on the situation of women. She served as Editor-in-Chief of Seitō from 1915 to 1916, during which time she assured the content of the magazine was as inclusive as possible. She “opened the pages to extended discussions of abortion, prostitution, free love and motherhood”. From 1914 to 1916, the pages of Seitō included a debate between Itō and another feminist, Yamakawa Kikue, about whether or not prostitution should be legalized. Itō argued for the legalization of prostitution for the same reasons that she favored the legalization of abortion, as she believed that women’s bodies belonged only to them, and that the state had no business telling a woman what to do with her own body. She also argued that the Japanese social system did not offer many economic opportunities to women and that most Japanese prostitutes were destitute women who turned to selling sex in order to survive, and they should not face punishment for it. Under her editorship, Seitō became a more radical journal that led the government to ban five issues for threatening the kokutai (system of government). As an anarchist, Itō was critical of the existing political system in Japan. This led her to call for people to practice acts of anarchy in everyday life; specifically to routinely undermine the kokutai in small ways. In February 1916, Itō published the last edition of Seitō, due to a lack of funds, as the government had prevented distributors from carrying the magazine.Because she continually challaned the kokutai, Itō was constantly harassed by the police to the point that she complained of feeling that her home was a prison, as she could not go out without a policeman stopping her. In the chaos immediately following the Great Kantō earthquake on September 16th, 1923, Itō, Ōsugi, and his 6-year-old nephew Munekazu were arrested, strangled to death, and thrown into an abandoned well by a squad of military police. Itō was only 28 years old. The killing of such high-profile anarchists and a young child, became known as the Amakasu Incident and sparked shock and anger throughout Japan. Itō and Ōsugi are buried together in Aoi-ku, Shizuoka.
On This Day in Herstory November 10th 1293, Isabel de Forz, who inherited in her own right the earldom and feudal barony of Plymouth and the Lordship of the Isle of Wight, and the richest woman in England at the time, died at the age of 56.
Isabel de Forz or Isabel de Redvers, the eldest daughter of the 6th Earl of Devon, was born in July 1237; she spent the majority of her early life in Tidcombe, a small town in Devon. When she was 11 of 12 she became the second wife of William de Forz, 4th Earl of Albemarle; he held extensive land in Yorkshire and Cumberland, and was Count of Aumale in Normandy; the couple went on to have six children, two of them died before William, all of them died before Isabella. In 1260 William died, and all of their children were underage, so wardship to their heirs and estates were passed to King Henry III. One third of William’s estates were granted to Isabella, and she was granted custody of her two remaining sons; the remaining two thirds went to the crown.
In 1262 Isabella’s brother, the 7th Earl of Devon, died without any children, and so she inherited his lands in Devon, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, and Harewood in Yorkshire. From this point she used the titles “Countess of Aumale and of Devon” and “Lady of the Isle.” With the death of her father, husband, and brother, Isabella was the richest woman in England and she was only 25; at this point she became a very sought after wife. In 1264 the 6th Earl of Leicester was acquired the rights to her remarriage from the King and she hid from him; in 1268, the son of Henry III acquired the rights to her marriage as well, and when she objected he married her daughter instead. Her daughter Aveline married the King’s son in 1269, but she died 4 years later at age 15.
The monarchy had been after Isabella’s estates for some time, and in 1276 the King asked that she sell her lands in southern England that she inherited from her brother, she did not comply. After the death of her daughter, and last surviving heir, a man named John de Eston was found to be her next heir, and in 1278 John transferred her lands in the north to the crown. In 1293 while travelling from Canterbury, Isabella fell ill. One of the King’s servants rushed to her bedside and drafted a charter to confirm the sale of the Isle of Wight to the King, Isabella agreed; the sale of the Isle of Wight is contested to this day. She died in the early morning of November 10th 1293, at age 56.
Eleanor Holmes Norton (b. 1937) is a lawyer and politician. She is a non-voting Delegate to the US House of Representatives, as well as a devoted civil rights activist.
She studied law at Yale, and later worked as the assistant legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union. In 1977 she became the first female Chair of the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and in 1990 she co-founded the African-American Women for Reproductive Freedom organization.
Simone Veil (1927-2017) was a French lawyer and politician. She survived Auschwitz-Birkenau but lost most of her family during WWII. After the war, she studied political science at the University of Paris and became an attorney. In 1964 she got the post of Director of Civil Affairs, where she worked on improving the general rights and status of French women.
She is most known for legalizing abortion in France as Minister of Health in 1975. She stayed active in French politics until 2007 at the age of 80.
