Today we celebrate International Women’s Day 2019! Yes, it was March 8th, but we are promoting this year’s theme “Balance for Better” and encourage our listeners to share their favorite stories – personal or otherwise – with the hashtag #BalanceForBetter in all your social media platforms! The hope for this year is to bring about a more gender-balanced world, so share the achievements, courage, generosity, and journey of women who inspire you!
“We Can Do It!” poster for Westinghouse, closely associated with Rosie the Riveter, although not a depiction of the cultural icon itself. Model may be Geraldine Doyle (1924-2010) or Naomi Parker (1921-2018). Artist J. Howard Miller (1918–2004), employed by Westinghouse which used the poster for the War Production Co-ordinating Committee. Image source: Wikipedia commons, public domain – from scan of copy belonging to the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, retrieved from the website of the Virginia Historical Society.
WHO TO WATCH: Emma Watson (HeForShe campaign speech), Meghan Markle (Meghan Markle UN Women speech), and this powerhouse Greta Thunberg (full speech at UN Climate Change COP24 Conference) are MUST-SEE videos, especially if you think women are the weaker sex. They’re here to tell you NOPE.”
-The Mugly Truth
We talk about the values internationalwomensday.com focus on in their efforts to educate about and encourage women’s rights globally, some disturbing statistics about women and girls around the world, and mention a few amazing women whose achievements have made living in today’s world a much better experience: Marie Curie, Susan B. Anthony, Soong Mei-Ling, Sacagawea, Emmeline Pankhurst, and Hedy Lamarr, among others.
We know we just scratch the surface with a small number of stories about powerful, world-changing women, because there are so many hundreds of thousands stories of amazing women in today’s world and throughout history: Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Ada Lovelace, Eleanor Roosevelt, Lady Diana Spencer, Amelia Earhart, Mary Seacole, Mother Theresa, Indira Gandhi…for a great read please go to biographyonline.net’s article about women who changed the world and become wildly inspired.
We wrap it up – or detour, yet again – by bringing up a controversial story (see correction below about Jane Fonda) which led to tackling some fairly deep issues about being accountable for wrongdoing, and how long should society continue to punish a person for their mistakes. Today’s episode is starts off about women’s rights, but we end up talking about justice in general.
Fact-checking and updates for today’s episode:
- Please read the linked article on Hedy Lamarr mentioned above, but as a quick correction on Kris’ comment about Ms. Lamarr’s invention: Lamarr partnered with George Anthiel to invent “frequency hopping,” an unbreakable code that manipulated radio frequencies at irregular intervals, preventing third party interference. The invention had the potential to keep classified messages from being intercepted by enemy personnel signals; specifically, it was designed to prevent the Nazi’s from interfering with a ship’s torpedoes. Although she and Anthiel received a patent for their invention, they donated it to the Navy. The technology was too complicated to put into action during WWII, but it was implemented later during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The technology Lamarr invented was the beginning of the technology boom which allows us to use wireless communication. Perhaps Alexa should have been named Hedy? Hedy Lamarr died in 2002 of congestive heart failure, at the age of 85. Kris mistakenly thought she passed away at a younger age.
- The actual lyric to the Disney song “Sister Suffragette“, composed by Robert B. Sherman and Richard M. Sherman, performed by Glynis Johns, Hermione Baddeley and Reta Shaw, from the film “Mary Poppins” is: “Take heart, for Mrs. Pankhurst has been clapped in irons again!” Kris mistakenly ((((kept)))) singing “Emmeline Pankhurst has been clapped in irons again!” Oh, Kris. Sooooooo close.
- On Jane Fonda: the very popular story that Jane passed messages from POWs to the Vietnamese captors is an urban legend. While neither of us assert the allegations about Ms. Fonda as true, we do discuss her controversial actions during the war, including the possibility that she did pass notes. Please read details here and here .
- For information about the Netflix documentary of women in India creating their own sanitary pads, “Period. End of Sentence,” please read here.
- The artist who created the “We Can Do It” poster was J. Howard Miller, not Howard J. Miller.
Check out our “#BalanceForBetter” episode on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Libsyn, Pocket Cast, Stitcher or anywhere you listen to podcasts. Then all you need to do is 1) subscribe 2) download and 3) listen! AND!!! 4) If you enjoy what you hear, please leave a rating and a review (pretty please?). The more subscribers and reviews we get, the more opportunities we get to grow this podcast and bring you richer content.
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