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W A Z to o f o m e n A TO Z OF W OMEN IN W H ORLD ISTORY E R I K A K U H L M A N A to Z of Women in World History Copyright © 2002 Erika Kuhlman All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information contact: Facts On File, Inc. An imprint of Infobase Publishing 132 West 31st Street New York NY 10001 ISBN-10: 0-8160-4334-5 ISBN-13: 978-0-8160-4334-7 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kuhlman,Erika A., 1961– A to Z of women in world history / Erika Kuhlman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8160-4334-5 1. Women—Biography—Dictionaries. I. Title. CT3202.K84 2002 920.72—dc21 2001054327 Facts On File books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk quantities for businesses, associations, institutions, or sales promotions. Please call our Special Sales Department in New York at (212) 967-8800 or (800) 322-8755. You can find Facts On File on the World Wide Web at http://www.factsonfile.com Cover design by Cathy Rincon Printed in the United States of America VB Hermitage 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 This book is printed on acid-free paper. CONTENTS (cid:2)(cid:3) Acknowledgments v 8 Religious Leaders 203 Introduction vii 9 Rulers 235 Alphabetical List of Entries ix 10 Scholars and Educators 265 11 Science and Health Practitioners 295 12 Visual Artists 327 1 Adventurers and Athletes 1 13 Women’s Rights Activists 351 2 Amazons, Heroines, and Military 14 Writers 385 Leaders 29 3 Business Leaders and Lawyers 57 4 Fashion Designers and Trendsetters 87 Bibliography 417 5 Journalists, Diarists, and Historians 115 Entries by Country of Birth 419 6 Performers 145 Entries by Year of Birth 423 7 Political Activists 171 Index 426 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (cid:2)(cid:3) I would like to thank my husband, Kevin Marsh, whose devotion made this book possible. I would also like to thank Elizabeth Frost- Knappman at New England Publishing Associates, my editor at Facts On File, Claudia Schaab, and my friend and colleague Anar Imin for her research assistance. v INTRODUCTION (cid:2)(cid:3) This book is about extraordinary women through- Many entries include cross-references to help readers out human history whose lives were shaped less by understand such cultural borrowing within and having been born women, as Simone de Beauvoir put across chapters. There is also an alphabetical list of it in her revolutionary book The Second Sex, than by entries in the book’s front matter for easy reference. having been made into women by the diverse cultures As men have traditionally dominated each of the in which they lived. As women and men from different categories of human achievement, nearly all these places and cultures migrated and interacted with each women faced formidable obstacles—in the form of other, they created the key forces driving human his- gender, religious, class, and/or racial discrimina- tory: patriarchy, religious domination, capitalism, tion—in the paths of their pursuits. As world histo- industrialization, imperialism, nationalism, socialism, rian Peter N. Stears noted in Gender and World democracy, feminism, and globalization, each of History, gender inequality tended to increase across which affected the culturally learned gender roles and cultures as economic, political, and social institutions stereotypes predominant in most of the world’s soci- became more complex. Men, he wrote, attempted to eties. Each of the women featured in A to Z of Women reduce women’s roles in society to a dependent in World History is considered within the particular domesticity. The women whose lives have been writ- cultural and historical milieu of which she was a part. ten about in this book amply illustrate that those The intertwining of three contemporary subfields of rigid gender roles were much more permeable than history—world history, women’s history, and gender they—or we—had been led to believe. history—forms the intellectual web underlying the Women warriors are among those who crossed the research and writing of this book. boundary of proper womanhood with the most vehe- Taking cultural interaction as the key force in mence. Born to German parents in Argentina, shaping world history, each chapter of A to Z of Tamara Bunke’s multicultural heritage, combined Women in World History represents a category of with her devotion to socialism, led to her involve- human achievement—from business to art to sci- ment in Che Guevara’s failed revolution in Bolivia in ence—in which each individual woman made her the 1960s. Working first as a German/Spanish inter- mark and influenced other women from diverse cul- preter and then as an undercover agent, Bunke ulti- tures and different historical periods pursuing the mately hoisted an M-1 rifle to her shoulder to force same goals. Nineteenth-century Chinese revolution- her dreamed-of revolution. She and her comrades ary Qiu Jin, for example, modeled her life on the were betrayed by the Bolivian peasants they hoped to 15th-century French Christian martyr Joan of Arc. help and then ambushed and butchered by Bolivian vii A TO Z OF WOMEN IN WORLD HISTORY soldiers in 1967. Bunke’s story not only illustrates Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, in which she that women heeded the call to revolution as ardently revealed the double-edged sword of being a female as their male counterparts but also the futility of one slave in the pre–Civil War United States. Not only society forcing social change upon another. was she condemned to a life of servitude by virtue of Another woman patriot, U.S. First Lady Dolley her birth to an enslaved mother, but because she Madison, found subtler, more traditionally feminine was female, she suffered a constant onslaught of sex- ways to affect the politics of war and peace. A Wash- ual hounding by her licentious master. Incidents in ington, D.C., socialite, Madison hosted White the Life of a Slave Girl, the foremost slave narrative House parties where U.S. congressmen, presidents, written by a woman, overturned the so-called senti- and bureaucrats could informally but persuasively mental novels popular in Jacobs’s day by equating chat about affairs of the day and thereby swing the women’s happiness not with marriage but with political pendulum. When Mrs. Madison sidled over independence. to the hawkish U.S. congressman Henry Clay and Italian artist Artemisia Gentileschi offered his- offered him a pinch of her snuff during one of her tory an eyeful of feminine independence when she famous soirees in the spring of 1812, Washington’s painted Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting.Hin- political powerhouses knew that Madison’s husband, dered in her early career by an art teacher who raped President James Madison, was to wage war against her, Gentileschi later gained a reputation as a Britain. While Washington, D.C., burned during the respectable artist of biblical allegory. Male Renais- War of 1812, war hero Madison defended her sance painters frequently painted themselves being beloved White House from encroaching British guided by an ethereal, feminine Allegory of Painting troops by packing up precious artifacts and sending hovering over their canvasses. But because she was a them to the Bank of Maryland, thereby saving the woman, Gentileschi could paint herself as the national home from utter destruction. embodiment of the Allegory of Painting, guiding Other women warriors were forced to disguise her own craft. Although in her own time Gen- their gender in order to join the ranks of the official tileschi did not receive the kudos she deserved, military. In a variety of human endeavors, women today many art historians consider her the artistic have had to play at being a man if they wanted recog- genius of the 17th century. nition of their talents. Sophie Germain, a French A to Z of Women in World Historyis an attempt to mathematician, could not enroll at École Polytech- reveal not only the distinction of the women it cov- nique in Paris because she was a woman. So she put a ers but also the ingenious ways in which women masculine name at the top of a math problem she skirted the numerous barriers society placed in their completed and asked a male friend to hand in the paths. Each entry presents the essential facts of each assignment for her, thereby forcing the professor to woman’s life within her unique historical context. examine her mathematical proofs. Germain passed Taken collectively, A to Z of Women in World History the professor’s scrutiny; she went on to help found paints a broad image of women (and womanhood) the study of mathematical physics. as movers and shapers of world history, without Writer Harriet Jacobs broke political, social, and whom the historical glass would be much more than literary boundaries through her autobiography, half empty. viii ALPHABETICAL LIST OF ENTRIES (cid:2)(cid:3) Adivar, Halide 172 Behn, Aphra 393 Carson, Rachel 303 Agnodike 296 Benetton, Giuliana 59 Cassatt, Mary 329 Aidoo, Ama Ata 386 Bernhardt, Sarah 150 Catherine II 243 Aishah 204 Bernstein, Aline 328 Chanel, Coco 89 Allende, Isabel 387 Bhutto, Benazir 240 Child, Julia 91 André, Valérie 297 Bishop, Hazel 60 Cho Wha Soon 207 Angelou, Maya 389 Blackwell, Elizabeth 300 Christine de Pizan 272 Anthony, Susan B. 352 Blankers-Koen, Fanny 2 Cleopatra VII 245 Apostoloy, Electra 173 Bloomer, Amelia 88 Clicquot, Veuve 63 Aquino, Corazon 236 Blunt, Anne 3 Cole, Johnnetta 274 Arendt, Hannah 266 Bly, Nellie 116 Comnena, Anna 119 Argentinita, La 146 Bocanegra, Gertrudis 32 Cruz, Sor Juana Inés de la 360 Armand, Inessa 354 Bol Poel, Martha 357 Cunitz, Maria 304 Artemisia I 30 Bonney, Anne 34 Curie, Marie 305 Ashton-Warner, Sylvia 267 Borgia, Lucrezia 241 Darling, Grace 41 Atwood, Margaret 390 Bose, Abala 271 David-Neel, Alexandra 5 Aung San Suu Kyi 175 Bouboulina, Laskarina 35 Davies, Arabella Jenkinson 120 Aylward, Gladys 205 Boudicca 36 Deborah 42 Bâ, Mariama 391 Bouhired, Djamila 176 Dickinson, Emily 396 Bach, Anna Magdalena 147 Boulanger, Nadia 151 Ding Ling 361 Bai, Lakshmi 31 Boupacha, Djamila 37 Eddy, Mary Baker 209 Baker, Josephine 148 Bourgeois, Louyse 301 Egeria 121 Bandaranaike, Sirimavo 237 Bourke-White, Margaret 117 Eliot, George 398 Barrios de Chungara, Bradwell, Myra 61 Elizabeth I 247 Domitila 356 Bremer, Fredrika 359 Emecheta, Buchi 400 Bassi, Laura 298 Brigid, St. 206 Endo Hatsuko 92 Beale, Dorothea 268 Buck, Pearl S. 394 Eng, Melinda 94 Beaufort, Margaret 238 Bunke, Tamara 39 Evert, Chris 7 Beauvoir, Simone de 270 Butcher, Susan 4 Fallaci, Oriana 122 Beech, Olive 58 Carreño, Teresa 152 Fatima 211 ix