4.10.2011

Victory for women in 2014 Winter Olympics

This is a victory for women everywhere: the 2014 Winter Olympics will include for the first time a ski jump event for women. Click here to read the story, "U.S. women's ski jumpers excited, relieved after decision" about how U.S. women competitors are feeling about the change.

Why so Few Women on the Forbes Fictional 15?

Click here to read the story by Michael Noer, published March 10, 2011


File:Peach Mario 2.jpg

April Women's History Highlights and Birthdays

April 2, 1931 - 17-year-old Jackie Mitchell, the second woman to play baseball in the all-male minor leagues, pitches an exhibition game against NY Yankees and strikes out both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. The next day, the Baseball Commissioner voided her contract, claiming baseball was too strenuous for women. The ban was not overturned until 1992 .


April 5, 1911 - 100,000 to 500,000 people march in New York City to attend the funeral of 7 unidentified people who died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in late March.

April 7, 1805 - Sacagawea begins helping the Lewis and Clark Expedition as an interpreter.

April 7, 1987 - Opening of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington , DC , the first museum devoted to women artists.

April 9, 1939 - Marian Anderson sings an Easter Sunday concert for more than 75,000 at Lincoln Memorial.

April 13, 1933 - Ruth Bryan Owens is the first woman to represent the U.S. as a foreign minister when she is appointed as envoy to Denmark.

April 19, 1977 - 15 women in the House of Representatives form the Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues.

April 22, - Earth Day - honor Rachel Carson today, a woman who changed America and greatly influenced the environmental movement.

April 26, 1777 - American Revolution heroine Sybil Ludington, 16 years old, rides 40 miles by horseback in the middle of the night to warn the American militia that the British were invading.

April 28, 1993 - First "Take Our Daughters to Work" Day, sponsored by the Ms. Foundation; in 2003 it became "Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work" Day.

April Birthdays

April 3, 1934 - Jane Goodall, primatologist and conservationist; world's foremost authority on chimpanzees

April 4, 1928 - Maya Angelou, author, poet, civil rights activist, actress; composed and read her poem at President Clinton's inauguration in 1993

April 7, 1944 (2002) - Julia Miller Phillips, film producer; first woman to win a Best Picture Academy Award (1973, "The Sting") as a producer; also produced "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "Taxi Driver"

April 9, 1887 (1953) - Florence Price, first African American woman symphony composer

April 10, 1880 or 1882 (1965) - Frances Perkins, first woman cabinet member, Secretary of Labor in 1933; key contributor to the Social Security Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act

April 10, 1903 (1987) - Clare Booth Luce, playwright, Congresswoman (R-CT), Ambassador to Italy (1953-1956)

April 10, 1930 - Delores Huerta, Chicana activist; co-founder United Farm Workers union

April 13, 1909 (2001) - Eudora Welty, writer, won Pulitzer prize for Fiction in 1973; photographer; winner of Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Literature, and the French Legion d'Honneur

April 14, 1866 (1936) - Anne Sullivan Macy, famous teacher of Helen Keller who was blind, deaf, and mute; the two worked and traveled together

April 25, 1917 (1996) - Ella Fitzgerald, "First Lady of Song", internationally renowned jazz singer, winner of 13 Grammy Awards

April 27, 1927 (2006) - Coretta Scott King, civil rights, human rights, and peace activist

April 30, 1939 - Ellen Zwilich, first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for Music (1983)