Woman

A woman is an adult female of the human race. The word girl is the usual term for a female child or adolescent.

HISTORY

In ancient Greece women didn't start counting their age until their wedding day, rather than the actual day they were born. They believed the wedding date was the real start of a woman's life.

In the late Classical Era of Greece, women owned 35% of the land and property in Sparta. When a woman's husband died (usually in battle), his land and property passed to the wife, not to the oldest male.

Women in ancient Egypt could own property in their own name, enter into contracts, sue and be sued, and were protected by prenups.

Viking women did enjoy an unusual degree of freedom for their day too. They could own property, request a divorce and reclaim their dowries if their marriages ended.

The Illinois Women's Employment Act was passed by the State of Illinois on March 22. 1872. It prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex in hiring and promotion in certain industries, such as factories, laundries, and other businesses. While the law did not explicitly state that women could join every profession, it was a significant step towards equalizing job opportunities for women.

The Illinois Women's Employment Act was the first state-level law of its kind in the United States, and it helped pave the way for future legal protections against sex discrimination in the workplace. 

Theodore Roosevelt's 1880 undergraduate thesis at Harvard was titled: "The Practicability of Equalizing Men and Women before the Law. It argued for women's rights, including property ownership, and argued that women ought to keep their birth names upon marrying.

Woman in England were allowed to own property in their own right for the first time in 1882. The Married Women's Property Act forced courts to recognise a husband and a wife as separate legal entities and also made married women liable for their own debts for the first time.

In a 1882 speech against allowing women to vote, Senator George G. Vest of Missouri declared, "A woman's place is in the home!"

New Zealand's Electoral Act of 1893 gave all women in New Zealand the right to vote. New Zealand thus became the first country to give women the vote in a national election.

International Women's Day was launched in Copenhagen, Denmark, by Clara Zetkin, leader of the Women's Office for the Social Democratic Party in Germany on March 19, 1911. It was marked by over a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland.

1917 International Women's Day - Petrograd.

The Women's Institute was founded on June 16, 1915 in the United Kingdom. Its two aims were to revitalise rural communities and encourage women to produce food during World War 1. It's now the largest women's voluntary organisation in UK.

The Inter-Allied Women's Conference opened in Paris on February 10, 1919.  A parallel conference to the Paris Peace Conference, it marked the first time women were granted formal participation in an international treaty negotiation.

The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 was enacted on December 23, 1919 in the United Kingdom. In effect, this act lifted most of the existing common-law restrictions on women in the United Kingdom; they were now able, for example to serve as magistrates or jurors, or enter the professions.

In 1973, Mao Zedong told Henry Kissinger that China had an excess of females and offered the U.S. 10 million Chinese women.

An estimated 2.5 million Hindu women gathered at the Attukal Temple in Kerala, India on March 10, 2009, making it the largest gathering of women in history, overtaking the record set by the same festival in 2007.

PIONEERING WOMEN 

On January 23, 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to qualify as a doctor of medicine in America when she was awarded her M.D. by the Geneva Medical College of Geneva, New York.

Elizabeth Blackwell

Martha Hughes Cannon became the first female state senator elected in the United States when she was elected as a Utah State Senator on November 3, 1896.

French aviatrix Raymonde de Laroche became the first woman to receive a pilot's license when she received ticket No. 36 on March 8, 1910.

Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming was elected the first female governor in the United States on November 4, 1924, when she succeeded her late husband William B. Ross.

At the 1964 Republican National Convention in San Francisco, Margaret Chase Smith of Maine became the first woman to have her name be placed in nomination for the presidency at a major political party's convention. A moderate Republican, she also was the first woman to serve in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the United States Senate.

Margaret Chase Smith

When Argentine president Juan Perón died on July 1, 1974, he was succeeded by his wife and vice president, Isabel, who became the first female president of any country in the world.

Six years later, Vigdis Finnbogadottir was elected president of Iceland becoming the world's first female democratically elected president.

In June 1989, following twelve months of training on Canadair CF-5 and McDonnell Douglas CF-18 Hornet jet fighter aircraft, Deanna Brasseur and Jane Foster became the first two women in the world to fly fighters in operational squadrons.

Canadian ice hockey goaltender Manon Rheaume achieved a number of historic firsts during her career. She was the first woman to play in the National Hockey League and also the first woman ever to play in any of the major North American pro-sports leagues.

By Manon_Rheaume2.jpg:

Janet Reno was the first woman Attorney General of the United States. She was sworn in as the nation's 78th attorney general on March 12, 1993. Reno served as Attorney General for the duration of Bill Clinton's presidency, from 1993 to 2001. During her tenure, she oversaw several high-profile cases, including the raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, and the capture and trial of the Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski.

Rebecca Marier became in 1995, the first woman to graduate 'top of the class' at West Point, the US Military Academy. The rankings are based on academic, military and physical accomplishments.

Navy Lt. Kendra Williams graduated from jet training at Naval Air Station Kingsville, Texas in 1997. On December 17, 1998 she was credited as the first woman pilot to launch missiles in combat during Operation Desert Fox in Iraq. 

Madeleine Albright was the first female United States Secretary of State in U.S. history, having served from 1997 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton.

FUN WOMEN FACTS

Until the late 1400s the word 'girl' just meant a child of either sex. If you had to differentiate between them, male children were referred to as 'knave girls' and females were 'gay girls'.

Although 227 minutes long, the 1962 Lawrence of Arabia film has no women in speaking roles. It is reportedly the longest movie not to have any dialog spoken by a woman.

William Moulton Marston the guy that created Wonder Woman was a psychologist that helped invent the polygraph machine, which is why Wonder Woman has the Lasso of Truth. He also believed women were emotionally superior to men and that the U.S. would one day be a matriarchy.

International Women's Day is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. It is celebrated each year on March 8.

Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

The average American woman now weighs as much as the average American man in the 1960s.