women

women

International Women’s Day

International Women’s Day

Since 1911, International Women’s Day has served as a salute to the capabilities and accomplishments of women throughout the world.  This year’s theme is #EmbraceEquity. What does it mean to #EmbraceEquity?  If women are to be counted as full members of society, they need more than acknowledgement.  They need real opportunities and the knowledge that women can and do anything they choose.  To that end, the IU East Campus Library offers a variety of databases dedicated to the creative, sociopolitical and scientific achievements and changes by women. Women have been leaders for social change since the founding of the United States.  From voting rights to social justice, women have led the charge for a host of causes, all dedicated to … Continued
Writers, musicians, scientists: accomplishments of Black women throughout history

Writers, musicians, scientists: accomplishments of Black women throughout history

In the arts, sciences, humanities and popular culture, Black women have helped to shape our society in ways large and small. You can research them in databases like African-American History Online, Black Women Writers, or Black Thought and Culture.  In this blog, we highlight three of these extraordinary women and their tremendous contributions to American society, history and culture. Sister Rosetta Tharpe The guitar stings its notes one after the next, amplified by gigantic speakers.  Up front, in a sleeveless cotton dress, a woman stands in front of a large silver microphone, her hair pulled up away from her face.  She is Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and according to a number of music historians, she invented or promoted many of the … Continued
Your vote counts! Then and Now: a brief timeline of women’s suffrage

Your vote counts! Then and Now: a brief timeline of women’s suffrage

On August 26, 1920, women in the U.S. secured the right to vote.  It was a victory 80 years in the making, opening voting rights on a national level to all women for the first time.  While the Constitution first extended voting privileges, it did so only for property-owning men.  Eventually, all men were allowed to vote, via a patchwork of state laws and the Fourteenth Amendment, which granted black men the right to vote.  But women were continuously denied the same privileges, under charges such as “wom(e)n would run into excesses”  or that they would abandon their “proper place” as homemakers, wives and mothers.  The fight for suffrage began in 1840, when abolitionists Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, … Continued
Women and Online Connectivity

Women and Online Connectivity

This March, with IU East (as well as almost every other college in the country) switching to online-only classes, the celebration of Women’s History Month has been curtailed, with many events and activities cancelled.  But the very act of e-learning offers an avenue to honor a particular way that women’s innovation and accomplishment have improved our world, in the form of the computer technology that is now so vital to maintaining any semblance of higher education in this country today. Women have always been instrumental to the development of computing technology.  The world recently lost mathematician and innovative computer programmer Katherine Johnson, whose life and contributions to early computer development are well known thanks to having been recently dramatized in … Continued
(Some of) the curious cultural history of women in chocolate

(Some of) the curious cultural history of women in chocolate

Chocolate is one of the most widely beloved foods in the world today, used in a variety of dishes from chocolate pasta to mole sauces to, of course, decadent brownies.  However, much of what we know about chocolate is fairly recent and limited in context.  Let’s open up a bit of that history and take a look at chocolate through the lens of women. For much of the 20th century, women have been closely associated with chocolate – mostly by craving it.  While this is a stereotype, it is rooted in a small bit of truth.  Chocolate is in fact the most desired food in the US, and while there is little consensus as to whether or not that desire … Continued