Miscellany

After Helen Gahagan Douglas was elected as a Democratic representative in 1944, news outlets spread rumors of a vicious rivalry between her and Republican congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce; one headline read helen vs. clare: torch vs. icicle. “For reporters short of real news,” Douglas complained, “it was a simple day’s work to speculate that we would claw at one another.” The women resolved to avoid giving fodder to such baseless stories by never discussing the same subject on the same day.

Miscellany

In 1873 elderly sisters Julia and Abby Smith of Glastonbury, Connecticut, were incensed to learn that a local property-tax hike had been imposed only on women. At a town meeting, Abby decried how “liberty is so highly extolled,” yet “one half of the inhabitants are not put under her laws, but are ruled over by the other half.” When the Smiths demanded voting rights, the town seized their cows. The standoff became such a cause célèbre that a Chicago market sold the cows’ tail hair wrapped in ribbons reading “Taxation Without Representation.”

Miscellany

“Your minds are full of all kinds of treacherous plans,” wrote Indian activist Tarabai Shinde, addressing men in an 1882 pamphlet. One plan: “Let’s bluff this moneylender and pocket a thousand rupees from him.” Another: “That woman Y, what a coquette she really is! What airs she gives herself! Must corner her one of these days and see whether some affair with her can be managed.” Such “insidious perfidies,” she concluded, “never enter a woman’s mind.”

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