Voices & Votes for Women's Rights

07/29/2025

07/27/2025

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/18/trump-administration-destroy-contraceptives-usaid-africa

As part of president’s shuttering of USAID, destruction of the contraceptives will cost US taxpayers $167,000

07/25/2025

Here are 12 women Old Masters benefitting from a tide of rediscovery

07/22/2025

"A Tennessee woman has been denied prenatal care because she’s unmarried. ...The woman—who hasn’t shared her name—spoke about her experience at a town hall last week....A few months ago, Tennessee passed the Medical Ethics Defense Act, which allows doctors, hospitals, insurers, and others to deny care based on their personal religious or moral beliefs. The 35-year-old’s doctor cited that law when refusing to provide her with prenatal care."

7.21.25

07/22/2025

She wasn’t allowed a title. So she took a Nobel instead. 🧠✨
In a time when women were told science wasn’t for them, Maria Goeppert Mayer changed physics forever—from borrowed labs and basement offices.
Born in 1906 in Germany, Maria earned her Ph.D. in physics and moved to the U.S. with her husband. But universities saw her as a professor’s wife, not a physicist. For years, she worked without pay, without a title, and without recognition.
But she didn’t stop asking questions.
While raising children and working from makeshift desks, Maria collaborated with some of the brightest minds of her time—Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller—contributing to groundbreaking atomic research.
Still, one question kept tugging at her mind:
Why do atomic nuclei behave as if they have layers—like shells?
That question became the key.
Her answer—the nuclear shell model—unlocked one of the great mysteries of atomic structure.
And in 1963, she became only the second woman in history to win the Nobel Prize in Physics, after Marie Curie.
Maria didn’t fight with protests or podiums.
She pushed boundaries by refusing to shrink—by letting her mind speak louder than any closed door.
She wasn’t given space.
So she carved her own.
And left behind a legacy that still shapes science today.

~Lovely USA

07/22/2025

"The Nurse Who Never Spoke Again"
Her name was Margot Elise Haynes.

She arrived in Vietnam in the summer of 1967 with a suitcase, a typewriter, and a voice that people said sounded like rain — gentle, constant, and calming.

She was 23. Fluent in French. Raised by a deaf mother.
She had learned early in life that some of the most powerful things are said in silence.

Margot was assigned to a mobile surgical unit outside Hue.
It was a brutal assignment — daily casualties, no stable ground, no rest.
But she never complained.

In fact, she was known for something rare among the staff:

She wrote down everything.

When a soldier was too injured to speak, she sat beside him and typed — his story, his hometown, his favorite food, a message for his little brother.

When one passed away, she typed a full page titled:

“He Was Here.”

She stored them in a leather folio, with the idea that after the war, she'd return them to their families.

She had over 700 pages.

In early 1969, during a night shift, a mortar exploded just meters from the surgical tent.

Margot survived.
But her throat was torn open by shrapnel.

She lost her voice. Permanently.

The Army offered her medical discharge. She refused.

She returned to the tents.
She kept working.
And she kept typing.

Now she passed notes instead of words.
Smiles instead of sentences.
A hand on the shoulder instead of farewell.

The soldiers began to call her “The Voice.”

Not because she could speak — but because her presence was louder than language.

After the war, Margot returned to California and lived in near solitude. She never gave interviews. Never published her letters.

But when she died in 2001, neighbors found a fireproof safe under her bed.

Inside were:

714 typed soldier profiles.

38 unmailed farewell letters.

And one single note in her handwriting:

“If they are remembered, I can be silent forever.”

Today, those profiles are stored in the National Archives under the collection name:

“The Voice Who Listened.”

There is no statue for her.
No grave with fanfare.

Only paper.
And memory.
And silence — the kind that still speaks.

07/21/2025

When abortion and broadband deserts collide, they can exact a devastating toll on women's lives.

07/21/2025

In 1945, six women programmed the world’s first computer—without manuals, training, or recognition. A single photo almost erased them from tech history.

Kathy Kleiman, a young computer scientist, found the image years later. Curious about the women beside the massive ENIAC machine, she was told: “Probably just models.”

But they weren’t. They were the first true coders. Betty Holberton, Jean Bartik, Kay McNulty, Ruth Teitelbaum, Marlyn Meltzer, and Frances Spence—pioneers hidden in plain sight.

Originally hired as “human computers” during WWII, they were tasked with programming ENIAC, a machine so massive and unfamiliar it had no manual—or precedent.

Banned from the lab, they wrote the first code from blueprints alone, inventing algorithms, flowcharts, and logic patterns on paper. Pure innovation.

When they finally got to touch the machine, they programmed it by hand—plugging in cables one by one to rewire its brain. And it worked.

On February 14, 1946, ENIAC stunned the world with its speed. But the newspapers never mentioned the women behind the magic.

The hardware engineers were celebrated. The programmers? Invisible—because society didn’t yet value what they did. Programming wasn’t even seen as real work.

As computing grew, so did the myth of the male coder. The women who built the foundation were pushed into silence and forgotten.

But they didn’t stop. Holberton wrote the first software application. Bartik built memory systems. McNulty helped invent subroutines—core concepts in modern coding.

Still, they vanished from textbooks. Until the 1980s, when Kleiman tracked them down, recorded their stories, and helped give them the spotlight they always deserved.

By 1997, they were honored publicly—most in their seventies. But the culture of tech had already shifted, claiming innovation as a boys’ domain.

We can’t change that erasure. But we can rewrite the narrative going forward—by remembering that women didn’t enter tech. They invented it.

Let’s teach every coder the full story: The first programmers weren’t just women. They were visionaries. And their legacy belongs to all of us.


~ The Inspireist

07/21/2025

Gisèle Pelicot, the French woman who earned international recognition after publicly testifying at her mass-rape trial last year, has been given France's top honour; Legion of Honour 👏

07/21/2025

In May 1944, Phyllis Latour, just 23 years old, jumped from a U.S. plane into the fields of Normandy, France.
Her mission: to spy on N**i positions in the weeks leading up to D-Day.
She landed alone, buried her parachute and uniform, and became someone else—a poor teenage French girl selling soap by bicycle. But under that quiet disguise, she carried a secret more powerful than any weapon.
Phyllis had been trained by Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE)—an elite group of undercover agents. She learned how to build radios, crack Morse code, scale walls, and vanish without a trace. Her wall-climbing instructor? A former cat burglar.
She did it all for revenge. The N**is had killed her godfather.
Posing as a harmless soap-seller, she cycled between villages, chatted with German soldiers, and passed coded messages hidden in a strand of silk—rolled inside her hair tie. Each time she used a code, she’d prick it with a pin.
She was briefly detained. The N**is searched her.
She casually let her hair fall loose.
They found nothing.
For four months, she lived in forests, moved by night, and sent 135 coded messages that helped Allied bombers target German positions.
She came home a ghost.
Married. Moved to New Zealand.
Told no one—not even her children.
It wasn’t until 2000 that her son discovered her service online.
In 2014, on the 70th anniversary of D-Day, France awarded her the Chevalier of the Legion of Honour.
Phyllis Latour Doyle passed away in October 2023.
A hero who walked softly, but helped change the course of a war.

~Weird Wonders and Facts

07/20/2025

SuperShe Island, located off the coast of Finland, was created by entrepreneur Kristina Roth as a luxurious women-only retreat. After selling her tech company, Roth envisioned a space dedicated to wellness, empowerment, and personal growth, without the presence of men.

The island offered yoga, meditation, hiking, healthy cuisine, and stunning natural views. Guests were personally chosen by Roth to build a close and empowering community. Although the island has now been sold, its story remains a lasting symbol of female self-care and independence.