Little Known Achievements By Women

Over lunch, my husband told me he heard a man on TV commenting about the recent women’s soccer team victory.

Darling Hubby shook his head in disgust and told me what the [profane noun deleted] man said.

It went something like this, “Face it. An average 15-year-old boys’ soccer team could beat them.”

Misogyny Is Alive & Well

Do you know the precise definition of misogyny? It’s the hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women or girls.

Misogyny manifests in many ways: social exclusion, sex discrimination, hostility, male privilege, belittling of women, disenfranchisement of women, violence against women, and sexual objectification.

The male talking head mentioned above certainly fits that definition. I won’t go into the emotional and psychological reasons some men are misogynists. I’m not a shrink. I’m just a woman who recognizes a misogynist when one rears his arrogant, entitled head.

Women shouldn’t have their achievements denigrated any more than men should have theirs belittled. Yet, women have often seen their triumphs ignored.

Little Known Achievements By Women

These are just a few of the many achievements by women that may surprise you.

A team of six women programmed the first digital computer. The female mathematicians participated in a World War II program coding instructions into what was then a revolutionary machine: the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer better known as ENIAC.

Mary Anderson invented the windshield wiper for automobiles in 1903. By 1916, windshield wipers were standard equipment on all cars.

The two highest IQ scores ever recorded were from women. Standardized testing changed the commonly-held belief that women were intellectually inferior to men.

The top score came from Marilyn vos Savant, an author and columnist. To this day, she is the Guinness World Record holder for highest IQ.

Margaret Heafield was the director of software engineering for NASA’s Apollo space program.
She wrote the mathematical sequence that enabled the Apollo mission to be successful. She was so good at what she did, NASA had her double check equations done by computers.

Eliza Zamfirescu was the world’s first female engineer. After being rejected in her home country of Romania due to prevailing misogyny at the time, she attended and graduated from the Royal Academy of Technology Berlin in 1912.

American chemist Stephanie Kwolek invented Kevlar, the material used in most bulletproof vests and body armor. In 1995, she became the fourth woman to be inducted into the National Inventors Hall Of Fame. Only 4 women out of so many female inventors!

Katharine Blodgett, the first female engineer at General Electric’s research laboratory, invented the process of making non-glare glass in the 1930′s by discovering how to transfer mono-molecular coatings onto glass. Her discovery was used to improve cameras, cinematography lenses, eyeglasses, and military periscopes.

Takeaway Truth

The story of women’s achievements is often the story of fighting for the right to participate and overcoming the barriers placed in front of women.