Gender Archives

Gertrude Benham: First Woman to Summit Mount Kilimanjaro

Early 20th Century Mountaineer Received Little Credit for Her Exploits

A long view of Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest mountain. — The first female climber to reach the summit of Africa’s highest mountain, Gertrude Benham should have been included in the record books, but few histories of Kilimanjaro even mention her name.

It was a classic case of “anything you can do, I can do better,” set in the magnificent Canadian Rockies in 1904 when Gertrude “Truda” Benham, at 36, set out to satisfy her wanderlust by climbing as many Rocky Mountain peaks as she could before summer’s end.

Engineer Mary Pennington, America’s “Ice Woman”

A Refrigeration Pioneer Who Surmounted Gender Barriers to Revolutionize The Way Food is Shipped, Stored and Sold

Engineer Mary Pennington on top of a rail car collecting food samples. — Mary Engle Pennington pioneered systems of refrigerated rail cars and practices that revolutionized the food shipping industry. She is shown here, atop a rail car, collecting food samples for testing.

For most women, being dubbed America’s “Ice Woman” would be cringe-worthy at best. But Mary Pennington, whose pioneering work in storing, shipping, refrigerating and flash-freezing perishable foods revolutionized America’s food supply, wore it as a well-deserved badge of honor.

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Tye Leung Schulze, Women’s Rights Advocate, First U.S. Chinese Voter

Rescued Chinatown Sex Slaves in Turn of the Century San Francisco

A staunch human rights advocate and activist, Tye Leung Schulze worked throughout her career to free female Chinese sex slaves from American brothels. She was also the first Chinese-American voter.

Standing just over four feet tall, she was nicknamed “Tiny.” But when it came to character, compassion, and her dedication to civil rights and women’s rights, there was nothing small about Tye Leung Schulze.

Marguerite Higgins: First Pulitzer-Prize Winning Female War Correspondent

New York Herald Tribune reporter and Korean War media star Marguerite Higgins chats with General Douglas MacArthur in the field.

Marguerite “Maggie” Higgins wasn’t America’s first female war correspondent. Legendary journalist and novelist Martha Gellhorn (who was also Ernest Hemingway’s third wife) had covered conflicts all over the world in her 60-year career. But Higgins was the first to win the coveted Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1951 with her front-line coverage of the Korean War.

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The Electrifying Story of Engineer Edith Clarke

Edith Clarke with one of her electrical system patents — Orphaned in 1895 in Baltimore, Edith Clarke excelled in mathematics and dreamed of being an electrical engineer at a time when there were no female engineers in that burgeoning new field of technology. Ultimately she went into the Hall of Fame as one of the most important electrical engineers of the 20th century and was also America’s first female university engineering professor.

For most of us, America’s vast electrical infrastructure is something we take for granted, rarely think about until it goes down, and don’t really understand. But for Edith Clarke it was the stuff of dreams. A pioneer in electrical engineering, and role model for every young woman pursuing a STEM education today, she used the power of math to improve our understanding of power transmission at a time when engineering was a man’s world and women just didn’t “do” science.

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Margaret Fogarty Rudkin, Feminist Founder of Pepperidge Farm

A Pepperidge Farms horse-drawn delivery wagon — After starting a baking business in her kitchen at the height of the Great Depression, Margaret Fogarty Rudkin’s Pepperidge Farm became one of the country’s best known food brands.

Maybe it’s the decadence of a double-chocolate Milano. Or those buttery, melt-in-your-mouth Chessmen. Or the handful of Goldfish (“the snack that smiles back”) a harried mom throws into a Ziploc bag on the way out the door with her little ones. Pepperidge Farm has been America’s bakery for generations. But did you know it all started with a housewife, a sickly little boy and a stately tree on a Connecticut farm?

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