Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. This woman was the first woman to hold a cabinet post (Secretary of Labor for FDR). She held this post for 12 years and helped enact the Social Security Act of 1935 and the 1938 Fair Labor Standards.
2. This woman was the first African-American woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar. She founded the Children's Defense Fund in 1973 to focus on children's need for safe homes, nutritious meals and decent education.
3. This senior was so upset with being forced to retire at 65 that she started the Gray Panthers in 1971. She helped create awareness of ageism and to rewrite mandatory retirement laws.
4. Firmly believing that liberating women would also liberate men, this journalist was a leader of the women's movement in the 70s. She popularised the phrase, "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle."
5. This woman wrote "The Feminine Mystique" in 1963. In it she labeled suburbia "a bedroom and kitchen sexual ghetto", in which "fulfillment had only one definition: the housewife mother." She also co-founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966.
6. This writer and scientist could be said to have started the environmental movement. She wrote several books that lay people were able to understand and absorb while still adding to scientific literature; including "Silent Spring" in 1962 about the deadly effects of chemical pesticides on fish, birds and humans.
7. A pioneer in the field of genetics, this woman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1983 for a discovery she had made 40 years earlier. She did genetic research on corn and found that genetic elements moved around on chromosomes and was not fixed as earlier though. This movement altered the genetic material from one generation to the next.
8. This woman was one of the first 50 licensed anesthesiologists in the country. She developed the first test in 1952 to access the condition of newborns shortly after birth; prior to this time newborns were taken to the nursery before any tests were performed.
9. This technology pioneer helped produce the Mark I (an early prototype of the electronic computer) in 1944. She was involved in the creation of UNIVAC, the first all purpose, all electronic digital computer. She invented the first computer compiler and co-developed COBOL (an early computer language that was the first to use both words and numbers). She also earned the first Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale.
10. This African-American contralto had to leave America in 1930 to sing in Europe because the concert halls would not allow her to perform because of her color. She was back five years later. In 1939 she was banned from singing at Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution. This caused first lady Eleanor Roosevelt to resign from the DAR and arrange for this woman to sing at the Lincoln Memorial. The Easter Sunday concert drew 75,000 supporters and millions more via radio.
11. This woman was a staff photographer at Fortune magazine when she caught the nation's eye with her photos of the "Dust Bowl" in 1934. Her work was on the first ever issue of LIFE magazine in 1936. With LIFE she created the photo essay. She was also the first woman accredited to work in battle zones during World War II.
12. This woman was the first woman to swim the 21 mile English Channel. She disproved the conventional wisdom that a woman was physically incapable. At the time she was only 19 years old. She also won three medals in the 1924 Paris Olympic Games.
13. This woman was an advocate for the mentally ill and better prison conditions. She became the Union's superintendent of nurses (in charge of all nurses in army hospitals) during the Civil War. She convinced skeptical military officials to allow women nurses and recruited heavily. After the war was over she went back to her advocacy and succeeded in opening the first state run mental asylum. (Previously the mentally ill had been kept in inhumane conditions, often in poor houses or prisons.)
14. This nurse and midwife coined the phrase "birth control" around 1914. She strongly advocated the availability of contraceptive information to women. At the time it was illegal to distribute such information through the mail. She later was sent to jail for opening a clinic and educating woman about reproduction. She was the founder of what became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
15. This woman excelled in all sports that she attempted including basketball, diving, tennis, track and field and golf. She was restricted to three events in the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles. She won a gold in hurdles and javelin. Even though she jumped the highest in high jump she was awarded the silver because of her "unusual head first" technique (now the standard method.) She set more records, won more medals and tournaments than any athlete of her era, male or female.
Source: Author
promise2try
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