Sappho of Lesbos ( c.650 BCE-c590 BCE): classical Greek poet known in her own time as the "Tenth Muse." Her works, tributes to both romantic and physical love, have come down to us only in fragments, in the works of others where her words were quoted. Since she was a teacher of women who wrote poetry in tribute to them as they left her to marry, later commentators derived the terms Sapphism and Lesbian from her name.1 Will things never change.

Hypatia of Alexandria (c.370-415): the earliest woman scientist whose life is well documented, was renowned in her own time for her learning and as a teacher of mathematics and philosophy. Called the Teacher and The Philosopher, she encouraged learning in all women. The last pagan scientist in the western world, Hypatia was pulled from her chariot, stripped naked, and torn apart by a vicious mob incited to an anti-pagan frenzy by Cyril, who was later canonized as a saint. Hypatia's work was condemned and burned by the church; it is lost to us.2

Hrotsvit of Gandersheim (c.930-c.990) (also known as Hroswitha or Roswitha3 of Gandersheim), her pen name means the strong voice of Gandersheim. The canonness4 Hrotsvit, consecrated to the church at an early age, a devout Christian, was truly a pioneering woman. "She is the first known dramatist of Christianity, the first Saxon poet, and the first woman historian of Germany. Her dramas are the first performable plays of the Middle Ages, her epics are the only extant Latin epic written by a woman, and, finally, she is the first medieval poet to have consciously attempted to remold the image of the literary depictions of women." 4

Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) perhaps the greatest of the Abbesses of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Hildegard, advisor to popes, was renowned in her own time for her learning in art, medicine, and music. Her art and theological writings, based on her mystic visions, emphasized the feminine aspects of God and tried to show that men and women were equal to one another in God's eyes.6 The New Age movement is reviving her music and her writings. For a true listening experience, listen to the CD, Vision.

Christine de Pizan (1364-1430): the first woman to earn her living by the pen. She wrote on a variety of subjects using several genres. Poet, biographer of King Charles V of France, autobiographer (_Christine's Visions_), literary critic, historian, and political commentator, her best known work _The Book of the City_ of Ladies (1405), a reply to Boccaccio's (of _Decammeron_ fame) misognystic _Of Famous Women_, is one of the earliest lists of famous women in the modern era. In it she presents roughly 100 mythical and historical women from antiquity to 1405 in a very positive light. 7

Aphra Behn (1640-1689): In _A Room of One's Own_ Virginia Woolf says of Behn: "All women together should let flowers fall on the tomb of Aphra Behn. . . for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds." More prolific than Shakespeare, in addition to poetry and letters, she had 17 plays produced in 17 years and wrote 13 novels (30 years before Daniel Defoe wrote _Robinson Crusoe_, reputed to be the first English novel.) A strong advocate of women and women's right to an education, her female characters are many things, sometimes strong, outspoken, cunning, plotting, brassy, intelligent, lustful, honorable, chaste but never shy, timid, or reserved. An early abolitionist, her novel Oroonoko contained the first portrayal of slavery in a popular work. Her work, bawdy and full of sexual innuendo, as was the work of the popular male playwrights of the time, and her advocacy of free love and the right of women to marry whomever they please- or not at all- tarnished her reputation until the very recent past. 8

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) Although Stanton and Susan B. Anthony collaborated throughout their adult years, today, much of the credit for their achievements goes to Anthony. While Anthony was the organizer, speaker, and worker, Stanton was a trained lawyer, wordsmith, philosopher, social analyst and visionary. While Anthony became more conservative as she aged and narrowed her focus to woman's suffrage, Stanton became more radical as she aged and broadened her efforts. It was Stanton who first fought for woman's suffrage at the 1848 Woman's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls. Later, she fought for married women's property rights, for the education of women, for the right of women to speak publicly, and to reclaim and preserve women's history. " Since 'all reforms are interdependent,' one cannot attempt to change the law, education, and other cultural institutions without also seeking to change biblical religion."9 And Stanton took on all institutions including the church. In her last major work, _The Woman's Bible_, she attempted a feminist reinterpretation of the Common and Christian Testaments of the Bible.

      There has always been a woman's movement. Women have always taken pride in being women, have tried to bring dignity, honor, freedom, equality, and justice to women, and worked to empower women to improved their own lives.

      The women listed above are only a few of our many feminist foremothers. If you know a teenager, find out if she has studied these women in school. All children, girls and boys alike, should recognize their names and list their accomplishments, just as we expect them to know the names of Plato, Socrates, Augustine, Aquinas, Donne, Milton, Locke, and Rosseau. If your children don't know of these women, go to their schools and find out why. Insist that these women and many more be part of every child's education. And take pride that you are one of a long line of distinguished women fighting for the dignity, rights, and freedom of all women.

1 Encarta encyclopedia
2 _Hypatia's Heritage: A History of Women in Science from Antiquity through the Nineteenth Century_, Margaret Alic, Beacon Press, 1986, p. 41-46
3 _A History of Their Own: Women in Europe from Prehistory to the Present_, Vol. 1, Bonnie S. Anderson and Judith P. Zinsser, Harper and Row, 1988, p. 186-187
4 A canoness took all of the vows of a nun except the vow of poverty.
5 "The Saxon Canoness: Hrotsvit of Gandersheim", Katharina M. Wilson, _Medieval Women Writers_, U. of Georgia Press, 1984
6 _The Creation of Feminist Consciousness_, Gerda Lerner, Oxford Univ. Press, 1993 p. 5-64
7 _The Book of the City of Ladies_, Christine de Pizan, Persea Books, 1982
8 _Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them_, Dale Spender, Pandora Press, 1982, p. 33 - 34
9 _Searching the Scriptures: A Feminist Introduction_, Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Crossroads Press, 1993 page 4 paraphrasing and quoting Stanton from _The Woman's Bible_

"Unless and until we can reconstruct our past, draw on it, and _transmit it to the next generation_, our oppression persists."
            Dale Spender, _Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them_, page 15

"At every level of the educational establishment women had to first fight for the right to learn, then for the right to teach and finally for the right to affect the content of learning. This last has yet to be accomplished to any significant extent."
            Gerda Lerner, _The Creation of Feminist Consciousness_, page 45

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