#OnThisDay, 21 Mar 1945, Hannie Schaft, an active member of the Dutch resistance known as "the girl with the red hair", is arrested at a German checkpoint in Haarlem.
She is later executed, allegedly saying "I shoot better" after the first attempt to shoot her missed.
#OnThisDay, 19 March 1944, Yvonne Baseden parachutes into Nazi-occupied France as a Special Operations Executive radio operator. The British SOE supported the French resistance. Radio operators ran the greatest risk of discovery as their position could be triangulated when they were transmitting.
Baseden was captured and sent to Ravensbrück.
She was the subject of the first regular UK edition of This Is Your Life in 1955.
Technology is supposed to make the world more accessible, not reinforce inequities. Liz Henry's advocacy for people with disabilities & the open source software and hardware ecosystem show how important it is for you to have the power to adapt tech to your own needs. #womenshistorymonth
Iconic computer scientist, mathematician & U.S. Navy rear admiral Grace Hopper worked on the first all-electronic digital computer, created the first implemented compiler (coining the term), and developed COBOL demonstrating that a programming language could use English words. 
Today in Labor History March 18, 1871: The Paris Commune began on this date. It started with resistance to occupying German troops and the power of the bourgeoisie. They governed from a feminist and anarcho-communist perspective, abolishing rent and child labor, and giving workers the right to take over workplaces abandoned by the owners. The revolutionaries took control of Paris and held on to it for two months, until it was brutally suppressed. During Semaine Sanglante, the nationalist forces slaughtered 15,000-20,000 Communards. Hundreds more were tried and executed or deported. Many of the more radical communards were followers of Aguste Blanqui. Élisée Reclus was another leader in the commune. Many women participated, like Louise Michel and Joséphine Marchais, including in the armed insurrection. Nathalie Lemel, a socialist bookbinder, and Élisabeth Dmitrieff, a young Russian exile, created the Women's Union for the Defence of Paris and Care of the Wounded, demanding gender and wage equality.
Read my complete biograph of Louise Michel here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/20/louise-michel/
Lucie Aubrac’s husband was arrested & he was sentenced to death by the Nazis. She led a dozen Resistance fighters in an ambush of the truck in which her husband was being transported & rescued him. She was 6 months pregnant at the time. She survived WW2 & died Mar 14, 2007 at the age of 94. (3/3)
In one mission, Lucie Aubrac & team rescued 5 captured resistance fighters from police custody in Lyon. (Source: Women in the Resistance, Rossiter, p. 166) After WW2, this story was the theme of Issue 49 of True Comics titled “Lucie to the Rescue.” Her cinematic life in the Resistance was made into a feature film starring Carole Bouquet in the title role. A trailer for the movie may be seen here: (2/3)
Lucie Samuel was better known as Lucie Aubrac. She was a history professor during the day & a member of the French Resistance at night. She & her husband published anti-Nazi propaganda, engaged in sabotage, & freed captured partisans from Nazi custody. Her infant son accompanied her to Resistance meetings. (1/3)
#WW2 #Resistance #France #WomensHistoryMonth
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/mar/16/guardianobituaries.france
“Once, with hand-grenades in my shopping bag, I travelled in a train so full that I had to stand against a German NCO.”
#OnThisDay, 18 Mar 1943, Francine Agazarian arrives in Nazi-occupied France to be a courier in the Special Operations Executive. The British SOE supported the French Resistance.
Join me Tuesday @ 6pm EST/5pm CST when #LaEsoterica honors #WomensHistoryMonth. Playlist available here (https://tinyurl.com/mpk6czy3)
(1/4)
#OnThisDay, 17 Mar 1964, Joan Merriam Smith set off from Oakland airport in California in an attempt to fly solo around the world. She followed Amelia Earhart’s easterly route from 1937 as far as New Guinea where Earhart had vanished.
Merriam Smith arrived back in Oakland on 12 May 1964, the first pilot to successfully make a solo circumnavigation by the equatorial route.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WomenPilots #AmericanHistory #WomensHistoryMonth
1/2
Chelsea E. Manning is a network security expert, whistleblower, and former U.S. Army intelligence analyst whose disclosure of classified Iraq war documents exposed human rights abuses and corruption the government kept hidden from the public. #womenshistorymonth
Happy birthday to botanist & photography trailblazer Anna Atkins (1799-1871), née Children!
Atkins’ mother died when she was still an infant, but she was close with her naturalist father & received a much more scientific education than was common for women in her time. Her 250 detailed engravings of shells were used to illustrate her father’s translation of Lamarck’s ‘Genera of Shells’; 
Today's book recommendation for Women's History Month is "Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years" by Elizabeth Barber (1994).
I mentioned this book here awhile ago, in connection with one of the daily haiku prompts, but today it's time to give it a direct recommendation.
It's about the earliest history of spinning and weaving in the Bronze Age, and the role women played in developing these arts, and the role these arts played in the lives of women.
Spinning was the basis of all textile production, and the most time-consuming. Without thread, there could be no weaving. Women had their spindles and distaffs always ready to hand, spinning in any odd moments as they went through their days, as they walked down the road, as they sat beside cooking pots, as they tended children, as they visited and socialized.
No wonder spinning played such a part in cultural memory, from the three Fates spinning the thread of a human life, to Ariadne's ball of thread in the labyrinth, to fairy tales like Rumplestiltskin.
Spinning and weaving were peculiarly female labors, because until industrialization, they could be performed at home while children ran about. Clothing was highly valued because it took so much labor to produce, yet because it wore out and vanished from the archaeological record, historians paid little attention to it, until modern interest in women's history highlighted its importance.
Link to book:
Some beautiful soul here recommended #SanoraBabb to me and I #justfinished Whose Names are Unknown and it was so excellent. #Thankyou! Perfect read for #womenshistorymonth as i think she wrote a better novel than Steinbeck, though her ending was kinda… abrupt. #bookreview #bookrecommendation #reading https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT2b4qM8m/
Barbara Simons, computer scientist & former president of the Association for Computing Machinery, has been on a mission to ensure election security in our systems for over 20 years. It's never been more important for us to know that our votes are secure, verifiable, & counted. #womenshistorymonth
