It is no secret that throughout the ages, women have been overlooked, underrepresented, and undervalued despite their hard work and meaningful contributions to our world. In honour of International Women’s Day, here are six brilliant women who were denied recognition in their time, while their male counterparts went down in history.
Nellie Bly (1864–1922)
Nellie was an investigative journalist in a time when women working, especially in investigative journalism, was heavily stigmatized. She was a force to be reckoned with, pioneering not only roles for women within journalism but the journalism field itself. In an attempt to prove to the world that women could travel independently, she took inspiration from Jules Verne’s novel, Around the World in 80 Days, and set out on a solo journalistic trip in the 1880s around the globe and completed it in 72 days, which at the time also set a world record. Additionally, not only did she write from Austria and Serbia during WWII, but she was also one of the first and only women to report the war from the frontlines of the Eastern Front. Perhaps her most famous journalist role was when she went undercover in 1887 after feigning insanity to gain entry to the Women’s Lunatic Asylum in New York. Nellie set out to expose the poor conditions and inhumane treatments from her firsthand account. Despite these incredible feats, Nellie was not revered in her time and often fought for credit for her work. Richard Harding Davis was a novelist who overshadowed Nellie’s war coverage. Julius Chambers was a journalist whose asylum expose diminished the significance of Nellie’s work, despite its impersonal and generic account, and Joseph Pulitzer, the political newspaper publisher whose name lives on in the Pulitzer Prize, underpaid Nellie and often denied her credit for her work, despite her pieces serving a large part in his paper’s success.
Chien-Shiung Wu (1912–1997)
Chien-Shiung Wu, a.k.a. the “First Lady of Physics,” was a nuclear physicist who continually made groundbreaking contributions in her field. Her most significant achievement in physics was “the Wu Experiment”, which disproved the “conservation of parity”. The law was considered to be a fundamental principle of science until this point and stated that nature is symmetrical and there is ‘no distinction between opposite sides of a subatomic particle’. The Wu experiment was the first to show proof, using radioactive material that tested beta decay, that particles had a left-right preference. This was a major breakthrough in physics at the time and holds to this day. Physicists Tsung-Dao Lee & Chen-Ning Yang took Wu’s findings for a very similar experiment of their own and the next year won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Wu was left largely unrecognized, uncredited and unacknowledged for her findings until recently.
Joanna van Gogh (1862–1925)
Known as the sister-in-law of famed painter Vincent and the wife of his brother Theo, Jo is the only reason the world knows the name van Gogh. Late to the art game and with a plethora of mental health struggles, Vincent van Gogh lived off of an allowance that his brother gave to him so that he could paint as an artist who earned no income himself. Theo was an art dealer and was good at what he did, but he was unable to sell Vincent’s work. After both Vincent and Theo died within months of each other, Jo was left with a small child to care for in an era where women had little to no career opportunities. So, Jo took to selling the only thing she had left: van Gogh paintings. Working in underground scenes, she did what Theo was unable to do and cultivated an interest in Vincent van Gogh’s artworks that helped turn him into the prolific and groundbreaking artist that he is known to be today. Without Jo, there would be no Vincent van Gogh, but her story lives in the shadow of the man she created.
Elizabeth Magie (1866–1948)
Writer, political activist and forgotten game designer Elizabeth Magie created a board game that was stolen, streamlined and repackaged into what became (and remains) one of the most famous games of all time: Monopoly. In 1904, Magie invented The Landlord’s Game, based on principles from the single tax system. Her version had two sets of rules for play: anti-monopoly rules (where wealth was shared) and monopoly rules (where one person dominated). In addition to being a fun pastime, it was meant to demonstrate the dangers of economic exploitation of the masses– and was played for decades as a successful board game. Despite Elizabeth patenting the game for a second time in 1924, Charles Darrow removed the anti-monopoly rules (and thereby eliminated the game’s intended lesson), doubled down on its capitalist principles by adding the concept of buying houses for the properties, and sold it to Parker Brothers as his own concept in 1935. When Parker Brothers discovered Magie’s patents, they coerced her into selling them for a mere $500 (for a franchise that now generates billions annually) and promoted Darrow as the inventor of Monopoly, celebrating the very economic system that she was warning the public of and ignoring her as the creator to this day.
The Trung Sisters
Sisters Trung Trac and Trung Nhi, were Vietnamese royalty who ruled from 40-43 AD and led one of the first major revolts against Chinese command. Not only did these warrior queens rally over 80,000 soldiers to free 65 different cities in one of the largest and most successful rebellions in their nation’s history, they abolished oppressive taxes, restored Vietnamese traditions and developed women’s rights (many women were warriors and generals in the army)- all roughly 2000 years ago. All this was overshadowed by male independence leaders in later years, such as Ngo Quyen, Le Loi, and Ho Chi Minh. General Ma Yuan, the Chinese leader who led to the sisters’ downfall, took most of their fame at the time as the man who overruled them. Because the sisters ultimately were defeated by the Chinese- after they led for three years of peaceful, independent rule- history has often written them as failed rebels as opposed to national heroes. Fortunately, today, they are getting the recognition they deserve and even have statues and streets named after them in Vietnam.
Unfortunately, there is no shortage of stories like these, but thankfully, more and more brilliant women from history are having their stories told and their credits known. Hopefully, as we continue to move into the future, the discrediting of women will be a thing of the past. Happy International Women’s Day!
