Infinite Women

This week's podcast is about legendary Norwegian shield-maidens and pirates Rusla and Stikla. Also known as the “Red Woman” for her ruthlessness, Rusla is a princess mentioned in Saxo Grammaticus’s History of the Danes and in Irish annals. When her brother’s throne was stolen by a Danish king named Omund, Rusla gathered a pirate fleet to attack Danish ships in revenge. Stikla, who had turned to piracy to escape marriage, was by her side every time. Some sources call her Rusla’s sister, though with the scant details, the exact nature of their relationship is open to debate. While Rusla was attacking ships and coastal towns in what is now Iceland, Denmark and the UK, her brother was busy being Omund’s bitch. The Danish king had tricked Tesandus into siding with the Danes, and in the process he lost his own crown to Omund. Where Rusla got pissed, Tesandus was being a good little boy. He was on one of the ships she attacked - although the ship was sunk, Rusla was merciful and allowed her brother to escape with his life. In an epic case of misplaced anger, Tesandus swore vengeance not on the man who conned him out of his throne, but on the sister who fought to avenge their family honor. He chased her fleet with one of his own, eventually captured her and held her by her braids while his crew beat her to death with rowing oars. To be fair, she earned her ruthless reputation and took no prisoners, so there is a sense of live by the oar, die by the oar. Stikla appears to have had a longer and hopefully happier life. The History of the Danes states that the Norwegian town of Stiklestad was named for her, and she apparently settled here after her exploits with Rusla.

Cathy Perkins, author of The Shelf Life of Zora Cross, joins us to talk about the best-selling Australian poet, novelist and journalist. Cathy is also an editor at the State Library of New South Wales. Read transcript

Fashion is one of the few areas where sewing really gets to shine, but even then modern designers are the ones getting the credit rather than the people building their imagined creations. But not too long ago, the roles were often combined by dressmakers like Elizabeth Keckley, a formerly enslaved woman who gained her professional reputation in Washington, D.C. by outfitting the city's elite, including First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. Thanks to her work as a seamstress, she was able to buy her and her son's freedom in St. Louis, Missouri in 1855, and moved to DC in 1860, where she established a dressmaking business that grew to include a staff of 20 seamstresses. After the Civil War, Mrs. Keckley wrote and published an autobiography titled Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (1868). The book was both a slave narrative about the physical and sexual abuse she experienced in her early life, and a portrait of the First Family, especially Mary Todd Lincoln. For a fictional novel about Mrs. Keckley, I recommend Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker by Jennifer Chiaverini. Read more about Keckley on the Infinite Women site: https://www.infinite-women.com/women/elizabeth-keckley/Speaking of outfitting the first lady, Ann Lowe was the first African-American to become a major fashion designer from the 1920s through the 1960s. She was best known for designing Jacqueline Bouvier's wedding dress when she married John F. Kennedy in 1953 - or rather, she should have been. Although her work is recognised now, Jackie never publicly credited Ann for the most talked-about dress of the year. Even though Ann had been working with the Bouvier family for years, when asked who designed the dress, Jackie reportedly replied ‘I wanted to go to France, but a colored dressmaker did it.’ The dress, which cost $500 (approximately $5,000 today), was described in detail in The New York Times's coverage of the wedding, but Ann's name was never mentioned. Even worse, Ann lost money on the project - ten days before the wedding, a pipe burst in her studio, ruining the dress as well as nine other dresses for other members of the wedding party. Ann and her team worked day and night to re-create the masterpieces in a week and a half. She ended up losing $2,200 — about $21,000 in today's currency. Then, when she hand-delivered the gowns in Newport, R.I., she was told to enter through a service entrance in the back. Ann replied that either the dresses went with her through the front door or they went back with her to New York. Ann also designed the dress Olivia de Havilland wore to the 1947 Oscars, when she won Best Actress. The name on the label, however, was Sonia Rosenberg.In 2019, Ruth E Carter became the first African-American to win an Academy Award for Best Costume Design, for her incredible work on the superhero film Black Panther. It was her third nomination - of the more than 60 films she worked on as lead costume designer, she was also nominated for Spike Lee’s Malcolm X in 1992 and Steven Spielberg’s Amistad in 1997. She then won again in 2023 for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. And it probably goes without saying, but her own Oscars dresses were masterpieces.

In the 1960s, Walter Keane’s “Big Eye” paintings gained immense popularity across the US. Derided as kitsch by critics, they were a massive commercial success. Andy Warhol remarked "I think what Keane has done is just terrific. It has to be good. If it were bad, so many people wouldn't like it."  But while they were done by “Keane,” they weren’t Walter’s. Like other women who escaped their husband’s influence, Margaret Keane later claimed credit for her work. In a common refrain, Walter was significantly older - 12 years - and physically and emotionally abusive, with Margaret later saying “I was afraid for my life.”  Initially, he was taking credit for her work without her knowledge or consent. As she explained, “After I married Walter I just signed my paintings ‘Keane’. He was able to take credit for my work, which I was not aware he was doing at first.” When she did find out, she kept quiet and even publicly supported his claim for fear of reprisals behind closed doors, later saying that he had threatened to kill her.  It was only years after their 1965 divorce that Margaret went public, asserting in a radio broadcast that she was the true artist. A reporter from the San Francisco Examiner arranged a “paint-off” between the former spouses - Margaret attended, Walter did not. It was not the only time he’d dodge such a challenge - in 1986, Margaret sued Walter and USA Today for an article in which he claimed to be the true artist of the Big Eyes paintings. The presiding judge ordered both Keanes to create a Big Eyes painting in the courtroom. Walter refused, spinning a tale about a “sore shoulder,” while Margaret finished hers in under an hour. The jury awarded her $4 million in damages; a federal appeals court later overturned the monetary award but upheld the defamation verdict. Margaret said after the initial trial, "I really feel that justice has triumphed. It's been worth it, even if I don't see any of that four million dollars." Indeed, unlike the sad children and dark surroundings of her earlier works, her post-Walter paintings tended to be much happier and lighter - a reflection of her own revitalised outlook on life. For a big-screen adaption of Keane’s life, check out Tim Burton’s 2014 biopic Big Eyes, starring Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz.

The Turing Award is generally regarded as the highest honor in computer science. In more than 50 years, only three women have won: Frances Allen, Barbara Liskov, and Shafi Goldwasser, but plenty of brilliant women computer scientists were overlooked:U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Grace Hopper was a trailblazing mathematician who was one of the first programmers to work with the Harvard Mark I computer in the 1940s. Read more about Hopper on the Infinite Women site: https://www.infinite-women.com/women/grace-hopper/Dr. Gladys West created the Global Positioning System that most of us use to get from place to place. Read more about West on the Infinite Women site: https://www.infinite-women.com/women/gladys-west/In addition to being a major advocate for gender equality in tech, Maria Klawe’s done work in a variety of fields, including theoretical computer science, human-computer interaction, gender issues in information technology and interactive-multimedia for mathematics education. 

Historian and audio producer Catherine Freyne is co-curator of an exhibition at the State Library of NSW called Pride (R)evolution (https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/pride-revolution; see the exhibition's "Sporty Lesbians and Fit Feminists" digital map at https://uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/2b49515c1ccc97c68b83ce4c05f11c5a/the-sporting-lesbian/index.html). She joins us to talk about Australian mountaineer Freda du Faur, the first woman to climb New Zealand's highest peak, Aoraki / Mount Cook, in 1910. Freda was also a lesbian, whose life was tragically impacted by the attitudes and practices of the times in which she lived. Read interview transcript Read about Freda on Infinite Women

Born into a prominent Muslim family in Granada in 1485, Sayyida fled the Spanish Reconquista in 1492. Her family resettled in northwest Morocco; she was highly educated and at 16 was married to her father’s friend, a man 30 years her senior. The Moroccan sultan had granted her husband the opportunity to rebuild the ruins of Tetouan, which had been destroyed by the Spanish. Sayyida served as a de factor vice governor, ruling in his stead when he traveled. When her husband died in 1515, the residents were used to seeing her in charge and accepted her as the new governor.But while she was a noblewoman and politician, she was also a pirate, or corsair. She never forgave the Spanish for forcing her family to flee Granada and to avenge herself on her “Christian enemy,” she reached out to the legendary Ottoman admiral Hayrettin Barbarossa of Algiers. While Barbarossa trawled the eastern Mediterranean, Sayyida proved herself a scourge in the western Mediterranean, Iberia and Morocco’s Atlantic coast. She led her fleet, preying on Spanish and Portuguese shipping lanes. She amassed a large fortune from both the loot and ransoming captives and was seen as the Europeans’ main contact to negotiate the release of Christian captives.After 25 years of widowhood, Sayyida accepted a marriage proposal from the Moroccan sultan. Their marriage is the only recorded instance of a Moroccan sultan marrying outside of the capital - Sayyida insisted he come to her in Tetouan because she had no intention of giving up ruling her city and she wanted everyone to know it.Unfortunately, the following year, she was overthrown by her son-in-law and stripped of her property and power after four decades in Tetouan.Accepting her fate, al Hurra retired to her childhood home in northwest Morocco, where she lived almost two decades more.Read more about al Hurra on the Infinite Women site: https://www.infinite-women.com/women/sayyida-al-hurra/

Thanks to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, every American child grows up hearing about the midnight ride of Paul Revere. Imagine if, instead, he’d chosen to immortalise the story of American Revolutionary heroine Sybil Ludington.  Her nighttime ride was the more impressive feat, to be sure - she was 16, to Revere's 41, when she rode 40 miles, compared to Revere's 12.5 miles. Her mission was to to warn the roughly 400 militiamen under her father's command that British troops were planning to raid Danbury, Connecticut, where the Continental Army had a supply depot. On the way, she woke people in their homes, yelling "The British are burning Danbury!" Previously, the teen had saved her father from capture by 50 Loyalists. When the mob approached their house, Sybil lit candles around the house and had her siblings march in front of the windows in military fashion, creating the illusion that troops were guarding the house and causing the Loyalists to flee. Yet even the national Daughters of the American Revolution, in 1996, said that the evidence was not strong enough to support their criteria for a war heroine because her story was recorded primarily in her family’s oral tradition, and they removed a book about her from their headquarters' bookstore. The DAR chapter near her historic home says that her exploit was documented, and it continues to honor her. As for Longfellow - maybe it’s just too hard to find rhymes for “Ludington.”Read more about Sybil on the Infinite Women site: https://www.infinite-women.com/women/sybil-ludington/When it comes to travelling long distances to pass military intelligence, we can’t forget about Canadian Laura Secord. During the War of 1812, Secord didn’t even have a horse when she traversed 20 miles on foot out of American-occupied territory in 1813 to warn British and Mohawk forces of a surprise attack by the Americans. According to legend, she’d overheard billeted soldiers talking about it and set out the next morning. Thanks to her warning, the Mohawk and British troops were able to prepare, and won the subsequent battle.Read more about Laura on the Infinite Women site: https://www.infinite-women.com/women/laura-secord/

Standing by your man isn’t always easy, but Gaby Bloch and Mary Ann Bugg went above and beyond to break their partners out of prison. While both demonstrated loyalty and ingenuity, that may be where the similarities end. Mary Ann was a bushranger, a type of 1800s Australian bandit, while Gaby was a member of the French Resistance during World War II. Let’s start with Mary Ann. Born in 1834, she grew up experiencing all the discrimination you’d expect for someone who was both female and Aboriginal, being Worimi (Warrimay) on her mother’s side, and the daughter of an English convict on her father’s. First married off at age 14, she had several children and exes by the time she took up with Frederick Ward in 1860. He went by the name, and no I’m not joking, Captain Thunderbolt. Ward was basically on probation for horse theft, and when he violated that probation, he was sent back to Cockatoo Island, which is not as adorable as it sounds. The island prison in Sydney Harbour, about 400 meters of shark-infested waters to swim - which Mary Ann reputedly did, carrying a file to take care of those pesky leg irons. They carried on robbing folks and making babies for several more years before separating at the end of 1867. It’s also worth noting that jailbreak aside, Mary Ann was probably doing the heavy lifting in their partnership while Thunderbritches claimed all the credit. She hunted their food, was the only one who could read a map, scouted ahead and spread false information to evade authorities and even taught him to read. He was also shot and killed within a year and a half of their split, while Mary Ann lived to age 70. She also had 13 kids and evaded arrest by pretending to go into labour. Several decades later and halfway around the world, Gaby Bloch had been arrested with her husband and other members of the French Resistance in October 1941. Although Gaby had been released after three months, the men were still being held by the government on charges of treason, and at risk of being turned over to the occupying Nazi forces. Gaby turned to Virginia Hall, one of the most effective agents sent to France by the UK’s Special Operations Executive. Known as the “Limping Lady” due to her prosthetic leg, Virginia’s brilliance was often overlooked. The women arranged to have a radio smuggled into the internment camp at Mauzac, and Gaby would travel the 35 miles there several times a week, sneaking in messages, tools and supplies a bit at a time. Gaby also recruited support from the staff - if she’d said the wrong thing to the wrong person, or been discovered smuggling items into the prison, either could have resulted in her death. The plan was almost ruined when one of their inside men accidentally slipped a message into the wrong guard’s jacket - fortunately, that guard was happy to be be bribed to keep silent, but it must have been terrifying when he confronted Gaby with the note. The escape went off without a hitch in July 1942, and although Gaby was arrested, Virginia had made sure Gaby had a rock-solid alibi for the time with plenty of witnesses and the police were forced to release her. The Special Operation Executive’s official historian called the prison break ‘one of the war’s most useful operations of the kind’. Gaby and her children reunited with her husband in London, where the couple went on to serve the French security services. Both received the Legion d’honneur, and Gaby was recommended for the King’s Medal for Courage in the Cause of Freedom.

Read about "La Pola" on our website: https://www.infinite-women.com/women/policarpa-salavarrieta/ Policarpa Salavarrieta was a revolutionary spy in what is now Colombia. For almost a decade after the Colombian declaration of independence in 1810, freedom fighters battled the Spanish in what was then referred to as “new Grenada”. As a seamstress, she offered her services to the wives and daughters of royalists and officers, and in their homes, she overheard conversations, collected maps and intelligence on the enemy’s plans and activities, identified major royalists and found out who the royalists suspected of being revolutionaries. She also secretly recruited young men to the Revolutionary cause, supplying soldiers that were desperately needed. In Bogotá, she lived with and ostensibly worked for Andrea Ricaurte y Lozano, whose home was actually a centre of the resistance and a hub of intelligence gathering. Although the independence forces would eventually succeed, forming the Republic of Gran Colombia in 1819, La Pola did not live to see it. She was arrested by the Spanish after her lover was captured with information she provided, and she was executed in 1817. She did not accept her fate meekly, cursing the Spaniards relentlessly the night before. When she and several other prisoners were taken to be killed by firing squad, she refused to kneel, yelling "I have more than enough courage to suffer this death and a thousand more. Do not forget my example." Although soldiers forced the prisoners to face away from their killers, when the squad began shooting, Policarpa turned around to face them. Remembered as a heroine of the fight for independence, she has been commemorated in stamps and on money, and in 1967, the Colombian congress passes a law declaring that 14 November would be the “Day of the Colombian Woman” in honour of the anniversary of the death of “Our heroine, Policarpa Salavarrieta”. She even has a tarantula named after her.