There
have been a lot of jokes about women drivers, politicians, business people
etc. The general idea behind all these innuendos is that the members of
the fairer sex are scatterbrained. Enough has been written about how
women are breaking or trying to break the glass ceiling in different
areas. I have no intention of writing another clichéd article on all
that. I just got curious about those women who were the first to go where
no woman had ever gone before. I left out most of the well known fields which
have been covered threadbare by numerous books and articles and have attempted
to write something about their role in other pursuits.
Mountain climbing was as manly as it
could get in the early days of climbing. But the women were not far off. The
earliest mountain climbing women were from Britain. Margaret Jackson (right) was one of the earliest and well known climber who in her mountain
climbing career between 1876 and 1889 made around 140 climbs, some in winter.
Her days as a climber came to an end in 1889 after she suffered
frostbite. Another notable climber was Katherine Richardson who had
116 climbs to her credit. Her main claim to fame was her speed.
Once, she reportedly had to spend nearly 45 minutes on the summit after a climb
to allow her male guide to recover. Then there was Elizabeth Le Blond who
started the Alpine Ladies Club for women mountaineers. More about these
women and others like them here.
We
all know about Mary Leakey (left) and her husband L.S.B.Leakey who did
pioneering work in Africa on the origin of man. However, women were
collecting fossils much before that. Ethelred Bennet who was born around
1775, was probably the first. Mary Anning lived around the same time [she
was featured in a Google doodle] and had some rare finds to her credit.
It is said that the tongue twister "She sells seashells on the
seashore" originated from her since she sold her fossils found near the
seashore! The earliest woman entomologist was probably Maria
Sibylla Merian, a German who settled down in Amsterdam. She published her
findings on the metamorphosis of insects in 1705. It was another matter
that these women were never invited to any of the scientific academies'
meetings nor were they allowed to become members though their work was cited by
the male scientists in their own publications.
My
favorite topic though is about women in armed forces. Throughout history,
we have read of women who have governed kingdoms and occasionally led armies (Remember Joan of
Arc?). We have also heard of the legendary Amazons in ancient Greek
lore. However, the role of women in combat in recorded history is
fascinating. The erstwhile Soviet Union in its war against the
Germans in the period 1941-45 came the closest to creating all-women fighting
units (the number of women in the Red Army was as high as 800,000 according to
some estimates). It is another matter that most of these women left
military service after the war and though women do serve in the armed forces
all over the world today, the scale and magnitude is less compared to the
Soviet women during the Second World War. In the Red Army, apart from
their usual roles in the medical corps, women served as snipers, machine
gunners, mechanics, pilots and a few even drove tanks. Their role is
largely forgotten today and there are few authentic sources about their lives
and times. After spending considerable time on the internet and trying to
separate wheat from the chaff, what I found was fascinating.
The
women volunteered in the armed forces but were not always welcomed. When
they did join, they faced hostility from their male counterparts, who were
uncomfortable with the idea of women soldiers. But they persisted and
finally had their way and even earned the respect of their male
counterparts. The life of a soldier is always tough and in those days,
especially in the Soviet Union, they were short of arms and ammunition,
planes etc. And they faced an enemy who had superior weapons. It
takes real courage to serve on the front lines with bombs falling around you and
bullets whizzing past. But many of these unflinching women made a name
for themselves. Women snipers like Lyudmila Pavlichenko, Roza Shanina (in the picture) and Natalya Kovshova are known names, but there were hundreds of others in the Red Army.
Among
the pilots, Marina Raskova (at right, who was sometimes described as the Amelia Earhart
of the Soviet Union) and Lydia Litviak (nick named as "The White Rose
of Stalingrad") made a name for themselves in their short career.
Marina Raskova was instrumental in creation of three all-women squadrons in the Red Air Force. Inna Pasportnikova was the female mechanic who was assigned to Lydia
Litviak. She has described how difficult the work was and how her male
counterparts sympathized with her, but could not help. The infantry division
had its own heroines like machine gunners Aliya Moldagulova (below left) and Manshuk
Mametova.
Of the female Soviet "tank men" the most well known
were Aleksandra Samusenko and Mariya Oktyabrskaya (below right). The latter joined the army
after her husband was killed in the war and had reportedly inscribed the words
"Fighting Girlfriend" on her tank.
These are the ones who were
noticed because of their exploits. They (except Inna) were awarded the "Hero of
the Soviet Union" medal, the highest honor. But there were many others who
died unsung. Never again has history been witness to such large scale
participation of women in war in different roles and I doubt whether this will
change in future. Many modern militaries do not permit women to fight on
the front lines though they are permitted to fly aircraft. In a sense, it can
be said that the participation of Soviet women in the war was a unique and
short-lived experiment, which had mixed results. Many of the women perished in
the war and some at a very young age (Roza Shanina and Natalya Kovshova were just 20 & 22 years old respectively when they died).
I never cease to admire the tenacity of these women who braved bullets, bombs
and male prejudice to prove themselves. Incidentally, a good book on some of
these women is available here. I guess all these
just go to prove that if you really want to, you can do almost anything. The
amount of male prejudice that a woman encounters when she tries to enter a
hitherto male preserve is something we cannot imagine today. That these
women overcame all that and went on to write their names in history is
admirable. It is unfortunate that the age of internet came too late to chronicle the
exploits of these women. I would have loved to read more about them.
