Q: Which First Lady of the United States was an advocate for civil rights, worked to enhance the status of women, but opposed the Equal Rights Amendment?
A: First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was an international author, speaker, politician and activist. An advocate for civil rights, Roosevelt worked to enhance the status of working women, however, she opposed the Equal Rights Amendment because she believed that it would adversely affect women.
Q: Who was the journalist, activist and spokesperson who co-founded a number of ventures, including Ms. magazine, the Ms. Foundation for Women, Choice USA and the Women’s Media Center?
A: Gloria Steinem’s work as a journalist, feminist and activist led to her recognition as the leader of the women’s liberation movement in the 60s and 70s. In 1971, she joined other feminists in forming the National Women’s Political Caucus. That same year, she co-founded Ms. magazine. In 2005, she worked with Jane Fonda and Robin Morgan to establish the Women’s Media Center, which works to increase the number of women’s voices in the media. At the age of 77, Steinem is still involved in politics and media affairs.
Q: Who is the woman who’s listed in the Guinness Book of Records for being the first woman to become a millionaire by her own achievements?
A: Madame C.J. Walker was a hair care entrepreneur whose hair and beauty products for African American women made her the first woman to become a self-made millionaire. She used her wealth to become a philanthropist, donating to the NAACP, the YMCA, schools, orphanages and retirement homes. She made the largest contribution to save the Anacostia home of Frederick Douglass.
Q: In addition to becoming the first woman to receive the U.S. Distinguished Flying Cross, this woman was also a member of the National Women’s Party and an early supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment.
A: Amelia Earhart received the U.S. Distinguished Flying Cross after becoming the first aviatrix to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. When she wasn’t setting records in the air, Earhart was on faculty at Purdue University, was a member of the National Women’s Party and was an early supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment. She disappeared over the Pacific Ocean during an attempt to fly around the world in 1937.
Q: Who was the woman who led the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years and advised multiple U.S. presidents on Civil Rights issues?
A: Dorothy Height was an educator and social activist who was the president of the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years. She also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. In addition to providing leadership in the community during the civil rights movement, Height advised First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Height died on April 20, 2010 in Washington, DC at the age of 98 and is buried at Fort Lincoln Cemetery.
Q: Who was the first woman to become chief of a Native American nation?
A: Wilma Pearl Mankiller was the first woman to become Chief of the Cherokee Nation in 1985. She was principal chief until 1995. The Oklahoma native grew up in a destitute family that lived first in Oklahoma and then in California. In 1983, she was elected deputy chief of the Cherokee Nation. When Principal Chief Ross Swimmer left in 1985, to head the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Mankiller became chief. She was freely elected in 1987 and re-elected in 1991, with 83 percent of the vote.
She said that prior to her election “young Cherokee girls would never have thought that they might grow up and become chief.”
Mankiller died of pancreatic cancer on April 6, 2010.
In the spirit of the theme of this year’s Women’s History Month, “Our History is Our Strength,” I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the history of women’s philanthropy specifically, since it is a particularly important part of our organization’s history.
The relationship between women and philanthropy has evolved significantly over the past 250 years. Starting in the 1800s, women began aligning their philanthropy with their volunteering – a model that persists today. Early on, many women chose to donate their time to aiding soldiers and their families during times of war and disasters. Providing assistance to widows and children – especially the poor – began to grow in popularity in the 19th Century and wealthy women were devoted volunteers and donors to these efforts. Typically, however, women’s giving was usually tied to their husbands’ or family’s wealth and was more about “charity” and meeting the needs of the “less fortunate” than addressing the sources of those inequities.
The 1960s brought a significant amount of change and activism around civil rights and anti-war ideologies, changing the face of engagement, volunteering and activism in profound ways. In the 1970s, a number of organizations developed for and by women emerged; organizations that also started to challenge the status quo. At the same time, women were moving into the workforce and sought higher education as a means to better their economic and intellectual standing. Their power to gather together and promote women’s issues and interests increased and their desire to fund their own movements was a powerful motivator. As the late, great Audre Lorde said: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” Being in control of their own resources was a critical piece of this model for change.
Today, women own one-third of America’s private businesses and control more than 51 percent of the wealth in the United States. Among the nation’s top wealth holders, 43 percent are women, according to the Treasury Department.
No longer having to rely on spousal or familial resources, women with increased access to personal resources stepped into philanthropy with gusto. A recent study of women’s philanthropy found that women give 3.5 percent of their wealth compared to 1.8 percent for men and that single women are more likely to give to charity than single men. Women also tend to be the decision-makers in their family philanthropy (both individually and for family foundations). Given this, it is probably not surprising that both married men and married women are more likely to donate than single men.
But not only are women giving more… they bring a new giving paradigm to their philanthropy. Sondra Shaw-Hardy and Martha Taylor – gurus of women’s giving – developed the six “C”s as a way to summarize women’s motivations for giving. These characteristics of women’s giving have been fundamental to the way that women give as individual donors, and in the development and operation of women’s funds.
#1: Create: Women want to create new solutions to problems. They like to be entrepreneurial with their philanthropy.
#2: Change: Women want to use their money to change the community. They want their giving to make a difference. They’re less interested in providing unrestricted support to preserve the status quo of an organization or institution.
#3: Connect: Women prefer to see the human face their gift affects. They want to build a partnership with people connected with the project they fund.
#4: Commit: Women commit to organizations and institutions whose vision they share. They often give to an organization for which they have volunteered.
#5: Collaborate: Women prefer to collaborate with others as part of a larger effort. They seek to avoid duplication, competition and waste.
#6: Celebrate: Women want to celebrate their accomplishments, have fun together, and enjoy the deeper meaning and satisfaction of their philanthropy.
Sondra Shaw-Hardy says that this paradigm of women’s giving has had significant results that she sums up in three additional C’s:
Control: Women are taking control of their lives, their finances and their philanthropy.
Confidence: They have gained the confidence to become philanthropic leaders.
Courage: Women have the courage to challenge the old way of doing things and take risks with their giving to bring about change.
Ours is a rich history of giving, and one that has overcome many obstacles along the way, yet, what makes history useful, and not just an exercise in nostalgia, is how we use what we have learned to shape our future.
Today, we are in greater need of philanthropy than ever and most of us feel competing priorities about what needs our attention. The truth is, we need many more of our resources – our time, talent and especially our treasure – to meet the needs abroad, and right here in our own backyard. And like so many arenas, in philanthropy we are not fully leveraging the power and solutions that women bring to the table. History has taught us not to underestimate the talent and resources that women can bring to the table.
It is estimated that $41* trillion in wealth will be transferred to Baby Boomers over the next forty-five years. Women will stand to inherit 70 percent of this wealth. That translates to $28.7 TRILLION. Think about what we could do if we could harness even a fraction of that wealth and put it in the hands of critical change-agents in our communities!
My colleague Donna wrote a blog post where she shared the recent return on investment from out Stepping Stones Initiative (our $270,000 investment yielded returns of $5.9 million!) and challenged us to see what we could do with the Macy’s million dollar makeover. Taking that challenge one step further, I think about our foremothers who dared to have B.H.A.Gs – big, hairy, audacious goals – and I want us to set our sights even higher! $41 trillion…people! Just imagine!
Our history is indeed our strength. It has taught us so much and prepared us for this moment. How we step into it is up to all of us. Let’s do our foremothers proud!
*In the interest of transparency, this was the number quoted before the recession, I am not sure what the impact of the economic downturn has been on this estimate.
Nicole Cozier is the Philanthropic Education Officer at Washington Area Women’s Foundation.
Q: Who was the former slave who became the first black woman in America to win a court case against a white man? She sued to get back her five-year-old son who had been sold to a plantation owner in Alabama. She later became an outspoken abolitionist, giving her most famous speech at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention.
A: Born into slavery, Sojourner Truth escaped to freedom with her infant daughter in 1826. After her escape, she learned that her five-year-old son, Peter, had been sold to a plantation owner in Alabama. With the help of a family that took her in after her escape, Truth sued the man who’d sold Peter. After months of legal proceedings, Peter was returned and Truth became one of the first black women to take a white man to court and win the case.
Later, Truth spoke out against equalities, giving her famous “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech at the 1851 Ohio Women’s Rights Convention. Over the next decade, Truth spoke before many audiences. Later, she recruited black troops for the Union Army during the Civil War and desegregated street cars in Washington, DC.
Q: Who was the first American postmistress? Hint: she was also the first person to print the Declaration of Independence with the names of the signatories.
A: Mary Katherine Goddard became postmaster of the Baltimore post office in 1775. The daughter of a postmaster, Goddard and her brother were both involved in the postal and printing businesses. When the Continental Congress moved that the Declaration of Independence be widely distributed, Goddard was one of the first to offer up her printing press, even though the Declaration was considered a treasonous document by the British.
In 1789, Goddard was removed from the postmaster position by Postmaster General Samuel Osgood who said the position required more traveling than a woman could undertake. Baltimore residents rallied behind Goddard, but their efforts to get her reinstated were unsuccessful and Osgood appointed one of his political allies to replace her.
Q: This woman was known both as “mother” and as “the most dangerous woman in America.” She organized mine workers and their families and organized a children’s march in 1903 to protest weak child labor laws.
A: Mary Harris “Mother” Jones was an Irish immigrant who became prominent in the American labor movement and co-founded the Industrial Workers of the World. She became involved with the labor movement after a series of tragedies in the late 1860s and early 70s claimed the lives of her husband, four young children and dress-making business. She often led strikes and, as a union organizer, she led the wives and children of striking workers to demonstrate, too.
She got the nickname “Mother Jones” because she claimed to be older than she actually was and referred to male workers as “her boys.”
In 1903, she organized children who were working in mills and mines to participate in a “Children’s Crusade.” The children, some of whom had injuries suffered on the job, marched 125 miles from Kensington, PA to Oyster Bay, NY, the home of President Theodore Roosevelt. Though the president refused to meet with the marchers, the demonstration did bring attention to the issue of child labor.
Later in life, Mother Jones moved to Adelphi, MD, where she continued to speak on union issues almost until her death in 1930.