First Woman on Cover of Business Week
Brownie Wise made her name using home parties to sell Tupperware. She was not the inventor of the home party sales method, but she was a master at it. This […]
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Inspirational Women
This section began as a celebration of March and Women’s History Month; it continues as a regular feature because there are so many unrecognized women who have made major contributions to history.
Jane Swisshelm, Journalist, Abolitionist, Women’s Rights Advocate
- Ardent abolitionist and advocate for women’s rights
- First woman to cover a story from the Senate press gallery
Jane Cannon Swisshelm was born in Pittsburgh in 1815. Her father was a Presbyterian minister who died when Jane was only eight. Without him to provide for them, the family faced financial hardship so Jane had to quit school and work with her mother at lacemaking. When she was fourteen she was able to get a job as a teacher. (At a later date, I will investigate the changes in teaching requirements in American schools.)
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Jennie Grossinger (1892-1972), Garment Worker to Resort Owner
- Established a world-class, financially successful resort
Jennie Grossinger was born in Austria in 1892 to parents who wanted to save enough money to bring the family to America for a better life. When Jennie was five, her father emigrated, and three years later he had saved enough money to bring Jennie, her younger sister, and her mother to New York; they lived on the lower east side. Her father, a former real estate overseer, was now a coat presser; life was not easy.
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Mary Heaton Vorse (1874-1966), Journalist and Labor Activist
• Honored by the United Auto Workers (1961) as a recipient of the first UAW Social Justice Award for her work as a labor journalist in the 1920s and ‘30s
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Clara Barton: Dedicated Life to Helping the Injured and Unfortunate
Early Life Clara Barton (1821-1912) was born in Oxford, Massachusetts, the youngest of five children in a middle-class family. When she was eleven, one of her brothers was seriously injured
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Jean Carroll (1911-2010), Pioneered the Path for Female Stand-Up Comediennes
- One of the early female comics (Moms Mabley preceded her, performing in the 1910s, but she was on the black vaudeville circuit; more about her another day)
- Appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show more than twenty times
Born Celine Zeigman in Paris, France, she moved with her family to New York City when she was still a child. Her father was abusive to her mother. Growing up in that atmosphere led Celine to the conclusion that she needed to be self-supporting, to never have to be dependent upon a man.
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