Patsy Mink
ATTORNEY / ACTIVIST (1927 - 2002)
Patsy Takemoto Mink was elected to the U.S.
House of Representatives in 1964,
representing Hawaii's 2nd Congressional
District. Although she was born in the U.S.,
her family was from Japan. In the workforce,
the odds were stacked against her: Law firms
refused to hire her, telling her that women
should stay home to care for their children.
After being elected, she was one of only eight
women in Congress at that time and the first
women of colour to be elected to congress.
Once in office, Mink championed the fight
against the inequity that she had faced. Most
people in the U.S. have heard of Title IX, the
landmark legislation that prohibits gender
discrimination in education. Mink was one of
two principal authors and sponsors of the bill,
and even penned its first draft.
Sarah Jane Rees
MASTER MARINER / TEACHER / POET (1839
- 1916)
Known by her bardic name of "Cranogwen",
she defied all the suffocating restrictions of
Victorian womanhood: first claim to fame was
as a master mariner. For two years she worked
as a sailor on cargo ships between Wales and
France before returning to London and
Liverpool to further her nautical education. She
gained her master mariner's certificate -
allowing her to command a ship in any part of
the world. She became a head-teacher at 21,
educating the children of the village, and taught
navigation and seamanship to local young men.
Many men who would later go on to sail and
captain ships across the world's oceans were
trained by Sarah Jane Rees. In 1865 her writing
and poetry skills made her the first woman to
win a poetry prize at the National Eisteddfod,
and in 1879 she became the first woman to edit
a Welsh-language women's magazine.
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