On January 3

On this day in ...
... 1940 (60 years ago today), Dr. Silvia Pimentel (left) was born in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Holder of degrees in law, the psychology of education, and legal philosophy, she has been a professor since 1973 in the Faculty of Law at Pontifícia Universidade Católica in São Paulo. (photo credit) Pimentel is a founding member of numerous women's advocacy groups, among them the International Women's Rights Action Watch. She's the author of "The New Civil Statute of Women," proposed to the National Congress in 1981 and made a part of the Brazil Civil Code in 2002. Since 2005 she's served as an expert member of the CEDAW Committee, which monitors state party compliance vel non with the 1979 Convention on the Eradication of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

(Prior January 3 posts are here and here.)

On October 8

On this day in ...
... 1807, Harriet Taylor Mill (left) was born in London, England. (image credit) Married at 18, the woman then known as Harriet Taylor gave birth to 3 children, "became active in the Unitarian Church and developed radical views on politics," including support for women's rights. She met philosopher John Stuart Mill, "the first man she had met who treated her as an intellectual equal." They exchanged comments on each other's essays over the years, to a degree that some consider her not only an author of her own philosophical works, but also a significant contributor to some writings of his. By 1833 she was living separately from her husband, rearing their daughter while he cared for their sons. In 1851, 2 decades after they'd met and 2 years after her 1st husband died, Taylor and Mill married. She published Enfranchisement of Women the same year. A victim of tuberculosis, Harriet Taylor Mill died from respiratory failure in 1858; thereafter, her daughter Helen and husband John worked together to finish his The Subjection of Women (1869).

(Prior October 8 posts here and here.)

Women's activist prefers prison to fine

'If certain people are going to rely on shari'a law to flog women on account of what they where, they're going to have to show me the passages in the Qu'ran or the hadiths that so stipulate. I have not found them.'

So spoke, a while back, Lubna Hussein (right), who yesterday was convicted of wearing an "indecent outfit," in violation of a Sudanese national law, for having worn pants and a long blouse, along with her headscarf, at a public restaurant in Khartoum. (credit for Agence France-Presse photo) The court did not impose the allowed sentence of 40 lashes; rather, it fined her 500 Sudanese pounds -- a little more than $200. But Hussein refused to pay. She declared that she "preferred to go to prison," and so she did. Lawyers for the journalist and former U.N. consultant said she planned to appeal.
Hussein's statement bore echoes of those by women's activists from another time and place; an account of the 1905 trial of women's suffragists, accused of spitting on a British police officer, includes this passage:

[T]he magistrates returned and announced their decision, which was that for assaulting the police Miss Pankhurst must pay a fine of 10s.6d. and costs, or seven days, and for causing an obstruction in South-street each of the defendants must pay a fine of 5s., or three days.
The Clerk: Have you any goods which may be distrained upon? Both ladies answered in the negative [Christabel Pankhurst was aware of the value of the publicity of the two women being imprisoned, rather than simply paying a fine]. They were taken below. A little later they were taken in a cab to Strangeways Gaol’.

It would be another 2 decades before Pankhurst (above left) (credit) and her colleagues saw the vote extended to all women in Britain.

Words from Down Under

IntLawGrrls' guest/alumna Penelope Andrews (right), who posted a while back on South Africa, recently took part in an Australian Broadcasting Co. radio interview respecting a law on women's equality enacted in Afghanistan. Money quote:

[W]hat follows -- the laws are in many ways the easiest things to do, passing the laws.

What's hard, she said,

is implementing them, in the contexts in which the culture is so steeped in patriarchy and -- I don't want to sound cliché, but -- male domination.

The full interview with Penny, who's teaching in Australia this semester, is here. It also includes comments on "obstacle[s] to women's full equality" in today's South Africa.

On August 13

On this day in ...
… 1762, Anne Josephe Théroigne de Méricourt (right), French revolutionary and feminist, was born in Marcourt, Luxembourg province, in modern Belgium. (image credit) She called for equality with men with an eloquence that was vigrous even for the National Assembly of the day. She demanded that women be permitted to arm themselves and to enlist in the army:

Fellow women citizens, why should we not enter into rivalry with the men? . . . And we too would wish to earn a civic crown and court the honor of dying for a liberty which is dearer perhaps to us than it is to them, since the effects of despotism weigh still more heavily upon our heads than upon theirs. . . . let us open a list of French Amazons; and let all who truly love their Fatherland write their names there.

... 1905, Norwegians voted overwhelmingly -- 368,208 to 184 -- in favor of dissolving the union of Norway and Sweden. This followed by a couple months a similar action in Sweden's legislature (prior post), and dissolution took effect later in the year.

(Prior August 13 posts are here and here.)

On August 12

On this day in ...
… 1833, Lillie Devereux Blake (left) was born in Raleigh, North Carolina. In 1857, she began writing short stories for Harper's Weekly and the Knickerbocker. After her husband’s death, she supported herself and her 2 children with her writing, working as a war correspondent during the Civil War as well as writing novels and short articles. In 1869 she joined IntLawGrrls' foremothers Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to fight for women’s suffrage. She was president of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association from 1879 to 1890 and of the New York City Woman Suffrage League from 1886 to 1900. Blake died in 1913. (image credit)
… 1825, Simón Bolívar (below right), known as "The Liberator," became the 1st president of the Republic of Bolivia. (image credit) A descendant of rich Spanish aristocrats, Bolívar was one of the major architects of South American independence from Spain. He consolidated the independence of several South American countries through multiple military campaigns over the course of the early 1820s. In 1821, Gran Colombia (a federation covering much of modern Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador) was created, and Bolívar became its president. Then followed the presidenc of Bolivia on this day.

(Prior August 12 posts are here and here.)

Guest Blogger: Doris Buss

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Doris Buss (right) as today's guest blogger.
An Associate Professor in the Department of Law at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, Doris is an expert in the use of international criminal adjudication to prosecute persons suspected of international crimes. She teaches courses in international law and governance, on matters such as human rights and international criminal law. Doris' scholarship draws on feminist and postcolonial theories to ask inter alia:

Could it be that international criminal law, rather than promoting a stronger respect for human rights, instead echoes and repeats colonial forms of governance?

With regard to prosecution of wartime sexual violence, moreover, she asks:

Might it be the case that in making wartime sexual violence against women an issue of hyper-visibility, international criminal law and human rights are erasing and displacing other forms of violence and inequality?

Doris examines the categorization of rape as a weapon of war in her guest post below.
In addition to her scholarly activities, Doris serves on the Board of the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (prior post), chairing its Law Program Committee. She earned an B.A. from Carleton, an LL.B. from Dalhousie University, and an LL.M. from the University of British Columbia.
She dedicates her post to the memory of Eleanor Rathbone (below left), who served as an Independent Member of the British Parliament from 1929 until her sudden death in 1946. (photo credit) Born in Liverpool in 1872, Rathbone was a social reformer, proponent of women’s rights, advocate of family allowance, and the author of The disinherited family: A plea for direct provision for the costs of child maintenance through family allowances (2004).
Doris writes that she learned of Rathbone only recently, when her friend and colleague, Didi Herman, Professor of Law and Social Change at the University of Kent, mentioned Rathbone "in the context of a brief exchange about feminist mothers whose social justice politics too often failed to include racialized and other socially disenfranchised groups. Rathbone," Doris continues, "stands as an example of someone whose political convictions embraced women’s rights, socialist principles, a more just society, and a responsibility to all individuals, citizenship and membership notwithstanding." She concludes: "The truly exceptional politics and life contribution of Eleanor Rathbone is perhaps best teased out in the first three lines of Susan Pedersen’s brilliant book, Eleanor Rathbone and the Politics of Conscience (2004)":

Whatever Eleanor Rathbone’s constituents thought their Member of Parliament should be doing in early March of 1939, it probably wasn’t what she was doing – which was hiring a ship to run the blockade of Spain and bring Republicans threatened with reprisal to safety. Of course, she was doing other things as well – putting together a plan to expand schoolchildren’s access to free milk and meals, for example, and reviving her campaign for family allowances, which were beginning to look achievable as the prospect of war put the health of the population back on the political agenda. But in early 1939, with Franco’s troops poised for final victory in Spain, Czech Jews and social democrats fleeing the territories ceded to the Nazis by the Munich accords and Hitler poised for another eastward strike, international issues and the claims of refugees must take priority.

Today Rathbone joins IntLawGrrls other transnational foremothers in the list below our "visiting from ..." map at right.
Heartfelt welcome!

Guest Blogger: Michelle Oberman

It is a distinct pleasure to introduce my friend and Santa Clara Law colleague Michelle Oberman (left) as a guest blogger.
Michelle has a background in public health, and her research focuses on legal and ethical issues relating to adolescence, sexuality, pregnancy, and motherhood. In recent years, she has written about statutory rape, postpartum mental health issues and the law, filicide, substance abuse by pregnant women, and the fiduciary obligations of health care providers to their patients. In addition to teaching in the area of Health Law, Michelle teaches Criminal Law and Contracts.
In 2008 she co-authored When Mothers Kill: Interviews From Prison, depicted below right, with Dr. Cheryl L. Meyer, Professor of Professional Psychology at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. Their work won the Outstanding Book Award that year from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. According to the ACJS,

The book was excellent and captured both the concrete circumstances and the complex morality of the women…

In her guest post below, Michelle recounts some of what she and I learned on our recent research trip to Costa Rica in connection with Santa Clara's summer program at the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Heartfelt welcome!

On June 29

On this day in ...
… 1974 (35 years ago today), Isabel Martínez de Perón (right) was sworn in as the 1st woman President of Argentina. (photo credit) The previous President, her husband, Juan Perón, had delegated responsibility to her due to weak health; he died 2 days later. At 43 the youngest Latin American head of state at the time, she inherited a political and economic crisis. Her presidency lasted until 1976, when she was overthrown in a bloodless coup by a military junta. In January 2007, she was arrested under suspicion of having links to right-wing death squads that had abducted and murdered political opponents during her rule.
… 1861, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (left), among the most prominent poets of the Victorian era, died in Florence, Italy, 55 years after her birth in England. (image credit) During the 19th century no women poet was held in higher esteem in both the United States and England than she. Her poetry had an immense impact on the work of the American poet Emily Dickinson. American poet Edgar Allan Poe similarly was inspired by the Briton's poem Lady Geraldine's Courtship (1844), borrowing its meter for his own The Raven (1845). Barrett Browning's loathing of social injustices -- such as the slave trade in America, the oppression of the Italians by the Austrians, child labor in the mines and mills of England, and the restrictions placed upon women -- is manifested in many of her poems, including Casa Guidi Windows (1851) and Aurora Leigh (1857).

Prior June 29 posts are here and here.)

Afghan women brave violence to protest law

The Afghan Constitution guarantees equal rights for all, yet President Hamid Karzai recently signed a law passed by Parliament that severely restricts Shi'ite women's rights. In particular, The New York Times reported:

One provision makes it illegal for a woman to resist her husband’s sexual advances. A second provision requires a husband’s permission for a woman to work outside the home or go to school. And a third makes it illegal for a woman to refuse to “make herself up” or “dress up” if that is what her husband wants.

Despite the April 12th murder by the Taliban of Sitara Achakzai (below right) (credit), an Afghan women's rights advocate and politician, on April 15 200-300 Afghan woman braved a crowd of 1000 counter-demonstrators shouting epithets such as 'whores" and "infidels," spitting on them and pelting them with rocks to march 2 miles to the Parliament, where a few supportive parliamentarians met them to discuss striking the law's most offensive provisions. (Prior post.)
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, among others, has expressed her concerns about the law "directly" to President Karzai, who may be able to "unsign" the law since it hasn't yet been published.

End violence against women now

Today is International Women's Day. To mark it, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called for an end to violence against women. Calling it an "abomination." Ban (right; photo credit) said:

The consequences of violence go beyond the visible and immediate. . . .The impact on women and girls, their families, their communities and their societies in terms of shattered lives and livelihoods is beyond calculation. . . .Violence against women cannot be tolerated, in any form, in any context, in any circumstance, by any political leader or by any government.

An encouraging report in this regard from Afghanistan notes that progress is being made in that country, where the centuries-old tradition of forced marriages means that girls and women seeking to escape abusive marriages risk being thrown in jail for being on the street alone or being returned to her husband. Though advocates say that women are still commonly victims of beatings, torture and trafficking, the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban has led to women's rights entering the vocabulary as the new Afghanistan Constitution and Ministry of Women's Affairs have, along with women's advocates, helped to promote greater equality for women. And since the first women's shelter opened in 2003, at least some of the girls and women like one named Mariam, forced to marry a 41-year-old man when she was 11 and beaten for not conceiving a child, have a safe place to go.

FAO fisheries report likely to have bad news

On March 2, the Food and Agriculture Organization will release its biennial report on the State of the World's Fisheries and Aquaculture (SOFIA). The news is not likely to be good.

Although figures are not typically broken out by gender, it is clear that the decline in fisheries will hit the millions of women work in fisheries particularly hard. According to the FAO's 2006 SOFIA:

Women participate as entrepreneurs and by providing labour before, during and after the catch in both artisanal and commercial fisheries. Their labour often consists of making and mending nets, baskets and pots and baiting hooks. In fishing, women are rarely engaged in commercial offshore and deep-sea waters, but more commonly involved in fishing from small boats and canoes in coastal or inland waters – harvesting bivalves, molluscs and pearls, collecting seaweed and setting nets or traps. Women also play an important role in aquaculture, where they attend to fish ponds, feed and harvest fish, and collect prawn larvae and fish fingerlings. However, women’s most important role in both artisanal and industrial fisheries is at the processing and marketing stages. In some countries, women have become important entrepreneurs in fish processing; in fact, most fish processing is performed by women, either in their own cottage-level industries or as wage labourers in the large-scale processing industry.

Overfishing has already put fisheries around the world under terrible pressure. Climate change is likely to further decimate fish stocks.

Along with diminishing wetlands, mangrove swamps and other nursery areas, and pollution, climate change and overfishing make food insecurity more likely for the 2.6 billion people dependent on fish as a primary source of protein. (map credit)

The affected people tend to be clustered in many of the same countries with the highest levels of food insecurity to begin with. As a result, these countries already start off less resilient to social and environmental challenges. This is just one of the many environmental justice issues we can expect to confront as the effects of global warming multiply.

It was gratifying that President Obama called for carbon trading in his Address to Congress. But, when markets cannot manage to accurately value and trade financial instruments, it is hard to imagine how they will be able to value carbon, with all its many unquantifiable effects.

Iran's inexorable sexual revolution

Since the revolution in 1979, when I've thought of Iran, I've thought of the color black: the black of oil, of religious garb, of violent repression. We've all read of Islamic women's "under cover" rebellion: under their veils, many wear sexy underwear or Western clothing, but the movie Persepolis (image at right) and my contact with Iranian friends and colleagues in Paris tended to confirm the black image, This report in Friday's Herald Tribune, by Nazila Fathi, provides a bright and heartening contrast. Fathi writes that the religious revolution led to an information revolution that is leading, slowly yet "inexorably," in the words of Janet Afary (below left) author of Sexual Politics in Modern Iran (2009) and professor of Middle East and women's studies at Purdue University, to a sexual revolution.
Remember that Iranian law provides for male supremacy: while men may be polygamous, forbid their wives from working and divorce them whenever their wish and take custody of any children older than 7, girls as young as 13 can be forced to marry, women inherit from their parents only half what their brothers' do, their word in court counts only half as much as a man's, refusal to cover one's hair can result in a jail term and 80 lashes and stoning is still the legally prescribed punishment for adultery. Despite these obstacles, women are uncovering their rebellion. For example, 1 in 5 marriages now ends in divorce as women from all socio-economic levels refuse to accept their unequal status, which often results in unabated domestic violence. After 1979, somewhat like the draft dodgers of the 1960s, women went to university to postpone, if not avoid, the restrictions of marriage, motherhood and low social status forced upon them by the religious revolution. And religious women who had previously shunned mixed university classrooms came to study once classes were segregated. Thus, in 1982, slightly more than 30% of students were women. Today, even though classrooms are no longer segregated, women make up over 60% of university students. And for those who cannot go to university, satellite TV and the internet have given Iranian women a glimpse of life as men's equals. And seeing is believing: being able to imagine a different reality is the first step to realizing it, and Iranian women and men are now openly questioning sex discrimination. In contrast to a popular movie about a woman denied a divorce despite her husband's adultery, Mehrdad Oskouei (left) has won wide international acclaim for his documentary The Other Side of the Burka, which reveals the plight of women from poor, traditional families on the Iranian island of Qeshm, for whom divorce is no option: rather than go from bad with their husbands to worse with their fathers, these women are committing suicide in increasing numbers.
Yet the 1979 revolution instituted programs to improve literacy, health and infrastructure that have benefited women: sexual segregation meant building schools and universities just for girls and women; improved infrastructure and transportation brought rural and/or poor women to school and big cities, where they gained exposure to different ideas and lifestyles. Then in 1993, to control population growth, the state began requiring engaged couples to attend premarital sex education classes, which included information on birth control. Delayed pregnancies helped shift views about marriage: young people very quickly began to seek compatible partners with whom they could be intimate. Today, they are seeking equality. In 2005, inspired by a similar movement against misogynist laws in Morocco, the Campaign for One Million Signatures began circulating a petition calling for greater equality in the areas of marriage, divorce, adultery and polygamy. Almost 50 of the groups members have been jailed, 6 cannot leave the country and their Iranian website has been blocked 18 times.
Perhaps a sign that, as women's rights advocates claim, differences are less pronounced between religious and secular women, the granddaughter of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Zahra Eshraghi (left, photo credit), signed the Campaign's petition. As both secular and religious Iranian women have become more educated and traveled more -- even attending women's rights conferences -- they've found common ground in their desire for equality. Such news is certainly encouraging, as is the success of a group called Meydaan, whose web reports and videos on stonings embarrassed the government enough for the head of the judiciary to urge judges not to order stonings. Though the number of stonings has thus been reduced, Parliament has not outlawed them and they continue. And due to government backlash against the Campaign for a Million Signatures, collection of those signatures has slowed and is now conducted mostly on the web, as women avoid being seen with campaigners and signing this or any other petition.
Still, Sussan Tahmasebi (left) says she and other women's rights activists have made great strides. One of the Campaign's founding members and one of the 6 subject to a travel ban, Tahmaseb and other members of her group are facing security charges. For her, this is a great achievement: "No one is accusing us of talking against Islam. No one is afraid to talk about more rights for women anymore."

Read On! Women's International Human Rights

Looking for innovative new course materials on women and international law? Check out a welcome addition to the options by Susan Deller Ross. Professor of Law and Director of the International Women’s Human Rights Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center (photo above).
Women’s Human Rights: The International and Comparative Casebook (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008) Cloth, 688 pages) is one of the newest volumes issued by the Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights series.
Deller Ross, a top U.S. women’s civil rights advocate and scholar, now provides a much-needed legal bird’s eye view on women’s international human rights in a format suitable for new courses or seminars. Among the complex and controversial legal and policy issues addressed (and which IntLawGrrls contributors and readers regularly discuss):
►Women’s Rights in Marriage and Family Life (e.g., child marriage, property and inheritance rights in divorce or widowhood);
►Violence against Women, whether officially sanctioned or culturally-enforced (e.g., rape as a weapon of war or civil conflict, marital rape, domestic violence/”honor” killings, female genital mutilation/female genital cutting);
►The Economic and Social Status and Rights of Women (e.g., labor and employment rights and reproductive rights). The book analyzes leading cases in both international and comparative perspective. Such efforts will, one hopes, lead to more inclusive and effective law school curricula as well as advocacy on the human rights of more than half the world’s population.

Introducing Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

In this 1st post at IntLawGrrls blog, I will explain why I have selected as my transnational foremother Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648 or 1651-1695), a Mexican nun recognized for her extraordinary knowledge of the arts and sciences of her day and for her fierce defense of a woman's right to education. She has been called the first feminist of the Americas because of her outspoken advocacy of women's right to learn, a dangerous position to advance during the Inquisition in 17th century Mexico.
In one of her most famous writings, Reply to Sor Philothea—written in response to a letter from the bishop of Puebla, who had posed as "Sor Philothea", which reprimanded her for neglecting religious literature—Sor (that is, Sister) Juana vigorously defended women's right to be educated and to take up intellectual pursuits, citing over forty women who had made significant contributions throughout history. Her reply incited harsh criticism from the Church. Although toward the end of her life Sor Juana renounced worldly learning, disposed of her library of 4,000 volumes (considered at the time to be the largest private library in Mexico), and devoted herself to penance, her story and reputation “as the first published feminist of the New World and as the most outstanding writer of the Spanish American colonial period” remain.
Many of her writings can be found online using the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Project.

"Natural Resource Curse" Affects Women

Economists have long pointed to the “natural resource curse” as an explanation for why countries rich in natural resources often have high levels of poverty. Generalizing broadly, the idea is that natural resources have ripple effects on the rest of the economy, including (among a number of other results) creating disincentives for both the development of other areas of the economy and education. The result: all except the few who directly benefit from the resources face weak job markets with little education, and hence, poverty.
Now, the Washington Post reports that a study by UCLA political scientist Michael Ross suggests that natural resources curse extends to women’s rights as well. Ross looked specifically at countries rich in oil, and found that there is a correlation between oil wealth and lack of women’s rights. Why? Oil wealth, like other kinds of mineral wealth, creates disincentives for development of other industries and particularly of the low end manufacturing jobs that tend to be women’s first point of entry into work outside the home. Working outside the home, in turn, is one of the major social developments catalyzing increased participation in other aspects of social life, including politics, and increased pressure for rights for women. According to the Post article, “for every $1280 increase in per capita oil profits, Ross shows that there is a 2 percent decrease in the number of elected female leaders, an effect that is powerful because it grows cumulatively over time.” A curse indeed.

On this day

On February 26, ...
... 1987, the leadership of the Church of England voted by a wide margin to work to permit permit women to become Anglican priests. That work took a while: it was not until March 12, 1994, that Angela Berners-Wilson (right) became the 1st woman to be ordained, in Bristol, England. And a survey conducted 4 years after that found that in 6 out of 44 dioceses, "many" ordained women "complained of bullying and even sexual harassment from male colleagues."
... 1993 (15 years ago today), a car bomb exploded in the garage beneath New York's World Trade Center, killing 6 persons and injuring 100. Another 50,000 workers were evacuated from the Center, which would, of course, be demolished in the attacks of September 11, 2001. Ramzi Yousef and others said to be responsible for the 1993 attack were tried in ordinary federal criminal courts, and in 2003 their convictions were affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The 1st incident is attributed to the "Islamic Group," an organization believed to have links with al Qaeda, the network to which the 2d attack's been attributed.

On this day

On February 16, ...
... 2001, "[e]thnic Albanian extremists, ... trying to drive Serbs out of Kosovo," were blamed for an attack on a bus convoy in which more than 250 ethnic Serbs were traveling to a religious ceremony in the province. At least 7 people, women, children, and men were killed. To this day ethnicity-based division remains. Meanwhile, over the objection of some in the international community, Kosovo is set to declare itself an independent state tomorrow.
... 1967, Florence Bird (right), a Canadian who'd been born Florence Rhein in Philadelphia in 1908 and worked as a journalist during World War II, was appointed chair of the new Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada. Charged with "ensur[ing] for women equal opportunities with men," it was the 1st Canadian commission headed by a woman. Its 1970 report revolved around 4 principles:

► women should be free to choose whether or not to take employment outside their homes
► the care of children is a responsibility to be shared by the mother,
father, and society
► society has a responsibility for women because of pregnancy and childbirth
► in certain areas women will, for an interim period, require special treatment to overcome the adverse effects of discriminatory practices

On January 21, ...

... 1908 (100 years ago today), the Sullivan Ordinance, a New York City law that forbade women from smoking in public, was passed by the city's aldermen, who voted 73-0 in favor of the ban. A subhead in a New York Times' article on the measure asked:

WILL THE LADIES REBEL
As the Ladies of New Amsterdam Did When Peter Stuyvesant Ordered Them to Wear Broad Flounces?

The "ladies" did indeed "rebel," and so New York's mayor vetoed the measure before 2 weeks had passed.

... 1840, Sophia Jex-Blake (right) was born in Hastings, Sussex, England. After attending Queen's College in London, she studied in the United States, where she was influenced by Dr. Lucy Sewall of Boston and worked as an administrator at the New England Hospital for for Women and Children, which had opened in 1862. On returning home in 1868, she attempted to earn a degree in medicine from the University of Edinburgh. That institution allowed her to sit in on classes but would not grant her a degree. She finally obtained an M.D. in 1877, from the University of Bern, and eventually, a British license to practice medicine. She practiced medicine in Edinburgh, Scotland, until her retirement in 1899. Jex-Blake died in 1912 in Sussex.

A friend to women

Today's San Francisco Chronicle carries news of the passing of Leo Kanowitz (right), emeritus professor at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and author of "the first extensive study of women's legal status in the civil rights era," which "became a reference work for feminist scholars and activists."
Born in Brooklyn to immigrant parents, Kanowitz was a feisty organizer for the feisty International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union before he began his law studies. As a postgrad in the early '60s he took part -- as the lone man -- in a women-and-the-law group put together by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, then a law professor at Columbia and now, of course, the lone woman on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Ginsburg's casebook coauthor, Herma Hill Kay, law professor and former dean at the University of California, Berkeley, told Chronicle reporter Bob Egelko that through his book Women and the Law: The Unfinished Revolution (1969), Kanowitz

called people's attention to the fact that the way the law was treating women could be viewed as a civil right, a human right, and not just a woman's right.