In belated honor of National Women's day, please share an amazing woman's story!
And before someone asks just to be contrary, National Men's Day is November 19.
But we're talking about women.
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Well women on my family are quite inspiring, but I'm really impressed about how my great grandma back in the 30's went from being a house wife to a detective after my great grandpa died during an investigation.
Phoolan Devi (1963–2001), popularly known as the Bandit Queen, was a Mallah woman who grew up in poverty in a village in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Sold to a husband at eleven and then having the ‘audacity’ to walk away from this marriage, she returned home just to be told she had brought shame upon her family. She was gang-raped by police as well as having relentless rumours hounding her of false claims that she was a prostitute. But Phoolan Devi refused to remain quiet, and in doing so resulted in her kidnapping.
But, this was a major turning point in Phoolan’s life and instead of being beaten or killed, Phoolan actually managed to befriend the second in command of the gang that had kidnapped her. To protect her, this man – Vikram – killed the leader and in turn became leader himself of the bandits and Phoolan rose in power. A turn of events no one could ever have expected.
Thus, resulting in the start of Phoolan’s life as an infamous bandit in India and gaining the reputation among her subordinates as being the reincarnation of the goddess Durga – involving herself in all sorts of crime such as kidnappings as well as holding up and robbing trains, and even exacting revenge on the men that had wronged her in her life. However, this did not last, Vikram was killed and Phoolan was taken for three weeks where she was gang-raped daily. Eventually escaping, Phoolan disappeared off the map until seventeen months later where she yet again, exacted revenge on the men that had wronged her with her own new gang.
It did not end there, Phoolan Devi became known as the modern-day female robin hood; she was notorious for stealing from the rich to give to the poor, freeing women from enslavement and having no mercy for rapists. She was responsible for the massacre of 22 men in Behmai, the village where she had been held captive and raped. For two years she avoided the manhunt for her capture until she surrendered in February 1983, when she heard the man who killed Vikram and raped her was dead.
She was imprisoned for eleven years until she was pardoned, and then ultimately decided to become a politician – she succeeded. Unfortunately, Phoolan Devi’s life was cut short when in revenge for the massacre at Behmai, she was shot in the street and killed in 2001.
Actually a group of incredible women, they were called the Mercury 13. They took the same astronaut tests as the Mercury 7 (beginning American Moon missions), and scored drastically higher than the men. On EVERYTHING. Their temperament, physical fitness, credentials, emotional regulation, flight capabilities, EVERYTHING. For example, there was a free fall simulator tests, and the men had to be carried out of the room on stretchers vomiting and dizzy after 20 seconds, and the women were asked to exit the machine after half an hour because they were enjoying themselves and having fun. The women's average flight hours were over 1000 more than the men.
And despite all of this they were varied from space. NASA's defense was that the women couldn't fulfill all the requirements they had for the astronaut program, but the only requirement that was an issues was having an engineering degree: something nationwide universities refused to allow women to earn. NASA knew this. Their defense was that 'oh well, you're not qualified so you can't, that's so sad', but John Glenn also didn't have that degree and NASA justified that as him having work experience that made up for it, but wouldn't allow that same work around for the women despite their longer and higher quality resumes.
These women, despite not getting to live their dream themselves, are the main reason women like Sally Ride we able to go up over 20 years after the first lunar landing. They ceaselessly campaigned to get women in space and force NASA to remove/change their astronaut requirements. They are the reason the USA has sent up any women in their space program.
Only one of those women made it to space. Her name is Wally Funk, and she became the oldest person to go to space when Blue Origin took her up a few summers ago.
This was on the news recently, and I actually found it pretty interesting. So this female police officer was chasing down a suspect that was...apparently raging about the streets? Well, he was a pretty big guy, but this officer, who was apparently much smaller than he was, still managed to apprehend the guy after tackling him to the ground. It's one thing that she earned her colleagues' respect, but it's another that she earned that of said suspect. As this guy is getting arrested by her colleagues, he keeps asking her if she's good, if she's alright, and makes the remark that he's never met such a strong woman before. Not sure if it was out of trying to get on her good side, make a pass, or out of being sarcastic, but I do still think it's kind of neat that she managed that.
This is a personal story. My great-grandmother is Scottish and lived in the Glasgow area during WWII. Even though they were never bombed or seriously attacked, the fear of attack stretched across the entire continent. She and her siblings fled to an orphanage, leaving their mother behind. They eventually returned, but I was always impressed because during this time she was less than ten years old. (Age unknown) Sure it doesn't sound like a lot, but hearing it come from their mouth, something just hits different.
Stories of the war are always incredible. I had a friend who was in Italy during the war. He was 14, and moved the family into a nearby cave. His father had already been killed, and he was "the man of the house". He ended up spying for the allies against the Nazis who had taken up in his village. My maternal grandfather served in Italy as a military police officer, and rather enjoyed his time (but he saw no combat himself). His brother had gone to Spain less than a decade earlier to fight Franco with the Communists, and ended up contracting and dying of tuberculosis. Their father died during the 1918 flu pandemic, my grandfather was 1 year old (he was the baby).
My great great aunt left her abusive husband in the Midwest and moved to Chicago. She was a girlfriend to a gangster in the early 30s. She was 104 when she died
Ellen White went into vision and held an 18 pound Bible in her outstretched left arm for over half an hour. Without looking, she conducted a Bible study in this posture, turning pages with her other hand and pointing to the verses. The whole while, she did not breathe.
