National Women's History Museum

Did you know that there were tons of heroines who played an important part in winning the Revolutionary War? While natives attacked a fort in frontier Virginia, teenager Betty Zane made a daring sprint to obtain essential gunpowder. Did she make it back to the fort safely or was she caught in enemy lines? Discover Betty Zane’s fate at www.nwhm.org!

Photo: Melina Mara-The Washington Post

A young boy learning about the founders of the suffrage movement.

Image from the Washington Post.

As a Board officer and former Chicagoan, I’ve been back and forth to the city a lot lately to introduce the National Women’s History Museum to my friends, friends of friends, business colleagues of friends, and, frankly, any stranger who will talk to me including a young woman at O’Hare Airport who asked if she could have the Museum button I was wearing to give to her mother: it read “Well-Behaved Women Rarely Make History.” It’s been fun and gratifying.

But two recent Chicago events reminded me of why this museum exists and must take its place at the National Mall — community, sisterhood, remembrance and cultural (r)evolution.

Chicago Event #1

Partners Anita Ponder, Jennifer Breuer, and Laurie Holmes and the Women’s Committee of Drinker Biddle & Reath LLC hosted a dialogue among 40 successful and diverse Chicago women about how gender roles have had an impact on their lives and what the Museum can do to inspire cultural change. We explored an incredible range of topics. We discussed the legacies of ground-breaking Chicago women who came before us. We shared personal stories and aspirations. We shared links to our online exhibits on African American women and Chinese-American women. Our plans for exhibits about Latinas and Jewish American women were presented. We talked about the Museum’s mission to be a change agent for gender equality. It was intense and electric!

We talked about feminine values and similarities as well as contrasts in gender roles across different ethnic and racial groups. Noting that men share the common language of sports (“how ‘bout those Bears?”), one woman called for us to help find a similar language to bring women together. The inimitable Hedy Ratner, President and Founder of the Women’s Business Development Center responded: “Shoes!  We meet. You say “Great shoes!” …we bond.” The crowd broke up. It was a Sex and the City moment….. And we bonded.

Chicago Event #2

My friend Kaarina Koskenalusta, the (first woman) President and CEO of the Executives’ Club of Chicago invited me to join the Speakers Table at her final Women’s Leadership Breakfast of the season. I accepted immediately. Kaarina introduced me to a ballroom filled with 1400 executive women and men as a former Chicagoan and an Officer of the National Women’s History Museum. And then she said: “Susan needs to raise a lot of money to build this important legacy and tribute to all women on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Please support her in this effort.” The packed Chicago Hilton Ballroom clapped and cheered.

I connected with Sherren Leigh, the publisher of Today’s Chicago Woman Magazine and a sponsor of the Executives’ Club Women’s Leadership Series. She and the magazine’s Associate Publisher flew to New York in April to join us for Good Housekeeping’s star-studded ShineOn event that benefited the Museum. Sherren has been supportive in helping us to extend our Chicago network.

It’s About “Us”:

Our president Joan Bradley Wages often states that the National Women’s History Museum goes far beyond the “hall of fame” approach to history. Of course, we tell the wonderful stories of individual women leaders. But we go much further to look at what women have accomplished together. Our exhibits explore how women as a collective force, for example, were the community builders of Jamestown , the first colonial settlement in the United States. Among other things, our exhibit on the Progressive Era tells the stories of the women of the settlement houses in Chicago and New York who gave rise to the passage of major public health, education and labor reforms.

Welcome to the Community:

And so, with the privilege of joining the amazing women at Drinker Biddle and of the Executives’ Club last month, I rejoined a community — a sisterhood of smart, successful, and supportive women in Chicago. I hope they will join my community of women who will build a museum on the National Mall that celebrates women. Women’s history teaches us that together we can be the architects of our future culture.

— Susan Sudman

Secretary, National Women’s History Museum

Cataract in Human Eye

June 15, 2010–According to new research appearing in the June edition of Archives of Ophthalmology, eating healthily can improve a woman’s defense against the damaging effects of cataracts. The study, which surveyed more than 1,800 women, found that those that scored the highest for adhering to the nationally recommended dietary guidelines, also had a 37% lower risk for cataracts.

The healthy diet linked to the lowered risk included high amounts of fruits, vegetables, proteins and whole grains, and low amounts of salt and fat.

According to an article appearing on Womenenews.org, some women’s dislike of math is directly correlated to math anxiety being taught in classrooms.

The article cites a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences at the beginning of 2010 that studied the how teachers sometimes transmit their aversion to math onto female students.

Click here for the full article

Louise Bourgeois' Maman at the National Gallery of Canada

French-born American sculptor Louise Bourgeois, most famous for her psychologically centered sculptures, died on May 31 in her Manhattan home.  Bourgeois carved out a long career of nearly five decades, in which she produced some world-famous sculptures including the Maman spider structures.

Ms. Bourgeois often cited pain as the guiding force within her work. “The subject of pain is the business I am in,” she said.  “To give meaning and shape to frustration and suffering.  The existence of pain cannot be denied.  I propose no remedies or excuses.”

Born on Dec. 25, 1911, Bourgeois was most well known for her Cells, Spiders, books, drawings and sculptures.  Throughout the 1940s, she exhibited her work in New York City, where she made her debut at the Peridot Gallery in 1949 with her sculpture entitled: “Louise Bourgeois, Recent Work 1947-1949: Seventeen Standing Figures in Wood.”

Bourgeois gained fame later in her career when in 1982, the New York Museum of Modern Art created a retrospective of Bourgeois’ work, marking the first retrospective the museum had ever organized on a female sculptor.  Later in her career, the Tate Modern museum in London mounted a major retrospective of her work that went on display from October 2007-2008.  The exhibition travelled to the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2008.  It later traveled to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC in 2009.