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Women’s achievements

By: Helena Ortíz and Ana Sofía Olivo 9B 

As women we have shown to be outstanding and we tend to leave a mark in everything we do. In this column you will learn about some of the amazing women who have accomplished incredible feats that inspire and change the world every day.

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Paola Mosquera

Paola Mosquera is a doctor and athlete who has represented our country in many different ways, mostly showing the strong perseverance of us Colombians, and as well she’s now a role model for all girls by showing them that there is no obstacle that they won’t overcome.

Since the pandemic started, Mosquera has been in the front line helping covid patients from day to night trying to save each life, and even though it was exhausting and difficult, she never doubted that she was going to overcome these stressful situations. 

Since she was a little girl she had to learn how to defeat obstacles. At the age of 7, Mosquera lost one of her legs due to an accident, but this was never a limit for her. Thanks to her strength and the love and reassuring support of her mom, Paola was able to achieve each goal she had such as becoming one of Colombia’s best swimmers and then winning the bronze medal in the Rio de Janeiro Paralympics Games, then the gold medal at the Paranationals Sports Games in Colombia and achieving multiple records in 100 and 400 meters.

https://www.subredsur.gov.co/?q=content/paola-mosquera-una-mujer-ejemplo-de-resiliencia-perseverancia-y-amor-por-salvar-vidas

Ketanji Brown Jackson 

​Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was raised in Florida by her two parents who lived through racial segregation, but still, taught her and showed her that her race posed no limits for her. Her love for law and justice comes from when she was little. When  she was in preschool, Jude Jackson’s dad was studying law and she tended to sit next to him while he worked on his homework, such as reading through cases.  Later on, while she was in school, Jackson showed her ambition and leadership skill by becoming the “mayor” of her Junior High school and then President of the student council at her high school. After these, she went to Harvard University where she graduated magna cum laude, and later began studying at Harvard Law School. 

After law school she began to pave her way to become the first Black Woman confirmed  to the United States Supreme Courts by also being the best qualified nominee for this role since she had already performed her roles as Supreme Court Clerk, Public Defender, Vice Chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia with excellence. Additionally, the experience and perspective she has collected thanks to her past positions in the U.S government and the law awareness she grew up with, allowed her to have a broad knowledge in the critical state of the U.S justice system to be fair and unbiased. Because of her ambition, intelligence, and abilities, she has marked history as the United State’s first black woman to hold a position in the Supreme Court. Now many girls will see themselves represented on The Supreme Court.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/kbj/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CbfdZmcLFCP/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

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Betty Reid Soskin

Betty Reid Soskin or  “Ranger Betty'' this year, at the age of 100 years old, has become the oldest ranger to work at the National Park in the U.S. Not only this,  but she is also a environmentalist feminist who has lived  multiple lives as she has said before on an interview with NPR. She grew up in an enviroment of segregation in the U.S. and saw by the lives of her relatives, as her great-grandmother, who was born into slavery in 1846 and lived till she was 102, the consequeces of racism, slavery and the intersectionality Black-Americans live through. 

Soskin also was a shipyard clerk at an all Black lodge at the Boilermakers union during WWII and then after the war ended, along with her husband, they founded one of the first Black-owned record stores in the U.S called Reid’s Records . Ranger Betty participated in different Civil Right movements by writing songs for all the activists looking for justice and freedom. Also, she participated in local politics to make a change in her community being part of the staff of the Berkeley City Council and West Contra Costa County. Later she narrated her experience on this movement on the tours she did at the Rosie River Home Front Park being part of an NPS’ initiative to tell the African-American’s untold stories. In 1995, the California Legislature named her woman of the year and in 2015 she was introduced to President Obama when she was selected to represent the NPS at the National Tree-lighting Ceremony holded at the White House. 

She’s now an example to our society by showing us that we can make an impact and fight for our beliefs and causes in the many opportunities we have in our lives.

https://www.nps.gov/rori/learn/historyculture/betty-reid-soskin.htm

https://www.npr.org/2022/04/01/1090301724/betty-reid-soskin-park-ranger-retires-age-100

With the Oscar’s just having passed, we witnessed our generation’s greatest actors receive this prestigious award that congratulates  their talent and worldwide recognition. But do you know who were the first women to receive an Academy Award? Here they are!

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Hattie McDaniel (1895-1952)

Hattie McDaniel was born with a natural passion towards singing and performing, which led to her becoming an American singer-songwriter, comedian, actress, and the first African American woman to win an Academy Award for best supporting actress  due to her outstanding performance as Mammy in the film Gone with the Wind (1939). With this feat, she accomplished the main reason why she dedicated herself to this line of work: she wanted to change the world’s perception towards African Americans, show them that they were not lazy, but talented, passionate, and hard-working. To do this, she portrayed her characters in a way that broke the mold of what was stereotypically expected from colored people. Moreover, in her quest of fighting racism and discrimination, she also became the first African American to star a radio show, The Beulah Show, which is also recognized as being ABC TV’s first hit situation comedy. 

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hattie-McDaniel 

https://www.kshs.org/teachers/read_kansas/pdfs/i03card09.pdf 

Miyoshi Umeki (1929-2007)

Miyoshi Umeki was an Asian-American singer and actress who grew up on the Northern Japanese island of Hokkaido where she developed a passion for singing and performing, and a dream of making it to the United States after WWII. She taped piano-key patterns on the dining table and sang with a bucket over her head to prevent annoying her parents. In the end, she moved to New York in 1955 where, two years later, she became the first actress of  Asian descent to win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her emotionally charged role as Katsumi in the movie Sayonara beside Marlon Brando and Red Buttons. https://ew.com/oscars/2018/02/22/miyoshi-umeki-sayonara-oscars-profile/ 

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Rita Morena

Rita Morena, during Hollywood’s Golden Age of cinema, was the sole Puerto Rican woman to become a movie star and the only one that, through this amazing feat, has earned all of the entertainment industry’s most prestigious awards: Oscar, Tony, two Emmys, and a Grammy. All of her accomplishments have signified Puerto Ricans triumph over racism, poverty, colonialism, prejudice and discrimination. Through her work she inspired and continues to inspire thousands of Puerto Rican women by bringing almost unseen representation of Puerto Rican women and leaving her mark on an industry which was typically wired shut for Latinas. Most notable of all is Jennifer Lopez, who mentioned her in a speech she gave when she accepted the 2014 GLAAD Vanguard Award from Moreno. “Her [Moreno’s] performance in it ('”West Side Story”) had more impact on me than anything else when I was young, on my artistic life, my career path, and ultimately, my confidence . . . Watching this beautiful, strong, Puerto Rican woman command the screen with her talent at a time when Latina women did not have every door in this industry open to them . . . made me feel worthy.”

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/rita-moreno-influence-puerto-rico/18907/ 

Kathryn Bigelow

Kathryn Bigelow is an American film director and screenwriter who, after producing The Hurt Locker in 2008, became the first woman to win an Academy Award for best director. With this movie she focused on the Iraq War, exploring the dangers of armed conflict and the psychology and appeal violence has over some people. Moreover, The Hurt Locker also won five other Academy Awards, one of them being best picture. Still, even before receiving this award, Bigelow had already written and codirected many films which helped her establish a name for herself in the mostly male dominated film industry.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Kathryn-Bigelow 

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Grace Lee Boggs 

Special recognition to:

​We want to give Grace Lee Boggs a special recognition to celebrate the amazing achievements of this extraordinary civil rights activist who just turned 100 this year. Turning 100 itself is already a remarkable accomplishment,  but what we want to remark and honor today is the impact she has left on our current views towards activism, and appreciate her lifetime servitude and advocating for the rights of others. She is a Chinese-American author, philosopher, feminist, and, overall, a social activist that supported for a span of over 70 years causes such as the Black power movement, feminism, equality and environmentalism. Most of her activism, along with her husband’s, was focused in Detroit, where they became the best known activists in the area. Because of her persistent organization and commitment towards protests and meetings aiming towards the civil rights movements, she was invited to the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Still, at 100 years she is nowhere close to stopping doing what she is passionate about: challenging the world around her to be better. At 95 she wrote her fifth book called The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century. Due to everything mentioned above, Grace Lee Boggs is regarded as a key figure in activism and the Asian American Movement. 

 

https://www.nps.gov/people/grace-lee-boggs.htm 

Instagram: @feminist (https://www.instagram.com/p/CbiW4KtJ58m/)

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APA sources → 

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