International Women’s Day: These Women Kick Ass

This coming Sunday is International Women’s Day, and as a badass woman owned business, you know that’s a huge deal for us. We love taking the time to celebrate women around the world. After all, how could we not? Women are badasses and should run the world. In the past, we’ve written about some influential women in history and some great women in fiction. While that was fun, this year, we’ve got a bit of an agenda. We recently wrote a blog about women in public relations and how they’re overlooked. So! Here’s a bunch of women who’ve been instrumental in making the world what it is today, but definitely didn’t get the credit or recognition that they deserved.

Claudette Colvin

You probably know about Rosa Parks. There’s no way you don’t. But Claudette Colvin is just as important, because she refused to leave her seat nine months before Parks did. Colvin was just fifteen when she decided not to get out of her seat to make room for a white person. She was handcuffed and brought to jail, but that wasn’t the end of her story. She was one of the plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, which eventually overturned bus segregation laws in Alabama.

Susan Kare

Raise your hand if you’re reading this on an Apple device. We’re writing it on a MacBook and we have someone you’ve probably never heard of to thank for the user experience. It turns out that we owe a lot of our Mac-loving experiences to Susan Kare, who worked alongside Jobs. Kare is the mastermind behind the visual language of the Mac. Her goal was to make a system that was easy to use for everyone. She created a lot of the buttons and icons we associate with the Apple brand, and all with the user in mind. In fact, her contributions to our everyday lives don’t stop there. Kare made the Photoshop lasso tool, some Facebook icons, and more. Still, she goes without notice for a lot of those contributions. So the next time you open your MacBook, say, “Thanks, Susan.”

Rosalind Franklin

Let’s talk about science! It’s super common for women to be overshadowed in this field, and Rosalind Franklin is no exception. She knew from the age of 15 that she wanted to be a chemist, and she went to Cambridge University to further her education. From there, Franklin worked on a research scholarship at King’s College where she studied DNA. Her work resulted in two photos of DNA fibers, all the way back in 1951. With that, she theorized that DNA was a helix, and that proteins were stored between the two strands. Franklin’s supervisor, Maurice Wilkins, passed that data on to his friends, James Watson and Francis Crick. The three men published papers on the DNA structure and were awarded the Noble Peace Prize. Franklin was not included.

We could go on for a long time about women who have done amazing things in history without any recognition. There are so many of them! But we only have so much space. Check out these two articles for even more great women, and then start spreading the word. This International Women’s Day, make sure to tell the women in your life how incredible they are. And if you aren’t a woman, do your best to shine the spotlight on those who are. That’s a request, directly from the women on the 8THIRTYFOUR staff. Did we mention that like 80% of our team identifies as women? Here’s our personal shout out to them. Keep kicking ass, ladies.