300 Unsung Women

 

A few years back, I had an idea. 

I would write a calendar book, where every day of the year had a short biography about a remarkable woman born on that date. All these women would never have received the recognition they deserved. 

It would be easy, I thought.

Wrong! 

There was no problem finding someone for January 1st. That wasn't true for other dates. As I continued researching, I discovered for some dates I had up to nine women. 

For other dates - nada, nothing.

I discovered there were women who excelled in the same fields such as inventions, aviation, veterinarian, architecture, spies, etc. Some women were unsung stars in many categories.

Instead of a calendar, I decided to select 300 women grouping them by expertise and cross listing them by field.

Women friends, who knew of my project, kept offering names to include. A Canadian friend, Isabelle Richard, found the most. Because I wanted to include birth and death dates, many of the First Nation women I didn't include because of lack of dates, but I really feel they should have a book of their own. 

Finding some women's lives was easy. Soon I might have almost 3000+ words of notes for a single women. The problem was to capture a woman's essence in 200 words of less.

Then there were so many details to make the book easy to read. I used the good old-fashioned alphabet to give it continuity and order wherever I could.

Readers can read it any many ways. Information, with a cup of tea, research, ideas for projects. Remembering what my ex-husband, a devoted reader, said whenever I tapped on our bathroom door, "One more chapter," it could be a bathroom book, delving into a few biographies when seated. 

It took almost two years from idea to publication, often frustrating. Some biographies flowed almost effortlessly, while others caused sweat and extra rewrites.

What I didn't expect when I started was to develop a great respect and caring for these women. I'd love to have a conference with them where we could sit down in small and large groups and discuss our experiences. It wouldn't matter what time period or country. 

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to share one woman from each field here in this blog. I hope if you take the time to read them, you will appreciate getting to know them, too.