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In 1909, the union organized its first city-wide strike, and 20,000 to 40,000 women shirtwaist workers refused to work.(48) The New York police brutally beat the demonstrators and many women went to jail as a result of their activism.
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The first woman to receive her dentistry degree was Lucy Hobbs Taylor. She first wanted to become a doctor, and headed to Eclectic Medical College, which was the only school that accepted women at that time. When she arrived she found that the school had adopted a new policy not to accept women. She was told to apply to dentistry school, since there was less stress involved. She found a dentist in Ohio who taught her to pull teeth and make dentures. Even with this training, she was not admitted.
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The Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote. But, some women didn’t want the vote. A widespread attitude was that women’s roles and men’s roles did not overlap. This idea of “separate spheres” meant that women should be concerned with home, children, and religion, while men took care of business and politics. North Carolina opponents of woman suffrage, or voting, claimed that women being able to vote “would take them out of their proper sphere of life.”
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Jane Addams becomes the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the poor in Chicago.
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The United Nations is established; Eleanor Roosevelt is appointed as a U.S. delegate.
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Althea Gibson is the first African American to win the All England title in tennis at Wimbledon.
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Ecologist Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring inspires the environmental movement. Rachel Carson holds her controversial book Silent Spring, which charges that pesticides are destroying wildlife and endangering humanity.
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Labor organizer Dolores Huerta becomes vice president of the United Farm Workers, which she cofounded to help immigrant and migrant people.
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Sandra Day O’Connor is named the first woman justice of the Supreme Court.
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The 1992 election doubles the percentage of women in Congress; as a result, 1992 is dubbed the Year of the Woman.
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The Gruber Prize for Women’s Rights is one of five, international prizes awarded by The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation, an American non-profit organization based in the U.S. Virgin Islands with offices in New York City. The Gruber Women's Rights Prize was established in 2003, and is worth $500,000 (US).
