Patents on the soles of your shoes...: Women

Showing posts with label Women. Show all posts

Saturday, March 26, 2022

Interlude - The Women's Building MaestraPeace Mural

In honor of Women’s History month, celebrated during the month of March, the spotlight is focused on the monumental MaestraPeace Mural, adorning The Women’s Building in the Mission District of San Francisco, California. Launched in 1993, the 5-story exterior mural, was completed in 2000 by a collective group of seven muralistas [1] (women muralists), while the interior mural of the common areas was completed in 2010. The exterior mural was then completely restored in 2012, by the original muralistas, together with a younger generation of muralistas.

The MaestraPeace mural depicts goddesses, activists, artists, writers, curanderas (women healers), and numerous other female figures, celebrating the many contributions and accomplishments of women, across cultures and time, both historical and mythical. In the most hopeful muralist tradition of Mexico, the MaestraPeace mural envisions a world healed of its injustices.

Located on the corner of 18th and Lapidge Streets, the mural is 65 feet high, and 160 feet wide, on each of the 18th Street and Lapidge Street facades. The mural decorates four surfaces of The Women's Building: the Lapidge Street façade, the 18th Street façade, the corner space at the intersection of Lapidge and 18th Streets, and surfaces inside the building's common area strairwell.

The Women’s Building was the first women-owned and operated Community Center in the US. A women’s non-profit enterprise, dedicated to incubating diverse Bay Area Women’s Projects, the Women’s Centers were founded in 1971. In 1979, the expanding group bought a building called Drove Hall, and transformed it into The Women’s Building. The Women’s Building rents space, and hosts events, programs and other organizations.

The San Francisco Women's Building
MaestraPeace Mural - Valencia Street facade
Copyright © The Artists

Depicted, for example, on the east (Lapidge Street) façade (shown above):

Rigoberta Menchu (at the top center). Winner of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize for her social justice work on behalf of the indigenous peoples of Guatemala.

Women elder profiles (facing each other, on each side of the façade): Two elder women profiles are depicted on the Lapidge Street façade (a Scandinavian Sami woman profile on the left, and an Asian woman profile on the right).

Coyolxauqui, Aztec Goddess of the Moon (right hand). Dismembered for having prevented the birth of her brother, the God of War, then entombed in stone. Coyolxauqui is depicted in Rigoberta Menchu’s right hand, breaking free from her stone tomb.

Yemayah, powerful Yoruba Orisha goddess (left hand). In ancient times, in Africa, Yemayah was the symbol of rivers, fertility and life, wearing clear beads. Then, she became mother of the oceans and salt water, and acquired blue beads.

Guanyin (below left profile of a Sami woman elder). East Asian goddess of compassion and mercy. Protects women, and grants children to those who want them.

Georgia O’Keefe (far left). North American painter, known as the mother of American modernism, and for her flower and skull paintings. In the panel next to the life size painting of O’Keefe, a skull reminiscent of the ones she painted, together with seven flowers, each one painted by one of the seven muralistas, as a bouquet signature for the mural.

Lilian Ngoya and Audre Lorde (below Yemayah). Ngoya, leader of the South African Resistance Movement is depicted burning her passbook, required of all Black South Africans, during apartheid. Ngoya is also depicted holding hands with Audre Lorde. Renowned North american poet, feminist, civil right activist and lesbian, who dedicated her life and talent to “confronting and addressing injustices of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia“.

Ancestor Mask from Gabon, Africa (Between Ngoya and Lorde). The mask is painted at the center of a map of Africa, symbolizing what is both seen and unseen.

Hanan Ashrawi (below Audre Lorde). Palestinian legislator, activist and scholar, chief spokesperson for the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East peace process.

Lolita Lebrón and other women political prisoners (below Coyolxauqui). Lebrón was a Puerto Rican nationalist, who spent 23 years in prison, after being convicted for fighting for the independence of Puerto Rico. The other women political prisoners are portraits of women, currently serving sentences worldwide.

Maria Sabina (below Lolita Lebrón) Mexican Mazatec curandera (woman healer), known to work with plants, depicted healing the woman sitting in front of her.

Painter from Mithila, India (below the right Asian profile of a woman). The craft is passed on from woman to woman over thousands of years.

________________

Note [1] Original seven muralistas of The Women's Building MaestraPeace mural in San Francisco: Juana Alicia, Miranda Bergman, Edythe Boone, Susan Kelk Cervantes, Meera Desai, Yvonne Littleton and Irene Perez.

References

Alicia, J. et. al. (2019) MaestraPeace: San Francisco’s Monumental Feminist Mural. Foreward by Angela Davis. (224 pages) Berkeley, CA: Heyday.

San Francisco Women's Building https://womensbuilding.org/

San Francisco Women's Building - MaestraPeace Mural. https://womensbuilding.org/the-mural/

San Francisco Women's Building - The muralists. https://womensbuilding.org/the-mural/#whoarethemuralistsection

Monday, February 14, 2022

VDay 2022

Each year, on February 14th, since 1996, VDay re-interprets Valentine’s Day, celebrating the foundation of a movement that seeks to end violence against all women and girls worldwide. Arising within the context of Eve Ensler’s famous play The Vagina Monologues, the VDay organization was initially funded on the occasion of a single evening performance of the play that raised $250,000. The Vagina Monologues tell the story of some of the 27,000 women that were raped as a war tactic, in connection to the 1998-1999 war in Kosovo, a former part of Yugoslavia, in Central Europe.

Over the course of 26 years, the Vday movement has branched into several projects and action groups, including :

One Billion Rising - a group of one billion women, representing the shocking statistic of 1 in 3 women worldwide who have been victims of violence.

The Solidarity Project - funded by The Rising Fund, a project that seeks to identify artists and grassroots movements, transforming culture, creating art and social change, working on the front lines of activism.

Voices - a new interdisciplinary performance arts project and campaign, grounded in Black women’s stories. According to the group, contributed submissions provide the poems you have been waiting for.

City of Joy - a sanctuary for women, fleeing war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and a Netflix documentary that tells the story of some of the 1472 women who have graduated from the City of Joy program. Women who found a place to heal, to release their trauma from rape, and to learn skills, enabling them to re-enter life as empowered individuals. The trailer of the documentary is included below.

Call to Men - Dismantle patriarchy and the next generation of manhood – a VDay sponsored competition in high schools in the US, and colleges worldwide, calling for creative thinking on what a new post-patriarchal society might look like, how to achieve it, and with what means.

On the occasion of February 14th, all of the VDay organization groups and programs, mentioned above, organize and schedule special events worldwide, including such items as readings of The Vagina Monologues play, groups flash performing specially-choreographed VDay dances, and drumming events. (Click here for an interactive list of events worldwide.)

According to the Vday organization, in 2022, “the ‘V’ in Vday stands inclusively for : Voice, Victory, Valentine and Vagina”. The VDay movement has also defined itself more clearly as: “an organized response to violence directed at all women and girls, and the planet; a vision, a demand, a spirit, a catalyst, a process, a day; and a fierce, wild, unstoppable movement and community”, with an invitation for everyone to participate.

References

Call to men - Dismantle Patriarchy
https://www.acalltomen.org
City of joy
https://www.vday.org/city-of-joy/about-city-of-joy/
One Billion rising
https://www.vday.org/one-billion-rising/what-is-one-billion-rising/

One Billion Rising - Find and event

https://www.onebillionrising.org/events/#!/0/0/1/

Ensler, E. (2008 campaigns) The Vagina Monologues (official script)

http://web.mit.edu/dvp/Public/TVMScript2008.pdf

Eve Ensler (website)

https://www.eveensler.org/

Solidarity Project

https://www.vday.org/solidarity-projects/rising-art-artists-rising/
VDay.org
https://www.vday.org/
Voices
https://voices.vday.org/

Tuesday, August 18, 2020

Oh, women! 100-year commemoration of the ratification of the 19th Amendment

One hundred years ago, on August 18^th1920, the 19^th Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified, granting all American women the right to vote. The Amendment states:

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." [Original 19th Amendment document]

The 19^th Amendment, voted by Congress a year earlier, on June 4, 1919, was the culmination of an almost 70-year struggle led by the US suffragette movement. The milestone marked the institutional onset of gender equality in the US. However, in practice, many historians concur that suffrage for Black women (and men) in the South would have to wait for the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s, almost 40 years later, when Jim Crow Laws were abolished (Waxman, 2020). Indeed, Jim Crow Laws, such as literacy tests for voting and polling taxes, continued to effectively, and efficiently, disenfranchise both black men and women, as well as other disadvantaged minorities, such as immigrants and the poor. Together with local and state laws that upheld the “separate but equal” 1896 Supreme Court ruling, making it possible to prevent blacks from accessing transportation and public places, including schools, Jim Crow laws collectively functioned to segregate the South. Segregation laws that consolidated the malevolent legacy of White Supremacy, with justice in lynchings, that still fuels racial violence, and hatred, to date. A deep cleavage in American society, now clearly documented, unmasked, and condemned, anew, in the Black Lives Matter movement, a movement incidentally founded by three fearless women: Opal Tometti, Alicia Garza and Patrisse Kahn-Cullors.

Looking back at the 100 years since ratification of the 19^th Amendment, The Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse points out that while much has been gained in extending suffrage to women, much more still needs to be achieved in the struggle for gender equality. Interestingly, she states: “The history of women voting is still a history of having representation without being represented”. Indeed, Hesse informs us that the 19^th Amendment was voted by an all-male Congress. Fifty years later, just one senator and 10 representatives were female. In 2020, an all-time high of 127 women are representatives in Congress, which still comprises just one-quarter of the votes. As a result of the absence of parity, laws concerning women issues, such as abortion, maternity leave and childcare, are still being voted (or rejected) by a majority of men, even if the 19^th Amendment also produced women legislators on all sides of the political spectrum, both conservative and liberal.

Looking at positive change, for all, resulting from the 19^th Amendment vote, Hesse cites studies showing that the extension of suffrage to women corresponded to an increase in public health spending, as well as in health-related education campaigns for infectious diseases, such as diphtheria and typhoid fever. Thus, child-mortality rates also declined at that time. Likewise, education budgets increased, keeping children in school for longer periods of time. Indeed, according to Hesse, “spending increased and the government got bigger.”

However, on August 18, 2020, one hundred years post-ratification of the 19^th Amendment, another defining event should be recorded. A stimulating possibility that the 19^th century Suffragettes no doubt had foreseen as a perfectly logical consequence of universal suffrage. Indeed, the nomination of Kamela Harris, a black and Asian-American woman as Vice-President (potentially the second-in-command of the United States Executive) in the Biden 2020 presidential campaign, arises both as an extraordinary “first” and a natural consequence of the 19th Amendment—even if it is just a bit overdue.

To test your knowledge of the brave and daring 19^th century Suffragette movement, take the tests at the Women’s Vote Centennial Initiative website, QUIZ1, QUIZ2 and STATE QUIZZES. Also, remember to celebrate! Today is indeed a special day.

References

19^th Amendment of the US Constitution: Women’s right to vote (1920) [Original Document] https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc_large_image.php?flash=false&doc=63

Black Lives Matter: https://blacklivesmatter.com/

Hesse, M. (Aug 3, 2020) Women’s suffrage was a giant leap for democracy. We haven’t stuck the landing yet. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/lifestyle/100-years-of-womens-suffrage-whats-changed/

Waxman, O. (Aug 14, 2020) 'It's a Struggle They Will Wage Alone.' How Black Women Earned the Right to Vote. Time.com https://time.com/5876456/black-women-right-to-vote/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief&utm_content=20200815&et_rid=110860530

Women’s Vote Centennial Initiative (WVCI): https://www.2020centennial.org/

Sunday, March 8, 2020

International Women’s Day (IWD) 2020

The first International Women’s Day (IWD) was celebrated more than one century ago, within the context of the women’s suffrage movement and the International Socialist Party platforms of Europe and the US. On March 19, 1911, more than 1 million women, in Europe and the US, responded to the call for peace and universal suffrage. In 1917, after granting women the right to vote, March 8 was declared International Women’s Day, in the Soviet Union, a day that began to be widely celebrated, in both Europe and the US. In the United States, it was just three years later, on August 18, 1920, that the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified, prohibiting States and the Federal government from denying or abridging the right to vote, on the basis of sex.

In 2020, the IWD theme “An equal world is an enabled world” reiterates the underlying tenets of a movement still in progress, striving to show that equality for women is progress for all. In the 60s, IWD also became part of the international Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM), integrating both the political and personal aspects of womanhood.

Suffragettes - 1911

The opposition....

IWD 2020

References

International Women’s Day

https://www.internationalwomensday.com/
NAOWS - National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage
https://www.britannica.com/topic/National-Association-Opposed-to-Woman-Suffrage

United Nations Observance of March 8

https://www.un.org/en/observances/womens-day
The Constitution of the United States of America
https://www.senate.gov/civics/resources/pdf/US_Constitution-Senate_Publication_103-21.pdf
Women's Rights Movement
https://www.britannica.com/event/womens-movement

Friday, February 14, 2020

VDay 2020

What is Vday?

Today is VDay, a global activist movement to end violence against women and girls, targeting rape, incest, female genital mutilation (FGM), and sex slavery. The February 14 re-interpretation of Valentine’s Day arises out of Eve Ensler’s famous play The Vagina Monologues. A play, which tells the story of one woman refugee, and through her, all the women in Bosnia and Kosovo, 27,000 of which were raped as a war tactic, in connection to the events surrounding the March 5-1998- June 11, 1999, Kosovo (former part of Yugoslavia) War, in Central Europe.

The Vagina Monologues play opened in NYC, in 1996. On VDay 1998, the play raised 250,000 dollars in a single benefit evening, which funded the VDay nonprofit organization. The rest is history. More than 100 million dollars have been raised for this cause. The Vagina Monologues, and spinoff versions, are performed each year, in celebration of Vday, on campuses worldwide, including here at SJSU.

The organization One Billion Rising, founded in 2012 to the beat of the song and dance Break the Chain, represents the one billion women (1 in 3) who experience violence worldwide, during their lifetime.

The City of Hope, a sanctuary funded by the Vday nonprofit organization, opened in Bukaru, Democratic Republic of Congo, for women survivors of violence. A sanctuary, which is the topic of the Netflix documentary, The City of Hope.

Tune in and rise! Happy VDay to all!

References

Eve Ensler

https://www.eveensler.org/

The Vagina Monologues (SJSU Shows & Benefit)

http://www.sjsu.edu/genec/events/vday/index.html
The Vagina Monologues (official script)
http://web.mit.edu/dvp/Public/TVMScript2008.pdf

Vday 2020 (Splash page)

https://www.vday.org/

VDay (website)

https://www.vday.org/homepage.html

One Billion Rising

https://www.onebillionrising.org/

City of Joy in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo (Splash page)

https://www.cityofjoycongo.org/splash/

CityofJoy.org (website)

https://cityofjoycongo.org/

City of Joy (Official Trailer for the Netflix documentary 2016)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNy0MG_iy0Y

Rise 2018

https://youtu.be/v48YPrcCgoU

Thursday, April 26, 2018

World IP Day 2018

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

For many different reasons, women are significantly under-represented in IP even though they bring game-changing and life-enhancing solutions to all domains of science, technology, business, education, and the arts.

This year, in an effort to recognize women's unique contribution to the world of innovation, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), under the auspices of the United Nations, is celebrating World Intellectual Property Day, with the theme: Powering change: Women in innovation and creativity,

World IP Day is celebrated, since 2000, on April 26, commemorating the day that the WIPO Convention became effective, in 1970. As a reminder, WIPO is a self-funded United Nations agency, bringing together 191 member states, committed to the development of an IP system that benefits everyone.

References

WIPO

www.wipo.org

#WorldIPDay

https://twitter.com/hashtag/worldipday?lang=en

#WIPO

https://twitter.com/WIPO

Friday, December 29, 2017

Celebrating the soles of heroes with Jo Farrell

At the end of 2017, after a year of highlighting more women inventors than ever before, and especially Millenial (Generation Z) women inventors, Patents on the soles of your shoes would like to join British photographer, Jo Farrell, in Celebraring the soles of heroes.

In this photography project, Farrell interviewed, befriended and photographed, forty (almost extinct) Chinese women with bound feet, during the course of several summers, in China.

Farrell’s photography is truly extraordinary in that it transports the viewer to a place of love and celebration. The viewer discovers these women, far from the horrors of the foot binding practices that martyed many generations of little Chinese girls, at the hands of their mothers, caught in a web of oppression and perverted sexuality; and still farther from the subsequent blame and shame that these women further endured during the Cultural Revolution, when the practices of foot binding were outlawed, on still more insensitive grounds. Indeed, foot binding was outlawed because the women with 3-inch Lotus feet were crippled, which prevented them from participating in the labor force.

Patents on the soles of your shoes embraces the silent beauty of the black and white photographs, and the dignity of the women’s serenity, only to renew a commitment. A firm commitment to continue searching, and finding, the patented inventions that now cushion and cradle the soles of little girls’ feet, their mothers’ and fathers’ too, so they may climb comfortably, indeed, leap to the summit of every mountain.

Jo Farrell’s photography, in Farrell’s own words:

"It’s not easy to sell photos of women with bound feet; it’s honestly not something people want on their walls. However, it’s impossible for me not to go back. It’s like having a whole series of grandmothers; I need to know the rest of their stories. My hope is that these photographs will find their place in a prominent museum or gallery and be published in a major book.”

Notes:
(1) For more information, and referencs, on the practices of foot binding, and Lotus shoes, at Patents on the Soles of your Shoes, please visit the following posts 2015 (1), 2015 (2), 2016.
(2) All the black & white photographs posted above: Copyright © Jo Farrell

References

Living history Project

http://www.livinghistory.photography/

Jo Farrell – My life

http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1655406/my-life-jo-farrell

Kilpatrick, Nick (2014) Photos: The last living women with bound feet, in The Washington Post
https://w ww.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/06/04/photos-the-last-living-women-with-bound-feet/?utm_term=.b969c2ce283b

Herrmann, F. (2015 -1) Patent torture - Lotus shoes

https://patentsonthesolesofyourshoes.blogspot.com/2015/09/patented-torture-lotus-shoes.html

Herrmann, F. (2015-2) Further Feminist reading on footbinding

https://patentsonthesolesofyourshoes.blogspot.com/2015/09/further-feminist-reading-on-footbinding.html

Herrmann, F. (2016) Exhibit: The history of shoes

https://patentsonthesolesofyourshoes.blogspot.com/2016/06/exhibit-history-of-shoes.html

Sunday, October 8, 2017

Oh, patents! SimiWeave™

Winner of 12 awards, including the 2017 Special Recognition Award from the Global Women’s Inventors and Innovators Network (GWIIN), The SimiWeave™, formerly called NewHair, is a really ingenious wig.

Invented by Simi Belo, the SimiWeave™ has a deliberate gap, (a U- shaped opening) through which the user brings out a small section of his or her own real hair. The small section of real hair is then parted to cover the gap in the wig, and by the same token exposes the user’s own roots, scalp, and hairline. Thus, all of the hair of the wig looks as though it is the user’s own hair! The gap is available to the right, left or center of the wig, thus allowing users to part the small section of their own hair accordingly.

Belo points out that while regular wigs provide a full head of hair, this is at the expense of realism since none of the hair appears as though it belongs to the user.

Belo’s invention is recited in a family of 4 patents, including the US utility patent US2007044814 titled NewHair by Simi Belo. The abstract for this US patent is included below with two patent figure drawings, respectively showing the invention wig with the U-shaped gap (Fig. 2), and the wig as it is worn with the user's hair filling the U-shaped gap (Fig. 3).

The NewHair wig features a deliberate gap (3) at the front of the wig (2). Through this gap the wearer brings through his/her own real hair (5), parts and brushes over the wig hair to cover the gap, and in doing so, reveals some of his/her own real hair, natural hairline, scalp and roots (6), so that it looks as if all of the hair is growing out of his/her head. Whether the gap is on the left (7), in the centre (8), or on the right (9), it adds much-needed realism to the traditional wig. This is because traditional wigs use fringes, hair bands and other features to hide the stitching, but in doing so, they conceal the wearer's own roots and hairline, so it is apparent that the hair is not really growing out of the head and therefore the hair is fake. [Abstract US2007044814]

The list of the SimiWeave™ patents is also included below.

US2007044814 (A1) ― 2007-03-01 - Newhair by Simi Belo
USD518604 (S) ― 2006-04-04 – Wig
WO2005046375 (A1) ― 2005-05-26 - Newhair by Simi Belo
EP1681950 (A1) ― 2006-07-26 - Wig
GB2407979 (A) ― 2005-05-18 - A wig (withdrawn)

References

GWIIN - Global Women's Inventors and Innovators network

http://www.gwiin.com/page.php?pid=2&menu=main

SimiWeave™

https://www.simiweave.com

Saturday, June 17, 2017

Oh, patents! Gae Aulenti

Questions: Who redesigned the Old Main Library in San Francisco, transforming it from the inside out into the New Asian Art Museum? Who transformed the old Paris Orsay train station into a fabulous museum of contemporary art ?

Answer: None other than Gae Aulenti, a famous Italian architect, and designer.

Gae Aulenti [1927-1912] also designed furniture. In 1974 she was awarded the US design patent USD232655S for a table lamp. A picture of the patent drawings and of a marketed embodiment are included below.

As a reminder the difference between a design and a utility patent is the following:

“a “utility patent” protects the way an article is used and works (35 U.S.C. 101), while a "design patent" protects the way an article looks (35 U.S.C. 171)” (USPTO)

References

Aisan Art Museum in San Francisco

www.asianart.org

Musée d'Orsay in Paris, France

http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/home.html

USPTO
www.uspto.gov

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

EPO award finalists (1) - Sylviane Muller - Lupuzor™

Lupus is a debilitating auto-immune disease, predominantly affecting women between 15 and 40 years of age, and the black population, although early diagnosis is difficult due to the large array of symptoms. The Lupus Foundation of America estimates that various forms of this disease affect 1.5 million in the US, and 5 million worldwide (LFA).

The body’s immune system, which normally defends against bacteria, viruses and other invaders, triggers abnormal antibodies (called auto-antibodies) that attack the patient’s own healthy tissues, as if it were an infection. The symptoms of the disease are tissue inflammation, sometimes specifically of a single organ such as the thyroid, and more commonly systemic, of all or several organs, such as the skin, connective tissue of joints, kidneys, liver, heart and brain.

Treatments to date are immunosuppressive, with important side effects since they also weaken overall immunity, which makes patients more susceptible to infections and other diseases.

However, all of this is about to change with the 2018 scheduled marketing of Lupuzor™ (rigerimod or P140), a small peptide drug that modulates the rogue production of antibodies, while leaving the immune system otherwise inact, and thus halts the progression of the disease. A new treatment and hope exist for the thousands of people suffering from this devastating disease.

This invention, consisting of a modified peptide, is recited in the following 4 European patents, awarded to Sylviane Muller and her colleagues, researchers at the CNRS Institute of molecular and cellular biology, in Strasbourg France:

EP1425295 titled Modified peptides and their use for the treatment of autoimmune diseases
EP1631586 titled Peptide analogues comprising at least one type of aminoacyl aza-beta 3 and the use thereof, in particular for therapy
EP1507794 titled Novel multimeric molecules, the preparation method thereof and use of same for the preparation of medicaments
EP0491014 titled Sm-D antigen peptides and their use, in particular, for the diagnosis of systemic lupus erythematosus.