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Eight Great Women, Five Awful Ones
by Martha Brockenbrough

March is Women's History Month--the sort of event that makes some people say, "Hey. What is so special about women's history? And when is men's history month?"

The smarty-pants answer to that is that every month is men's history month. But as with most smarty things, that's not a very satisfying answer, and women's history deserves more than the smarty-pants treatment. It's a vast subject, spanning both the globe and the thousands of years we humans have been recording events.

But there's one way that Women's History Month has tended to be, well, a little sexist.

History tends to favor heroes. Despite this fact, most history books will also teach you about the bad men--warlords, dictators, and crazy emperors who turned their horses into senators.

The baddies of women's history, on the other hand, don't get nearly as much play. And the fact is, there have been some pretty bad apples. So, in the name of equality--and the right of women to be just as wicked as men--here are the stories of 13 women, 8 good and 5 bad.

The good eggs

Agnodice
In the 4th century BC it was illegal for women to practice medicine in Greece. But the 1st-century-AD author Hyginus wrote that one Greek woman, Agnodice, disguised herself as a man, studied medicine, and set up a bustling practice in Athens. Scholars debate whether Hyginus's tale is true, but I wonder if one reason we can't find corroborating evidence is that she was a woman.

According to Hyginus, Agnodice was so successful that other doctors got jealous and accused her of "corrupting" aristocratic women. So, Agnodice revealed that she was a woman herself--and was promptly arrested and sentenced to death.

Her devoted patients came to her rescue. All noblewomen, they threatened to kill themselves if she was executed. It worked, and thereafter, all free women could become doctors--as long as they treated women only.

The Trung sisters and Phung Thi Chinh
Trung Trac and Trung Nhi, sisters and widows of Vietnamese aristocrats, led a major uprising against Chinese invaders in AD 39. Trung Trac ruled for four years before the Chinese conquered Vietnam again, but resistance continued for the next 1,000 years. Many women figured in the resistance, notably Phung Thi Chinh, who fought while pregnant, paused to give birth, and rejoined the fight with her baby on her back.

Deborah Sampson
During the Revolutionary War Sampson put on a man's uniform and fought under the alias Robert Shurtleff. Hit in the leg during the Battle of Tarrytown, Sampson removed the musket balls herself so that no one would guess her identity. She later took a shot in the shoulder at the Battle of Yorktown and came down with brain fever (an old-timey term for inflammation of the brain). It was only then that a doctor figured out her secret.

Accounts differ over what happened next, but Sampson was eventually given an honorable discharge. Paul Revere later helped her get a soldier's pension, and she went on to give lectures about her experience.

Nellie Bly and Ida Wells-Barnett
Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman--using the pen name Nellie Bly--helped invent an important kind of journalism, even if it did get an ugly name: muckraking. Writing for Pittsburgh and New York newspapers, Bly exposed corruption, horrible prison conditions, slums, and factory abuses. Her most famous exploit, however, was probably the ten days she spent disguised as a patient in a mental hospital in 1888. Her book, 10 Days in a Madhouse (1888), became a bestseller.

Bly didn't stop there. In 1889 and 1890, she circled the globe in 72 days, 6 hours, and 11 minutes, beating Jules Verne's fictional 80-day mark. The story of that adventure, Nellie Bly's Book: Around the World in Seventy-two Days (1890), also became a bestseller.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett was Bly's equally remarkable contemporary. Wells-Barnett is kind of a precursor to Rosa Parks. In 1884 Wells-Barnett, the daughter of former slaves, was traveling on a first-class train ticket to Memphis. White passengers complained that she should leave the first-class car, but Wells-Barnett refused to move to the smoking section, which was reserved for blacks. She was eventually kicked off the train.

Wells-Barnett sued the railroad and won a $500 judgment, but the Tennessee Supreme Court later overruled her victory. She told her story in a newspaper--launching her career as an activist journalist.

Valentina V. Tereshkova
You hear a lot about Sally Ride, who in 1983 became the first American woman in space. But Soviet cosmonaut Valentina V. Tereshkova beat her into orbit by 20 years. In 1963 Tereshkova rode the Vostok 6 spacecraft into orbit and circled the Earth a whopping 48 times during her three-day mission.

To put this in perspective, Tereshkova spent more time in orbit than all the U.S. Mercury astronauts combined. (Too bad she didn't write a book, Around the World 48 Times in Three Days: Neener, Neener, Nellie Bly.)

The bad apples

Countess Nadasdy
This Hungarian countess, also known as Elizabeth Bathory, had a disturbing beauty regimen. She believed that soaking in human blood would keep her forever young, giving a new and hideous meaning to the term bloodbath.

It didn't work. But before she died in 1614, she had stolen the lives of hundreds of female servants. (The Web site Bathory.org says her diary documented 612 killings, but other sources offer slightly different figures.)  (Note from Alt - she is also known as the world's first documented female serial killer.)

Mary Reade and Anne Bonney
Pirates are bad, but women pirates could be especially dastardly. In the early 1700s, Mary Reade and Anne Bonney donned menswear and terrorized the West Indies. (This is after Reade had served in both the British army and navy, but decided, evidently, that her survival depended on plundering instead of public service.)

The pirating pair was captured in 1720 and sentenced to hang for their crimes. But, choosing an escape route not available to their male colleagues, they claimed to be pregnant--and after they were released, they fled (according to one version of the story). Another version claims that Mary Reade later died of fever and that no one knows what happened to Anne Bonney, other than the fact that she wasn't executed.

Mary Mallon
"Typhoid" Mary Mallon worked as a cook in New York, and after an outbreak of the disease in 1904, she was recognized as a carrier. But this didn't stop her from handling food. She went from job to job, infecting the innocent until she was caught in 1907 and committed to an institution until 1910.

She wasn't supposed to work in food service again but did--spreading more disease in her wake. In all, authorities attributed 51 cases and three deaths to "Typhoid" Mary, who was institutionalized again in 1914. She died in 1938 but not from typhoid. She was immune to the disease.

Ilse Koch
Last but not least is Ilse Koch, who committed atrocities in Nazi concentration camps (for which she got life in prison). But this wasn't the extent of her crimes: She also collected lampshades and other ornaments made from human flesh.

So there you have it. The best of women, the worst of women. But most important, a reminder that women have been right there with men, all through the years.