The Book of Gutsy Women

by Hillary Rodham Clinton

  A few weeks after Mona’s press conference, the state capitulated, switching Flint back to Great Lakes water, but the pipes had been corroded and new pipes were needed to ensure no lead found its way into the water. Flint was an unnecessary man-made disaster born out of greed and negligence. Without Mona’s activism and audacity, it could have taken even longer for the crisis to be discovered and for parents to be informed.

  Today Mona is focused on raising funds for programs that mitigate the effects of lead and getting as many kids into those programs as possible. She shares her platform, lifting up the voices of others who embody hope and resilience in Flint—including Mari Copeny, “Little Miss Flint,” who has been working to address this crisis since she was eight years old.

  I was honored to meet Mona in 2016, and am grateful to my friend Sarah Lewis, associate professor at Harvard of Art History and African American Studies, for including our conversation about Mona’s book and work in the Spring 2019 Vision & Justice convening. The issue of lead, painfully invisible to the naked eye and more painfully visible in its effects on kids’ brains, is an issue of justice.

  I’m proud to call Mona a friend and role model; the lesson of her story resonates today as much as ever: When leaders deny science, disregard facts, and ignore the people they represent, the consequences are disastrous. In this moment when thousands of communities in the United States still have unsafe lead levels due to paint, plumbing, and industrial waste, none of us can be complacent.

  Vaccinators

  Chelsea

  I don’t remember my first vaccine shots, but I definitely remember my kids’: They each got a hepatitis B vaccine at birth and have stayed on the vaccine schedule recommended by the Centers for Disease Control. Over the last couple of years, Charlotte and I have gotten our flu shots together while Marc and Aidan have gotten theirs at the same time. It’s a tradition we plan on continuing, with the support of the wonderful doctors and nurses at our pediatrician’s office—and one we don’t take for granted.

  Around the world, doctors, nurses, and dedicated vaccine workers do the lifesaving but often dangerous work of vaccinating kids and adults alike. In many countries, that work is done primarily by women, often in dangerous circumstances. Vaccine workers have been prevented from entering communities and even murdered on the job. Nine polio vaccine workers, all women, were executed in Nigeria in 2013. More than a hundred vaccine workers, almost all women, were killed around the world from 2013 to 2017. A mother-and-daughter polio vaccination team was killed in Pakistan in 2018. And amid an ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, eighty-five health workers, many racing to give the new Ebola vaccine, were killed or wounded in the first five months of 2019.

  “Denying children lifesaving vaccinations violates the most fundamental principles of morality, disregards the core tenets of human decency, and breaks the contract of ethical responsibility between generations. Everyone has the chance to do the right thing.”

  —DR. CLAIRE POMEROY, PRESIDENT OF THE ALBERT AND MARY LASKER FOUNDATION

  In much of the world, “routine vaccinations” are anything but. While most kids have been vaccinated against at least one disease, many others still go without vaccinations for deadly but preventable diseases, like pneumonia, which kills hundreds of thousands of kids under two every year. In some areas, people are afraid that vaccines cause sterilization (they don’t). In others, people are concerned about outsiders coming into their community, including health workers. In many places, there simply aren’t enough shots, enough health workers, or sufficient systems to vaccinate every person. In Pakistan, which has had seventeen cases of polio paralysis in the first five months of 2019, vaccinators are confronting rumors as well as fake fear-mongering videos that have been covered on national television, and public suspicion. One worker trying to persuade a family to vaccinate was shot and killed by an eighteen-year-old family member.

  In the U.S., as well as much of Europe and Australia, we face growing challenges of our own. Some parents don’t think the benefits of vaccinations outweigh concerns about vaccine safety; some don’t believe in or know the benefits of vaccinations; some have religious or cultural concerns; some worry about the pain of the shots; some believe pharmaceutical companies push vaccines only to make a profit and not for their kids’ health. For some parents, it’s probably a mix of all of the above. In countries with high levels of vaccine skepticism, many of the nurses, doctors, and public health workers debunking misinformation and talking about the benefits of vaccines are women.

  Women have also been in the vanguard of vaccine research. In the 1940s, the work of Drs. Pearl Kendrick and Grace Eldering led to the first vaccine for pertussis, or whooping cough. Later, they combined that vaccine with diphtheria and tetanus, creating the DTP shot that’s still administered today. In the 1970s, Dr. Ruth Bishop led the research team that first identified rotavirus, the leading cause of severe diarrhea in infants and young kids, which can be deadly because of the severe dehydration it can trigger. It’s also very common: Most kids around the world will be infected with rotavirus before they’re old enough to go to kindergarten. I wasn’t vaccinated against rotavirus, since the first vaccine against it wasn’t approved for use in the U.S. until I was already in college. I’m grateful my kids have been vaccinated against rotavirus—and even more grateful that millions of kids who live in places without reliable access to clean, safe water have been vaccinated.

  HILLARY

  From local to global efforts, women have also led public campaigns in favor of vaccines. Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter has been a strong advocate on behalf of immunizations for more than thirty-five years, going back to her time as first lady of the state of Georgia. She still serves on the board of Vaccinate Your Family.

  We know that it’s possible to eliminate diseases because it’s happened in the last few decades. In 1980, the World Health Organization declared smallpox officially defeated. We are closer than ever to beating polio, thanks to the extraordinary efforts coordinated by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative over the last three decades: More than 20 million vaccine workers have immunized more than 2.5 billion children. A growing body of research shows that the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine is reducing rates of cervical cancer—a promising step forward in a disease that affects more than half a million women worldwide every year.

  These gains are possible only when people actually take advantage of the vaccines available to them. In 2000, the CDC declared the U.S. on track to be measles-free. As of early June 2019, more than a thousand recent cases prove that prediction to have been optimistic. Many parents continue to refuse the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine specifically because of concerns that it can cause autism, even though multiple studies have shown that vaccines are safe and don’t cause autism—rather, as one of my favorite sayings goes, “Vaccines cause adults.” Vaccines are important because they help protect on an individual level, and because they create “herd” immunity, the level of vaccination coverage required to help prevent a disease from spreading, and to protect those who can’t be fully vaccinated or aren’t yet—including babies who are too young to receive most vaccines or patients who are immunocompromised. Again, many of the people in the United States who patiently demystify vaccines to parents and explain concepts like herd immunity are women—from pediatricians to nurses to public health workers who are working to put us back on track to eliminate measles and other diseases.

  Despite the challenges and even deadly threats, polio eradication campaigns, pneumococcal vaccine campaigns, rotavirus vaccine campaigns, and other inoculation efforts haven’t stopped. Every year, more and more children are vaccinated against more and more diseases. None of that would be possible without the heroism of the women who work tirelessly around the world to protect kids from getting sick, even when that means putting their own health and lives at risk.

  Athletes

  Alice Coachman and Wilma Rudolph

 
ALICE COACHMAN

  WILMA RUDOLPH

  Chelsea

  In the segregated South of the 1920s and ’30s, few opportunities existed to support black male athletes and even fewer for black girls and women. Born in 1923, in the small town of Albany, Georgia, Alice Coachman discovered her love of sports early. At first, she pursued her passion by running and jumping on her own, using old equipment that others had thrown away. She couldn’t practice at official tracks because of segregation, so she trained by running barefoot on dirt roads. When she got to high school, the boys’ track coach spotted Alice’s innate talent and drive and began training her. Soon after her formal training began, Alice broke the American high school and college high jump records—barefoot. That was all before she graduated from high school at Tuskegee Preparatory School. As a student at Albany State College, she ran even faster and jumped even higher, becoming the national champion in the 50- and 100-meter races and the high jump, as well as a member of the winning 400-meter relay team.

  Though the Olympic Games were suspended during World War II, it’s fair to think that Alice would have been a core member of the team in 1944, maybe even in 1940. Sportswriter Eric Williams wrote, “Had she competed in those canceled Olympics, we would probably be talking about her as the number one female athlete of all time.” When the Olympics resumed in 1948, Alice joined the American team in London. She became the first black woman ever to win Olympic gold, and she set a new Olympic record. Forty years earlier, John Taylor had become the first black athlete to win gold; twenty years after that milestone women were allowed to compete in track and field events for the first time. As Alice walked to the podium to collect her medal, the weight of what she had just accomplished started to sink in. “I saw it on the board, ‘A. Coachman, U.S.A., Number One,’ ” she said. “I went on, stood up there, and they started playing the national anthem. It was wonderful to hear.”

  What should have been heralded as a major milestone was barely mentioned in the American news reporting from the Olympics. President Harry S. Truman congratulated her at the White House, but Alice ultimately returned home to little fanfare. It was a notable difference from the parades and celebrations often greeting athletes when they returned—especially those who had set records and won gold medals and who also were white and male. When Alice returned to Albany, the town held a parade and a celebration in her honor; but because it was still segregated, black attendees were relegated to one side of the auditorium. The mayor sat on the stage with Alice but refused to shake her hand. When the event was over, she left through a side door. Alice later reflected, “We had segregation, but it wasn’t any problem for me because I had won.… That was up to them, whether they accepted it or not.”

  After the Games, Alice retired from the track and finished her college degree. Although newspapers had largely ignored her and her hometown had given her a segregated reception, Coca-Cola asked Alice in 1952 to be a national spokesperson—the first time they had ever asked a black American. Throughout her life, Alice would support young athletes and retired Olympians, and inspire countless aspiring track and field stars.

  It’s not hard to imagine Alice cheering on Wilma Rudolph when, twelve years after Alice’s Olympic feat, Wilma became the first black woman to win gold in the television era. Like Alice’s, Wilma’s story started in the segregated South. Born prematurely in Saint Bethlehem, Tennessee, now Clarksville, in 1940, Wilma contracted polio at the age of four. She had to wear cumbersome leg braces and was prescribed intense therapy to help her recover. The local hospital refused to treat Wilma because she was black. So every week, twice a week, Wilma’s mother brought her to Nashville for therapy. Every day at home, her parents or siblings helped her repeat her exercises and massaged her legs.

  Wilma worked hard to strengthen her legs: She walked, hopped, and even played basketball with her siblings. By the time her braces came off when she was around twelve, she had also survived scarlet fever, whooping cough, and measles. After she said goodbye to the braces for good, Wilma wanted to do more than walk or hop; she wanted to run, and she wanted to compete. She started accompanying her sister to basketball practice and joined a local girls’ track team. In 1956, Wilma earned a spot on the U.S. Olympic track and field team. She was sixteen, still in high school and just a few years out of the braces. At the Melbourne Games that year, Wilma won a bronze in the 4x100-meter relay.

  When she was seventeen, Wilma got pregnant with her first child. She missed competing during her senior year in high school, but her sister helped take care of the new baby so Wilma could resume her training in college. At Tennessee State, Wilma got faster. At the 1960 Rome Olympics, she became the first American woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympics: the 100-meter, the 200-meter, and the 4x100-meter relay, which she anchored. She broke three world records. It was the first time the Olympic summer games were televised. A dozen years after the media had ignored Alice Coachman, Wilma was recognized as the star she was.

  Back from the Olympics, her hometown wanted to throw a parade in Wilma’s honor. At first, she refused the offer; the town of Clarksville and the state of Tennessee were still segregated. Finally, Tennessee’s segregationist governor agreed to have an integrated parade and celebration. Wilma took part, and they were the first integrated events Clarksville had ever held.

  Wilma returned to college, finishing her degree and ultimately her track career. After graduation, she taught at her old elementary school and later coached track at her high school. She mentored and inspired countless athletes, including Florence “FloJo” Griffith Joyner, the fastest woman of all time (at least as of 2019!) and Jackie Joyner-Kersee, considered one of the greatest female athletes of all time. I remember watching the 1988 Seoul Olympics with my Grandma Dorothy when FloJo set her 100- and 200-meter records. My grandmother told me about watching Wilma smash barriers and how she hadn’t known women could do that. Even before anyone else did, Alice and Wilma knew it was possible—and they made it happen.

  Junko Tabei

  Chelsea

  As a girl growing up in Japan in the 1950s, Junko Tabei was small and fragile for her age. But she developed an interest in a physically and mentally challenging pursuit: mountain climbing. When she was ten years old, her elementary school class took a trip to Mount Nasu, a volcanic mountain in Nikkō National Park. She would later reflect that when she was on top of the mountain, she realized not only how much fun she was having but how much of the world she had never encountered. That was the day she decided to climb whenever she could. Throughout high school, she hiked and climbed. While she was a student at Showa Women’s University, she joined a mountaineering club. But when she started to look for a climbing group to join after graduation, she had an unpleasant surprise: Every group was made up almost entirely of men. She struggled to convince her male teammates to take her seriously—they thought she was there to look for a husband.

  Still, Junko kept climbing. She supported her hobby by working constantly, editing a scientific journal and giving English and piano lessons. Within a few years, she had climbed all of Japan’s highest mountains. That was when Junko’s dream of going to the Himalayas with an all-female team first took root. In 1969, she helped found the Joshi-Tohan, or the Ladies’ Climbing Club. Their excellent—and straightforward—motto was: “Let’s go on an overseas expedition by ourselves.” At a time when women in Japan were expected to stay home with their families, or at least stick to secretarial work, their efforts raised more than a few eyebrows.

  In 1960s Japan, for any club to be permitted to climb in the Himalayas, it had to be registered as part of the Japan Mountaineering Association and receive the group’s endorsement. Initially, Junko’s Ladies’ Climbing Club was refused membership. They kept applying and eventually became the first women’s club accepted. The Ladies’ Climbing Club’s inaugural trip to the Himalayas was the 1970 expedition to Annapurna, in Nepal. The climb had been completed only once before and never by a group of women. Tabei a
nd her team made it, forging a new path up the mountain’s south side.

  When Junko and the other club members decided to try Everest next, the overwhelming view of men in the climbing community in Japan, and likely outside it, was that an all-women’s expedition would never make it to the top of the world. When Junko’s team received a permit for Everest in 1972, they were determined to prove the naysayers wrong. Translating that determination into financing for the Everest expedition proved challenging. Sponsorship from a Japanese newspaper and television station provided only part of the needed funding. Junko financed her portion of the expedition by once again teaching piano lessons. She saved money by making climbing pants from old curtains. Many years later, a reporter from Outside magazine asked her: “Was there a moment before you went to Everest that you wondered if you should quit?” Tabei didn’t beat around the bush: “No,” she answered. “I never thought of giving up once. We had worked so hard to obtain the climbing permit.”

  In 1975, Junko and her party set out for the world’s most famous summit. Adding to the already grueling climb was an avalanche that came after midnight, when Junko and her fellow climbers were asleep in a tent at camp. “Without any sign, we were hit by an avalanche, and buried under snow,” she recounted later. “I began to suffocate, and thought about how our accident would be reported. Then suddenly, I was pulled up by Sherpas and revived. It was very lucky that none of us had been injured, but it still took three days until I could walk and move normally.” The doctor at base camp tried to persuade her to return to the bottom of the mountain. Her answer was clear: Absolutely not.