The Sydney Feminists

Russia sent the first woman, Valentina Tereshkova, into space onboard Vostok 6 in 1963. It would take America another twenty years before it would send its first female astronaut, Sally Ride, skywards. Besides being the first new group since 1969, the astronaut class of 1978 was special because of its diversity, notably for including Black and Asian Americans. Selected from thousands of highly qualified candidates, the group (nicked named ‘Thirty-Five New Guys’) also included NASA’s first female astronauts. After the class announcement, each individual underwent a year of intense training before graduating and becoming an active astronaut. Sally Ride Sally Ride was the first American woman to fly in space. Ride was born on May 26th, 1951, in Encino, California. She briefly tried to become a professional tennis player but quit in order to get a Bachelor of Science in Physics and a Bachelor of Arts in English. Leading up to her first flight in 1983, Ride was a member o...

The common rhetoric blasted across our societal landscape is “The future is female”, but what if the past already was? When you think about the art world, across a myriad of artistic movements, the main majority of modern artists were men. Whether it’s Duchamp, Matisse, Picasso, Dali, Warhol or Da Vinci himself, it’s clear that the mainstream rhetoric alludes to the masters of the art world’s past being predominantly male. Yes, there are the few outliers such as Frida Kahlo, Marina Abramovic who have managed to make a name for themselves over time but they tend to be the exceptions. For every master of the art world, there is more than likely a female equivalent working within the same time period who is creating equally as innovative work yet has managed to go practically unnoticed as time has gone on. One classic example includes the previously neglected works of the Swedish artist known as Hilma af Klint. Klint was an abstract painter who was creating paintings within this v...