First Women
- MirrorWater Team
- Mar 25
- 5 min read
The first woman…
…to be elected to Congress, earn a noble prize, to travel to space.
Who were they?
The term 'First Woman' often refers to the earliest women who made significant strides in various fields, representing milestones in women's rights and representation. These women set precedents in politics, education, and social reform, challenging gender norms and advocating for equality.
This year history has been made and is still in the making. This year we have seen Zoe Saldaña become the first actress of Dominican heritage to win an Academy Award! On April 1st, 2025, we will witness the first German female astronaut to go to space.
The three- to five-day Fram2 space mission is using a SpaceX chartered Crew Dragon spacecraft. Four people will fly over the Earth's polar regions from orbit for the first time. The crew includes the Maltese entrepreneur and cryptocurrency investor Chun Wang, the Norwegian camerawoman and film director Jannicke Mikkelsen, the Australian polar adventurer Eric Philips and the German engineer Rabea Rogge.
The flight will be the first astronautical mission to orbit the Earth over both poles. Chun has chosen the team so that they all have a different perspective on the polar regions: Eric as a polar adventurer, Jannicke as a polar filmmaker and Rabea as a researcher working with robots in the Arctic.
And just like that that she will be the first German woman in space.
Luck? Coicidence? Chance?
That reminds me of a project I am currently working on about the first woman to ever film in the Amazon Forrest. Pola Bauer–Adamara has been forgotten in time but by coincidence she was part of a film exploration that resulted in her becoming the leader and completing the documentary film „Die Grüne Hölle“ (The Green Hell).
While Pola has been forgotten, Rabea will be etched in history books and will be remembered, forever. This post, however, isn’t about being remembered or forgotten. It isn’t about the first women either. Instead, I want to highlight the many women who don’t end up in the history books but had major contributions in helping the first women.
But before we do that, let’s look at the answers to the questions posed at the very beginning:
Who was the first woman to be elected to Congress, earn a noble prize, to travel to space?
The first woman elected to Congress was Jeannette Rankin in 1916.
It was the suffragist movement that made this possible, however. Certainly we have heard the name Susan B. Anthony but have you heard of Dr. Mabel Ping-Hua Lee. She advocated for women’s suffrage for years even though as a Chinese immigrant, she was unable to vote. Or have you heard of Ida B. Wells-Barnett? She was an anti-lynching advocate, author, suffragist, founder of the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago. What about Zitkala-Ša? She was a writer, political activist, teacher, intellectual, and musican. She fought for Native American suffrage. Weren’t it for these and MANY more women, Jeannette Rankin might not have become the first women elected to Congress.
Marie Sklodowska-Curie was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize and the only woman to this day to receive two Nobel prizes.
Marie will always be remembered as the first but have you heard about Agnes Pockels? Agnes had been interested in science since childhood and wanted to study physics. However, she had no access to universities and could only find information from scientific literature through her younger brother, a student of the University of Göttingen. A single woman, Agnes looked after her sick parents at their home in Germany. She carried out the household chores, and, whilst washing up, she noticed the effects of oils, soaps and other household chemicals (today we would call them surfactants) on the surface tension of water. Agnes devised an apparatus with which she could measure surface tension and in 1891, with the help of Lord Rayleigh (an eminent English scientist), published her first research paper, Surface Tension, in the journal Nature. Agnes continued to study surface phenomena and published several more scientific papers. She received the Laura Leonard award from the Colloid Society in 1931 and was granted an honorary PhD by the Braunschweig University of Technology. From washing up to becoming a recognised pioneer in the new field of surface science – quite a triumph!
And finally, Valentina Vladimirovna Tareshkova was the first woman in space having flown a solo mission on Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963. She orbited the Earth 48 times, spent almost three days in space, is the only woman to have been on a solo space mission. It wasn’t after Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982 that Sally Ride became the first American woman and third woman to fly in space. Since then many women have been to space – even though men continue to dominate space travel.
It will have taken 62 years that the first German woman will fly into space. But there are many other women before Rabea Rogge who made this day possible. I have had the fortune to meet one of these women and feature her in an episode in our documentary series EMPOWERED. Suzanna Randall is part of the organization “Die Astronautin” whose mission is to send the first German women into space. Suzanna may not become the first German woman in space, but I know for sure that if it hadn’t been for her work, or that of Insa Thiele-Eich and Claudia Kessler, and many other women, that we are finally witnessing this historic moment.
Rabea Rogge will be the one who will be remembered. The other women will be forgotten, but I cannot forget Suzanna. Since I’ve met Suzanna I’ve been following along the journey if she will be the first. Through my documentary series EMPOWERED I have been invested in this journey and while it certainly saddens me knowing it won’t be Suzanna, nonetheless, I recognize this very historic moment. While I don’t have a direct link to any of this, indirectly I feel apart of it which is why I would like to share the episode about Suzanna Randall called “The Climb.”
As a small production company, I’m depedent on any licence fees I get for making the programs we’ve done but this journey that Rabea Rogge will make and the women who led the way in making this possible are bigger than anything which is why I want people to watch this inspiring episode and recognize how historic this moment is.
I am and will always be grateful to Suzanna, who’s given me her time in featuring her in this episode. Without a doubt, her dedication and determination as an Astronaut trainee, as a scientist and simply put as a human being is inspiring. I have learned so much from her and I certainly feel very honored to have met her and be able to feature her in our documentary series EMPOWERED.
For more information about Empowered, please go here.
The episode “The Climb” will be available on our website for free starting today March 25th for one week until April 1st. To watch the episode, you can go here.
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