International Women's Day
Cover art for Out of the Shadows: The Ladies of Royal Château Amboise
In 1975, the UN invited member states to proclaim 8 March as an official holiday for women’s rights and world peace. Fat chance. Fifty years on, good luck with that. The UN has been shouting into the wind about the plight of millions of women since 1946. How sad that on 6 March 2023 the UN Commission said: ‘progress on women’s rights is vanishing including in countries such as Afghanistan, where women and girls have been, in effect, erased from public life’.
The UN theme for 2023 is DigitALL. It wants women to have careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. If yours truly, baffled by all technology post Amstrad, is anything to go by, good luck with that.
Apparently, women make up only twenty-two per cent of artificial intelligence workers. Given its definition, good luck with that too*.
Out of the Shadows; The Ladies of Château Amboise, published to mark International Women's Day 2022 was written to give the Ladies air time so to speak but it came as a bit of a surprise to learn that although yes, some have been airbrushed out of history and yes, some were treated shamefully, there were quite a few amazing women who would join the protesters on the 8th March.
For thirty years, Margaret of Anjou, Queen of England, relentlessly led the Lancastrians against the Yorkists fighting for justice in what became known as The War of the Roses. Brought up by her formidable grandmother Yolande of Aragon, the fight for justice ran in her veins. Gran, in full armour, fought alongside French troops in The Battle of Baugé, a major defeat for England in the Hundred Years' War. She also financed Joan of Arc to drive the English out of Orléans.
The exemplary Anne of Beaujeu, king of France in all but name, ruled the country for eight years. She taught daughters of aristocrats in her care to aim high. Margaret of Austria governed the Netherlands on behalf of The Holy Roman Emperor for twenty-two years. Louise of Savoy as Regent ran France more effectively than her son Francis I and Diane de Poitiers co-ruled France with Henry II.
Then there was the feisty Marguerite of Angoulème, a devoted follower of Martin Luther, very dangerous in a Catholic country. Sorbonne officials threatened to put her in a sack and drown her in the Seine had her brother not been the king of France, Francis I.
His sister-in-law, Renée, Duchess of Ferrara, was a devotee of Calvin, France’s answer to Martin Luther. She was put in prison by her husband because she refused to attend Mass. When he died, her son, the new duke, gave his mother an ultimatum. Give up Protestantism, become a good Catholic, go to Mass, or be exiled. She chose exile.
Renee left her home of twenty-five years and returned to France. Her Château in Montargis was a refuge for persecuted followers of Luther and Calvin.
These women stuck to their guns but they were wealthy, privileged with connections in high places. The same cannot be said for girls being poisoned in Iran or women in Afghanistan.
* The theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.
Read more about the Ladies of Royal Château Amboise in Out of the Shadows by Pamela Shields.
Post by Pamela (BA History of Art). Artwork by Mark.
Out of the Shadows
The Ladies of Royal Château Amboise
