On the last day of Women’s History Month, I want to tell a personal story. This is the story of my great-great-grandmother, Gana Naidenova Stoilova.
You’ll need to know a bit of Bulgarian history first. From the late 14th/early 15th century onwards, Bulgaria fell under the rule of the Ottoman empire. Bulgarian institutions, national identity, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church were all practically obliterated and assimilated into the structures of the Sultanate. This had a devastating impact on the Bulgarian population. Historians estimate that at the end of the 14th century there were around 1.3 million Bulgarians – a similar number to the populations of countries like Germany, France, or England at the time. 100 years into Ottoman rule, that number had dwindled to just 260,000. This population impact can be seen right through to today: whereas countries with a comparable 14th-century population now have populations upwards of 50 million, there are barely 10 million Bulgarians.
Bulgarian women were particularly harshly affected by the Ottoman occupation. They were already oppressed: subservient to their husbands, their activity pretty much limited to their own homes, with no social role outside the home. Domestic violence was wide-spread. What Ottoman rule added to this was the constant threat of violence from locally stationed Turkish soldiers or administrators, frequent abductions of Bulgarian women – either to be sold into slavery or forcibly converted to Islam, abductions of their children, especially boys who were converted to Islam and trained to fight in some of the most vicious units of the Empire’s army. Bulgarian folklore is full of tales and songs about young women suffering terrible torture or even choosing to die rather than convert to Islam. One story, which I read when I was ten years old and which still sticks in my mind, is of 100 girls abducted into slavery who instead chose to braid their hair together and jump off the cliffs into the sea.
After 400 years of Ottoman rule, by the start of the 19th century economic and political conditions had changed sufficiently to allow for the beginning of a Bulgarian “National Revival” movement within the weakening Empire. There were two catalysts in particular: the first was a strong push for independence of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church; the second was increased levels of education and especially the teaching of the Bulgarian language in semi-religious and newly-established public schools. Women in particular had a pivotal role to play in the latter as the vast majority of teachers were women.
As the pace of the national revival picked up, with a small Bulgarian middle class beginning to emerge, so did the demands for political autonomy and self-government. Eventually, these demands culminated in the April Uprising, an armed revolt in the Balkan mountains in April 1876. For a number of reasons, the uprising wasn’t as well prepared and didn’t have the reach the organisers were hoping for. It was brutally crushed by the Ottoman army, and an estimated 15,000 Bulgarians – including women and children, sometimes whole towns – were killed in the process. This indirectly led to the establishment of an autonomous Bulgaria two years later.
Back to my great-great-grandmother…
Gana was born in Sopot in 1850. The town had had a reputation for resisting the Ottoman occupation since the very beginning in the 15th century, when it was completely destroyed in revenge for such resistance. As a young woman Gana moved to the town of Klisura where she became a teacher and became involved in the organisation of the April Uprising there.
Gana sewed and embroidered the flag for the uprising in Klisura. With money set aside from her teaching wages over five years, she bought fabric and sewed clothes for the fighters. The uprising found her in Klisura, and when the town was overrun by the Turks, she actually found herself fighting. She was captured, tortured (they cut off one of her breasts – I can’t imagine her not being raped), escaped to Koprivshtitsa, and survived. She had seven or eight children, lived to see her country liberated, lived into the 20th century. A single photo of Gana survives (that my family is aware of). In it, she wears a medal she was awarded for her bravery and contribution to the uprising. Proud as I am to have her as my great-great-grandmother, Gana was not an exception. Bulgarian women contributed time, money, skills, and their lives to the uprising. They played a vital role in the national revival as teachers. They fought bravely, a lot of them died bravely.
Gana is the basis of the female lead character Rada in one of Bulgaria’s greatest works of literature, Ivan Vazov’s “Under the Yoke”. I have a number of issues with the portrayal of Rada as a simpering love interest, as my great-great-grandmother clearly was neither of these things, but I am happy that some of her story is read by every Bulgarian school child to this day.
Gana’s story brings me back to the theme I talked about at the start of Women’s History Month: the way we as a society have historically restricted opportunities for women, and the way we value women’s contributions to our history. I find Gana’s story inspiring because she managed to overcome those obstacles in her own way. Her first contribution to the April Uprising was strictly within the sphere reserved for women: she made clothing and a flag. But when the time came to fight, she did, and did so bravely.
Do I wish she had lived in a time and place where her life was not characterised by violence? Yes. But in her time, in her place, this woman made a significant mark on the world. I don’t generally believe that I can or should be proud of things I have not achieved myself. But I am proud of having Gana Naidenova Stoilova, freedom fighter, for a great-great-grandmother, and I am proud to tell her story.

Kathryn Cann has kindly contributed a Women’s History Month guest post. I was enlightened by this story of two women pioneers in the medical professions, I hope you are too. Enjoy Kathryn’s post below!

(Image via Wikipedia.)

This is a tale of two Elizabeths. Not the Queen Elizabeth I or II, worthy though they surely would have been of a Women’s History Month post! No, these Elizabeths (Elizabeth Blackwell & Elizabeth Garrett) were pioneering doctors, and they helped break barriers for women in the medical profession, in many respects they also made a large contribution to winning the argument of that time about women’s access to higher education.
No matter how well-known these two may be to feminists and women’s historians they can never be well known enough to the mainstream, hence the reason for this reminder as Women’s History Month draws to a close. We must make Women’s History mainstream history, somehow.
Elizabeth Blackwell was born in Bristol, England in 1821 to a Quaker Family that believed in the idea of equal rights. The family emigrated to the United States in 1832, and at private school Elizabeth became interested in medicine. At this time, women were not permitted to attend higher education establishments. Elizabeth Blackwell took a keen interest in medicine at school and decided that she wanted to be a doctor. After being rejected from 29 medical schools, the Geneva Medical College, New York, finally accepted her application. It is believed that the student body voted to allow her in, thinking that the application was a hoax. In any event on the 11th January 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first female* to graduate as a medical student. Here is an eyewitness account of the Graduation Ceremony (pdf format). It makes for a very interesting read!
*Of those that admitted their gender that is! We do not know how many women had posed as male to complete their medical studies.
After graduation, Elizabeth Blackwell was banned from being a doctor, and as she wanted to go on to be a surgeon, friends advised her to go to Paris. La Maternité would accept her but the downside was that she had to continue her training as a student midwife, not a physician. In November 1849, her hopes of becoming a surgeon came to an abrupt end when Dr. Blackwell picked up a serious eye infection that led to the loss of her right eye, and a replacement glass eye had to be fitted in its place.
This setback did not deter Elizabeth Blackwell and in 1853, along with her sister Emily and Dr. Marie Zakrzewska, they founded the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children in Manhattan, New York. After the Infirmary was well established, she seems to have spent some of her time back in England, on lecture circuits and attending Bedford College before becoming the first woman to have her name put on the General Medical Council Medical Register in January 1859. Around this time, she met Elizabeth Garrett, inspiring her and countless other women to seek a career in the medical profession. Dr. Blackwell spent some of her time in Great Britain, organising the National Health Society and founding the London School of Medicine for Women. She later returned to the United States to train women to be nurses during the US Civil War and in 1868 established a Women’s Medical College at the Manhattan Infirmary.
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was the first woman to successfully complete the medical qualifying exams in Great Britain. Born in Whitechapel, London in 1836, Garrett was introduced to the feminist scene in London in 1854, and met Dr. Blackwell, who inspired her to study to be a doctor, in 1859. At first she attended the Middlesex hospital as a nursing student, going to doctors’ lectures normally only attended by male students. After half receiving a medical education but being the subject of too many complaints she was barred! It just wasn’t the done thing to have females studying to do medical exams at the time. So Garrett had to find another way, and that she did. The Society of Apothecaries did not specifically forbid women from taking the examinations and in 1865 she passed, gaining a certificate to become a doctor. This loophole was swiftly closed behind her and no other women were allowed to enter this way. Elizabeth Garrett had become the second woman to have her name placed on the UK Medical Register and the first educated and qualified in Great Britain. She went on to set up her own dispensary and in doing so became the first woman to practice medicine in Britain. The dispensary grew into the New Hospital for Women, where Dr. Garrett worked for more than twenty years.
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson also founded the London School of Medicine for Children, and in 1875, Elizabeth Blackwell was appointed professor of gynaecology. Both women throughout their lives and careers were strong advocates of women’s suffrage and women’s opportunities in higher education, arguing against spurious claims of the times that womens reproductive, general and mental health would suffer if they were allowed to participate in higher education.
Incidentally, Elizabeth Garrett’s younger sister is Millicent Garrett Fawcett, after whom the Fawcett Society is named.
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson became the first woman in England elected as mayor, in the town of Aldeburgh, Suffolk which had been their family’s home-town for some years. A monument to Elizabeth Blackwell can be found at the site of the former Geneva Medical College, (now Hobart) New York. The New Hospital in London was renamed the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital but in 2005 the building was sold to UNISON, and is no more. A wing at the University Hospital London is named after Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, and an art exhibition in her honour was held there in 2009.
Cross Posted at miscellani.org/blog/

This is going to be my penultimate Women’s History Month post, and I want to take a moment to raise awareness of an issue that is often shrouded in secrecy and shame, and that is integral to women’s history. Even in Britain where abortion is (more or less)^[1] legal the women who dare speak up about having had an abortion are rare and brave.
In Ireland (both North and South), the picture is different entirely. Abortion is illegal in Northern Ireland, and constitutionally outlawed in the Republic of Ireland. So women who find themselves unexpectedly pregnant and do not want to continue the pregnancy (they may be too poor, have too many children already, be in an abusive relationship, find themselves pregnant as a result of rape – there are as many reasons as there are women seeking abortion) have only one option – travel to England for a termination.
As abortions are not available on the NHS for either Irish or Northern Irish women, the significant cost of the procedure at a private clinic is added to the travel costs, the potential costs of childcare while away, and in some cases the costs of staying overnight in England.
In the 1980s a number of Irish women living in London got together to form the Irish Women’s Abortion Support Group. The history of the group is documented in Ann Rossiter’s “Ireland’s Hidden Diaspora”. Here are a few highlights.
The group was entirely unfunded/self-funded. Rossiter herself says they did “sponsored swims, sponsored walks, sponsored weight loss, and sponsored anything else we could think of.” The vast majority of the work of the group consisted of providing Irish women with information (not readily available, and at times illegal to obtain), overnight accommodation when they came over for the procedure, financial support, and also escorting them to the clinic.
This kind of “welfare feminism” (as Rossiter calls it) is an example of the way “women’s issues” are left to be dealt with by women – usually at great cost, with no support from the state, and in secret and shame. Like violence against women, unavailability of abortion is one of those areas where the cost is almost exclusively born by women. We raise the money, we support each other, we provide a sympathetic ear to our friends when they break down crying on the anniversary or their abortion, we keep the secrets, we get on with it – quietly, efficiently, out of the way of “mainstream society”.
Towards the end of the 1990s, as the Irish economy boomed and credit and low-cost flights became more readily available, the IWASG was wound down. With the recent economic crisis, however, Irish women are yet again finding it more and more difficult to raise the money to travel to the UK for a termination. Which is why the Abortion Support Network (ASN) started up.
I honestly can’t remember how I first came across ASN, though if I had to guess I would say it was through Twitter. I donated money to one of their appeals, and have been getting their monthly updates in my inbox ever since, a constant reminder of the continued struggle of so many Irish women for bodily autonomy. Reading the stories of women helped by ASN, and some of the stories documented by Ann Rossiter, the one thing that strikes me is how little has changed in 30 years. The guilt, the shame and the social stigma are all still there. But with every grant ASN makes, a woman gets her life back. And that is an amazing achievement for a small, chronically underfunded group of women operating on the fringes of society.

[1] Abortion in the UK is only legal to prevent a negative impact on the woman’s physical or mental health or if there are severe foetal abnormalities. Two doctors have to sign off a woman’s request for an abortion. While the guidelines are interpreted extremely liberally so that de facto abortion is available here on request, the legal situation is somewhat murky. Every few years, there is an attempt to further restrict abortion rights. There is, in fact, one going on right now. All this despite the fact that having an abortion is medically safer than carrying a child to term.