After four years of writing about First Women on this blog, I am delighted to see Time magazine jump on the bandwagon for First Women. They have put together a wonderful multi-media project with profiles about First Women and I recommend you check it out.
The September 18 issue of Time has amazing photographs of 46 living women who are First Women. (Fourteen of them have been profiled previously in these posts.) The issue of the magazine is exciting for me because of the topic but, I have to admit, I was most blown away by the photographs. They were taken with an iPhone yet capture each woman’s essence and are photographic artistry at its best.
As part of the release Time has built a captivating web page at http://time.com/collection/firsts/ with short videos of each of the women. There are also three topic-focused videos about fighting sexism and double standards, finding inspiration to go first, and balancing family and work. I recommend viewing them all, although watching the same commercials at the beginning of each video does get tiresome. My favorite is the video on Family as I believe the obstacles to achieving a balance with work may be the most significant issue women face today.
All of this is a promotion for the book Firsts: Women Who Are Changing the World, by the editors of Time and Nancy Gibbs, the First Woman editor of the magazine. It will be released this week. My local independent bookstore should have a copy for me any day now and I’m looking forward to reviewing it on this blog. I believe that telling stories of First Women provides a springboard for conversations about how far women have come, but also a clarion call to women to work to preserve their rights for the future.
