Question Female contributions to society that males either minimized and or took the credit for?

Fire? Cooking? Agriculture? Domestication of animals? Spirituality and mysticism? Society itself?

ALL HUMAN LIFE...?

Dr. Sara Jo Baker, the first woman to earn a DrPH from NYU revolutionized maternal and child healthcare in Hell's Kitchen at the turn of the century. She was given the assignment by the board of health because all the male officials thought it was too hard and she would fail and prove that women can't do public health. By the time she retired, it's estimated that her programs prevented the deaths of 90,000 infants in New York tenements.

Personal hero of mine!

Mileva Marić, Einstein's first wife closely collaborated on their theories, including theory of relativity, but never received official recognition. Here is an article providing proof, explanation of her motivation to stay in shadows and Einstein's incestuous payback, some quick quotes:

By the end of their classes in 1900, Mileva and Albert had similar grades (4.7 and 4.6, respectively) except in applied physics where she got the top mark of 5 but he, only 1. She excelled at experimental work while he did not. But at the oral exam, Professor Minkowski gave 11 out of 12 to the four male students but only 5 to Mileva. Only Albert got his degree.

On 13 December 1900, they submitted a first article on capillarity signed only under Albert’s name. Nevertheless, both referred to this article in letters as their common article.

Dord Krstić [..] suggests that given the prevalent bias against women at the time, a publication co-signed with a woman might have carried less weight.

But nobody made it clearer than Albert Einstein himself that they collaborated on special relativity when he wrote to Mileva on 27 March 1901: “How happy and proud I will be when the two of us together will have brought our work on relative motion to a victorious conclusion.”

Krstić(2) wrote: “[Miloš] described how during the evenings and at night, when silence fell upon the town, the young married couple would sit together at the table and at the light of a kerosene lantern, they would work together on physics problems. Miloš Jr. spoke of how they calculated, wrote, read and debated.”

Gajin and Zarko Marić also reported hearing from Mileva’s father that during the Einstein’s visit to Novi Sad in 1905, Mileva confided to him: “Before our departure, we finished an important scientific work which will make my husband known around the world.”

Eight pages of Albert’s first lecture notes are in her handwriting. So is a letter drafted in 1910 in reply to Max Planck who had sought Albert’s opinion.

There's much more in the article linked above, and yes, it gets much more depressing.

Men constantly minimize or erase women's contributions one way or another, so there's too many to mention. Mary Anning did not get the credit she deserved. Zelda Fitzgerald got plagiarized by her own husband. Lise Meitner did not get to share a Nobel Prize with her collaborator. Credit for pioneering abstract art often goes to Kandinsky even though Hilma af Klint has abstract work that predates his (Kandinsky backdated his own art in an effort to be considered the first abstract artist and even then Hilma af Klint has him beat by several years).

Also, plenty of "genius" men only got their place in the hall of fame on the backs of women. For example, Vincent van Gogh has a woman to thank for his massive fame (Jo van Gogh-Bonger) and nobody cared until recently.

Every generation genius and famous women are in the mouth of everyone. They are widly admired and revered. The generationd dies off and withouth the lived experience the successes of women get forgeted while men stay in place. When I heard my parents talk about famous women from their time I usually know none of them. When as a historian I read things for a very distant past, the men I can know for sure, but all the women mentioned (that they always are, and revered) has been forgotten. So is the nature of patriarchy, every generation we must forget the female canon to impose the male one.

Great topic!

And don't forget Fanny Mendelssohn, who loved composing music so much that she consented to having her brother's name on it just to get it published.

Clara Schumann was arguably the greatest pianist of the 19th century, with an enduring legacy handed down through her students and their students. Only Liszt, arguably, was her equal. She was the mainstay of her husband, the composer Robert Schumann. Kept the household, raised the children, organized the tours, held everything together when his mental illness destroyed him, and composed some fine songs herself. Without her, we would not have so much of his music, which is very dear to me.

There are so many more of us that we'll never hear of. "Anonymous was a woman."

Nettie Stevens, geneticist who discovered sex chromosomes. Credit, fame etc. stolen by Wilson and Morgan.

Hedy Lamar laid the groundwork for wireless communication.

That would be a very long and incomplete list. If you haven't read it already, you might be interested in "Who cooked the Last Supper" by Rosalind miles.

I'll add Anna Marie Mozart to the list. Link Title

As a lifelong Shakespeare fan who never believed any of the "Shakespeare's plays were written by Philip Marlowe/Francis Bacon/etc.," my mind was radically changed when I read this article, and now I'm about as convinced as you can be that Emilia Bassano was bare minimum Shakespeare's co-writer, and quite possibly the sole author.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/06/who-is-shakespeare-emilia-bassano/588076/

Computing was a low paid "women's job" that lots of Black women were hired to do back in the day. Then, when computers became mainstream and a lucrative industry, suddenly it was a Boy's Club.

Also, Margaret Keane's husband tried to steal credit for her paintings. She took him to court and proved she was the artist by painting a picture in front of the judge