“I have always been fascinated by the tree ring timelines at the entrance of Muir Woods or any National Park. They illuminate how the trees are a witness to human history. However, I also felt like those timelines tell a colonialist and patriarchal story. The tree rings in Human Nature imagine what alternate histories could be told.”- Tiffany Shlain

DENDROFEMONOLOGY: A FEMINIST HISTORY TREE RING

Reclaimed Deodar Cedar Wood Sculpture 
65" x 64" x 3" 

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Text burned onto tree ring:

• 50,000 BCE Goddesses are worshiped. 

• 10,000-3000 BCE Women are healers, shamans, and warriors. A number of societies acknowledge multiple genders.

• 3100 BCE Literacy develops, and seeds of patriarchy spread.

• 2400 BCE Mesopotamian law declares: “If a woman speaks to a man out of turn, her teeth will be smashed in by a burnt brick.” 

• 200 BCE Goddess worship is forbidden in Judaism, and later, in Islam and Christianity.

• 690  Wu Zetian becomes the first—and only—female ruler of China.  

• 1100 Matrilineal and matriarchal Hopi tribe establishes the community of Oraibi in present-day Arizona.

• 1450 to 1918 50,000 women tortured and executed as witches across Europe and America.

• 1576-1610 Queen Amina rules over Zazzau (present-day Nigeria).

• 1690s Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz becomes the first published feminist in the Americas.

• 1776-1860s Abortion up to four months of pregnancy is legal in the United States.

• 1880s Inspired by indigenous and abolitionist leaders and British suffragists, first-wave feminism gains momentum in the United States.

• 1920 19th Amendment grants US women the right to vote, although most women of color are disenfranchised until the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

• 1920 The Soviet Union legalizes abortion.

• 1960 FDA approves birth control pill in the United States

• 1960 Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka) becomes the first woman to be elected to lead a democratic country.

• 1962 Dolores Huerta co-founds US National Farm Workers' Association.

• 1960s Second-wave feminism begins with leaders including Dorothy Pitman Hughes, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Flo Kennedy, and Shirley Chisholm.

• 1963 First woman in space Valentina Tereshkova flies a solo mission and orbits Earth 48 times.

• 1972 Title IX prohibits gender-based discrimination in US federally-funded educational programs and activities.

• 1972 The US Senate approves addition of the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution. (The states have not yet ratified it.)

• 1973 Roe vs. Wade legalizes abortion in all US states and territories.

• 1974-1980 The Combahee River Women’s Collective calls out the interconnectedness of sexism, racism, and homophobia, and demands change in mainstream feminism and civil rights movement.

• 1975 Icelandic Women’s Strike held to protest inequality in the workplace and the home. 90% of women participate, and 15 years later Iceland elects a woman president.

• 1989 Kimberlé Crenshaw defines the concept of intersectionality and ushers in third-wave feminism.

• 1993 Women allowed to wear pants on the floor of the US Senate.

• 2006 Tarana Burke begins #MeToo movement.

• 2016 Hillary Rodham Clinton receives the majority of votes in the US presidential election.

• 2017 An estimated 5 million people attend Women’s Marches globally. #MeToo goes viral.

• 2017 Oregon becomes first state to include non-binary gender category on IDs.

• 2020-2022 US elects first female Vice President Kamala Harris and first trans State Senator, Sarah McBride; Ketanji Brown Jackson becomes first Black woman confirmed to  Supreme Court.

• 2022 

  • Roe v. Wade is overturned, eviscerating federal protection of reproductive rights in the U.S.

  • Globally, 65 countries have legalized abortions, four in the last year.

  • Globally, 86 women have been elected president or prime minister to date…

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