The Only Woman in the Room

by Marie Benedict

The Social Democrats and the Christian Social Party have been at each other’s throats for years. It was only a matter of time before the Heimwehr and Schutzbund turned that verbal warfare into actual bloodshed.”

Is history repeating itself?

Take Chancellor Hitler. The Germanic people don’t have the illustrious history of the Italian people, so Hitler has been forced to create a state around this fiction of the Aryan race and his hatred of the Jews. This is an unfortunate basis for a new regime, even if his loathing is understandable.” I

“Well, America has made immigration quite the bewildering process. On purpose. The government uses the hoops of its onerous application as a deterrent.” “Why?” “So as few immigrants as possible can enter the country, of course,” he went on, oblivious to the dreadful nature of his statement. “Here’s the gist of it. The applicant first registers with the American consulate and gets on the waiting list for an American visa. While they’re biding their time, they have to collect a long list of documents to submit, things like identity papers, police certificates, exit and transit permissions, and a financial affidavit, because the applicant has to prove that they can support themselves.

The trick of these papers is that they all have expiration dates, so you’ve got to obtain them and get off that waiting list to submit them before they expire. Or you’ve got to do it all over again. The timing of this paperwork is so complicated—nearly impossible—that they call it the ‘paper wall.’”

I’d kept the dark, terrible secret closed within, more fearful of what sharing the truth might divulge about me than what help disclosure might bring the victims of Hitler’s rage.

But it seems to me that Hedy, her history, and her creation may have even greater symbolic importance. The manner in which her contribution to this world-changing device was largely lost—or ignored—for decades reflects the pervasive marginalization of women’s contributions, a problem that is both historical and modern. Whether Hedy’s work in spread-spectrum technology was purposefully disregarded or unconsciously forgotten, it appears that imbedded in that oversight were misconceptions about her abilities—about all women, really. Faulty assumptions about women’s capabilities, stemming in part from the conscripted roles into which they’d been slotted, has caused many to think more narrowly about the manner in which the past has been shaped. But unless we begin to view historical women through a broader, more inclusive lens—and rewrite them back into the narrative—we will continue to view the past more restrictively than it likely was, and we risk carrying those perspectives over into the present. Perhaps if Hedy’s society had viewed her not simply as a blindingly beautiful creature, but as a human being with a sharp mind capable of significant contributions, they might have learned that her interior life was more interesting and fruitful than her exterior. Her invention might have been accepted by the navy when she offered it, and who knows what impact that might have had on the war? If only people had been willing to look behind “the only woman in the room” to examine the ...