Japanese Climber Junko Tabei, First Woman To Conquer Mount Everest, Dies At 77 : The Two-Way : NPR
▻http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/10/22/498971169/japanese-climber-junko-tabei-first-woman-to-conquer-mount-everest-dies-at-77
On May 16, 1975, mountain climber Junko Tabei became the first woman to stand on the summit of Mt. Everest in Nepal.
AP
More than 40 years after she became the first woman to climb the world’s highest mountain, Junko Tabei has died at age 77, according to Japanese media. Tabei was just 4’9", but she was a giant in mountaineering, as the first woman to conquer the “Seven Summits” — the tallest peak on each continent.
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Even before she confronted the world’s tallest peak, Tabei had already defied Japanese society’s ideas of how women should behave by leaving her 3-year-old daughter with her husband and heading to Nepal to tackle Everest. Just six years earlier, she had founded the Ladies Climbing Club (slogan: “Let’s go on an overseas expedition by ourselves.”).
Her all-female climbing club was a first in Japan; Tabei started it in part because of how she was treated by male climbers.
“Back in 1970s Japan, it was still widely considered that men were the ones to work outside and women would stay at home,” Tabei told the Japan Times in 2012. “Even women who had jobs — they were asked just to serve tea. So it was unthinkable for them to be promoted in their workplaces.”
