Changing History to HER story
This in-person exhibition became an online sensation due to covid restrictions. Due to its immediate popularity, it quickly became a book, published by Girl God Books.
We live in a world that is predominantly shaped and dictated by men, so for International Womens day 2021, Kat Shaw decided to take a look back over history, and change it to HERstory, honouring the magnificent women who have shaped the way the world is today that have often gone unnoticed. It is time to raise the profiles of the glorious, strong, brave women who have made HERstory, and place them onto the pedestals they should have been on for many years!
WELCOME TO THE GROUNDBREAKING AND EMPOWERING EXHIBITION BY KAT SHAW ARTIST.
These strong and influential women have changed the world in such a huge and impactful way – yet, the majority of them have gone unnoticed. Now is the time to honour the women who have walked before us and change history to HERstory. These women (and the many others I have not mentioned) may not have intentionally set out to become role models but have all achieved extraordinarily amazing things by following their hearts, talents, dreams, beliefs and passions. They didn’t listen to the confining drone of a society who places women in the “cannot do that” box – they dared, and they took a stand, stepping into their power, following their truth and using their voices to be different and make a change to the world we live in today. We are standing on their shoulders. We are using the stones thrown at them as women to build our paths forwards. They are the women who walked before us. It’s time to honour them now. It’s time to change history to HERstory.
Discover how these wonderful women changed HERstory and inspired Kat's paintings by exploring these pages:
Icons of the Visual Arts
Powerful Politicians
Radical Writers
Stars of Sport, Screen and Song
Freedom Fighters and Faith Keepers
Scientists and Explorers
Rosa Parks
“No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (1913 – 2005) was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The United States Congress has called her 'the first lady of civil rights', 'the mother of the freedom movement' and 'the woman who stood up for herself and others by sitting down.'
Back in the 1950s, the rule in Montgomery, Alabama, was that if the 'white' section of a bus became full, seats must be given up in the 'coloured' section to allow white passengers to sit down. Parks, a leader in the local NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People), and the civil rights movement, iconically refused to give up her seat and remained quiet and dignified throughout, even though it led to her arrest.
Her willingness to disobey the rule helped to spark the Montgomery boycott and other efforts to end segregation in America. When Rosa Parks refused to move, she took an important step towards making the lives of black and white people equal.
“Never trade in your authenticity for safety.”
Brené Brown
Brené Brown (born November 1965) is an American professor, researcher, lecturer, podcaster and author. Currently, she holds an Endowed Chair at the University of Houston's Graduate College of Social Work. She is also a visiting professor of management at McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas.
Brown has studied courage, shame, empathy, vulnerability and leadership for two decades, building a highly successful career. Her 2010 talk, The Power of Vulnerability, is in the top five most-viewed TED talks. She has now officially gone 'mainstream', and is the author of five number-one New York Times bestsellers.
She says: “I believe that you have to walk through vulnerability to get to courage, therefore . . . embrace the suck. I try to be grateful every day and my motto right now is, 'Courage over comfort.' I do NOT believe that cussing and praying are mutually exclusive, and, I absolutely believe that the passing lane is for passing only.”
“If you trade in your authenticity for safety, you may experience the following: anxiety, depression, addiction, rage, blame, resentment and inexplicable grief.”
“Sometimes the bravest and most important thing you can do is just show up.”
“If you’re not in the arena also getting your ass kicked, I’m not interested in your feedback.”
“Let go of who you think you’re supposed to be; embrace who you are.”
“I am both war and woman and you can't stop me."
Nikita Gill
An Ode to Fearless Women
“Defined by no man, you are your own story.
Blazing through the world, turning history into herstory.
And when they dare to tell you about all the things you cannot be, you smile and tell them,
I am both war and woman and you cannot stop me.”
Nikita Gill, a poet and writer, grew up in Gurugram, Haryana in India. In her mid-twenties, she emigrated to the south of England. She worked as a carer for many years but has been writing for as long as she can remember. At 12 years old, a non-fiction story she wrote was published in a newspaper in India and she started sharing her poetry on Tumblr ten years ago.
“You are your own story.”
Gill’s first manuscript was rejected by 137 publishers, and she used it as fuel to better her creative process – and that certainly happened as she has published many books since then! She has a very modern view of the ever-changing world of social media and how poetry plays into it.
She is vocal in her advocacy for poets and their right to be credited correctly for their work; Gill herself has experienced celebrities, such as Khloe Kardashian, using her work without crediting her. She longs to educate people about personal responsibility within the arts.
In Gill's book, Fierce Fairytales: & Other Stories to Stir Your Soul, she takes classic tales and gives them a fun, feminist twist. Gones are the aged tropes, cliches and damsels in distress just waiting for knights in shining armour to save them. Cinderella becomes a princess who can save herself, Little Red Riding Hood is a leader of wolves, and villains might just be misunderstood - and relatable characters.
Gill is an Instagram sensation, and it's amazing to see such a strong woman writing HERstory and inspiring others along the way.
Coco Chanel
“Always have in mind your true worth – self-awareness leads to self-confidence and self-confidence leads to self-love. And all are crucial.
Remember who you are, where you come from and where you are going.”
Gabrielle Bonheur “Coco” Chanel (1883 – 1971) was a French fashion designer and businesswoman. The founder and namesake of the Chanel brand, she was credited in the post-World War I era with popularising a sporty, casual chic as the feminine standard of style, replacing the 'corseted silhouette' that was dominant beforehand. Coco literally liberated women – by stripping off the constraints of corsets, she unapologetically gave them back their right to breathe and introduced a new, bold, modern style of leveraging elegance which women embraced gladly.
The legendary fashion designer and true icon of style was also a remarkably intelligent and audacious woman. Apart from her creative ingenuity and a sharp eye for sophisticated aesthetics, she was an incredibly empowering woman who continues to empower women of all generations.
“Remember who you are.”
"A girl should be two things: Who and what she wants.”
"Be your own kind of beautiful.”
“Nothing is impossible, the word itself says I’m possible.”
Audrey Hepburn
Audrey Hepburn (1929 – 1993) was a British actress and humanitarian. Recognised as both a film and fashion icon, she was ranked by the American Film Institute as the third-greatest female screen legend from the Golden Age of Hollywood and was inducted into the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame. She was thought to have repeatedly struggled against the way women should dress, making trousers a female fashion statement, and often wearing flats, giving women an 'out' from towering stilettos.
Hepburn devoted the final years of her life to humanitarian work. Having donated to UNICEF (United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund) since 1954, she became a Goodwill Ambassador for the charity in 1988. She dedicated the rest of her life to helping impoverished children in Africa, Asia and Latin America by working in the field, nursing sick children and raising awareness of their conditions.
“Always be the leading lady of your own life.”
Audrey Hepburn is a hero because she overcame adversity, helped others, and never gave up. She was in Holland when the Nazis took over and watched German soldiers put men against a wall and shoot at them – her uncle being one of them. Her waif-like figure was the visual remnant of her starvation as a child in that time during World War II, which resulted in a slew of ailments that led to "a lifetime of quietly suffering frail health." In short, her pain became her beauty—and by extension, her livelihood, and she then used her fame for good with UNICEF.
In 1992 she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She remains one of only 16 people to have won the Academy, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Awards.
Amelia Earheart
Amelia Mary Earhart (1897 – 1937) was an American aviation pioneer and author: a woman with grit, determination and a dream. She was only the 16th woman to be issued a pilot’s license.
On 18th June 1928, she achieved her dream of becoming the first female pilot to fly across the Atlantic Ocean (3875 km) solo. The dangerous journey had only ever been completed solo once before by a man and many others had died attempting it.
Her record-breaking flight wasn’t easy, as she flew into a storm near Paris, where she was initially supposed to land. This caused mechanical issues and she thought fast, changing course to land safely in Londonderry, Northern Ireland after a 14-hour, 56-minute flight.
Earhart set many other records too, and wrote best-selling books about her flying experiences, including The Fun of It: Random Records of My Own Flying And of Women In Aviation. She was also instrumental in the formation of The Ninety-Nines, an organisation for female pilots.
In 1937, Amelia and her plane mysteriously disappeared while flying over the Pacific Ocean during her attempt to be the first woman to fly around the world. Despite a huge rescue attempt, she was never found and was pronounced legally dead 2 years later.
"The most effective way to do it, is to do it.”
“Never interrupt someone doing something you said couldn’t be done.”
“The woman who can create her own job is the one who will win fame and fortune.”
Germaine Greer
Germaine Greer, born 29th January 1939, is an Australian writer and public intellectual, regarded as one of the major voices of the radical feminist movement in the latter half of the 20th century.
Her radical feminist views, and her book, The Female Eunuch, published in 1970, was pivotal in post-second-wave feminism literature. Her book explores the behaviours of women, and became a bestseller around the world, making Greer a household name.
Her thesis is that the 'traditional' suburban, consumerist, nuclear family represses women sexually, and that this devitalises them, rendering them eunuchs. Greer is a liberation (or radical) rather than equality feminist and her goal is not equality with men, yet it favours women. Her beliefs are controversial, but she believes that arguments and conflicting views need to be heard to be refuted, and says that she isn't afraid of criticism.
In a 2019 interview with the BBC to mark her 80th birthday, she said, "That’s the point of writing anything, is to get criticised. I’m not going to go home and cry because you disagree with me.” There is no denying the fact that she has definitely written HERstory in her own way!
The full quote that inspired the painting is, “Freedom is fragile and must be protected. To sacrifice it, even as a temporary measure, is to betray it.”
“Freedom is fragile and must be protected.”
“The difference between a broken community and a thriving one is the presence of women who are valued.”
Michelle Obama
Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama (born 17th January 1964) is an American attorney and author who was the first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017. She is married to the 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama, and is the first African-American first lady.
Michelle has been creating her own legacy in many ways, including the 'Let Girls Learn' initiative started in March 2015. Its aim is to help educate the 62 million girls around the world who aren’t in school.
“I see myself in these girls, I see my daughters in these girls, and I simply cannot walk away from them. I plan to keep raising my voice on their behalf for the rest of my life. I plan to keep urging world leaders to invest in their potential and create societies that truly value them as human beings. I plan to keep reaching out to local leaders, families, and girls themselves to raise awareness about the power of sending girls to school.”
Her speeches are always full of inspiration. One of her most famous speeches included the following inspirational words:
“The women we honour today teach us three very important lessons.
One, that as women, we must stand up for ourselves.
The second, as women, we must stand up for each other.
And finally, as women, we must stand up for justice for all.”
She also spoke directly to men at the United State of Women Summit. “Be better at everything. Be better fathers. Good lord, just being good fathers who love your daughters and are providing a solid example of what it means to be a good man in the world, showing them what it feels like to be loved. That is the greatest gift that the men in my life gave to me.”
Addressing a group of young African leaders in 2014, she made it really clear that respect for women is critical when it comes to making a nation successful, saying: “No country can ever truly flourish if it stifles the potential of its women and deprives itself of the contributions of half of its citizens.”
She uses her status to powerfully and emotively speak out about the oppressed circumstances in which many African women find themselves. She said: “Any man who uses his strength to oppress women is a coward, and he is holding back the progress of his family and his country.”
“Am I good enough? Yes, I am.”
“There is no limit to what we, as women, can accomplish.”
“I’ll be fierce for all of us”
Deb Haaland
It’s been a rocky road for Haaland, who has experienced homelessness and relied on food stamps. She is also the product of racist policies. “There are a lot of people in this country who suffered historical trauma. I carry history with me, I’m a product of the assimilation policy of the United States. I feel very strongly that having this perspective is super important for the issues we bring to Congress.”
Haaland was elected to the House of Representatives in 2018 after campaigning under the slogan: “Congress has never heard a voice like mine.” Since then, she has introduced legislation that would establish a truth commission on Native American boarding schools and spearheaded two laws to combat the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women. Haaland will be the most senior Native American in the US government since the Republican Charles Curtis, a member of the Kaw nation situated in what is now Kansas, who served as vice-president to Herbert Hoover between 1929 and 1933.
“The emotional, sexual and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says: ‘It’s a girl'.”
Shirley Chisholm
Shirley Anita Chisholm (1924 – 2005) was an American politician, educator, and author. In 1968, she made HERstory by becoming the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress, representing New York's 12th congressional district for seven terms from 1969 to 1983.
The Brooklyn-born activist and political leader later entered the 1975 Democratic presidential race – becoming the first woman and the first black American to do so. In Congress, she quickly became known as a strong liberal who opposed weapons development and the war in Vietnam.
Chisholm, a founder of the National Women’s Political Caucus, supported the Equal Rights Amendment and the legalisation of abortions throughout her congressional career. She later wrote the autobiographical works Unbought and Unbossed (1970) and The Good Fight (1973).
“We must reject not only the stereotypes that
others hold of us, but also the stereotypes that
we hold of ourselves.”
"You alone are enough."
When she was 8 years old, Maya Angelou stopped speaking. She silenced her voice because she thought her voice had killed a man and for almost five years, she spoke to no one but her beloved brother, Bailey. The man she believed she had killed with her voice - her mother's boyfriend, Mr. Freeman - had raped her. After she testified against him in his trial, he was convicted and sentenced, but released from jail.
Four days later, he was found dead. Murdered. Probably by Angelou's uncles, her memoir implies.
Angelou told this story in her first book, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," her groundbreaking memoir about her childhood. Published in 1969, when she was 41 years old, the book established her voice – the one she had silenced as a child - as one of the most important in American literature.
Angelou's work takes readers on a personal journey through the African American experience of the 20th century. She writes with blazing honesty about racism, rape, her pregnancy at 16 and the deep fractures in her own family.
Her strong voice speaks to countless readers as her themes of finding identity, strength, economic, racial, and sexual oppression and courage carry deep resonance. Besides writing about racial inequality, Angelou wrote many empowering poems about women and their rights; she wrote about the hypocrisy of the world, and injustice, but also about love and nature.
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou (1928 – 2014) was an amazing woman with an incredible life story. She was an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several poetry books, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees.
"Each time a woman stands up for herself, she stands up for all women.”
“Yet if we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls.”
“I’ve got my own back.”
Her work and her life offer readers a personal journey through the African American experience of the 20th century, writing with blazing honesty about racism, rape, her pregnancy at 16 and the deep fractures in her own family. Her strong voice speaks to countless readers as her themes of finding identity, strength, economic, racial, and sexual oppression and courage carry deep resonance. Besides writing of racial inequality, Angelou wrote many empowering poems about women and their rights; she wrote about the hypocrisy of the world, and injustice, but also about love and nature.
“Touched by an angel”
“We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.
Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.
We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.”
“Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
One of Angelou’s most famous poems is Phenomenal Woman.
In this poem, Angelou speaks out about the dignity of being a woman, about self-pride and female grace. It is about sex appeal, about the inner power that radiates through in an inexplicable way. This kind of strength has nothing to do with a dress size or other beauty standards imposed on women: it has a deeper meaning, as it is connected to one’s identity.
A woman is therefore not only beautiful (as beautiful is something that is usually linked to outer beauty), but also phenomenal:
“It’s the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.”
“If you’re always trying to be normal, you’ll never know how amazing you can be.”
“We have the choice to use the gift of our life to make the world a better place – or not to bother."
Jane Goodall
Dame Jane Morris Goodall DBE (born on 3rd April 1934), is an English primatologist and anthropologist. In July 1960, at the age of 26, she travelled from England to what is now Tanzania and ventured into the little-known world of wild chimpanzees. She began studying them in the Gombe Stream National Park of Tanzania, and her extensive research (which spanned almost 60 years) has provided some of the most
groundbreaking insight into the minds and social lives of chimpanzees.
When Jane Goodall entered the forest of Gombe, the world knew very little about chimpanzees, and even less about their unique genetic kinship to humans. She took an unorthodox approach in her field research, immersing herself in their habitat and their lives to experience their complex society as a neighbour rather than a distant observer.
“Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference.”
She came to understand them not only as a species, but also as individuals with emotions and long-term bonds. Dr. Jane Goodall’s discovery in 1960 that chimpanzees make and use tools is considered one of the greatest achievements of twentieth-century scholarship. Her field research at Gombe transformed our understanding of chimpanzees and redefined the relationship between humans and animals in ways that continue to emanate around the world.
The primatologist and anthropologist went on to found the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977 as well as the Roots and Shoots program in 1991 to encourage wildlife conservation efforts. She is desperate to raise awareness of the urgent need to protect chimpanzees from extinction. Jane travels the world, speaking about the threats facing chimpanzees and environmental crises, urging each of us to take action
on behalf of all living things and the planet we share.
Malala Yousafzai
“We realise the importance of our own voices only when we are silenced.”
Malala Yousafzai (born on 12th July 1997), often referred to just as Malala, is a Pakistani activist for female education. After surviving an attempted assassination by the Taliban, she has since become a spokesperson for human rights, education and women’s rights.
In many parts of the world, girls are subjected to brutal violence and cannot live freely. Today, over 130 million girls are denied education due to poverty, war and discrimination - 5 million of them in Pakistan. Malala won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work in this area, becoming the youngest Nobel Prize laureate.
Malala’s story:
Malala was born in the Swat Valley, where many of the Pashtun people still value boys more than girls, so her arrival was less celebrated than it would have been if she had been a boy. However, Malala’s father Ziauddin was a humanitarian and education activist, with different views. He adored Mala, and from the start, he encouraged her to try to reach her full potential. She attended his school in the Swat city of Mingora, where she learned much - including how different boys’ and girls’ lives were, and that men were always in charge. But she also learnt from her father that things didn’t have to be this way. Things could change. He was a passionate advocate for women’s education and fought for everyone’s right to go to school, including poor people and girls.
When Malala was ten years old, the Taliban came to the Swat Valley and everything altered. They made bonfires from people's CDs, DVDs and televisions, and shut down cable TV. They prevented young children from being vaccinated against polio and banned them from playing.
Then the Taliban set their sights on girls’ schools. They pinned a letter to the gate of Ziauddin's school, warning him not to allow the girls to continue wearing the normal school uniform. Instead, they insisted the girls must wear burkas and cover their faces.
By 2008, the Taliban were using more violent methods to impose their rules, regularly blowing up schools – mostly girls’ schools. Malala, then eleven, was interviewed on several TV channels, speaking out for girls’ right to go to school. In a BBC interview, she said: “How dare the Taliban take away my right to education?”
Soon after, all girls' schools were forced to close and girls in the Swat Valley were forbidden to attend school. Excerpts from Malala's diary, describing life under the Taliban, were broadcast on BBC Radio under a pseudonym. Later, in a documentary, she said: “They cannot stop me... our challenge to the world around us is: save our school, save our Pakistan, save our Swat.”
Widespread protests caused the Taliban to partially relent and allow girls up to ten years old to attend school. Some older girls, such as Malala and her friends, continued to study in secret, hiding their schoolbooks under their shawls. In 2009, the Pakistani army moved in to oust the Taliban from the area, causing most people to evacuate. Malala’s family returned three months later, with the army claiming the Taliban were defeated - but soon school bombings began again. In her memoir, Malala describes her birthplace as "a heavenly place full of mountains, flowing waterfalls and clear lakes. The sign at the entrance to the valley reads ‘Welcome to Paradise’.” The Taliban were turning this paradise into a hell.
In January 2012, Malala travelled to Karachi with her family to make a speech at a school which was to be named in her honour. She said: “We want to be able to make our own decisions and be free to go to school or work. Nowhere in the Koran does it say that a woman should be dependent on a man or have to listen to a man.”
They were still in Karachi when Malala’s father saw on the internet that the Taliban had issued death threats against her. Proud of her but afraid for her safety, he urged her to stop speaking out against the Taliban, but she refused.
Malala was not allowed to walk to school anymore. Instead, she travelled by rickshaw to school, and came home on the back of the school ‘bus’—simply a truck with a canvas roof. One day, two men stepped into the road, forcing the truck to stop. One climbed into the back shouting, “Which one of you is Malala?” She was the only one without her face covered. The man fired three rapid shots—and the first hit Malala in the head. She was flown by helicopter to a military hospital, and then on to a hospital in the UK. She regained consciousness a week later, but the left side of her face had been paralysed. After an eight-hour operation, doctors managed to restore her facial nerves, and she began her recovery.
On 12 July 2013, her sixteenth birthday, Malala was invited to speak at the UN. The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, called the day ‘Malala Day’. He said: “I urge you to keep speaking out. Keep raising the pressure. Keep making a difference. And together let us follow the lead of this brave girl. Let us put education first. Let us make this world better for all.”
Malala replied: “Today is the day of every woman, boy and girl who has raised their voice for their rights. Let us wage a global struggle against illiteracy, poverty and terrorism. Let us pick up our books and pens, they are our most powerful weapons. Education is the only solution. Education first.”
The Taliban thought they could silence Malala by killing her, but instead, they gave her an even stronger voice, allowing HERstory and message to spread around the globe. She has set up the Malala Fund, which promotes girls’ rights to 12 years of free education in a safe environment. “I don’t want to be famous for being the girl who was shot by the Taliban. I want to be the girl who fights for education,” she explains. The Fund supports local activists in Syria, Nigeria, Pakistan and other countries where girls are affected by injustice and violence. “Extremists have shown what frightens them most – a girl with a book," says Malala. "With guns, you can kill terrorists, but with education, you can kill terrorism.”
Kamala Harris
“What I want young women and girls to know is that you are powerful and your voice matters.”
Kamala Devi Harris (born on 20th October 1964) is an American politician and attorney who is the 49th and current Vice President of the United States. She is the United States' first female vice president, the highest-ranking female elected official in U.S. history, and the first African American and first Asian American vice president - HERstory in the making!
Harris was born in Oakland, California, in 1964. Her mother Shyamala, an Indian immigrant, was a breast cancer researcher; she died in 2009. Donald, her father, is a Jamaican American economics professor. Both parents took her along to civil rights marches in her pushchair. With this family background, she was always aware of the legacy left by other activists, building the steps on which she climbed - something she alluded to in her acceptance speech at the DNC: "That I am here tonight is a testament to the dedication of generations before me – women such as Constance Baker Motley, Fannie Lou Hamer and Shirley Chisholm. Women who believed so fiercely in the promise of equality, liberty and justice for all.”
Harris’ achievement of reaching the second highest office in the country shatters the glass ceiling for so many of her countrywomen and citizens from ethnic minorities. She gives them hope for a future where the top tiers of US government will no longer be populated almost exclusively by white men. During her first speech as vice president-elect, she promised those listening, "While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last.”
Beyond race and gender, Kamala Harris continues to inspire many people in the US and around the world.
“You are powerful and your voice matters.”
"This is a country of possibilities, and to the children of our country, regardless of your gender, our country has sent you a clear message: Dream with ambition, lead with conviction and see yourselves in a way that others may not, simply because they've never seen it before. But know that we will applaud you every step of the way".
She continues to write HERstory by ignoring those who don't believe she has the right or ability to achieve change. "I didn't listen. And the people didn't listen, either. And we won."
“Aging is not lost youth but a new stage of opportunity and strength.”
Betty Friedan
Betty Naomi Goldstein, An American writer and activist, was born in 1921 in Peoria, Illinois. Her mother was a Hungarian immigrant who worked as a journalist until Friedan was born, while her father, a Russian immigrant, was a jeweller.
Friedan gained a psychology degree at a women's college while also pursuing literary activities. But it was at the University of California, Berkeley, while in a graduate psychology program, that she became involved in several political causes. She left Berkeley after a year to move to New York, where her interest in women's rights grew. This led to her writing union pamphlets that took up the cause of women's workplace rights.
In 1947, she married Carl Friedan, a would-be theatre producer working in advertising. She continued working through the next decade while having her three children, and in 1956, the family moved to suburban Rockland County. There, Friedan became predominantly a housewife and mother, although she also did freelance writing for women’s magazines and began researching for a book she had in mind (which would later become The Feminine Mystique).
At a 15-year school reunion, she did a survey of her former classmates and found that, like her, most were dissatisfied with the limited sphere in which suburban housewives now existed. She spent the next five years interviewing women across the country. Her material showed that the role of white, middle-class women had changed. The independent and career-minded women who had existed in the 1920s and 1930s were increasingly rare. Post-war housewives were encouraged and expected to find their fulfilment within their homes and families.
Her findings became the basis for many articles, and, eventually, The Feminine Mystique. Published in 1963, her book was an immediate best-seller. It's considered one of the sparks that fired the second wave of feminism and is still regarded as one of the most influential books of the 20th century.
After reading her work, women recognised Friedan's "problem that has no name” and spoke up, raising public awareness of women's dissatisfaction with their modern role. It also brought many women into the growing women’s movement and made Friedan one of the movement's leaders.
In 1966, Friedan co-founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) with Pauli Murray and Aileen Hernandez, becoming its first president. The organisation's mission statement, written by her, was “…to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all the privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men.” NOW's first campaign was for Equal Employment Opportunities.
Friedan's activism burned brightly throughout the 1960s and 1970s. She helped found the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws in 1969 (later known as the National Abortion Rights Action League) and organised the Women’s Strike for Equality on 26th August 1970 - the 50th anniversary of women’s suffrage. Friedan also co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971 with Congresswomen Bella Abzug and Shirley Chisholm, and feminist Gloria Steinem.
“When she stopped conforming to the conventional picture of femininity she finally began to enjoy being a woman.”
In later decades, she supported and founded campaigns and organisations against paying taxes during the Vietnam War, gun violence and pornography too. Friedan was instrumental in changing not just the views of many people, but also in changing outdated laws regarding hiring practices, gender pay inequality, and pregnancy discrimination. She died in 2006, leaving an amazing legacy.
Hedy Lamarr
Hedy Lamarr (1914 – 2000) was an Austrian-American actress and inventor who pioneered the technology that would one day form the basis for today’s WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth communication systems. As a natural beauty she was seen widely on the big screen in films like Samson and Delilah and White Cargo.
Lamarr was originally Hedwig Eva Kiesler, born in Vienna, Austria on November 9th, 1914 into a well-to-do Jewish family. An only child, Lamarr received a great deal of attention from her father, a bank director and curious man, who inspired her to look at the world with open eyes. He would often take her for long walks where he would discuss the inner-workings of different machines, like the printing press or street cars. These conversations guided Lamarr’s thinking and at only 5 years of age, she could be found taking apart and reassembling her music box to understand how the machine operated. Meanwhile, Lamarr’s mother was a concert pianist and introduced her to the arts, placing her in both ballet and piano lessons from a young age.
Lamarr’s brilliant mind was ignored, and her beauty took centre stage when she was discovered by director Max Reinhardt at age 16. She studied acting with Reinhardt in Berlin and was in her first small film role by 1930, however, it wasn’t until 1932 that Lamarr gained name recognition as an actress for her role in the controversial film, Ecstasy.
Austrian munitions dealer, Fritz Mandl, became one of Lamarr’s adoring fans when he saw her in the play Sissy. Lamarr and Mandl married in 1933 but it was short-lived. She once said, “I knew very soon that I could never be an actress while I was his wife … He was the absolute monarch in his marriage … I was like a doll. I was like a thing, some object of art which had to be guarded—and imprisoned—having no mind, no life of its own.”
“I can excuse anything except boredom.”
She was very unhappy, and finally escaped from Mandl’s grasp in1937 by fleeing to London. However, she took with her the knowledge gained from dinner-table conversation about wartime weaponry.
While in London, Lamarr’s luck turned when she was introduced to Louis B. Mayer from MGM Studios, which gave her an introduction to Hollywood. She entranced American audiences with her grace, beauty, and accent. Among the fascinating people she meant in Hollywood was businessman and pilot Howard Hughes.
Lamarr dated Hughes but she was most focused on his ambitions as an innovator. Her association with him brought her scientific mind to the fore once again, doing experiments in the trailer while on set with a small set of equipment he had given her. Hughes took her to his factories, showing her how the aeroplanes were built, and introduced her to scientists. Hughes wanted to create faster planes for the US military and Lamarr bought books on fish and birds to study how they achieved speed. Inspired by the fins and wings of the fastest of these creatures, she sketched a new wing design for Hughes’ planes, who told her, “You’re a genius.” Lamarr did not think of herself as a genius, however, and once said, “Improving things comes naturally to me.” She went on to design an improved stoplight and a tablet that dissolved in water to make a Coca-Cola-like fizzy drink. However, her most significant invention was created as the US prepared to enter World War II.
In 1940, Lamarr met George Antheil - another quirky entrepreneur. During her marriage to Mandl had given her an understanding of munitions and weaponry, and she began to work on ideas in this area with Antheil. began to tinker with ideas. They invented an amazing new communication system for torpedo guidance. The system used 'frequency hopping'; both the transmitter and receiver would 'hop' to new frequencies, preventing the interception of the radio waves so that the torpedo could reach its intended target.
However, Lamarr didn't receive any award for her work for many years. She would have to wait until 1997, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation jointly awarded Lamarr and Antheil with the Pioneer Award. Lamarr was also the first woman to receive the Invention Convention’s Bulbie Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award.
“I am my own muse.”
Frida Kahlo
“I am my own muse. I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to better."
Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón (1907-1954) was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artefacts of Mexico. Her thought-provoking work, based in magical realism, was known around the world, and her 1938 self-portrait, The Frame, was the first work by a 20th-century Mexican artist to be featured in the Louvre.
Kahlo suffered from polio as a child and nearly died in a bus accident as a teenager, which left her with health problems for the rest of her life. It was while recovering from her multiple serious fractures, encased in a body cast, that she began to focus on painting while recovering in a body cast. In her lifetime, she had 30 operations and also suffered miscarriages as a result of damage to her pelvis.
“I used to think I was the strangest person in the world.”
Frida's work is recognisable by its bold, vibrant colours. It is praised for depicting Mexican and Indigenous culture and acknowledging the female experience and form. In her body of work, which consists of around 200 paintings, sketches and drawings, she depicts her physical and emotional pain, including her difficult relationship with her husband, artist Diego Rivera- whom she married twice. 55 of her 143 paintings are self-portraits. She explained: “I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best."
Although she was occasionally commissioned to paint portraits, Kahlo sold few paintings in her lifetime. There was just one solo exhibition of her work in Mexico in 1953, just a year before she died, aged 47. However, her work has gained popularity and value in the decades since her death. In May 2006, one of her self-portraits, Roots, sold for $5.62 million at a Sotheby's auction in New York. This was a new record: the most expensive Latin American artwork ever purchased at auction.
She was unapologetic about her identity as a woman, a feminist, and a bisexual, and about her choice of lovers, including American-born French entertainer Josephine Baker. Despite her looks being referred to as 'masculine', she refused to get rid of her faint moustache or monobrow, and even exaggerated them in her self-portraits. She dressed as she wanted, in bright, bold dresses, and often wore flowers and ribbons. Her art pushed boundaries too, touching on issues seen as highly taboo at the time, such as abortion, miscarriage, birth and breastfeeding.
Frida Kahlo is recognised today not just for the talent displayed in her work, but also her determination in the face of hardship and the gender bias of society. Her defiance of social conventions continues to be an inspiration for many.
“The most dangerous phrase in the language is: it’s always been that way."
Grace Hopper
Grace Murray Hopper (1906 – 1992) was a curious child who showed an early interest in engineering. One of her childhood hobbies was taking apart household items and putting them back together.
Hopper earned her Master's and PhD in Mathematics from Yale – a very rare accomplishment for a woman at the time. After joining the Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service), she was commissioned as a Lieutenant (Junior Grade) in 1944 and assigned to Harvard University's Bureau of Ordnance Computation Project. Her team were working on an early prototype of the electronic computer - Mark I. They coined the now-familiar word 'bug' to describe a computer malfunction.
After World War II, Hopper first worked as a research fellow at Harvard faculty and then joined the Eckert-Mauchly Corporation. Here, she again did groundbreaking work in computer technology, helping to create the first all-electronic digital, UNIVAC. She also invented the first computer compiler, a program that translates written instructions into computer code. This in turn led her to co-develop COBOL, one of the first standardised computer languages, which allowed computers to respond to words, not just numbers.
During this time, Hopper also lectured widely, delivering up to 300 lectures per year. One of her statements at this time would have been hard to believe, but it turned out to be a very accurate forecast: she predicted that computers would one day fit on a desk and be used widely in everyday life - not just by programmers.
Hopper retained her connection with the Naval Reserve throughout her career. By 1966, she held the rank of Commander; she became a Captain in 1973, a Commodore in 1983, and a Rear Admiral in 1985. Two years later, she was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the highest decoration that can be awarded to non-combatants. In 1973, Hopper became the first woman to be named a distinguished fellow of the British Computer Society.
Eleanor Roosevelt
“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself “I lied through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.” You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
A shy, insecure child, Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 – 1962) would grow up to become one of the most important and beloved First Ladies, authors, reformers, and female leaders of the 20th century.
Born on October 11, 1884 in New York City, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the first of Elliot and Anna Hall Roosevelt’s three children. Her family was affluent and politically prominent, and while her childhood was in many ways blessed, it was also marked by hardship: her father’s alcoholism, as well as the deaths of both parents and one of her brothers before she was ten years old. She was raised by her harsh and critical maternal grandmother, who damaged Eleanor’s self-esteem. Timid and awkward, she believed that she compared badly with other girls.
In 1899, Roosevelt began her three years of study at London’s Allenswood Academy, where she became more independent and confident. She returned to New York for her social debut in 1902, where she became involved with the settlement house movement, teaching immigrant children and families.
In 1905, after a long courtship, she married her distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a charming, Harvard graduate in his first year of law school at Columbia University. Her uncle and close relative, President Theodore Roosevelt, walked her down the aisle.
“You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
The Roosevelts settled in New York, where Eleanor found herself under the thumb of her controlling mother-in-law, Sara Roosevelt, who, like her grandmother earlier, was harsh in her criticism of her daughter-in-law. While Franklin advanced his career, his wife raised their daughter and four sons under the watchful eye of her belittling mother-in-law.
All that changed in 1911, when Franklin was elected to the New York State Senate, and the couple moved to Albany, away from Sara. Two years later, the Roosevelts moved to Washington, DC, and when World War I broke out, she volunteered with various relief agencies. Roosevelt promoted women’s political engagement, playing a leadership role in several organizations, including the League of Women Voters and the Women’s Trade Union League and soon became the most politically active and influential First Lady in history.
In the White House from 1933 to 1945, First Lady Roosevelt kept a dizzying schedule. She wrote nearly 3,000 articles in newspapers and magazines, including a monthly column in Women’s Home Companion, donating what she earned from the column to charity.
"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
She also authored six books and travelled nationwide delivering countless speeches. She held weekly press conferences with women reporters who she hoped would get her message to the American people.
Roosevelt had immense influence on her husband’s decisions as president and in shaping America, and her political activism did not end with her husband’s death in 1945.
In 1946, she was appointed as a delegate to the United Nations, the institution established by her husband. She remained in this role for a decade, a dedicated advocate for world peace. She not only chaired the United Nations Human Rights Commission, she also helped write the 1948 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, as well as chairing the President’s Commission on the Status of Women, which released a ground-breaking study about gender discrimination a year after her death in 1963. Roosevelt worked on the Equal Pay Act, too, that was passed that same year.
Roosevelt’s commitment to racial justice was evident in her civil rights work and efforts to push Washington to take swifter action in housing desegregation and protections for Freedom Riders and other activists. Kennedy nominated Roosevelt for the Nobel Peace Prize and though she did not win, she remained at the top of national polls ranking the most respected women in America decades after her death. She dramatically changed the role of the first lady, advocating for human rights, women’s rights and children’s causes, and has definitely made history HERstory.
Marie Curie
Marie Skłodowska Curie (1876 – 1934), born Maria Salomea Skłodowska, was a physicist and chemist. She is famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity.
Curie was born in Warsaw on 7th November 1867. Her father, who taught at a secondary school, supplemented her school education with scientific training. She became involved in a students’ revolutionary organisation and in 1891, she left Poland for the Sorbonne in Paris to continue her learning. There, she won awards in Physics and the Mathematical Sciences and met Pierre Curie, a Professor in the School of Physics, whom she married in 1895.
She succeeded her husband as Head of the Physics Laboratory at the Sorbonne and gained her Doctor of Science degree in 1903. On Pierre's death, Curie took over his role as Professor of General Physics in the Faculty of Sciences - the first woman to be appointed to the role - and became Director of the Curie Laboratory in the Radium Institute of the University of Paris, founded in 1914.
In the early years of the research she undertook with her husband, they had poor laboratory facilities and both had to undertake extensive teaching commitments to make a living. But they were inspired by Henri Becquerel's discovery of radioactivity in 1896, and their own studies led to the isolation of polonium, named after the country of Marie Curie's birth, and radium. Curie also developed methods to separate sufficient quantities of radium from radioactive residues for research purposes, ensuring its properties could be studied.
“Have no fear of perfection, you will never reach it.”
Its potential therapeutic properties were of particular interest. These achievements earned her great respect from scientists worldwide. She was also awarded many honorary science, medicine and law degrees. together with honorary memberships of learned societies around the world.
She and her husband Pierre received the Davy Medal of the Royal Society in 1903, and in the same year, shared half of the Nobel Prize fund for Physics in 1903 (with Henri Becquerel himself as the winner of the other half). In 1911 she was the sole winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and in1921, President Harding of the United States, presented her with one gram of radium in recognition of her service to science, purchased with the contributions of American women.
She spent the rest of her life predominantly studying medical uses of radioactivity and the development of x-radiography with her daughter Irene. Today, Marie Curie is most remembered and celebrated for laying the groundwork for the use of radioactivity in diagnosis and cancer treatment.
“Spread love everywhere you go.”
Mother Teresa
Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.”
Mother Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu (1910 – 1997), honoured in the Catholic Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, was a Roman Catholic nun and missionary of Albanian-Indian descent.
Mary (baptised as Agnes) was brought up in Skopje. She felt called to God at the age of twelve, and became determined to be a missionary. When she was eighteen, she travelled to Dublin to join the Sisters of Loreto. After a short period of training, she travelled to one of their missions in India and there, in 1931, she took her initial vows.
She spent the next 17 years teaching at St. Mary’s High School in Calcutta. During that time, she took her final vows (earning the traditional title of Mother used by the Sisters of Loreto, and became fluent in Benglai and Hindi.
She was dedicated to the education of these girls, who came from the very poorest families - but seeing the suffering and poverty all around her made her long to do more. However, it took another year for her to gain permission to be released from the order.
In 1948, she finally left the school and devoted herself to hands-on work in Calcutta's slums instead. With no funds, she started an outdoor school for children, and as her work became known, she gained financial support and volunteers to help her in her work.
In 1950, Mother Teresa received permission from the Holy See to start The Missionaries of Charity, her own Order. The main purpose was to provide love and care for people with nobody else to provide it for them. The Order began with just a few members, primarily former pupils and colleagues from the school, but it soon grew. Over the next two decades, the Order set up a leper colony, an orphanage, medical clinics and a nursing home.
After being awarded the Decree of Praise by Pope Paul VI, Mother Teresa began to expand the Order's work overseas, establishing charity houses around the world to help disaster victims, alcoholics, homeless people, and AIDS sufferers.
When she died in 1997, the order had 4000 members (including Brothers and Priests), and ran 610 foundations in 123 countries. The Order is still active today, with thousands of volunteers, and cooperates with many other charitable organisations worldwide.
Mother Teresa received many awards for her work. They include the Jewel of India (the highest civilian honour in India), the Soviet Union's Gold Medal of the Soviet Peace Committee, the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize (1971), and the Nehru Prize for her promotion of international peace and understanding (1972). In 1979, she was awarded both the Balzan Prize and the Nobel Peace Prize - the latter in recognition of her work "in bringing help to suffering humanity."
“One of the best things that has ever happened to me is that I’m a woman. That is the way all females should feel.”
Marilyn Monroe
Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.”
Marilyn Monroe (1926 – 1962) was an American actress, model, and singer. She became a hugely popular sex symbol and actress, famous for her roles playing a 'blonde bombshell'. She was both a driver and a symbol of changing attitudes to sexuality in the 1950s and 60s.
Marilyn was born in Los Angeles as Norma Jeane Mortenson, but was later given her mother's surname of Baker (possibly because she was;t a Mortensen; DNA testing suggests he wasn't her father). She had a difficult childhood; her mother and maternal grandparents were committed to mental institutions, resulting in her living in a succession of relatives' homes, foster homes, and an orphanage. During this period, she suffered numerous sexual assaults.
“To all the girls who think you’re fat because you’re not a size zero, you’re the beautiful one, it’s society who is ugly.”
In 1942, at just 16, she married James Dougherty, who worked with her in an aircraft factory. He joined the Merchant Marines and was sent to the South Pacific during World War 2, while Norma was 'discovered' by a photographer. She left the factory behind for a successful modelling career and soon left behind Dougherty too, divorcing him in 1946. Shortly after, she signed a film contract with 20th Century Fox.
An acting career meant a new name and a new hair colour. Brown-haired Norma Jeane became platinum-blonde Marilyn Monroe. She starred in films that are now classics, such as Gentleman Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire.
She married again in 1954, but her baseball star husband, Joe DiMaggio, was just as uncomfortable with Marilyn's image and rising fame as her first husband was. They divorced after just nine months. Despite later claims that he had been abusive, they remained good friends.
Fed up with being typecast and poorly paid, Monroe set up her own production company in 1954, and spent 1955 growing the company and studying method acting under Lee Strasberg. A new contract with Fox followed, offering higher pay and more control over her career. This period saw greater critical acclaim for films such as Bus Stop (1956), 1957's The Princess and the Showgirl (her first independent production)m and Some Like it Hot (1959), for which she won a Golden Globe for Best Actress.
However, she had also embarked on a third marriage during this time, to famous playwright Arthur Miller in 1956. It lasted four years, but it's thought to have contributed to her mental health issues during that time, and she was admitted to hospital twice for psychiatric observation.
"Imperfection is beauty.”
Her last completed film was The Misfits (1961). On 5th August 1962, Monroe was found dead from a barbiturate overdose at her home in California. She was just 36 years old.
Marilyn Monroe divided opinion among women; she was admired and imitated by many, who loved her look and didn't care whether she was 'taken seriously', but others were disgusted or intimidated by her glamour, confidence and sexuality. She shared her views on the subject in 1959: “I’d like to be known as a real actress and human being,” she said, “but listen, there’s nothing wrong with glamour either. I think everything adds up. I’ll never knock glamour. But I want to be in the kind of pictures where I can develop seriously as a woman, not just wear tights.”
Marilyn was a strong woman who consistently fought for what she wanted and believed in, writing HERstory in a Hollywood era when men made all the decisions.
Florence Nightingale
“Live life when you have it. Life is a splendid gift – there is nothing small about it.”
Florence Nightingale (1820 – 1910) was a nurse whose caring nature, innovative practices and leadership made her famous. She gained the affectionate nickname 'The Lady with the Lamp'.
Florence Nightingale was born in Florence, Italy, to wealthy English parents who took her back to England in 1821. Her father gave her a comprehensive education at home, but despite her intelligence and diligence, she was expected, like other women of her station, to marry while still young rather than pursue a career.
However, in her teenage years, she became involved in philanthropy, caring for local people struggling with sickness or poverty. By 16, she believed God had called her to become a nurse. Nursing wasn't a respected profession and initially, her parents refused to give her permission to pursue it. But by 1844, she had announced that nursing would be her life.
She travelled extensively over the next decade, and while in Rome in 1847, she met Sidney Herbert, the former Secretary at War, who was on honeymoon with his new wife. They became lifelong friends.
In the early 1950s, she began nursing at the Institute for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in Upper Harley Street, London and was eventually promoted to Superintendent. However, she wasn't to have a long career there. The Crimean War began in 1953, and soon, newspapers were full of tales of the terrible conditions in which injured soldiers were living.
“There is nothing small about life.”
In 1854, Nightingale was recruited by her old friend Sidney Herbert to lead a group of 38 nurses to Crimea. When they arrived at the British camp outside of Constantinople, they received a frosty reception from the doctors, who weren't keen to work with female nurses. But they were much needed; supplies were low, hygiene was terrible, and the staff was overworked. The soldiers were as much in danger from infections and infectious diseases as they were from their injuries.
It was in the Crimea that Nightingale got her 'Lady with the Lamp' nickname, as she patrolled the wards at night, checking on her patients. Within a few months, she and her team transformed the care of the wounded and the survival rate increased dramatically. Her reports back to Britain resulted in a new prefab hospital designed by Isambard Brunel and a visit from the Sanitary Commission to improve ventilation and sanitation.
On her return to London, Nightingale continued to improve hospital conditions. She presented her findings and data to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1856, prompting them to form a Royal Commission to improve the health of the British Army.
So skilled was she at statistics that in 1858 she was elected as the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society. A year later, she helped to set up the Army Medical College in Chatham and published Notes on Nursing: What it is, and What it is Not. Her book provided guidelines for patient care and safe hospital environments.
The Nightingale Fund had been established in 1955 to allow her to continue training nurses. This helped to fund the Nightingale Training School at St. Thomas’ Hospital, which opened in 1960.
Sadly, Nightingale was often ill herself in her later years, but she continued to advocate for safe nursing practices until she died in 1910, and her legacy remains strong. The International Committee of the Red Cross created the Florence Nightingale Medal in 1912, which is awarded for nursing excellence every two years, and International Nurses' Day has been celebrated on her birthday since 1965.
“Be a first-rate version of yourself instead of a second-rate version of someone else.”
Judy Garland
Judy Garland (1922 – 1969), mother of Liza Minelli, was born in Minnesota to a theatrical family as Frances Ethel Gumm. Her mother pressured her to perform and may have given her drugs to increase her energy. At just 13 years old, she signed a contract with MGM and starred in The Wizard of Oz in 1939. MGM later dropped her, but she continued on her path to stardom, taking roles in both films and musicals. One of her most famous films was Meet Me in St Louis, and her work life kept her very busy.
However, her hectic schedule and the tremendous pressure put on her to maintain her looks and watch her weight took their toll. The studio put her on a strict, unhealthy diet, and gave her amphetamines for energy and weight loss. They started her on a journey of amphetamine reliance and a need for other drugs to help her sleep and perform. Substance misuse, addiction and depression increasingly dominated the rest of her life.
She had two short-lived marriages, the second of which was to Liza Minelli's father Vincent, a film director. Her third marriage to producer Sid Luft, in 1954, was also reportedly stormy. However, they had two children together and he provided a huge boost to her career. She won two Grammys in the 1960s, and an Academy Award for the film A Star is Born. Her divorce from Luft was quickly followed by another short marriage to actor Mark Herron.
By the end of the 1960's, Garland was noticeably suffering, mentally and physically, and in financial trouble. She married club manager Mickey Deans in March 1969, whom she allegedly met when she bought drugs from him. In June, he discovered her dead from a barbiturate overdose; her troubled life and successful career had ended at just 47.
"Trust in God – She will provide.”
Emmeline Pankhurst
Emmeline Pankhurst (1858 – 1928) was a British political activist, famous for leading the UK's suffragette movement.
Emmeline Goulden was born into a Manchester family with radical political ideas on both sides. She was only 14 when she became determined to campaign for the right of women to vote, after attending a political talk with her mother. That cause became the guiding principle of her life. Despite her parents' support of women's voting rights, though, they didn't believe that women could perform as well as men academically or in the workplace.
In 1879, she married lawyer Richard Pankhurst. Richard supported women's suffrage and had written the Married Women's Property Acts of 1870 and 1882, which allowed women to keep earnings or property acquired before and after marriage.
“I would rather be a rebel than a slave.”
They had five children over the next decade, one of whom died young, but Pankhurst kept campaigning, employing staff to help with childcare.
In 1889, Emmeline co-founded the Women's Franchise League, which campaigned for the voting rights of both married and unmarried women - at odds with other suffragette movements that considered married women did not need the vote, as their husbands 'voted for them.'
Voting rights for women were not Emmeline's only concern. She worked as a Poor Law Guardian and became very concerned for the poor and oppressed in society. She believed that not only did women have the right to vote, but that society would be the better for it. She also supported her husband in his unsuccessful attempts to be elected as an MP, and tried unsuccessfully to join the Independent Labour Party, attracted by the range of issues they wanted to tackle. The local branch rejected her application on the grounds of her sex, but she was later granted membership on a national level.
Her campaigning began to involve her in legal battles, with her husband acting as counsel. His death in 1898, while she was abroad, was a great shock to her - and left her in considerable debt. She moved her family to a smaller home and took a paid position as Registrar of Births and Deaths in Chorlton.
In October 1903, she helped found the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU); her three daughters were members too. They had a more militant outlook than the WFL and their motto was ‘deeds not words’, but they tried to campaign peacefully at first. However, they became desperate in the face of continued opposition; disruptive demonstrations, hunger strikes, and sometimes arson and vandalism, became integral to their campaigning. Pankhurst was arrested numerous times and force-fed during hunger strikes. Another member, Emily Davison was killed when she threw herself under the king's horse at the 1913 Derby to protest at the government's continued refusal to grant women the vote.
It wasn't until 1918 that the Representation of the People Act gave voting rights to women over 30, and this age limit was lowered to 21 in 1928. Sadly, Pankhurst had died three weeks beforehand, unable to witness the granting of a right she had campaigned so hard for.
Nawal el Saadawi
Nawal El Saadawi (born 27th October 1931) was an Egyptian feminist writer, activist, physician, and psychiatrist.
El Saadawi was born in Kafr Tahla, a village north of Cairo, and was one of nine children. She underwent female genital mutilation at age 6 despite her parents being relatively liberal for the time and place. Her father was from what she described as "the peasant class," while her mother was from a wealthy upper class, and just 15 when they married. They wanted El Saadawi herself to marry at 10, but she rebelled and her mother supported her.
Initially, she was drawn to music and dancing, but her father could not afford to buy a piano, so she focused on academic study and excelled, meaning she was automatically channelled into medicine. She graduated from the University of Cairo in 1955, specialising in psychiatry, and returned to Kafr Tahla to work as a doctor.
In 1972, she published her first book, Women and Sex, the first of a series of books in which she attacked the aggressions carried out against women and their bodies: female circumcision, the brutal rituals around proving bridal virginity, and more. This controversial book robbed her of her job and forced the closure of her magazine, al-Sihha [Health].
She continued to write, publishing Woman at Point Zero in 1973 and The Hidden Face of Eve in 1977, although she was attracting anger from the state and knew they would eventually move against her - especially as she had been critical of the government.
“They say I am a savage and dangerous woman. I am speaking the truth and the truth is savage and dangerous.”
In September 1981, she was taken from her apartment in Giza during a round-up of 'rebels' that President Sadat had ordered arrested. In prison, imprisoned in a cell with other women, she continued to write her memoir on toilet paper, thanks to an eye pencil she had smuggled in. She also formed the Arab Women's Solidarity Association while imprisoned - the first legal and independent feminist group in Egypt.
A small transistor radio had also been smuggled in, so she and her cellmates quickly heard of the assassination of the president on 6th October. After 4 weeks, she was taken to see the new president, who set her free after talking to her. However, she was furious after being incarcerated for three months, without any contact with her husband and children, having committed no crime - and brought a court case, which she won.
She won her court case and carried on writing, but now it was under government restriction. Her work was censored, and although she wasn't imprisoned, she was isolated and received death threats. After she was included on a 'death list' published in a Saudi newspaper, she and her husband went into exile, and she took teaching posts in European and US universities.
She returned to both Egypt and her campaign against FGM, the veil, and other women's issues in 1996. Around 90% of Eguptian girls were circumcised at the time, and while the practice became illegal in 2008, it made no difference to the statistics.
El Saadawi said: “You can’t change such a deep-rooted habit by passing a law. You need education. The law was passed to satisfy the West. They wanted to cover that disgrace, not to eradicate the practice itself. You have to change the minds of the mothers and fathers and even of the girls themselves, who have been brainwashed to accept it – how long it takes depends on the courage of writers.”
Her Egyptian supporters established the Nawal El Saadawi forum to hold meetings to discuss her books, of which she had written over 50.
"The beginning is always today.”
Mary Woolstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 – 1797) was an English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights, and mother of writer Mary Shelley.
Wollstonecraft was born into a wealthy family, but she and her mother were abused by her father - a drunkard who squandered the family's fortune. Her formal education lasted just a few years and she was always resentful of this, particularly because her brother had a much better education. Her feminist ideals were sometimes dangerously ahead of the times, though, and when she persuaded her sister Eliza - who was probably suffering from post-partum depression - to leave her husband and baby, she doomed her to a life of poverty and social condemnation.
Wollstonecraft set about educating herself and earning her own living, and by 25, she had opened a small girls’ school with her sisters and a friend, Fanny. Unfortunately, the school struggled financially and her departure to nurse Fanny, who had married and moved abroad, was its death knell.
After this, she took a job as a governess, albeit unwillingly, with Lord and Lady Kingsborough in Cork. She found her mistress 'frivolous' and deeply unlikeable and longed for the intellectual stimulation of London and her friends. After a troubled and unhappy year, she was fired and returned to London, emotionally and financially drained.
Luckily, the liberal publisher Joseph Johnson hired her as a translator and book reviewer and published her first book, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, in 1787.
After her rejection by a married suitor, Wollstonecraft went to Paris in 1792 to immerse herself in its revolutionary spirit. Her best-selling book, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, was published the same year; it passionately advocated for women's access to the same education and opportunities as men, which would enable them to contribute equally to society.
In Paris, she lived with an American captain, Gilbert Imlay, and gave birth to their daughter Fanny in 1994. After their relationship broke down, she returned to London, devastated, and attempted suicide by throwing herself off Putney Bridge.
However, she began to rebuild her life in London, spending time at the house of her publisher, Johnson, and meeting his friends, many of them radical thinkers. His circle included William Blake, Thomas Paine, William Wordsworth, Thomas Holcroft and William Godwin, whom Wollstonecraft had first met at Johnson's house in 1791.
She and Godwin fell in love, and despite Godwin's opposition to marriage on principle, they wed in 1797 when she fell pregnant. However, they continued living separately.
Sadly, when Wollstonecraft gave birth to her daughter, also named Mary, in August, things did not go smoothly. On 30 August, she went into labour and after about 18 hours she gave birth to her second child, a daughter, also named Mary. Although there were only minor complications, the incompetence of the surgeon led to Wollstonecraft suffering haemorrhaging and infection. She died 11 days later, aged just 38.
Although she was a controversial figure, as time went on, Wollstonecraft came to be recognised as a leading light of feminism, lauded by notable figures in the movement such as suffragist leader Millicent Fawcett and writer Virginia Woolf. Today, she is seen as an icon in the ongoing fight against misogyny, inequality and sexual injustice, and her work is still published and read around the world.
Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia Totto O'Keeffe (1887 – 1986), an American artist, was integral to both American modernism and feminism. She is known primarily for her paintings of enlarged natural objects such as flowers.
O'Keeffe was raised on a Wisconsin dairy farm. Her artistic talent was encouraged at home and school; she and her sisters had lessons from local watercolourist Sara Mann. After graduating high school, she attended the Art Institute of Chicago from 1905-6, then, after a bout of typhoid fever, she attended the Art Students League in New York City in 1907-8. Here, the course was dominated by realism. She won the William Merritt Chase still-life prize in 1908 for her painting, Untitled (Dead Rabbit with Copper Pot), winning a scholarship to the League's summer school in New York.
At this point, circumstances conspired to stop o'Keeffe painting for the next four years. She learned her father had gone bankrupt and her mother was ill with TB, so there was no way to finance more study. She didn't want to work in the mimetic tradition in which she'd primarily been taught. She took a job as a commercial artist in Chicago until 1910, then moved to her family's new home in Virginia, first to recuperate from measles and then to teach art. It was there, at a summer course for art teachers in 1912, that she came across the concept of abstraction and Arthur Dow's Japanese-influenced approach: the idea that art could be about expressing the artist's feelings and thoughts rather than a literal rendering of what they could see,
This inspired her to start creating again, and in 1915, while still teaching, she produced a set of abstract charcoal drawings that she sent to a former classmate, Anita Pollitzer, in New York. Pollitzer showed them to Alfred Stieglitz, a well-known photographer, who exhibited them in his famous 291 gallery.
“I have been absolutely terrified every moment of my life – and I have never let it keep me from doing a single thing.”
Watercolours followed, and in 2018 she moved to New York to take up Steiglitz's offer of support: finance, accommodation, and a place to paint. Their professional relationship soom became a personal one, despite the fact he was married. His divorce was a lengthy process, and he didn't marry O'Keeffe until 1924. His work included hundreds of nude photographs of her, and this, combined with her bold work and the sexual interpretations often attributed to it - expecially by Steiglitz himself - added to her reputation as an edgy, sexually-liberated artist and woman.
However, as a member of the radical feminist National Woman’s Party, O'Keeffe rejected the idea that women have certain inherent character traits, and the gendererd interperetations of her work. She disliked Steiglitz's sexualized public portrayal of her, and after the Anderson Galleries exhibition of 1923, she went out of her way to change her public image. She promoted herself as a serious, professional artist - writing HERstory instead of his.
Stieglitz continued to promote his wife's work, especially the close studies of flowers that she started to paint in the mid-1920s. She had numerous one-woman gallery exhibitions, and her first retrospective, 'Paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe', opened at the Brooklyn Museum in 1927. Despite working in a world dominated by men, who were often critical of female artists, this success continued throughout her career. She once said, “The men liked to put me down as the best woman painter. I think I’m one of the
best painters.”
From 1929 onwards, she spent part of the year in the Southwest, and three years after Stieglitz's death in 1946, O’Keeffe moved to New Mexico, drawn by its landscapes and vibrancy. She spent the next 40 years there, apart from travels abroad. She was a canny businesswoman and sometimes bought back her works at auction, helping to stimulate the highly lucrative market for her art.
Although macular degeneration made oil painting difficult from the 1970s onwards, she continued to work in pencil, watercolor, and clay, sometimes with the help of an assistant. She was awarded the Medal of Freedom in 1977 and the National Medal of Arts in 1985.
She moved to Santa Fe and stopped working when her health worsened in 1984, and died there two years later, at the age of ninety-eight. It was here that the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum - the first museum in the United States dedicated to a single female artist - opened in 1997, providing a home for over 1000 of her works.
“Well behaved woman seldom make history."
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
This famous quote is variously attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, Anne Boleyn, Marilyn Monroe and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. However, the earliest evidence of its use seems to be in an academic paper in American Quarterly in 1976. Later versions sometimes change 'seldom' to 'never' or 'rarely'.
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American historian and a professor at Harvard University.
She was born in 1938 in Sugar City, Idaho. She graduated from the University of Utah in 1960 with a BA in English. Over the next ten years, Ulrich raised her family in Boston, where she and her husband had moved for his graduate work at MIT. During this period, she worked with a group of Mormon women to produce a popular guidebook to Boston and found a Mormon feminist newspaper. Exponent II.
She gained an MA in English at Simmons College in 1971 and again moved for her husband’s career, this time, a role at the University of New Hampshire’s Engineering School. As a faculty wife, Ulrich got tuition benefits and decided to study history. After completing a Ph.D. in Early American History in 1980, she accepted a part-time position administering the University’s freshmen humanities program. Her revised dissertation, Good Wives, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1982.
Her second book, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, made history - and HERstory. Published in 1990, by which time Ulrich was a full-time member of the UNH history department, the book won the Pulitzer Prize in History—the first book of women’s history to receive the prize.
In 1995, Ulrich accepted a position at Harvard University as James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History and Professor of Women’s Studies. There, she continued to write books that shine a light on women, particularly the well-behaved ones whom history often ignores, and the unrecorded inheritance of women – the skills, household and work items they pass down in families. In 2001, she published The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth, examining early American history through domestic objects including fabric, baskets, tools and furniture – objects handed down from mother to daughter with no legal record.
She says: “If you can investigate history, and begin to rewrite history, then you have a different orientation toward the future. History is our job. If we just sit and passively accept our own circumstances, nothing will change. So: well-behaved women seldom make history.”
in 2004, Ulrich published Yards & Gates: Gender in Harvard and Radcliffe History – the result of her cooperation with students, colleagues, and alumnae, and in 2006, she became 300th Anniversary University Professor. The title was partly in recognition of her ability to engage in interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching, especially in Harvard’s many museums.
In 2007, she published Well-behaved Women Seldom Make History and in 2015 Tangible Things: Writing History Through Objects, co-written with Ivan Gaskell, Sara Schechner, and Sarah Anne Carter.
Ulrich’s 2017 book, A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women’s Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870, was written using some of the same research strategies she had developed previously. She used artefacts such as diaries, ledgers, meeting notes, and quilts to study female activism, including women’s securing of the vote in Utah decades before the 19th Amendment was passed.
Ulrich continues to be fascinated by the intersection of race, religion, and women’s rights in the United States from the Revolution onwards, but she has now retired from Harvard, leaving her position in 2018.
Shirin Neshat
“I find that through the study of women, you get to the heart – the truth – of the culture.”
Shirin Neshat is an Iranian filmmaker, photographer and videographer. She was born in 1957 in Qazin, Iran, to parents who supported Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the shah of Iran, and his reforms that helped to emancipate and empower women. This meant that Neshat and her sisters attended boarding school. In 1975, she went to the University of California at Berkeley to study art. She attained her BA four years later and an MFA in 1982.
In her absence, her country of birth had undergone dramatic change. In 1979, revolutionaries overthrew the Shah and established an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a Shiʿi religious leader. The Iranian hostage crisis and Iraqi invasion followed, so returning to Iran was virtually impossible.
Neshat moved to New York in 1983 and began working at Storefront for Art and Architecture, an exhibition and performance space. Shortly after, she married the founder, Korean artist and activist Kyong Park. In her ten years working there and raising their son, she created very little art and destroyed much of it, dissatisfied with the results.
She returned to Iran to visit in the early 90s, after Khomeini's death, and found the changes there shocking. This, coupled with exposure to the diverse creators and art forms at Storefront, proved inspiring.
“Through the study of get to the heart and truth of culture.”
n 1993, Unveiling, a sequence of stills, emerged from her re-ignited creativity, and she went on to produce the series Women of Allah from 1993-97. The black and white photographs focused on how gender, identity and society interact, and included pictures of Neshat in a chador, a garment that conceals everything except the hands. Neshat wrote in Farsi on her face, quoting a controversial feminist Iranian poet.
Since then, her bold work has continued to focus on contradictions and intersections between Eastern and Western culture and between the experiences of men and women - for instance, how veiling could symbolise both liberation and oppression for women.
Working across film, photography and video, she has achieved international fame and acclaim with works such as Rapture (1999). Turbulent (1998), a split-screened video, won the First International Prize at the Venice Biennale, and she won the Silver Lion at the 2009 Venice Film Festival for her directorial debut Women Without Men.
Neshat's work has been featured in exhibitions at MoMA and the Tate Modern, and the Huffington Post named her Artist of the Decade in 2010. She has staged an opera, worked on a multimedia production, and been awarded prizes, an honorary professorship, and artist residencies. Ultimately, though, her art - in whatever form - is inextricable from the causes that drive and inspire her.
She took part in a three-day hunger strike at the UN Headquarters in New York, protesting against the corrupt 2009 Iranian presidential election and in 2022, she protested after the suspicious death of Mahsa Amin. Amin died in hospital while under arrest for allegedly not wearing her hijab correctly.
In recent years, her work has also reflected her experiences of issues in other countries, including Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, and the US under the leadership of Donald Trump.
"The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off."
Gloria Steinem
Gloria Steinem is an acclaimed American journalist, a political activist, a passionate leader spokesperson for the women’s rights and a famous proponent of feminism.
Steinem was born in Toledo, Ohio in 1934 and her early life was spent travelling with her parents. After their divorce, her mother settled back in Toledo and Steinem started attending school regularly. However, she also had to take care of her mother, who suffered from severe mental health issues that saw her hospitalised for long periods.
Steinem studied government at Smith College in Massachusetts where she graduated magna cum laude in 1956 and earned the Chester Bowles Fellowship. This scholarship enabled her to spend two years studying and researching in India. There, she took part in protests against government policies and was inspired by this taste of grassroots activism.
“Don’t think about making women fit the world – think about making the world fit women.”
In 1960 she began working in the male-dominated world of freelance wring and journalism in New York City. She found it hard to break away from writing ‘women’s pages’, despite offering ideas for political stories. In 1963, Show magazine hired her to go undercover to report on working conditions at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Club. Her resulting article, I Was a Playboy Bunny, attracted attention – but not the kind she wanted, merely increasing her struggle to be taken seriously as a journalist.
Her solution was to help found a magazine. In 1968, New York magazine launched with Steinem on board as an editor and political writer. In her column, The City Politic, she covered political campaigns and progressive social issues such as the women’s liberation movement. She also began to speak publicly about causes close to her heart, including making a speech at an event campaigning for the legalisation of abortion in 1969 – where she shared her own story of having an abortion. This inspired her to speak at more events and protests, where her intelligence soon made her a popular speaker.
In 1971, Steinem founded the National Women’s Political Caucus with Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug, and Shirley Chisholm, to support gender equality and pro-equality candidates in public office. She also founded a new women’s magazine with journalists Patricia Carbine and Letty Cottin, that would discuss contemporary issues from a feminist viewpoint. By December, the first issue of Ms. magazine was out, included as an insert in that month’s issue of New York. It became a standalone publication in the following year. Steinem remained an editor and writer for the magazine for the next fifteen years and has continued to be involved in its leadership.
Steinem co-founded many groups and movements including the Women’s Action Alliance (1971), which promotes non-sexist, multi-racial children’s education; the Coalition of Labor Union Women; Voters for Choice (1977), a pro-choice political action committee; Women Against Pornography; and the Ms. Foundation for Women. In the 1990s, she also helped establish Take Our Daughters to Work Day, hoping to empower young girls to learn about potential careers, and in 2004, she founded the Women’s Media Center to promote positive images of women in media.
In 2000, at age 66, Steinem married for the first time. Sadly, her husband, entrepreneur and activist David Bale, died just four years later.
Steinem's award-winning writing has continued alongside her activism throughout her life. Her work is featured in numerous anthologies and textbooks, and she has authored several books including Marilyn, a biography of Monroe, and her best-selling memoir, My Life on the Road. She also hosted a TV documentary series on female issues in 2016, entitled Woman with Gloria Steinem.
In 2013, President Barack Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and Rutgers University created The Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies in her honour in 2017.
"No need to hurry, no need to sparkle. No need to be anything but oneself.”
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was a feminist and renowned author, and before her death at the age of 59, she published several
novels and feminist essays.
"For most of history, anonymous was a woman.”
“Free-thinking, powerful, passionate women are dangerous to a conservative male-dominated culture.”
Lucy Pearce
Annette Kellerman
