The Periodic Table of Brilliant Women and Girls

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The Periodic Table of Brilliant Women & Girls is a poster collaboration by artist and graphic designer, Sarah Dixon, and writer, Rob Clucas-Tomlinson. The table was inspired by a conversation Rob had with their seven year old daughter, regarding famous women in history. When the only women their daughter was able to recall were Queens Elizabeth I and Victoria, Rob began a quest to compile a list of inspirational female non-rulers who had made a huge impact on the world. When their daughter was then given a Periodic Table of Elements book for her birthday, and Sarah got involved, the idea for the poster was formed!

To follow the Periodic Table model, we have grouped the women into the above categories, colour coded as shown below.

HOW TO CHOOSE 101?

facebook.com/brilliantwomengirls

We would encourage you to use this booklet as a notebook or scrapbook - scribble comments, highlight favourite quotes, cut out the stories you want on your wall.

And let us know if you have other ideas because this is just a beginning...

Thanks so much for being part of this.

Sarah & Rob (with Bella)

Stroud, Gloucestershire, 2020

Follow the Periodic Table:

Rob made it his mission to curate a definitive collection of 101 women and girls, before Sarah took the project to a wider audience, asking members of online women’s groups for their recommendations. Through careful consideration, and with a determination to include women and girls from all over the world, and all walks of life, the collection has been edited in the search for an inspiring and diverse mix of Elements. (We know we can never make the perfect collection because there are so many amazing, inspirational women to choose from!)

This was not an easy choice, and we particularly wanted to focus on changemakers for our daughter’s role models. There are hundreds more we could have added but we hope this list is rich enough to inspire, stimulate and cause you to rethink female contribution to society over the ages. Every one of these people have done extraordinary things, even when conditions have been very powerfully set against their chances of achievement.

It’s worth thinking a bit about how this list was gathered, and who by. Who do you know and admire that you would have liked to see?

Who is excluded, and why? The truth is, there are so many amazing stories, and many of them are those of the people we know - our mother, our midwife, our gran, our friends or our colleagues. We hope you will enjoy these stories and be inspired to celebrate all kinds of achievements, including your own!

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“Every woman’s success should be an inspiration to another. We’re strongest when we cheer each other on” - Serena Williams

Maria Merian (16471717) was a Germanborn naturalist and explorer whose detailed illustrations of insects and plants remain popular 300 years after her death in 1717. She was one of the first illustrators to actually study the topic they were drawing, and her observations on the metamorphosis of caterpillars did much to advance the scientific field of entomology.

In 1699 she travelled with her daughter, Dorothea, to Suriname in Central America and illustrated the insects and plants which she saw there, and on her return published her work, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium, to great acclaim.

“In my youth, I spent my time investigating insects.”

Wáng Zhēnyí (1768-97) was an 18th Century Chinese mathematician, astronomer and poet who became one of China’s greatest scholars despite having to teach herself, as women were forbidden an education during that time. In her short life she died before reaching 30 - she was able to calculate and explain the movement of equinoxes and lunar eclipses and she wrote math books in accessible language so that they could be understood by more people. She was also an acclaimed poet and she excelled in archery, martial arts and equestrian skills. Remarkably, her obvious brilliance allowed her the right to tutor male students, something which was otherwise unheard of in 18th Century China.

In 2004, the International Astronomical Union named one of Venus’s craters after her.

“It’s made to believe women are the same as men; Are you not convinced daughters can also be heroic?”

Laura Bassi (1711-78) was an 18th Century Italian physicist who, in 1732, became the first ever female university lecturer. During her long career at the University of Bologna, she championed the work of Isaac Newton and was instrumental in introducing his theories to the whole of Italy. At her doctorate ceremony a silver coin was created in her honor, acknowledging the significance of the event and linking her to Minerva, Goddess of Learning. She fought hard for equal pay and opportunities for women scientists, and ran private lessons when male colleagues prevented her from teaching at the University. A mother of 8 children, in 1776 she was elected to the Chair of Experimental Physics by the Bologna Institute of Sciences.

On marrying physician Giuseppe Veratti, Bassi explained: “I have chosen a person who walks the same path of learning, and who from long experience, I was certain would not dissuade me from it.”

Ada Lovelace (1815-52) was a British mathematician who, as far back as the 1840s, became a pioneer of computing, having worked closely with Charles Babbage on his concept for the world’s first digital and programmable computer. As well as having a brilliant mind, Lovelace was also a skilled writer and not only was she able to explain these difficult concepts in words to baffled scientists, but her notes included a method of calculation that many historians now see as the first ever computer program. For this, she is widely regarded as the world’s first computer programmer! In 1979, 127 years after her death, a computer programming language, ‘Ada’, was named in her honour. It is still used today in aviation, healthcare and financial systems. Ada died aged 36 and was buried next to her father, the poet Lord Byron, despite him abandoning her when she was just a few months old.

“Your best and wisest refuge from all troubles is in your science.”

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Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) was a British nurse and social reformer whose diligent care for wounded soldiers during the Crimean War brought about the birth of modern nursing. At the time soldiers were 10 times more likely to die from infection or disease caught while in hospital than they were from their actual wounds. Florence set about implementing a strict practice of hand-washing and sanitation to combat this, and she encouraged the nurses in her charge to be especially aware of their patients’ needs.

Because of her approach, nursing became much more a professional vocation and in 1860, Florence set up the first nursing training programme, The Nightingale School for Nurses.

Following her death in 1910 a statue of her was erected in Waterloo Place, London.

Marie Curie (18671934) was a brilliant Polish/French chemist and physicist who became the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize in 1903. She went on to win a second Nobel Prize in 1911 after discovering two elements, Polonium and Radium, and is still, to date, the only person to have been awarded Nobel prizes in two different scientific fields. In 1906, she became the first ever female professor at the University of Paris and it was her who coined the phrase ‘radioactivity’. Her achievements are seismic and her work has profoundly changed our understanding of both Physics and Chemistry.

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”

“It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm.”

Nettie Stevens (1861-1912) was an American biologist and geneticist who, in 1905, became one of the first scientists to discover sex chromosones. Despite being exceptionally bright, opportunities for US women in the late 1800s were few and so she chose to train as a teacher.

However, she persevered with her studies, and at 39 eventually found a position as a research scientist. At first, her chromosome discoveries were largely dismissed, but Nettie was eventually proved right. A male scientist, Edmund Wilson, was later credited with these discoveries, until recent historians deemed Nettie as being the far greater driving force.

“How could you think your questions would bother me? They never will, so long as I keep my enthusiasm for biology; and that, I hope will be as long as I live.”

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Alice Ball (1892-1916) was an African American chemist who, while studying for her masters degree, created a treatment for leprosy known as ‘The Ball Method’. At this time leprosy was a disease with no cure and most US people who contracted it were sent to a colony in Hawaii where they eventually died. Alice, though, created a technique for chaulmoogra oil to be injected into, and absorbed by, the body, alleviating the pain and paving the way for an eventual cure.

However, she died prematurely of chlorine poisoning before being able to hand her paper in, and her brilliance was lost to the world. It’s only very recently been uncovered properly.

“Ball’s discovery was very beneficial to alleviating the pain that was sustained by patients…. And for a black woman to be able to achieve what she did and make advances in that area during that time is remarkable unto itself.”- James P. Harnisch

Joan Proctor (1897-1931) was a British zoologist who, in 1923, became the first female curator of reptiles at London Zoo. In 1927, she designed the zoo’s now famous Reptile House, which was so ahead of its time that it was soon copied by many other zoos. Joan was an expert at handling dangerous reptiles like crocodiles and snakes, and she was responsible for bringing the first komodo dragons to Europe. One of them, Sumbawa, became a popular attraction among children, and Joan was often seen walking it around the zoo.

She was celebrated across the world as a brilliant herpetologist and two species of reptiles, a snake ‘Buhoma procterae’ and a tortoise ‘Testudo procterae’ were named in her honour. She died aged just 34 following many years of ill-health.

“Back in the days of long skirts and afternoon teas, young Joan Procter entertained the most unusual party guests: slithery and scaly ones, who turned over teacups and crawled past the crumpets.”

Dr. Grace Hopper (190692) was an American naval officer and mathematician who rose to the rank of Rear Admiral in the US Navy whilst simultaneously helping to create the world’s first commercial electronic computer. In 1952, she devised the first linker, which enabled computers to be so much more than simple calculators, and this led to the creation of COBOL, one of the most important programming languages of the 20th Century. In 1944, she coined the phrase ‘computer bug’ after a moth had accidentally got trapped inside the circuit of a large-scale calculator that she was working on. A Navy ship, the USS Hopper, is named after and, in 2016, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour in the US, for her contribution to computer science.

“If it’s a good idea, go ahead and do it. It’s much easier to apologise than it is to get permission.”

Patricia Valdez - ‘Joan Proctor, Dragon Doctor’ Rachel Carson (190764) was a 20th Century American biologist and Dr. Maria Telkes (1900writer whose 1962 book, 95) was an Hungarian-born Silent Spring, played a chemist and biophysicist major role in galvanising who became known as ‘The the environmental activism Sun Queen’ after inventing movement. In the book, the world’s first solarCarson brought to light powered heating system the damaging effects of for residences during World War II. In 1953, she pesticides on the environment. In 1972, she successfully campaigned for the pesticide DDT helped invent a solar oven that could be used by people all over the world and in 1980 she helped to be banned in the US and around the world build the world’s first fully solar-powered home. and her work eventually led to the creation of the US Environmental Protection Agency. She She also worked closely on creating materials has been referred to as the mother of modern that could stand the extreme temperatures of environmentalism and is considered to be outer space. In 1952, she was the first recipient one of greatest conservationists in history. of the Society of Women Engineers Award.

“Sunlight will be used as a source of energy sooner or later. Why wait? ”

“The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.”

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Chien Shiung Wu (1912-97) was a Chinese American scientist, known as ‘The First Lady of Physics’ for her work on separating uranium metal into 2 different isotopes by gaseous diffusion.

She was the first woman to serve as president of the American Physical Society and her book, Beta Decay, published in 1965, is still the go-to manual for budding nuclear scientists.

In 1957 her experiments on the law of parity resulted in 2 male physicists receiving Nobel prizes while her efforts were ignored.

“So few women in science...There is a misconception in America that women scientists are all dowdy spinsters.

This is the fault of men.”

Katherine G. Johnson (1918-2020) was an African American mathematician who was pivotal in the US’ first manned spacecraft and subsequent moonlanding successes. She also worked closely on the first Space Shuttle, which went into space in 1981, and she was a member of the team who brought the crew of Apollo 13 safely back to earth after their failed mission in 1973. Her calculations were so trusted, in fact, that as John Glenn prepared to become the first astronaut to orbit the earth, he specifically asked for her to go over the final checks, stating “if she says they’re good, I’m ready to go!” She received the US’ highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, presented to her by Barack Obama, in 2015, and died in 2020 aged 101!

“I don’t have a feeling of inferiority. Never had.

I’m as good as anybody, but no better.”

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Rosalind Franklin (192058) was a British chemist who, along with James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, helped discover the structure of DNA in 1953, although she received little recognition for it at the time while they were awarded with a Nobel Prize. Her later work on the molecular structures of viruses led to the discovery of the structure of the polio virus in 1959, a year after her death at just 37. Her one-time apprentice, Aaron Klug, continued her research and was, himself, awarded a Nobel Prize for it in 1982. Thus, her brilliance helped 4 men to find fame while her efforts went, until recently, largely ignored.

Teacher: “Who can tell me what Watson and Crick discovered?

Student: “Rosalind Franklin’s notes, sir!”

Helen Bamber (19252014) was a British psychotherapist and human rights activist who dedicated her life to helping sufferers of abuse all over the world. Born of Jewish origin, she first worked with holocaust survivors after World War II and, in 1961, helped set up the charity, Amnesty International. She went on to co-found The Medical Foundation for Care of Victims of Torture and, in 2005, The Helen Bamber Foundation, which helps survivors of abuse and torture around the world rehabilitate and start again (close to 1000 people are referred to the Foundation every year). Helen died in 2014 aged 89. Former hostage, Terry Waite, called her one of the greatest humanitarians who has ever lived.

“People wanted to tell their story and I was able to receive it. They would rock back and forth and I would say to them - I will tell your story. Your story will not die.”

Vera Rubin (19282016) was an American astronomer who, in the late 1970s, discovered that galaxies are made up mostly of dark matter.

This revolutionised our understanding of the universe, meaning that we can now understand both its shape and longevity. To put her discovery into perspective, dark matter makes up about 85% of the universe’s material! But Rubin wasn’t just a brilliant astronomer, she was also a passionate advocate for better opportunities for women and girls to become scientists.

The first observatory that she worked in after graduating from university didn’t even have a female toilet and this experience fuelled her fight for equality. “Look, now you have a ladies room!” she remarked, in mock admiration, after swiftly fixing the problem herself.

“There is no problem in science that can be solved by a man that cannot be solved by a woman.”

Jane Goodall (1934-) is a British primatologist who has been studying chimpanzees for over 60 years, predominantly in the Gombe National Park in Tanzania. In 1977 she set up the Jane Goodall Institute for Wildlife and Environmental Conservation, which has, to date, helped protect over 1.5 million acres of habitat across the world. She has long been an advocate of ending medical testing on animals and, in 2002, was named a UN Messenger of Peace, before becoming a Dame in 2004. She has had over 25 books published and is largely considered the greatest living expert on chimpanzees.

“The least I can do is speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves.”

Maggie Aderin-Pocock (1968-) is a British space scientist and educator who is wellknown as a presenter on BBC’s long-running astronomy programme, The Sky At Night. She is also a passionate advocate for bringing the wonders of the universe to the attention of the young and she has, to date, inspired over 25,000 school children with her talks.

Maggie is British-born to Nigerian parents and is always happy and willing to help break the stereotype that scientists are white and male.

“I’m really lucky because I get to speak to fouryear-olds and sometimes the prime minister, and I sometimes use the same demonstrations for both.”

Maryam Mirzakhani (1977-2017) was an Iranian mathematician whose work in the field of geometry won her the prestigious Fields Medal in 2014 for “her outstanding contributions to the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces.” Her work was so important, in fact, that it has since pushed physicists to re-evaluate their understanding of how the universe came into existence and it could also benefit their understanding of quantum theory.

Maryam was known to work very slowly on her mathematical equations, so much so that her daughter said of her, “it was like she was creating a painting.” She became a professor of mathematics aged just 31 but tragically also died young, of breast cancer, aged 40.

“There are times when I feel like I’m in a big forest and don’t know where I’m going. But then somehow I come to the top of a hill and can see everything more clearly. When that happens it’s really exciting.”

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Emmanuelle Charpentier (1968- ) a French professor and geneticist and Jennifer A. Doudna (1964-) an American biochemist, shared the Nobel Peace Prize for Chemistry in 2020 for their work in developing a method for genome editing. Even before this, in 2015, Time Magazine had included both scientists in their list of the 100 most influential women for their work. They met in 2011 and worked closely together until recently, when they decided to pursue different projects. Between them, they have won many major science awards for their skill and dedication.

“We met at a conference in San Juan…..she was passionate, her excitement was very infectious...it was this kind of electrifying moment. Even then I just had this gut feeling that this was something really interesting.”

- Jennifer A. Doudna Gertrude Ederle (19052003) was an American Olympic swimmer who, in 1926, became the first female to swim the English Channel, achieving it two hours faster than any of the five men who swam before her! Prior to this, she had competed for the USA at the 1924 Summer Olympic Games, winning one gold and two bronze medals, and had also broken the record, set by a man, for swimming the length of New York Bay. Just 20 years old when she swam the Channel, Ederle, whose hearing was damaged, both by contracting measles as a child and as a result of her Channel swim, went on to teach deaf children for many years. She died in 2003 at the ripe old age of 98.

“I knew it could be done, it had to be done, and I did it!”

Wilma Rudolph(1940-94) was an African American athlete who, despite suffering from polio as a child, recovered to win 3 gold medals at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome. Her achievements made her an icon for black and female athletes during a time when many black Americans were still treated as second class citizens.

Wilma retired from athletics aged just 22 and went on to become a teacher and a goodwill ambassador for the US Government.

“No matter what accomplishments you make, somebody helps you.”

Kathrine Switzer (1947-) is a Germanborn American marathon runner and commentator who, in 1967, became the first woman to run in, and complete, the Boston Marathon, despite women being excluded from entering on account of them being ‘too fragile’ to run long distances. Her achievement angered the American Athletics Union who went on to ban all women from competing in marathons and in races with males! She was even attacked during the race by an enraged male organiser who tried, in vain, to drag her from the course.

However, Switzer’s act of defiance became world news and ultimately led to a change in the rules when, in 1972, an official women’s Boston Marathon was created and women all over the US started to take up the sport. Switzer went on to win the 1974 New York Marathon and in 1977 was voted Female Runner of the Decade.

“When I go to the Boston Marathon now, I have wet shoulders - women fall into my arms crying.

They’re weeping for joy because running has changed their lives. They feel they can do anything.”

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Alexandra Kosteniuk (1984-) is a Russian chess grandmaster who became Russian Women’s Champion aged just 12 in 1996. She reached grandmaster status 2 years later and, in 2008, won the Women’s World Title aged just 24.

Alexandra is a wholly modern chess grandmaster, having appeared in films, adverts and modelling campaigns. She currently produces a popular chess podcast series and tweets regularly under her Twitter name @chessqueen. She is also a member of Champions for Peace, a group of elite athletes who campaign for world peace through sport.

“If people will be interested in me, they will be interested in chess too.”

Megan Rapinoe (1985-) is an American footballer who captained the USA to World Cup glory in 2019.

She is also a passionate campaigner for LGBT rights and has used her fame and standing to speak out on issues of homophobia, especially in sport. “Being a gay American, I know what it means to look at the flag and not have it protect all of your liberties” she said in 2015 after refusing to sing the national anthem before a match. She is an ambassador for Athlete Ally, an organisation that works to end homophobia in sport, and is heavily involved in a current lawsuit filed against the US Soccer Federation for gender discrimination.

“This is my charge to everyone: We have to be better.

We have to love more. Hate less. We got to listen more and talk less.”

Venus Williams (1980-) and Serena Williams (1981-) are African American tennis players who have won an astonishing 62 Grand Slam titles between them. Venus still holds the record for the fastest female serve at Wimbledon, which she set in 2008. Serena famously won the 2017 Australian Open while 8 weeks pregnant, and the sisters’ breathless athleticism has helped lift women’s tennis to a whole new level of speed and power. Serena, in particular, has hit the highest heights and is considered by many to be the greatest female tennis player of all time. In 2007, Venus took on the Wimbledon authorities, arguing that the female players deserved equal prize money to that of their male counterparts.

She was successful in her challenge and women have earned the same amount as men ever since. She responded to the ruling by saying: “Somewhere in the world a little girl is dreaming of holding a giant trophy in her hands and being viewed as an equal to boys who have similar dreams.”

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97) was an English writer of the late 18th Century, most famous for her work A Vindication of the Rights of Women, in which she argued that the lack of equal rights and opportunities, especially in education, were holding women and girls back in society.

She is often referred to as ‘the first feminist’ and her writings have inspired two centuries of women to take up the fight for equality. She died aged 38 a few days after giving birth to her second daughter. Her daughter, Mary Shelley, survived and went on to write Frankenstein.

“I do not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves.”

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Elizabeth Fry (1780-1845) was a British social reformer who, after visiting female prisoners in Newgate Prison in 1812, was so shocked by their conditions that she dedicated the rest of her life to prison reform. She funded a school for children who had been imprisoned with their mothers, encouraged rehabilitation over punishment and successfully fought to abolish transportation ships. She also established a night shelter in London to help the homeless, and set up a training school for nurses in 1840, many of whom later joined Florence Nightingale in the Crimea. During her years of dedication to her causes, Elizabeth earned the respect and friendship of luminaries such as Queen Victoria, King Frederick William IV of Prussia and British Prime Minister, Robert Peel. She was aided in much of her work by fellow reformer, Lydia Irving.

“It is an honour to appear on the side of the afflicted.”

Angela Burdett-Coutts (1814-1906) was a British heiress and great philanthropist. Denied an opportunity to become involved in her family’s banking business because of her gender, she instead used her fortune to help fund a plethora of causes. She was a pioneer of social housing and schooling for poor children in London, a fierce advocate for better treatment of indigenous Africans in the British colonies and, in 1884, a founding member of the London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which later became the NSPCC. She funded institutes for the poor, provided large sums of money to help those starving in Ireland after the great potato famine, and even served as President for both the British Goat Society and the National Association of Beekeepers! Her philosophy was always to help empower people to help themselves and in today’s money, it is estimated that she gave away in the region of £350m, pretty much her entire fortune.

For these acts, she was often looked down upon by members of her high class. She defied convention and was, for her time, a true radical.

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Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) was a 19th Century American women’s rights activist whose tireless crusade for women’s suffrage paved the way for US women to finally be given the right to vote. During her lifetime, and often in partnership with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anthony was instrumental in creating many important women’s organisations including the Women’s Loyal National League, the American Equal Rights Association and the National Woman Suffrage Association. She was also heavily involved in the formation of the International Council of Women, which is still going strong to this day, and she was a passionate anti-slavery campaigner who even hid runaway slaves in her house to protect them from re-capture. The 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, which makes it illegal to bar anyone from voting based on their sex, is widely known as the Susan B. Anthony amendment.

“Organise, agitate, educate, must be our war cry.”

Clara Barton (18211912) was an American nurse, teacher and activist who founded the American Red Cross in 1881. She was a staunch critic of slavery and supported the Union during the American Civil War, during which time she helped to nurse soldiers on the battlefield as well as keep them in essential supplies. After the war she led a team that set about locating the bodies of over 22,000 missing troops, and she oversaw the marking of thousands of graves.

She helped prepare former slaves for their new lives as free people and, in later life, became a powerful advocate for women’s suffrage.

Clara never received, or asked for, payment during her 23 years as head of the American Red Cross. She even used her own funds on occasions to help with various causes. She is one of the most decorated people in US history.

“The door that nobody else will go in at, seems always to swing open widely for me.”

Harriet Tubman (18221913) was a 19th Century African American activist who helped free over 100 slaves despite beginning life as one herself. In 1849, aged 36, she escaped her shackles, and the following year, as a member of the Underground Railroad, began the first of 13 daring missions to free family members and other slaves, always at great risk to her own life and to those who were helping her. After the American Civil War and the subsequent abolition of slavery, she became a national icon, respected by all sides of the political world, and she later campaigned for women’s suffrage.

Adela Speratti (18651902) and Celsa Speratti (1868-1938) were Paraguayan sisters and educators who, after training to be teachers in Argentina, where they had fled to as child refugees, returned to their native country and set about developing its first education system. In 1890 Adela established a training school for teachers while Celsa helped organise a school for girls. The first normal school was founded by Adela in 1897 and following her death, in 1902, Celsa took over as the school’s director. The 2 sisters were pioneers of teaching and were especially instrumental in providing opportunities for women to study.

Anna Filosofova (18371912) was a 19th Century Russian feminist who co-founded the Charity Association of Russian Women Movement in 1895. Born into a wealthy family, Anna dedicated her life to charitable causes and social reform, especially for women.

She founded several other charities for women, including The Society for the Organisation of Work for Women, The Women’s Publishing Artel and The Society for Cheap Lodging and Other Aid to the Residents of St. Petersburg, which provided low-cost housing for poor women.

In 1867, she approached Tsar Alexander II and asked him to grant permission for women to be able to access higher education at St. Petersburg University. In later life, Anna became chairperson of the International Council of Women. When she died, over 1000 people attended her funeral.

Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955) was an African American civil rights activist and educator who, in 1904, opened a boarding school to teach black girls. The school later became a college and eventually began awarding degrees. Throughout her life, Mary was a fervent campaigner for gender and racial equality and, inspired by her parents who had both been born slaves, worked as an advisor to US presidents F.D. Roosevelt and Harry. S. Truman to bring about social reform. She was president of both the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs and The National Council of Negro Women and, in 1945, was the only black woman to attend the opening of the United Nations.

“I grew up like a neglected weed - ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it.”

“The true worth of a race must be measured by the character of its womanhood.”

“A woman, who deep in her heart and in her clear, enlightened mind, realised that humanity would never be free until women had full rights.”

Ariadna Tyrkova

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Eglantyne Jebb (18761928) was a British social reformer who founded Save The Children in 1919 after seeing images of starving children affected by the First World War. When she was arrested while distributing leaflets in Trafalgar Square, she gave such an impassioned speech in court that the judge paid the fine he had imposed on her!

Within 2 years of being founded, Save The Children helped save the lives of hundreds of thousands of children affected by the Russian famine of 1921 after Jebb organised a shipment of over 600 tonnes of food and medicine to be sent to the country. In 1924, she approached the League of Nations, now the United Nations, with a Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which read, “the child that is hungry must be fed, the child that is sick must be nursed, the child that is backward must be helped, the delinquent child must be reclaimed, and the orphan and the waif must be sheltered and succored.” Her declaration was officially adopted in 1925.

“Every generation of children offers mankind the possibility of rebuilding his ruin of a world.”

Whina Cooper (18951994) was a Maori elder (Kuia) who dedicated much of her life to improving the conditions of her people. After refusing an arranged marriage, Whina began her adult life as a teacher, but she soon became involved in local issues and land disputes. She moved to Auckland in 1949 and from then on her activism became national. She became president of the Moari Women’s Welfare League and, in 1975, led a coalition of Maori groups on a long march of protest to the government office in Wellington. That same year she led a second march in protest at the taking of Maori land. She was made a Dame in 1981 and in 1993 was awarded New Zealand’s highest civilian honour, The Order of New Zealand.

“Not one more acre of Maori land!”

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Saalumarada Thimmakka (1911-) is an Indian environmentalist who has, to date, planted over 8000 trees in and around the village where she lives. She began planting trees with her husband at the age of 40 to help her combat her grief in not being able to conceive, but when her husband died in 1991, she continued with the project as it had become her life’s work. She dedicates every planted tree to the state of Karnataka where her village resides, and she has never once asked for anything in return. She was born in 1911 and is still going strong at 109, meaning that those first trees she planted are, themselves, nearly 70 years old! In 2016 the BBC included her as one of the most influential and inspirational women in the world.

“Green is my sword, make it yours!”

Rosa Parks (1913-2005) was an African American civil rights activist who became known as “the mother of the freedom movement” after refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white person in December, 1955. She was arrested and convicted of disorderly conduct and the injustice of it resulted in a mass boycott as the entire black community of Montgomery, Alabama, refused to travel on any of the local buses for over a year. The bus company lost a fortune in revenue and were eventually forced to end segregation. Rosa became an icon of the civil rights movement, befriending both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, and went on to dedicate much of her life to political activism.

Upon her death in 2005 at the age of 92, the front seats of all the Montgomery buses were reserved in black ribbons in her honour.

“I believe we are here on the planet Earth to live, grow up and do what we can to make this world a better place for all people to enjoy freedom.”

Claudia Jones (1915-64) was a political activist and journalist who moved from her native Trinidad to the US as a child. But after 30 years of political activism in America, she was tried as a communist and deported to England. In London, she remained a passionate campaigner for racial equality and political reform and in response to race riots which took place in 1958, created the now world-famous Notting Hill Carnival to showcase the talents of London’s Caribbean community, under the banner, “a people’s art is the genesis of their freedom.” She died on Christmas Eve, 1964, and is buried in Highgate Cemetery, North London.

“The Lady with the Lamp, the Statue of Liberty, stands in New York harbour. Her back is squarely turned on the USA. It’s no wonder, considering what she would have to look upon. She would weep, if she had to face this way.”

Grace Lee Boggs (19152015) was an Asian American writer and philosopher whose books were filled with ideas for a revolutionary America that was free of racial and class inequality.

She campaigned, marched, rallied and lectured for racial, social and gender inclusion and she championed the cohesion of local communities as a means of political change.

In her hometown, Detroit, she organised groups to support the elderly, the unemployed, and even a group to help combat local drug gangs. In all, she wrote 9 books on socialist philosophy, including The Invading Socialist Society, The Next American Revolution and Women and the Movement to Build a New America. Grace died in 2015 aged 100.

“You cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it.”

Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826-98) was an American suffragist, abolitionist and writer who helped draft the Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States in 1876.

Considered too radical by mainstream suffragist groups, she founded The Women’s National Liberal Union in 1890 with the purpose to “assert woman’s natural right to self-government; to show the cause of delay in the recognition of her demand; to preserve the principles of civil and religious liberty; to arouse public opinion to the danger of a union of church and state through an amendment to the constitution, and to denounce the doctrine of woman’s inferiority” She wrote many books, including Is Woman her own?, All The Rights I Want and Woman as Inventor. She is also known for The Matilda Effect, which exposes the bias in refusing to acknowledge the work of women scientists.

“There is a word sweeter than mother, home or heaven.

That word is liberty.”

Joyce Clague (1938-) is an Australian activist who, as an elder of the Yaegl people, has dedicated her life to campaigning for the rights of Indigenous Australians. In 1967, she played a major role in instigating the Constitutional Referendum whereby 90.77% of Australians voted in favour of allowing the government power to make laws for indigenous people as well as including them in national population counts. Joyce later fought for the right of indigenous Australians to be able to vote and in 2015, she finally won a court case, which had begun in 1996, to have a large stretch of the Clarence River officially classed as Yaegl territory. She accepted an MBE in 1977 on behalf of all indigenous Australians.

“When I look back I see that slowly Aboriginal people are taking their place in this society. Even organisations have changed, so that where once they were dominated by white people, Aboriginal people are in control.”

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Dr. Wangari Maathai (1940-2011) was an African environmental activist who, in 1977, started the Greenbelt Movement in her native Kenya, a campaign which mobilised poor women to plant trees in areas affected by deforestation.

The movement spread to other African countries and in 2004, Wangari received the Nobel Peace Prize for her work, becoming the first African woman to win the award. She died in 2011, but her movement continues and has so far planted over 45 million trees in Kenya alone and helped change the lives of countless women.

The movement’s motto is “When we plant trees, we plant the seeds of peace and hope.” Wangari was also a Doctor of Philosophy, the first East and Central African woman to become so.

“It’s the little things that citizens do, that’s what will make the difference. My little thing is planting trees.”

Ruby Bridges (1954-) is an African American civil rights activist who, in 1960, at the age of just 6, became the first black child to attend the previously all-white William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans.

Despite daily verbal abuse and threats of physical violence from white parents at the school gates, Ruby persevered, going on to see out her primary years there, and her bravery helped inspire Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. In adult life she became a travel agent before forming The Ruby Bridges Foundation in 1999, which encourages people from all walks of life to work together as one.

In 2005, when hurricane Katrina decimated large parts of New Orleans, The William Frantz Elementary School was badly damaged.

Ruby, despite having her own life turned upside down by the floods, was instrumental in ensuring that the school remained open.

“Racism is a grown-up disease and we must stop using our children to spread it.”

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Rigoberta Menchu (1959-) is a Guatemalan human rights activist who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for her work on advocating social rights for indigenous people.

In 1982, a year after she had been exiled to Mexico by the Guatemalan government, she wrote the book, My Name is Rigoberta Menchú, and this is how my Awareness was Born, which brought her cause to a world audience. In 2009, she helped create the indigenous political party, Winaq, and was also a founder member of The Nobel Women’s Initiative with, among others, Wangari Maathai. She belongs to the K’iche’ indigenous people who are 100 million strong and make up about 11% of the Guatemalan population.

“Peace cannot exist without justice, justice cannot exist without fairness, fairness cannot exist without development, development cannot exist without democracy, democracy cannot exist without respect for the identity and worth of cultures and people.”

Valdecir Nascimento (1960-) is a Brazilian women’s rights campaigner who, in 2015, helped organise the Black Women’s March, when 70,000 women brought the capital city, Brasilia, to a standstill.

Women, especially black women, are still seen as second class citizens in many areas of Brazil and Valdecir is determined to keep her movement at the forefront of Brazilian politics. “Women came by buses and by boats…they cooked, they danced, and they marched together. It was beautiful!” she said. “Some 70,000 women came to Brasilia for the march. We stopped the capital.” She is the executive coordinator of the Black Women’s Institute in her home city of Salvador. She is also an historian and educator, and she has spoken at UN conferences.

“It’s necessary for young black women to take on this fight...We are the solution in Brazil, not the problem.”

Polly Higgins (19682019) was a British barrister and environmental campaigner who dedicated a major part of her life to trying to persuade the United Nations to make ecocide - unlawful human activity that violates the principles of environmental justice - an international crime.

“The earth is in need of a good lawyer,” she said in 2009, before taking on that very role. She wrote four books, including I Dare You To Be Great in 2014, but died in 2019 following a short illness. Other environmental campaigners have since taken on her crusade and hope remains that her law will eventually be passed.

Sônia Guajajara (1974-) is an indigenous Brazilian activist who is currently the head of the Articulation of the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, which represents and supports over 300 indigenous ethnic groups in her country. In 2018, she became the first indigenous person to run for Brazilian federal office and, although she was unsuccessful, she has since stepped up her campaigning for environmental change, stating, “When you destroy nature and foreclose the indigenous peoples’ way of life, preventing them from exercising their culture, you are killing them. If we do not follow our culture, our tradition, we are no longer people.”

“My to do list for today: Count my blessings. Practice kindness. Be productive yet calm. Let go of what I can’t control. Just breathe. Tell my family how much I love them. Make a difference in someone’s life.”

“For us, life is inseparable from nature.”

Tarana Burke (1973-) is an African American civil rights campaigner who, in 2006, started the ‘Me Too’ movement to encourage women and girls who have been abused by men to speak up about their ordeals. The movement gained widespread international support in 2017 following well-publicised Hollywood abuse scandals. However, Tarana has actually been an activist for over 30 years and she is currently the director of Girls for Gender Equity, an organisation that empowers women and girls to live safe and successful lives.

“When one person says, ‘Yeah, me, too,’ it gives permission for others to open up.”

Janet Mock (1983-) is an American transgender rights activist whose autobiography, Defining Realness, made her an icon for the transgender movement and brought their struggles to a mainstream audience.

She was speaker at the 2017 Women’s March on Washington where millions of people came to show their support for women’s rights, and she has also written and directed several episodes of the US television series, Pose, which tells the story of New York’s LGBT community of the 1980s.

“I was born in what doctors proclaim is a boy’s body. I had no choice in the assignment of my sex at birth.... My genital reconstructive surgery did not make me a girl. I was always a girl.”

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Vanessa Nakate (1996-) is a young Ugandan climate activist who recently founded two climate action groups, Youth for Africa and The Rise Up Movement, after realising that Africa would be worst hit by climate change, despite it having the lowest carbon emissions of any continent on earth. Vanessa has caused a big stir in a short amount of time, and she told world leaders at the 2020 International Peace Lecture to “wake up!” to the impending African crisis.

“Leave your comfort zones and see the danger we are in and do something about it.” She said. “This is a matter of life and death.” She has also started up the Green Schools Project in her country, an initiative to transform Ugandan schools so that they may run entirely on solar energy.

“The global south is not on the front page, but it is on the front line.”

Heidy Quah (1994-) is a young Malaysian humanrights campaigner who, in 2012, aged just 18, set up Refuge For Refugees, a non government organisation that provides education for refugee children.

There are currently an estimated 180,000 refugees living in Malaysia, most of whom have escaped persecution from neighbouring Myanmar. “Meeting them showed me how privileged I was in having a roof over my head, not worrying about my next meal or being able to walk out of my house safely,” she said. “I carried so much shame and guilt at my own privilege. But then I reframed that and thought, what am I doing with my privilege?

Instead of stewing in guilt, how could I channel it positively?” To date, her organisation has helped set up 35 schools and 2 halfway houses in her country. In 2017, she received a Queen’s Young Leader Award at Buckingham Palace.

“Then you come to a point where you say, I can’t be frustrated with an unjust system if I’m not contributing in any way.”

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Malala Yousufzai (1997-) is a 23 year old Pakistani activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 while still at school - the youngest person ever to win a Nobel award.

An advocate for the schooling of Pakistani women and children, who have often been denied an education in her country, Malala survived an attempt on her life in 2012 (she was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman) to rise to prominence and inspire a generation of girls. She went on to study at Oxford University, graduating in 2020 with a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, and helped set up a charity, The Malala Fund, which aims to get 130 million girls from around the world into education. To date, the charity has invested £22m to this cause. She has written two books, I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban and We Are Displaced: True Stories of Refugee Lives.

“I tell my story not because it is unique, but because it is the story of many girls.”

Greta Thunberg (2003-) is a 17 year old Swedish climate activist who rose to fame in 2018 after regularly skipping school to sit outside the Swedish Parliament Building in protest at the world’s lack of action in combating the threat of climate change.

Her actions inspired young students from around the world to do the same, peaking in September, 2019, when up to 4 million children from 125 countries took part in simultaneous school strikes. She has since met with Prime Ministers and Presidents across the globe and in her speech at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit in New York, famously told them “This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!”

Greta has twice been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and was voted Time Magazine’s youngest ever Person of the Year in 2019.

Jane Addams (18601935) was an American social worker and reformer whose work helped bring about social and economic reform in the US and around the world. She advocated research into the social and economic causes of poverty and crime and she fought for better justice for immigrants, children and women. Her work led, indirectly, to the creation of the Juvenile Protective Association, the first Juvenile Court and the United Nations. She wrote about, and lectured on, world peace, and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, four years before her death.

“The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.”

Maria Teresa Ferrari (1887-1956) was an Argentinian physician and activist who, despite hostility from her male counterparts, became South America’s first female professor in 1939.

During her time as a physician she became a pioneer of women’s medical research, opening the first maternity and gynecological ward at the hospital she worked at, instigating the country’s first incubators and inventing a vaginascope which eradicated any damage caused by doctors during investigations. She founded the Argentina Federation of University Women, and throughout her life pushed for recognition of both civil and political rights for women. In a male-dominated, conservative society, Ferrari continued to advocate for equal rights and, although she did not see this in her lifetime, her work nonetheless made a huge difference to women across Argentina and Brazil.

Irena Sendler (19102008) was a Polish nurse and social worker whose bravery saved the lives of over 2,500 Jewish children during World War II. As a member of Zegota, the secret Polish resistance, she helped smuggle the children from under the noses of the Nazis and provide them with fake documents to hide their true identities. She was arrested in 1943 but, despite being tortured, revealed nothing of the children’s whereabouts.

She was later sentenced to death by firing squad but was reprieved at the last minute and went on to become a politician after the war, dedicating the rest of her life to social causes.

The hospital where she had worked as a nurse later became the Warsaw Children’s Home.

“Every child saved with my help is the justification of my existence on this earth, and not a title to glory.”

Aleda Lutz (1915-44) was the first American woman to die during World War II, but not before she had helped rescue over 3000 injured soldiers from the battlefields. In 1942, 5 years after she had qualified as a nurse, she volunteered for duty as an Air Evacuation Nurse and in the following 2 years flew countless times into war zones across North Africa, bringing in supplies and ferrying away the wounded. She rose quickly to the rank of Flight Lieutenant and during 196 flights and over 800 hours in the air, not one of the 3,500 injured soldiers in her care died. She became a national hero, but was sadly killed in 1944 when an aircraft she was travelling in came down in a storm. She was 28.

“Aleda was the most wonderful person…the best nurse I ever came into contact with, before or after the war.”

- a fellow nurse

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Hazel Monteith (19172012) was an AfroJamaican social worker and consumer rights activist who became her country’s first ever Citizen’s Advice Bureau executive director, in 1973. Famous for hosting a long-running radio show, where she offered advice on all manner of consumer issues, Hazel was also a staunch campaigner for the welfare of young Jamaican women and, in 1990, founded the Hazel Monteith Skills Training Centre to help train unskilled women in order for them to find employment. She also served as a senator and justice of the peace from 1985-89.

“The gusto with which Mrs. Monteith undertook this task here at the CAB is something that no one can imitate. She was a shoulder to lean on, she was a problem solver. She meant so much to so many people.”

Esther Pinnock, executive director of CAB

Jane. C. Wright (19192013) was an African American surgeon who dedicated her career to cancer treatment and research. Her studies on anti-cancer agents and methods led her to develop new ways for using chemotherapy to treat cancer patients. In 1951, she and her team showed the efficacy of methotrexate, a drug which has been used to fight breast cancer ever since, as well as combatting other cancers and even auto-immune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. A founding member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, she was a true pioneer and her discoveries have helped change the face of cancer medicine forever.

“There’s no greater thrill than in having an experiment turn out in such a way that you make a positive contribution.”

Ina May Gaskin (1940-) is an American midwife and writer whose 1977 book, Spiritual Midwifery, inspired a natural birth movement and empowered women to give birth at home without the need for drugs or clinical intervention. She is famous for championing what has become known as The Gaskin Manoeuvre, a Guatemalan technique for giving birth where the woman crouches on all fours to change the shape of her pelvis, thus reducing the risk of complication which may lead to fetal death. Ina is also the founder of the Safe Motherhood Quilt Project, which commemorates women who have died during pregnancy, and at 80, she still tours, giving lectures and inspiring midwives across America. Her other written works include, Babies, Breastfeeding and Bonding, Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth and Birth Matters: A Midwife’s Manifesta. She was inducted into the US Women’s Hall of Fame in 2013.

“We are the only species of mammal that doubts our ability to give birth.”

Ameyo Adadevoh (19562014) was a Nigerian physician whose quick thinking helped save thousands of lives during an Ebola outbreak in 2014.

Despite pressure from the Liberian government to discharge a patient in her charge, she refused their demand, convinced that the patient had the Ebola virus. Instead she moved him into isolation and, with precious few medical resources at her disposal, and with many Nigerian doctors on strike, she was able to make an official diagnosis of the virus. The Nigerian government quickly declared a National Health Emergency and a catastrophic epidemic was averted. Sadly, Ameyo caught the virus herself and died in October of that year aged 57.

“Dr Adadevoh had been working with us for 21 years and was perhaps one of the most brilliant physicians. I worked with her. I know that she was sheer genius,” Dr Benjamin Ohiaeri

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Eleanor Rathbone (1872-1946) was a British Member of Parliament and women’s rights champion whose tireless campaigning helped bring about the Family Allowances Act in 1945, which is now more commonly known as Child Benefit. Her determination to have women involved more in political life culminated in her becoming an Independent MP in 1929, and she immediately used her position to bring to light the horrors of female genital mutilation in Kenya among other gender inequality issues. She began her adult life as a suffragette and, when Millicent Fawcett retired in 1919, became President of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies.

Today, the Eleanor Rathbone Charitable Foundation offers grants to charities who are working to better the lives of women.

“Continually measuring women’s wants by men’s achievements seems out of date, ignominious, and intolerably boring. ... Now that we have secured possession of the tools of citizenship, we intend to use them not to copy men’s models but to produce our own.”

Lilian Ngoyi (191180) was a South African political activist who became the first woman to be elected onto the executive committee of the African National Congress in 1954. Known by many as ‘the mother of the black resistance’, she led an anti-apartheid march of 20,000 women in 1956. When they reached the government office in Pretoria, it was Lilian who approached the Prime Minister and handed him thousands of petitions. For this, she was arrested and tried for treason by the white government before finally being acquitted.

She continued her activism, nonetheless, and twice spent several months in solitary confinement during the 1960s, after which she remained under close government surveillance for the rest of her life. Lilian was known as an inspirational speaker and served for a time as President of the ANC Women’s League.

Ruth First (192582) was a white South African journalist whose investigations into the mistreatment of black and white working class people in all walks of South African life brought to light the brutality of the AntiApartheid government during the 1950s. Ruth was imprisoned along with Nelson Mandela and other high-ranking ANC leaders in 1963 and was kept in solitary confinement for 90 days.

She later fled to England with her family, but she continued to write about the injustices of apartheid, publishing several acclaimed books, including, South West Africa, 117 Days and The Barrel of a Gun: Political Power in Africa and the Coup d’etat in Africa. Despite not having set foot in her birth country for 20 years, Ruth was assassinated by the South African government in 1982, a crime which led a fellow activist to call “the last act of censorship”.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg (1933-2020) was an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the USA for 27 years, until her death in 2020.

She was also a legal revolutionary who, long before her Supreme Court position, had fought for, and won, many battles for gender equality. She was a fierce advocate for workers rights and a believer that the church should not be involved in matters of the state. She was greatly respected by all sides of American politics and when President Bill Clinton put her forward for the Supreme Court in 1993, the senate voted 96-3 in her favour.

“Today we mourn but with confidence that future generations will remember Ruth Bader Ginsburg as we knew her, a tireless and resolute champion of justice.”

Chief Justice John Roberts

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Unity Dow (1959-) is a statesperson and former High Court Judge from Botswana who has dedicated her life to fighting for human and women’s rights.

Her list of achievements are many, they include helping to set up her country’s first AIDS organisation, The AIDS Action Trust, becoming Botswana’s first female High Court Judge, and being involved in several UN missions, particularly to Sierra Leone where she observed how international women’s rights were being incorporated in the country. She has also written 4 novels: Far and Beyon’, The Screaming of the Innocent, Juggling Truths and The Heavens May Fall, and is currently Minister for International Affairs in the Botswana government.

“The time that women were treated as chattels or were there to obey the whims and wishes of males is long past.”

Thuli Madonsela(1962-) is a South African law professor who, in 1996, helped write the Constitution of South Africa during Nelson Mandela’s presidency.

From 2009-16, she served as her country’s Public Prosecutor and came to prominence in 2014 after her report on her investigation into the mishandling of funds by president Jacob Zuma was published. Despite a huge backlash from many of Zuma’s highranking supporters, Thuli held firm and, in 2016, he was ordered to pay the money back. Over the years her investigations have brought to light corruption in high office and have exposed politicians and police chiefs. This has made her even more resolute about upholding the values of the very constitution that she helped create.

“Through life I have learned that the most important critic whose judgement of my actions matters is my conscience.”

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Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1656) was an Italian artist who is now considered to be one of the greatest painters of the 17th Century. Although it was rare for women to become artists in the 1600s, Artemisia not only succeeded in doing so, she was celebrated for it too. She lost her mother at a young age, and learnt painting in her father’s atelier. She showed exceptional talent and stood out among her brothers who also studied art.

Influenced particularly by Caravaggio, including his method of painting from life, many of her paintings are dark, violent and brave depictions of biblical allegory - widely considered to reflect the abuse that she suffered at the hands of a fellow painter. He was later put on trial but escaped punishment after being protected by the then Pope. The early roots of feminism can be seen in her works, of which almost all place female figures as bold, strong and central, setting her apart from her male contemporaries.

“As long as I live I will have control over my being.”

Phyllis Pearsall (1906-96) was a British writer and artist who is credited with creating and designing the iconic London A-Z map, in 1935, although the story that she walked a combined 3,000 miles around the city to gather all her information has now largely been declared a myth! But Phyliss’ brilliance is undoubted and she later went on to found The Geographer’s A-Z Map Company, which now publishes A-Z maps all across the UK. She was a formidable businesswoman and the company even survived the war, during which they weren’t allowed to sell maps. The objectives of the business stated: “a commitment to natural and sustainable growth... in the hope of bringing together a work team that would appreciate and thrive (both in work and in their private lives) in an atmosphere of stability, mutual trust, honesty and high endeavour”

Frida Kahlo (1907-54) was a Mexican painter, famous for her colourful self-portraits and use of magic realism. Despite being badly injured in a bus crash at the age of 18, she went on to paint many of her wellknown works whilst lying horizontal in her bed. In 1939, her painting The Frame became the first work by a Mexican artist to be featured at The Louvre in Paris. As well as being lyrical, her work is celebrated for depicting females in an honest form. As she herself once said, “I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.”

“Feet, what do I need you for, when I have wings to fly?”

Louise Bourgeois (19112010) French-born Louise Bourgeois was one of most important artists of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries, most famous for her giant spider sculpture, Maman, which she created in honour of her mother who had died when she was just 18. The spider depicts the strength and power of motherhood and many of Louise’s works centre on the female form as more than just an object. She was also an advocate for LGBT rights and created several works of art inspired by the movement. “Everyone should have the right to marry,” she once said. “To make a commitment to love someone forever is a beautiful thing.” As well as making sculptures, Louise was a prolific painter and printmaker, and she was working right up until her death in 2010 aged 98.

“She was my best friend. Like a spider, my mother was a weaver...spiders are helpful and protective, just like my mother.”

Faith Ringgold (1930-) is an African American artist, famous for her politically-charged, colourful quilts which have made her a favourite of the feminist art movement in the US. She is also a painter whose early works concentrated on the civil rights movement from a female perspective.

She later became a professor of art at the University of California and she has written and illustrated several books for children, including Aunt Harriet’s Underground Railroad, which tells the story of Harriet Tubman.

“You can’t sit around and wait for somebody to say who you are.”

Zaha Hadid (19502016) was a British Iraqi architect who set out to “reinvestigate the aborted and untested experiments of Modernism [...] to unveil new fields of building.” Named ‘Queen of the curve’ by the Guardian for her non-Eucliden approach to geometry, in 2004 she became the first woman to be awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize. She became famous for her futuristic, deconstructivist designs and her buildings can be seen all over the world from London to Leipzig and Beijing to Rome, and she was one of the first foreign architects to build large scale buildings in China. She made colourful paintings to describe her designs, many of which were not made, often due to expense and ambition. She was made a Dame in 2012, following the building of the Olympic Aquatics centre in London. She also designed interiors, restaurants and theatre sets.

“Good education is so important. We do need to look at how the people are taught. It’s not just about qualifications to get a job, it’s about being educated.”

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Josephine Baker (190675) was a world-famous French singer and actor who, in 1927, became the first black woman to appear in a major movie.

She was also a passionate anti-fascist activist and during World War II served as a member of the French Resistance. Despite becoming a French National, Baker was born in the US and remained an outspoken civil rights campaigner throughout her adult life. “I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents. And much more,” she once said, “But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad.”

When Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968, Josephine was asked to take his place as head of the US civil rights movement, but she declined, fearing for the safety of her children.

“Beautiful? It’s all a question of luck. I was born with good legs. As for the rest….beautiful, no. Amusing, yes.”

Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1915-73) was an African American singer and guitarist whose original electric guitar playing helped herald the Blues era and inspired a generation of artists including Little Richard, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley. At just 6 years of age, she began accompanying her mother on stage during gospel concerts and she went on to record many gospel/pop albums before her untimely death in 1973. She was one of the first musicians to use heavy distortion in her guitar playing and she was so ahead of her time that she is often referred to as ‘the godmother of rock & roll’.

“Can’t no man play like me. I play better than a man.”

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Miriam Makeba (19322008) was a South African singer/songwriter and human-rights activist who helped put African music on the world stage 247 during the 1960s after being exiled from her Curiu m native country by its white, apartheid government. She settled in the US and recorded several successful albums, winning a Grammy award in 1965. Many of her songs were politically charged, which further riled her native country’s leaders, although she argued, “people say I sing politics, but what I sing is not politics, it is the truth.” She also carried out humanitarian work throughout her life and on her return to South Africa in 1990 following the release from prison of Nelson Mandela, campaigned both for the support of abused girls and for greater awareness of AIDS. She became a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations and formed the Zenzile Miriam Makeba Foundation. After her death in 2008, the foundation eulogised her as ‘A Mother, Songstress, Ambassador, Humanitarian, Activist, Patriot, Philanthropist symbolizing the Flame of Unity in Cultural Diversity’

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“Be careful, think about the effect of what you say. Your words should be constructive, bring people together, not pull them apart.”

Delia Derbyshire (19372001) was a British composer of electronic music who is best known for her electronic arrangement of the 247 Doctor Who theme tune.

Her arrangement changed Berkel-ium the theme tune so much that its original composer, Roy Grainer, remarked, “Did I really write this?” to which Delia replied, candidly, “Most of it!” However, she received no credit for her role in the tune. She joined the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop in 1962 and, as well as Doctor Who, went on to create distinctive sounds for over 200 television programmes. Her work has influenced the music of, among others, Orbital and The Chemical Brothers.

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“Listening to her archives I got really humbled by how graceful the sound was…..She had to create tones and overtones without relying on advanced machinery. I think we’ve lost that grace in a lot of modern music.”

Caroline Churchill.

Linda Perry (1965-) is an American singer/ songwriter who was once lead singer for the group 4 Non-Blondes and wrote their 1994 hit What’s Going On as well as Christina Aguilera’s worldwide hit Beautiful and Pink’s equally successful Get The Party Started.

Linda is also a record producer and, as well as founding two record labels, has gone on to write songs for many female artists including Gwen Stefani, Courtney Love, Kelly Osbourne, Alicia Keys, Celine Dion, Ariana Grande and Miley Cyrus. She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2015.

“All my life I’ve loved women, and that’s it. I’ve never been any other way.”

Phillis Wheatley (175384) was an 18th Century African writer who, despite being taken to the US as a slave aged just 7, became the first African American to have a book of poetry published.

Her poetry was popular, both in the US and in England, and she was granted her freedom from slavery as a result. Abolitionist sympathisers used her talent as proof that black slaves were “artistic and intelligent”, and the seeds of the movement were certainly watered by her poetry.

Sadly, she died in poverty in 1784, aged 31.

“Proceed, great chief, with virtue on thy side. Thy every action let the goddess guide.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-96) was an 18th Century American writer whose 1852 novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, brought to light the injustices of slavery in the south of the country and galvanised those in the north to take on the fight for abolition. She wrote over 30 major works of literature in her long life, but none as famous or as influential as that book. She even met with President Abraham Lincoln at the beginning of the American Civil War, who remarked, “so you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.” But Beecher Stowe was no ‘little woman’. Before the war had even begun, she and her husband had housed several fugitive slaves who had escaped and were trying to reach the freedom of Canada, and throughout her life she campaigned for the financial rights of married women, claiming, “in the English common law a married woman is nothing at all. She passes out of legal existence.”

But it is for Uncle Tom’s Cabin that she will forever be remembered - a book that has been translated into 70 different languages and which continues to move those who read it today.

“Women are the real architects of society.”

Bertha von Suttner (1843-1914) was a 19th Century Austrian writer and pacifist, best known for her anti-war novel, Lay Down Your Arms, which was published in 1889. She dedicated her entire life to peace activism and was instrumental in persuading Alfred Nobel to add a Peace Prize to his list of annual awards. She herself won the prize in 1905, becoming the first woman to do so. She lobbied for the creation of an International Court of Justice long before it was finally formed in 1945 and her legacy lives on today in The Bertha von Suttner Peace Institute at The Hague. She died in 1914, ironically a few months before the outbreak of World War I. 23

Ichiyō Higuchi (187296) was a 19th Century Japanese writer whose small body of work still resonates through Japanese literature 120 years after her death. She began writing at an early age but her brilliance only took off after she, her mother and sister were forced to move to a poor area of Tokyo. Here, Higuchi wrote novels inspired by the poor women and people who she encountered there, such as The Thirteenth Night, which told the story of a young woman trying to escape from an abusive husband. Tragically, she contracted tuberculosis in 1896 and died at just 24.

“On a moonlit night, one is happy to have a visitor— maybe someone one has not been all that close to who is kind enough to drop by. A man is all right, but one is happier if the visitor is a woman.”

Qiū Jǐn (1875-1907) was a 19th Century Chinese writer, poet and activist whose work, A Respectful Proclamation to China’s 200 Million Women Comrades, helped fuel a revolution that would ultimately bring down the Qing Dynasty and replace it with the Communist Republic. In her proclamation, Qiu Jin argued that women should be free to marry who they wanted and be allowed an education equal to men. She also argued that the traditional act of foot-binding be abolished. After leaving her abusive husband, she secretly trained revolutionaries to fight, but was arrested in 1907 and sentenced to death, aged just 31. She instantly became a martyr to the revolution’s cause and 5 years after her death, the Qing Dynasty was overthrown.

Helen Keller (18801968) was an American writer and activist who, after losing both her sight and her hearing at a very early age, dedicated her entire life to helping others with similar disabilities. Describing her condition as ‘living in a dense fog’ Helen learned to read sign language and braille and, in 1904, she became the first deaf/blind person to graduate from University.

She spent a great deal of her life touring the world giving lectures about her experiences and, in 1915, founded the American Foundation for Overseas Blind to aid World War I soldiers who had been blinded in battle. It has since become Helen Keller International and continues to educate people on the causes of blindness and visual impairment. Helen was also a suffragist and pacifist, and she wrote several books, including an autobiography in 1903.

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart.”

Gabriela Mistral (18891957) was a Chilean poet and humanist who received the Nobel prize for literature in 1945 “for her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world.”

But Gabriela was also an activist who advocated for the rights of women, children and the poor in her community. She began her adult life as a teacher and, after becoming famous, she went on to play a significant role in advancing the education system, both in Chile and Mexico.

“With all my heart I beseech and beg my two hundred “Many things can wait. Children cannot. Today million female compatriots to assume their responsibility their bones are being formed, their blood is being as citizens. Arise! Arise! Chinese women, arise!” made, their senses are being developed. To them we cannot say “tomorrow.” Their name is today.”

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Betty Friedan (19212006) was an American writer and activist whose book, The Feminine Mystique, inspired a feminist movement across the US. The popularity of her book led her to co-found the National Organization of Women’s Principles in 1966, and to organise The Women’s Strike For Equality in 1970, which saw marches all over the country. She went on to found several other women’s organisations, many of which helped change parenting and work laws to make them fairer to women. Friedan has been criticised for not being radical enough, but its principles have remained the same since she first wrote its mission statement “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.”

“Why should women accept this picture of a half-life, instead of a share in the whole of human destiny?”

Maya Angelou (19282014) was an African American writer and civil rights activist, most famous for her autobiography, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, which was published in 1969. During her lifetime, she wrote seven autobiographies as well as a hefty body of poetry, returning time and again to the themes of black identity and the prevalence of racism in her own country. As a writer, she was happy to reveal the darker aspects of her life and this inspired a generation of female writers to find their own true voices and do the same. A friend of both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, she was heavily involved in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s. She continued to write books right up until her death in 2014, also composing songs for the singer Roberta Flack and appearing as a supporting actress in the 1970s television show, Roots.

“Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.”

Anne Frank (1929-45) was a German/Dutch Jewish girl whose teenage diary of her family’s 2 years spent hiding from the Nazis in an attic in Amsterdam during World War II has since become one of the most famous books ever written. Upon publication, after her death, it received literary acclaim and moved Eleanor Roosevelt to claim it as, “one of the wisest and most moving commentaries on war and its impact on human beings that I have ever read.” Anne and her family were eventually captured, and she and her sisters were sent to a concentration camp where they sadly died of typhus 3 months before the end of the War. Her diary, though, has since been translated into 70 languages and sold over 30 million copies worldwide.

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”

Mariama Bâ (1929-81) was a Senegalese writer whose 2 novels, So Long The Letter and Scarlet Song, brought to light the unfairness of society on African women, especially those who find themselves in polygamous marriages and are powerless to find a way out of them. (Mariama, herself, was married 3 times and on each occasion chose to end the relationship!) She also wrote a work of nonfiction, The Political Function of African Written Literatures, in which she makes a passionate plea for men to acknowledge how greatly women contribute to African society, and for women, themselves, to be proud of their achievements. A teacher for most of her adult life, Mariama wrote in her spare time and was a pioneer of Senegalese literature.

She is widely considered a literary genius.

“As women, we must work for our own future…Like men, we must use literature as a non-violent but effective weapon.”

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Nellie Bly (1864-1922) was an American journalist and adventurer who, after reading Jules Verne’s novel Around The World in Eighty Days, famously travelled the world in just 72 days, breaking the actual record in doing so.

She also became one of the world’s first investigative journalists after pretending to be mentally ill and spending 10 days in a mental asylum just so that she could write an expose of the cruel treatment of women there. Following the publication of her article, the asylum was forced to reform and Nellie found instant fame. In later life, she became an inventor, before returning to journalism, where “Jeanne Baret, by means of a disguise, circumnavigated the globe on one of the vessels commanded by Mr de Bou- she was one of the few women to report from the European battlefields during World War I. gainville. She devoted herself in particular to assisting Mr de Commerson, doctor and botanist, and shared with “Nonsense! If you want to do it, you can do it.

The question is, do you want to do it?” great courage the labours and dangers of this savant.”

French Marine Ministry Bessie Coleman (1892Sacagawea (1788-1812) 1926) was a US aviator was a member of the who became the first Lemhi Shoshone Native African American to pilot American tribe, who lived a plane. Being both black in Idaho in the early 1800s. and a woman, Bessie found At just 16, and with her it difficult to get into flying two-month old son in her school, but she persevered, arms, she aided the famous and, in 1921, at the age of Lewis-Clark Expedition 29, successfully obtained on their long fact-finding journey across the US her wings. She quickly gained a reputation from Dakota to the Pacific Ocean and back again. for death-defying aerial acrobatics and people Sacagawea was the only female on the trip and her from all over the US and Europe rushed to knowledge of the area and her understanding of see her perform. She flew the flag for racial other Shoshone tribes ensured that many positive equality and inspired a generation of African relationships with their white counterparts were Americans to do the same. She died in a plane forged. Her knowledge of edible plants kept the crash in 1926, and since 1931, the Challenger expedition in food and she was instrumental in Pilots Association of Chicago has held a negotiating from the Shoshone the purchase of tradition of flying over her grave every year. horses in order to cross the Rocky Mountains.

“The air is the only place free from prejudice.”

Early into the journey a storm almost sank one of the expedition boats, but it was Sacagawea Odette Sansom (1912who, as well as having to protect her child, 95) was a French-born gathered up all of the important papers, maps, British secret agent whose books and other navigational equipment so unbelievable bravery they didn’t end up at the bottom of the river. during World War II Her exploits inspired the National American saved the lives of many Woman Suffrage Association of the early 20th of her fellow agents.

Century, who adopted her as their symbol of While serving in France, female strength and courage. She died in 1812 Odette and another agent aged just 24. “Everything I do is for my people.” were betrayed in 1943 Jeanne Baret (17401807) was an 18th Century French botanist and adventurer who became the first woman to circumnavigate the globe, discovering several new plants along the way. In all, she spent 10 years at sea, most of it disguised as a man to avoid abuse by other sailors, and she received little recognition for any of her findings at the time. However, in 1785, at the age of 45, she was granted a pension from the French Marine Ministry, who praised her highly for her efforts at sea. Only now, though, are we beginning to understand more about her significant contribution to botany.

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and arrested by the German Gestapo. Odette lied that her accomplice was not a member of her group and he was spared arrest. But she was mercilessly tortured and then sent to a concentration camp, spending much of her time in pitch-black solitary confinement. However, throughout her 3 year ordeal, she revealed nothing to her captors and so her fellow agents were able to continue with their secret work.

For this, she was awarded the George Cross Medal as well as the French Legion d’honneur.

“By accepting death, they would not win anything.

They’ll have a dead body, useless to them. They won’t have me. I won’t let them have me.”

Valentina Tereshkova (1937-) is a Russian engineer and former cosmonaut who, in 1963, became the first woman to travel into space, spending 3 days in her capsule and orbiting the earth 48 times. On her return, she was awarded The United Nations Gold Medal of Peace and became a hero of her country, touring the world and giving speeches. She went on to be a member of The World Peace Council and now, at the age of 83, is still active as a politician in the Federal Assembly of Russia.

“It doesn’t matter what country or what political system you are from. Space brings you together.”

Junko Tabei (19392016) was a Japanese mountaineer who became the first woman to reach the summit of Mt. Everest in 1975 as part of an all-female climbing party. Just 6 years before, in 1969, she had set up the Joshi-Tohan Women’s Mountaineering Club after several male mountaineers refused to climb with her because she was female. She went on to climb the highest peak in all seven continents, again the first woman to achieve the feat, and later became a director of an organisation that worked to preserve mountain environments around the world. In all, she climbed the highest peak in over 70 countries and, 3 months before her death in 2016, aged 77 and terminally ill, she was still able to lead an expedition of young

climbers up Mt. Fuji in her native Japan.. An asteroid, 6897 Tabei, is named in her honour.

“(Women), let’s go on an overseas expedition by ourselves.”

Neerja Bhanot (1963-86) was an Indian senior flight attendant who was killed trying to save the lives of 380 passengers after the plane she was working on was hijacked by members of a Palestinian terrorist organisation in 1986. The terrorists demanded that they be given the passports of everyone on the plane so that they could shoot dead any American passengers, but Neerja was able to hide their passports so they couldn’t be discovered. When the hijackers began setting off explosives several hours later, Neerja was able to open a door and, instead of jumping out and escaping, remained and helped as many passengers off the plane as she could. She was eventually shot dead at point blank range while trying to protect 3 children. She was 23.

“Neerja was absolutely calm and efficient through the horrific episode. She was the first one to alert the captain, the co-pilot and first officers about a possible hijack and it was on her instruction they made their way out of the cockpit, ensuring that the plane could not take off.”

Dr. Kishore Murthy

Alyssa Azar (1997-) is a 23 year old Australian mountaineer who, in 2016, reached the summit of Mt. Everest while still a teenager and 2 years later became the youngest woman to climb the mountain from both the north and south sides. By the age of just 12, Alyssa had climbed all 10 of Australia’s highest peaks and she scaled the heights of Mt. Kilimanjaro while still a minor. Her plan is to climb the highest peak in all 7 continents and to reach the summit of every mountain in the world over 8000 metres.

“My dad always believed in me and told me and my sisters that our size or the fact we were girls never mattered: we could achieve anything we set our minds and hearts to.”

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Thank you so much for being part of this.

Sarah & Rob (with Bella) - Stroud, Gloucestershire

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“Every woman’s success should be an inspiration to another.

We’re strongest when we cheer each other on” Serena Williams

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