Judith Butler is an American philosopher and gender theorist. She is best known for her books Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity and Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. Her work has influenced political philosophy, ethics and the fields of feminist, queer and literary theory. Butler was born in 1956 …
Amandla Stenberg is an actress best known for Catelya in Colombiana and Rue in The Hunger Games. She is an activist and in addition to advocating for No Kid Hungry, she has spoken out about a range of issues including the Black Lives Matter movement and the appropriation of black culture into the mainstream. She …
Fatema Mernissi was a Moroccan sociologist and one of the founders of Islamic feminism. She is best known for her focus on reconciling traditional Islam with progressive feminism. Mernissi was born in 1940 in Fes, Morocco. As a child, she, unlike her mother and grandmother before her, was able to gain an education. She attended …
Frances Power Cobbe was an Irish writer, social reformer, anti-vivisection activist, and leading women’s suffrage campaigner. Cobb was born in 1822 in Newbridge House on her family estate in what is now Donabate, Co. Dublin. The Cobbe family included noteworthy figures like Charles Cobbe, the Archbishop of Dublin from 1743 to 1765. Cobbe was the …
Gloria Richardson is best known as the the leader of the Cambridge Movement, a struggle for civil rights and economic opportunities in Cambridge, Maryland. Richardson was born in Gloria St. Clair Hayes in 1922 in Baltimore, Maryland. At the age of six, Richardson’s family moved to Cambridge, Maryland where her grandfather, Herbert M. St. Clair, …
Shirley Chisholm was an educator, author and politician. She was the first African-American woman elected to the United States Congress, the first major-party black candidate for President of the United States, and the first woman ever to run for the Democratic presidential nomination. Chisholm was born Shirley St. Hill in 1924 in Brooklyn, New York …
Princess Sophia Duleep Singh was a political activist and prominent member of the British suffragette movement. She also had a leading role in the Women’s Tax Resistance League. Singh was the daughter of Maharaja Duleep Singh, the last king of the Sikh Empire. He had become the Maharaja of Punjab in 1843 at the age …
Katherine Murray “Kate” Millett is an American feminist writer, educator, artist, and activist. She is an acknowledged leader of the modern women’s movement. Millett was born in 1934 in Saint Paul, Minnesota to James Albert and Helen Feely Millett. The family’s background was Irish Catholic, and Kate attended several parochial schools. Her father was an …
Dame Vivienne Westwood is an English fashion designer and businesswoman whose early designs helped shape the look of the punk rock movement. Westwood was born Vivienne Isabel Swire in 1941 in Tintwistle, England. Her parents, Gordon and Dora Swire had married two years previously, two weeks after the outbreak of World War II. Westwood attended …
Maya Angelou was an American award-winning author, poet, and civil rights activist. She is best known for her acclaimed memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and her numerous poetry and essay collections. Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. She was briefly raised in St. Louis until her parents …