This weeks Illustrated Woman in History was illustrated by Zowie Murphy and written by Hollie Peck. Lesley Gore (Lesley Sue Goldstein) May 2, 1946 – February 16, 2015 When it comes to girl power, Lesley Gore was way ahead of her time. She was a singer-songwriter, actress, feminist and LGBT activist. She is perhaps best …
Wanda Gág was an American artist, author, translator and illustrator. She wrote and illustrated the children’s book Millions of Cats, which won both a Newbery Honor Award and the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award. It is the oldest American picture book still in print. Gág was born in 1893 in New Ulm, Minnesota. Her parents, Elisabeth …
Doria Shafik was a feminist and founder of the Bint al-Nil Union who became one of the leaders of the women’s liberation movement in Egypt in the mid-1940s. Her efforts led to Egyptian women being granted the right to to vote by the Egyptian constitution. Shafik was born in 1908 in Tanta, in the Nile …
Adrienne Rich was an American poet, essayist and feminist called “one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century.” She is credited with bringing “the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse.” Rich was born in 1929 in Baltimore, Maryland. Her father, Arnold …
Louisa May Alcott was an American novelist, feminist and poet best known for her novel Little Women. Alcott was born in 1812 in Germantown, Pennsylvania. She grew up in Boston and Concord, Massachusetts, and from a young age she would write stories which she and her sisters would act out for friends. Her father briefly …
Florynce Kennedy was an American lawyer, activist, civil rights advocate, lecturer and one of the pioneers of second-wave feminism. Kennedy was born in 1916 in Kansas City, Missouri. She grew up in a mostly white neighbourhood, and as a young child was arrested as the police didn’t believe she lived in the neighbourhood. On one occasion, …
Georgia O’Keeffe was an American artist who is best known for her paintings of magnified flowers, animal skulls, and New Mexico desert landscapes. She has been recognised as the “Mother of American modernism”. O’Keeffe was born in 1887 in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. She grew up on a dairy farm, and showed a talent for art …
Camilla Collett was a feminist writer from Norway. She wrote the first Norwegian novel dealing critically with the position of women and is known as the “first Norwegian feminist.” Collett was born in 1813 in Kristiansand, Norway to Nicolai Wergeland, a noted theologian, politician, and composer in his time, and Alette née Thaulow. At the …
Eugénie Niboyet was a French author, journalist and early feminist. She is best known for founding La Voix des Femmes (The Women’s Voice), the first feminist daily newspaper in France. Niboyet was born in 1797 in Montpellier, France and raised in a Protestant household. During the Bourbon Restoration following the fall of Napoleon in 1814, …
Huda Shaarawi was a pioneering Egyptian feminist leader and founder of the Egyptian Feminist Union. Shaarawi was born in 1879 in Al-Minya, Egypt, and was the daughter of Muhammad Sultan, the first president of the Egyptian Representative Council. When she was 5, her father died and she realised that her status as his oldest child …