Today’s Illustrated Woman in History was written by Catherine Haustein. Dora Jordan In her fifty-four years of life, Dora (Bland) Jordan experienced poverty, a sexual assault resulting in a child, abandonment, and an attempt to wipe her name from history. She overcame them all. The comic actress and ultimate working mother known to fans as …
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 …
Constance Markievicz, known as Countess Markievicz was an Irish Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil politician, revolutionary nationalist, suffragette and socialist. She was both the first woman elected to the British Parliament and the only woman to serve in the first Dáil Éireann (Irish Assembly). Markievicz was born in 1868 and grew up at Lissadell, her …
Ifrah Ahmed is a Somali anti-FGM campaigner and social activist. She was hugely influential in the passing of anti-FGM legislation in Ireland and is the founder of the United Youth of Ireland and the Ifrah Foundation. Ahmed was born in Mogadishu, Somalia. At the age of 8 she underwent Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), along with …
Farrokhroo Parsa was an Iranian physician, educator and parliamentarian. She served as Minister of Education of Iran during the Pahlavi Dynasty and was the first female cabinet minister of an Iranian government. Parsa was born in 1922 in Qom, Iran. Her mother, Fakhr’e Afagh Parsa was the editor of the women’s magazine, Jahan’e Zan (The …
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 …
Aletta H. Jacobs was the first woman to officially attend a Dutch University and the first female physician in the Netherlands. She was also a women’s suffrage activist and inventor. Jacobs was born in 1854 in Sappemeer, Netherlands to Abraham Jacobs, a physician and Anna de Jongh. From an early age, Jacobs would accompany her …
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 …
Begum Rokeya was a leading Muslim feminist writer and social worker in undivided Bengal during the early 20th century. She fought for gender equality and established the first school for Muslim girls, which still exists today. Rokeya was born in 1880 in Bangladesh during British colonial rule. Her family were orthodox Muslims, and so women …