Shirin Ebadi is an Iranian lawyer and human-rights activist who founded the Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran. She was the first female judge in Iran, and the first Iranian and the first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Ebadi was born in 1947 in Hamadan, Iran. A year later, her family …
Raichō Hiratsuka was a writer, journalist, political activist, anarchist and pioneering Japanese feminist who founded Seitō (Bluestocking) magazine. Hiratsuka was born in 1886 in Tokyo. She attended Japan Women’s University where she became interested in European philosophy, Zen buddhism and the Swedish feminist writer Ellen Key. After graduating, she continued her education at the Narumi …
Shahla Sherkat is a journalist, prominent Persian feminist author, and one of the pioneers of the Women’s rights movement in Iran. Sherkat was born in 1956 in Isfahan, Iran. When she was 11, her family moved to Tehran. After finishing school, Sherkat continued her education at Tehran University where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in …
Wangari Maathai was a Kenyan environmental and political activist who founded the Green Belt Movement, an organisation fighting to conserve the environment and campaign for women’s rights. She was the first African women to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for “her holistic approach to sustainable development that embraces democracy, human rights, and women’s rights in …
Ann Oakley is a British sociologist, feminist and writer who pioneered research into women’s lives, including the role of a housewife, childbirth and motherhood. She is currently a Professor at the Institute of Education, University of London where she founded the Social Science Research Unit and established the EPPI-Centre (Evidence for Policy and Practice Information …
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 …
Harriet Taylor (also known as Harriet Taylor Mill) was a philosopher and women’s rights advocate. Taylor was born in 1807 in Walworth, south London to Thomas Hardy, a London surgeon, and his wife Harriet Hurst. She was educated at home, and showed a keen interest in poetry. At the age of 18, Taylor married the …
bell hooks is an American author, feminist, and social activist whose work deals with issues of race, gender, class, and sexual oppression. hooks was born Gloria Jean Watkins in 1952, in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, a small, segregated town in rural Kentucky. Her experience in growing up within this community shaped her feminism and her father represented …
Gerda Lerner was an American historian, author and the single most influential figure in the development of women’s and gender history since the 1960s. Lerner was born Gerda Hedwig Kronstein in Vienna, Austria in 1920. She was the first child of the affluent Jewish couple Ilona (née Neumann), an artist and Robert Kronstein, a pharmacist. …
Mary Carpenter was an English educational and social reformer. She brought education to poor children and young offenders in Bristol who had been previously denied it. Carpenter was born in 1807 in Exeter. In 1817 her family moved to Bristol and her father took charge of the Lewin’s Mead Unitarian meeting house. He also established …