Amelia Boynton Robinson was an American activist who was a leader of the American Civil Rights Movement in Selma, Alabama and a key figure in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches. She was also the first black woman to run for Congress in Alabama. Robinson began her interest in activism at nine years old when …
Gloria Steinem
Gloria Steinem is is a writer, lecturer, political activist, and feminist organiser who became nationally recognised as a leader and spokeswoman for the feminist movement in the late 1960s and early 70s. Steinem was given her first serious assignment as a freelance writer by Esquire magazine features editor Clay Felker. Her first draft on the …
Kathleen Hanna
Kathleen Hanna is an American musician, feminist activist, and punk zine writer. She is best known for being one of the founding members of the Riot Grrrl band Bikini Kill. Hanna was born in 1968 in Portland, Oregon. She became a feminist at a young age, inspired by Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, the feminist …
Maud Wagner
Maud Wagner was a circus performer and the first known female tattoo artist in the United States. Wagner was an aerialist and contortionist who worked traveling circuses when she met the tattoo artist Gus Wagner at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904. Wagner wanted to learn to tattoo and exchanged a date with Gus for …
Amelia Earhart
Amelia Earhart was a writer and an American aviation pioneer, she was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Earhart had no interest in flying until a short 10 minute trip on a plane at a Long Beach air show in 1920. As soon as Earhart was two or three hundred …
Barbara Jordan
Barbara Jordan was the first black woman elected to the Texas state senate and the first black Texan in Congress. Jordan had been inspired to become an attorney by a talk by Edith Sampson, a black lawyer who gave a talk at Phyllis Wheatley High School, which was segregated. Jordan was a member of the …
Nellie Bly
Nellie Bly was the pen name of the American journalist Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman. She was a pioneer in the field of journalism and widely known for completing a round the world trip in 72 days. Bly’s first job as a journalist was for the The Pittsburgh Dispatch. She got the job after writing an infuriated …
Dr Marie Daly
Dr. Marie Maynard Daly was the first black woman to earn a Ph.D. in Chemistry. Daly was brought up in a family that valued education, her father had emigrated from the West Indies and enrolled at Cornell University to study chemistry, unfortunately he had to drop out due to a lack of money. Daly attended …
Lyudmila Pavinchenko
Lyudmila Pavlichenko was a Ukrainian Soviet sniper during World War II. She is regarded as the most successful female sniper in history with 309 kills. She is still one of the top ten deadliest snipers in history. She was known as ‘Lady Death’. Pavlichenko was a student in her fourth year of college when Germany …
Norah Fry
Norah Fry (also known by her married name Norah Cooke-Hurle) was an advocate and campaigner for disabled children and those with learning difficulties. She was a mental health pioneer. Fry was a member of the Bristol Quaker Fry family of the J. S. Fry & Sons company who made chocolate and cocoa. She became Norah …