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 …
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 …
Syeda Ghulam Fatima is a Pakistani human and labour rights activist, known for her work in ending bonded labour in brick kilns. She is General Secretary of Lahore-based Bonded Labour Liberation Front Pakistan (BLLF). Fatima is the daughter of a trade-unionist and small-scale railway employee Syed Deedar Hussain. She holds a Masters Degree in Political …
Nawal El Saadawi is an Egyptian feminist writer, activist, physician and psychiatrist. El Saadawi was born in 1931 in the small village of Kafr Tahla. Her family were a mix of traditional and progressive. At the age of six El Saadawi was pinned down by four women in her home in Egypt and was subjected …
Angela Davis is an American academic, Civil Rights Activist, scholar and Women’s Rights Activist who advocates for the oppressed. Davis’ political activism began when she was a child in Birmingham, Alabama. She lived in the “Dynamite Hill” neighbourhood, which was marked by racial conflict and experienced racial prejudice and discrimination. As a teenager she organised …
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an American suffragist, social activist, abolitionist, and leading figure of the early women’s rights movement. Cady Stanton was introduced to the abolitionist, temperance, and women’s rights movements through her cousin, the reformer Gerrit Smith. In 1840 she married the reformer Henry B. Stanton, she insisted that ‘obey’ be dropped from the …
Nina Simone was an American singer, songwriter, pianist and civil rights activist. Simone started playing piano by ear when she was 3 years old. She played piano in her mother’s church and soon began to study classical music with an Englishwoman called Muriel Mazzanovich. She developed a love of Bach, Chopin, Brahms, Beethoven and Schubert. …
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 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 …
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 …