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 …
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Florynce Kennedy
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
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 …
Nichelle Nichols
Nichelle Nichols is an American actress, singer and voice artist. She is best known for starring as Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek, making her one of the first African American female characters to play a role other than a servant. She was a role model for female women of colour, and inspired many to join …
Camilla Collett
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 …
Joyce Banda
Joyce Banda is a Malawian politician who served as vice president (2009–12) and president (2012–14) of Malawi. She was the first woman to serve as head of state anywhere in Southern Africa. Banda was born in 1950 in Malemia, a village in the Zomba District of Nyasaland (now Malawi). After completing school, Banda went on …
Sophie Taeuber-Arp
Sophie Taeuber-Arp was a Swiss artist, painter, sculptor, textile designer and dancer. She was one of the foremost figures of the Dada art movement, and is considered one of the most important artists of concrete art and geometric abstraction of the 20th century. Taeuber-Arp was born in 1889 in Davos, Switzerland. She studied art at …
Aletta H. Jacobs
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
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
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 …