Inspirational women

In the summer of 1945, during the San Francisco Conference, the United Nation Charter was signed, becoming the first international agreement to proclaim the equal rights of men and women as part of fundamental human rights. Out of 850 delegates who participated in the Convention, only four were women: one of them was the famous Brazilian zoologist, feminist activist and politician Bertha Lutz.

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Born in 1946 in Meerut, India, Fahmida Riaz was a human rights activist, feminist, and one of Pakistan’s best known progressive writers and Urdu poets. Author of over a dozen books on poetry and fiction, she was often regarded as a controversial figure for her use of erotic and sensual themes and allusions in her writings.

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Anna Costanza Baldry was an Italian psychologist, criminologist and academic researcher who dedicated most of her life to women who have suffered violence and abuse, and to the protection of femicide victims’ children. Her work contributed to shedding light upon gender-based intimate partner violence, and to fostering the empowerment of the survivors. She prematurely passed away on March 9th at the age of 47, after a long illness.

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Rigoberta Menchú Tum is a political and human rights activist from Guatemala, belonging to the K’iche’ ethnic group. Born in 1959 to a poor family in a small Mayan community, Menchú has devoted her life to defending the rights of Guatemalan indigenous feminists during and after the Civil War (1960–1996), and to the promotion of the indigenous rights in the country. Thanks to her tireless work for social justice and ethno-cultural reconciliation, in 1992 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, while in 1998 she received the Prince of Asturias Award for improving the condition of women in Guatemala.

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During the French Revolution of 1789, almost 400 women were executed by the guillotine. The most famous among them is, of course, Marie Antoinette; however, aside from the queen, another relevant female figure who died for her ideals is Olympe de Gouges. Playwright and political activist, she advocated for the emancipation of women and against slavery in a moment of great social transformation and uncertainty. She is mostly known for having written The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, in response to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, where she criticized the French revolutionaries for not having considered women in their fight for equality. Her progressive ideas and stances in favor of women´s rights make her one of the very first feminists in the modern era.

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To be called “influential” to someone as famous as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one would have to already be well known, no? This is not the case for Reverend Dr Pauli Murray, an American civil rights advocate, feminist, lawyer and ordained priest, who also was named as co-author to Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s brief in the Reed case, which helped her win the breakthrough case regarding same sex discrimination. Though Murray did not actually co-author the brief, she was given the honour due to her being a leading pioneer in creating the legal strategy for fighting sex discrimination.

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“We are here not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers. I would rather be a rebel than a slave! “

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Trịnh Thị Minh Hà is a Vietnamese filmmaker, feminist, writer, composer and professor of Gender and Women Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

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“I am a woman with chronic schizophrenia. I have spent hundreds of days in psychiatric hospitals. I could have ended up living most of my life on a back ward, but things turned out quite differently”

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