PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: women's movement
president of Malawi
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’s official...
American philosopher
Judith Butler is an American academic whose theories of the performative nature of gender and sex have been influential within Francocentric philosophy, cultural theory, queer theory, and some schools...
American actress, writer, director, and producer
Lena Dunham is an American actress, writer, director, and producer known for advancing a feminist perspective coloured by the experiences of the millennial generation, most visibly on the television series...
American author and feminist
Betty Friedan was an American feminist best known for her book The Feminine Mystique (1963), which explores the causes of the frustrations of modern women in traditional roles. Bettye Goldstein graduated...
American feminist and law professor
Catharine A. MacKinnon is an American feminist and professor of law, an influential if controversial legal theorist whose work primarily took aim at sexual abuse in the context of inequality. MacKinnon,...
French writer
Simone de Beauvoir was a French writer and feminist, a member of the intellectual fellowship of philosopher-writers who have given a literary transcription to the themes of existentialism. She is known...
American lawyer and editor
Myra Bradwell was an American lawyer and editor who was involved in several landmark cases concerning the legal rights of women. Myra Colby grew up in Portage, New York, and from 1843 in Schaumburg township,...
American politician
Bella Abzug was a U.S. congresswoman (1971–77) and lawyer who founded several liberal political organizations for women and was a prominent opponent of the Vietnam War and a supporter of equal rights for...
American reformer and educator
Anne Henrietta Martin was an American reformer who was an ardent feminist and pacifist in the early 20th century. Martin attended Whitaker’s School for Girls in Reno, Nevada, and the University of Nevada...
American artist
Judy Chicago is an American feminist artist whose complex and focused installations created some of the visual context of the women’s liberation movement in the 1970s and beyond. Reared in Chicago where...
American politician
Jeannette Rankin was the first woman member of the U.S. Congress, representing Montana in the House of Representatives (1917–19, 1941–43). Rankin was a vigorous feminist and a lifetime pacifist and crusader...
American feminist, political activist, and editor
Gloria Steinem is an American feminist, political activist, and editor who was an articulate advocate of the women’s liberation movement during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Steinem spent her...
Australian writer
Germaine Greer is an Australian-born English writer and feminist who championed the sexual freedom of women. Greer was educated at the Universities of Melbourne and Sydney before taking a doctorate in...
Yemeni women’s rights activist
Tawakkol Karman is a Yemeni women’s rights activist who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 for her role in leading a pro-democracy protest movement. She shared the prize with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf...
American feminist, author, and artist
Kate Millett was an American feminist, author, and artist. She was an early and influential figure in the women’s liberation movement, whose first book, Sexual Politics, began her exploration of the dynamics...
American diplomat
Perle Mesta was an American socialite and diplomat who entertained the world’s business and political elite from the 1930s through the ’50s and who also served as the first U.S. minister to Luxembourg....
American academic
Camille Paglia is an American academic, aesthete, and self-described feminist known for her unorthodox views on sexuality and the development of culture and art in Western civilization. Paglia was the...
American activist, feminist, writer, and curator
Lucy Lippard is an American activist, feminist, art critic, and curator noted for her many articles and books on contemporary art. Lippard earned degrees from Smith College (B.A., 1958) and New York University...
American civil and women’s rights activist
Dorothy Height was an American civil rights and women’s rights activist, a widely respected and influential leader of organizations focused primarily on improving the circumstances of and opportunities...
American feminist and author
Anne Roiphe is an American feminist and author whose novels and nonfiction explore the conflicts between women’s traditional family roles and the desire for an independent identity. Anne Roth graduated...
American theologian, philosopher, and ethicist
Mary Daly was an American theologian, philosopher, and ethicist who pioneered radical feminist theology. Daly was born into a Roman Catholic family. After earning a Ph.D. in religion from St. Mary’s College...
American literary critic
Annette Kolodny was an American literary critic, one of the first to use feminist criticism to interpret American literary works and cultural history. Kolodny was educated at Brooklyn College of the City...
Javanese noble
Raden Adjeng Kartini was a Javanese noblewoman whose letters made her an important symbol for the Indonesian independence movement and for Indonesian feminists. Her father being a Javanese aristocrat working...
Austrian author
Elfriede Jelinek is an Austrian novelist, playwright, and poet noted for her controversial works on gender relations, female sexuality, and popular culture. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature...
British playwright
Caryl Churchill is a British playwright whose work frequently deals with feminist issues, abuses of power, and sexual politics. When Churchill was 10 years old, she emigrated with her family to Canada....
American activist and author
Andrea Dworkin was an American feminist and author, an outspoken critic of sexual politics, particularly of the victimizing effects of pornography on women. Dworkin began writing at an early age. During...
American author and editor
Mary Abigail Dodge was an American essayist and editor whose writings included works both of homely wit and in ardent support of women’s independence from men. In 1850 Dodge graduated from the Ipswich...
American journalist and author
Susan Faludi is an American feminist and award-winning journalist and author, known especially for her exploration of the depiction of women by the news media. Faludi first showed an interest in journalism...
American feminist and public official
Catherine East was an American feminist and public official, a major formative influence on the women’s movement of the mid-20th century. East earned a degree in history at Marshall University in Huntington,...
Caribbean-American educator and critic
Barbara Christian was a Caribbean American educator and feminist critic who attempted to define an African American feminist philosophy of criticism. Educated at Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin...
Indian literary theorist and critic
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is an Indian literary theorist, feminist critic, postcolonial theorist, and professor of comparative literature noted for her personal brand of deconstructive criticism, which...
Cuban revolutionary and women’s rights activist
Vilma Espín Guillois was a Cuban revolutionary and women’s rights activist. As the wife of Raúl Castro, the younger brother of longtime Cuban leader Fidel Castro, she was for decades regarded as the unofficial...
Swedish writer
Ellen Key was a Swedish feminist and writer whose advanced ideas on sex, love and marriage, and moral conduct had wide influence; she was called the “Pallas of Sweden.” Key was born the daughter of the...
governor of Texas, United States
Ann Richards was an American Democratic politician who served as governor of Texas from 1991 to 1995. A prominent figure in that state’s politics, Richards gained national attention for her keynote speech...
American author
Nancy Friday was an American feminist and author who was especially known for works that explored women’s sexuality. Friday was educated at Wellesley (Massachusetts) College. She worked briefly as a reporter...
American author and social reformer
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was an American feminist, lecturer, writer, and publisher who was a leading theorist of the women’s movement in the United States. Charlotte Perkins grew up in poverty, her father...
American activist
Maggie Kuhn was an American social activist who was central in establishing the group that became known as the Gray Panthers, which works for the rights and welfare of the elderly. Kuhn was raised in the...
American suffragist
Alice Paul was an American women’s suffrage leader who first proposed an equal rights amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Paul was reared in a Quaker home. She graduated from Swarthmore College (1905)...
American social activist
Mary Eliza Church Terrell was an American social activist who was cofounder and first president of the National Association of Colored Women. She was an early civil rights advocate, an educator, an author,...
American scholar
Bell hooks was an American scholar and activist whose work examined the connections between race, gender, and class. She often explored the varied perceptions of Black women and Black women writers and...
Canadian artist and filmmaker
Joyce Wieland was a Canadian artist who was one of Canada’s most influential woman artists. She produced works in a variety of media, including sculptures, quilts, tapestries, paintings, and films, all...
Japanese economist and government official
Takahashi Hisako was a Japanese economist and government official who became the first female member of the Supreme Court of Japan (1994–97). After graduating from Ochanomizu University, Takahashi did...
Indian writer and activist
Mahadevi Varma was an Indian writer, activist, and leading poet of the Chhayavad movement in Hindi literature. Varma, whose father was a professor of English, obtained a master’s degree in Sanskrit from...
Egyptian author and reformer
Durriyyah Shafīq was an Egyptian educator, journalist, and reformer who campaigned for women’s rights in Egypt and founded (1948) the Egyptian women’s organization Bint al-Nīl (“Daughter of the Nile”)....
Egyptian journalist and writer
Amīnah al-Saʿīd was an Egyptian journalist and writer who was one of Egypt’s leading feminists and was a founder (1954) and editor (1954–69) of Ḥawwaʾ (“Eve”), the first women’s magazine to be published...
French author
Julia Kristeva is a Bulgarian-born French psychoanalyst, critic, novelist, and educator, best known for her writings in structuralist linguistics, psychoanalysis, semiotics, and philosophical feminism....
American author and scholar
Paula Gunn Allen was an American poet, novelist, and scholar whose work combines the influences of feminism and her Native American heritage. She played an important role in the late 20th century in advocating...
American scholar
Jill Ker Conway was an Australian-born American scholar, the first woman president of Smith College (1975–85), whose research as a historian focused on the role of feminism in American history. Jill Ker...
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