Cathay Williams (1844 – 1892), a.k.a. William Cathay, was the first known African American woman to enlist in the United States Army, and the only black woman documented to serve in the US army in the 19th century. Born a slave in Independence, Missouri in 1844, Cathay worked as a house servant on a nearby […]
Henrietta Dugdale, Australian women’s rights and suffrage pioneer
It should always be the aim of woman to rise from the degrading position assigned her in the age of bestial ignorance and brute power. Henrietta Dugdale Henrietta Dugdale (1827–1918) was a passionate, confident, and assertive feminist who was one of the pioneers of Victoria, Australia’s feminist movement. She founded the Victorian Women’s Suffrage Society, […]
Fay Kellogg, ambitious architect
Fay Kellogg (1871–1918) was an American architect and suffragette who helped to open the field of architecture to women who followed. She was described in her own time as “the foremost woman architect in the United States”, and known for staying on the job site “until the last brick is laid and the last nail […]
Huda Shaarawi, Egyptian feminist & activist
Huda Shaarawi (1879–1947) was an Egyptian feminist who influenced not only women in Egypt but throughout the Arab world. She was a pioneer in feminism, and brought to light the restrictive world of upper-class women in her book The Harem Years, published in 1987. Huda Shaarawi (also spelled Hoda Shaarawi or Sha’arawi) was raised in […]
Elizabeth Yates, the British Empire’s first female mayor
Elizabeth Yates (1845–1918) was the mayor of Onehunga in New Zealand in 1894, just two months after women gained the right to vote in New Zealand. This made her the first woman to be a mayor anywhere in the British Empire. Born Elizabeth Onan in Scotland, she was the older of two daughters. She moved […]
Qiu Jin, Chinese feminist & revolutionary martyr
Qiu Jin (1875–1907) was a Chinese writer & poet, a strong-willed feminist who is considered a national hero in China. Also called “Jianhu Nüxia” (Woman Knight of Mirror Lake”), she was executed after participating in a failed uprising against the Qing Dynasty. Qiu Jin was born in 1875 to a family of the gentry, and […]
Queen Liliʻuokalani, first and last queen regnant of Hawaii
Liliʻuokalani (1838–1917), born Lydia Liliʻuokalani Loloku Walania Wewehi Kamakaʻ, was the first female monarch of Hawaii to reign in her own right. Up until the 1890s, the Kingdom of Hawaiʻ was an independent sovereign state, officially recognized by the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, and Germany. During Liliʻuokalani’s reign, the Overthrow of the […]
Fanny Blankers-Koen, wife, mother, and four-time Olympic gold medalist
Fanny Blankers-Koen (1918–2004) was a Dutch Olympic athlete known as the Flying Housewife. In the 1948 Olympics in London, the 30-year-old mother of two won four gold medals and set world records — while pregnant with her third child. She was the first woman to win four Olympic gold medals, and the first one to […]
Wilma Rudolph, Olympic gold medalist & civil rights pioneer
Wilma Rudolph (1940–1994) was considered the fastest woman in the world in the ‘60s, and the first American woman to win three gold medals in track & field in the 1960 Olympics. This was the first year that the Olympics were covered internationally on television, which helped Wilma become an international star. In the 1960 […]
Gay Allis Rose Clifford, poet & scholar
Gay Allis Rose Clifford (1943-1998) was a poet and a literary theorist whose most influential piece, Transformations of Allegory, has been cited by over a hundred subsequent works and is still a major work today in the field of allegory in literature. Gay Clifford left her mark not only in the world of literature, but […]