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Esther W. Hyman’s dedication to the improvement of the status of women is an inspiration for the empowerment of all women. Born in 1898 in Chicago, Illinois, Esther was a lifelong champion of international understanding, engaged in activities aimed at making the world a better place women, men and families to enjoy. Starting her work with the suffragist and peace movements, she went on to play a vital role in the International Federation of Business and Professional Women (IFBPW) and the development of the partnership with the United Nations.
In her study guide “Women and the United Nations” Esther Hymer who had been a lobbyist in the USA for the setting up of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), defined the CSW as being the forum to consider: questions of political equality, including the right to vote and hold political office; civil rights, problems of marriage the right of a woman to keep her own nationality, to equal education opportunities, and many more.
On the celebration of Esther’s 100th birthday, both private and public, were many and varied and included diplomatic representatives, UN officials and NGOs all of whom toasted Esther’s century of achievement.
On her 100th birthday, UN Secretary General Kofi A. Annan wrote Esther a thank you note for her dedication and hard work.
Thanks to Sylvia Perry who captured the life of Esther Hymer in the book A Bus to 42 Street.
Growing up in a politically tumultuous country, Tawakkol witnessed the unification of North and South Yemen in 1990, followed by a civil war between the two factions in 1994 in which the North triumphed over the South. The civil war led to dissidence in the South as the repressive Northern government assumed control over the country.
A journalist by profession and human rights activist by nature, Tawakkol responded to the political instability and human rights abuses in Yemen by mobilizing others and reporting on injustices. In 2005, she founded the organization Women Journalists Without Chains (WJWC) which advocates for rights and freedoms and provides media skills to journalists. In addition, the organization produces regular reports on human rights abuses in Yemen, documenting more than 50 cases of attacks and unfair sentences against newspapers and writers to date.
In 2007, Tawakkol began organizing weekly protests in Yemen’s capitol, Sana’a, targeting systemic government repression and calling for inquiries into corruption and other forms of social and legal injustice. Tawakkol’s weekly protests continued until 2011, when she redirected protesters to support the Arab Spring.
Tawakkol Karman came forward as a courageous leadership figure during the Arab Spring in 2011 and was praised for her efforts to promote reconciliation between Shia and Sunni Muslims and between Islam and other religions.
Tawakkol even brought Yemen’s revolution to New York, speaking directly with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and organizing rallies at the UN headquarters.
Bold and outspoken, Tawakkol has been imprisoned on a number of occasions for her pro-democracy, pro-human rights protests. Amongst Yemen’s opposition movement, she is known as “mother of the revolution” and “the iron woman.”
Since receiving the award, Tawakkol has continued to support female journalists and rally Yemenis against government corruption and injustice. Fiercely committed to change, Tawakkol spends the majority of her time in a tent in Change Square, where she continues her peaceful protests for justice and freedom.
Valerie Thomas (born February 8, 1943, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.) is an American scientist and inventor who, while working at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), invented a way to transmit three-dimensional images, or holograms, that appear to be real. In addition, she helped to develop processing software to convert scientific data captured by satellites into information that scientists could use.
Thomas graduated from Morgan State University in 1964 with a Bachelor Degree in Physics. Thomas subsequently began working as a data analyst at NASA. One of her early roles was analyzing data from the Orbiting Geophysical Observatory, a series of scientific satellites that the United States launched in the 1960s. In the 1970s Thomas helped to develop the image-processing system for NASA’s Landsat, a program involving uncrewed scientific satellites designed to collect information about Earth’s natural resources. The satellites carried various types of cameras, including those with infrared sensors. Thomas served as leader of the Large Area Crop Inventory Experiment, a program that researched and developed ways to monitor wheat yields around the world by using Landsat images.
In 1976 Thomas became intrigued by 3D illusions after viewing a demonstration in which a light bulb seemed to stay lit even after being removed from a lamp. Thomas began experimenting, and she soon invented the illusion transmitter, for which she received a patent in 1980. The transmission system uses a video recorder to take a picture of a floating image in front of a concave mirror. The video image is sent to a second camera, which projects the image in front of a second concave mirror. This process creates the optical illusion of a 3D image. NASA subsequently used the technology in some of its satellite applications.
Thomas continued to work at NASA throughout the 1980s. In 1985 she earned a master’s degree in engineering administration from George Washington University. That same year she served as the computer facility manager for NASA’s National Space Science Data Center. In 1986 she became project manager of the agency’s Space Physics Analysis Network, which was created to help scientists share data and collaborate on space-related topics. Before retiring from NASA in 1995, Thomas held the position of associate chief of the Space Science Data Operations Office. In 2004 Thomas received a doctorate in educational leadership from the University of Delaware.
Internationally known as “Africa’s Iron Lady,” Nobel Laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is a leading promoter of freedom, peace, justice, women’s empowerment and democratic rule. As Africa’s first democratically-elected female head of state, she has led Liberia through reconciliation and recovery following the nation’s decade-long civil war, as well as the Ebola Crisis, winning international acclaim for achieving economic, social, and political change. Recognized as a global leader for women’s empowerment, President Sirleaf was awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize for Peace in 2011. She is the recipient of The Presidential Medal of Freedom—the United States’ highest civilian award—for her personal courage and unwavering commitment to expanding freedom and improving the lives of Africans. Her many honors also include the Grand Croix of the Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest public distinction, and being named one of Forbes’s “100 Most Powerful Women in the World.”
In addition to her Nobel Prize, President Sirleaf is the recipient of numerous honors, including: the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace Disarmament and Development (2012), the African Gender Award (2011), Friend of the Media Award (2010), Golden Plate Award (2008), International Women’s Leadership Award (2008), American Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award (2008), Gold Medal of the President of the Italian Republic (2006), National Reconciliation Award (2006), International Woman of the Year (2006), and International Republican Institute Freedom Award (2006).
President Sirleaf has been ranked among the top 100 most powerful women in the world (Forbes, 2012), the most powerful woman in Africa (Forbes Africa, 2011), one of six “Women of the Year” (Glamour, 2010), among the 10 best leaders in the world (Newsweek, 2010) and top 10 female leaders (TIME, 2010). In 2010, The Economist called her “the best President the country has ever had.”
U.S. educated, she holds a master’s in public administration (MPA) from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. She also earned a degree in accounting at Madison Business College in Wisconsin and received a diploma from the University of Colorado’s Economics Institute. She strengthened women’s rights, expanded freedom of speech and became an example for other African leaders. President Sirleaf has written widely on financial, development and human rights issues, and in 2008 she published her critically acclaimed memoir, This Child Will Be Great.
GPS has changed the lives of everyone forever.
Gladys West (born October 27, 1930, Sutherland, Virginia) is an American mathematician known for her work contributing to the development of the Global Positioning System (GPS).
As valedictorian of her high-school graduating class, Gladys received a full scholarship to Virginia State College (now Virginia State University), the historically Black college where she earned a degree in mathematics in 1952. She later returned for a Master’s degree in the subject—after spending time teaching math in racially segregated Virginia schools and after applying for a series of jobs in Virginia’s segregated state government. In 1956 Gladys was hired as a mathematician by the U.S. Naval Proving Ground, a weapons laboratory in Dahlgren, Virginia, as only their fourth Black employee. At Dahlgren, Gladys was admired for her ability to solve complex mathematical equations by hand. She eventually transitioned from solving those equations herself to programming computers to do it for her. One of her first major projects was work on the Naval Ordnance Research Calculator (NORC), an award-winning program designed (via 100 hours of computer calculations, which often had to be double-checked for errors by hand) to determine the movements of Pluto in relation to Neptune.
In 1978 West was named project manager of Seasat, an experimental U.S. ocean surveillance satellite designed to provide data on a wide array of oceanographic conditions and features, including wave height, water temperature, currents, winds, icebergs, and coastal characteristics. It was the first project to demonstrate that satellites could be used to observe useful oceanographic data. Out of West’s work on Seasat came GEOSAT, a satellite programmed to create computer models of Earth’s surface. By teaching a computer to account for gravity, tides, and other forces that act on Earth’s surface, West and her team created a program that could precisely calculate the orbits of satellites. These calculations made it possible to determine a model for the exact shape of Earth, called a geoid. It is this model, and later updates, that allows the GPS system to make accurate calculations of any place on Earth.
During her career on the naval base, West earned another master’s degree in 1973, this time in public administration from the University of Oklahoma. Though she retired from the base in 1998 at age 68, she continued her education: after recovering from a stroke, she received a Ph.D. in public administration and policy affairs from Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 2000 at age 70.
In 2018 West was formally recognized for her contribution to the development of GPS by the Virginia General Assembly. That same year she was also inducted into the Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame and named one of the British Broadcasting Corporation’s 100 Women of 2018, a list designed to honor inspiring women worldwide.
Mary Eliza Church Terrell was a well-known African American activist who championed racial equality and women’s suffrage in the late 19th and early 20th century. An Oberlin College graduate and one of the first African-American women to earn a college degree in America, she earned both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees. Terrell was part of the upper class, her father being one of the first African American millionaires in the southern states, who used their position to fight racial discrimination. Her activism was sparked in 1892, when an old friend, Thomas Moss, was lynched in Memphis. Terrell joined Ida B. Wells-Barnett in anti-lynching campaigns. Her words—“Lifting as we climb”—became the motto of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), the group she helped found in 1896. She was NACW president from 1896 to 1901. She also actively embraced women’s suffrage, which she saw as essential to elevating the status of black women. Terrell fought for woman suffrage and civil rights because she realized that she belonged “to the only group in this country that has two such huge obstacles to surmount…both sex and race.
In 1909, Terrell was among the founders and charter members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Then in 1910, she co-founded the College Alumnae Club, later renamed the National Association of University Women. Following the passage of the 19th amendment, Terrell focused on broader civil rights. In 1948, Terrell became the first black member of the American Association of University Women, after winning an anti-discrimination lawsuit. In 1950, at age 86, she challenged segregation in public places by protesting the John R. Thompson Restaurant in Washington, DC. She was victorious when, in 1953, the Supreme Court ruled that segregated eating facilities were unconstitutional, a major breakthrough in the civil rights movement.
Terrell continued to be active in the happenings within suffragist circles in the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Through these meetings she became associated with Susan B. Anthony. n 1913, Alice Paul organized a NAWSA suffrage rally where she initially planned to exclude black suffragists and later relegated them to the back of the parade in order to curry favor with Southern white women. However, Terrell and Ida B. Wells fought to integrate the march. Terrell marched with the delegation from new York City, while the Delta Sigma Theta sorority women of Howard University, whom Terrell mentored, marched with the other college women. Active in the Republican Party, she was appointed director of Work among Colored Women of the East by the Republican National Committee for Warren G. Harding's 1920 presidential campaign during the first election in which American women won the right to vote.
Combined with her achievements as a principal, the success of the League's educational initiatives led to Terrell's appointment to the District of Columbia Board of Education which she held from 1895 to 1906. She was the first Black woman in the United States to hold such a position."Lynching from a Negro's Point of View," published in 1904, is included in Terrell's long list of published work. In 1904, Terrell was invited to speak at the International Congress of Women, held in Berlin, Germany. She was the only black woman at the conference. She received an enthusiastic ovation when she honored the host nation by delivering her address in German. She delivered the speech in French, and concluded with the English version.
A proponent of civil rights, women’s emancipation and anti-imperialist ideas,Sarojini Naidu became the first Indian woman to be the President of the Indian National Congress in 1925 and be appointed governor of an Indian state, United Provinces in 1947. Mahatma Gandhi named her. the Nightingale of India because of the color, imagery and lyrical quality of her poetry. Educated in Madras, and between 1895-1898 at King’s College London and at Girton College, Cambridge, she was a suffragist, and became part of the Indian Nationalist movement.
In 1904 she gained popularity as an orator promoting independence for India and rights for women. She counted among the nationalist leaders of the time, and with Muthulakshmi Reddy she helped establish the Women’s Indian Association (WIA) in 1917. She accompanied Annie Besant, president of the Home Rule League and the WIA to advocate for universal suffrage before the Joint Select Committee in the UK. She supported the Lucknow Pact, a joint Hindu-Muslim demand for British political reform and more. She returned to join Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance, and later participated in the non-cooperation movement. In 1928 she was a founding member of the All Indian Women’s Conference, and in 1928 travelled to the US to promote non- violent resistance. In 1930 she helped persuade Gandhi to allow women to take part in the Salt March, despite the high risks associated with it. When Gandhi was arrested, he appointed her as the new leader, and she participated in the Second Round Table Conference headed by Viceroy Lord Irwin in 1931, before being jailed in 1932, and again in 1942 for her participation in the Quit India Movement.
She began to write at age 12, so impressing the Nizam of the Kingdom of Hyderabad with her play, Maher Muneer written in Persian, that she received a scholarship from him for the British universities. Her first book of poems, published in 1905, was entitled the Golden Threshold, and bore an introduction by Arthur Symons, and a sketch of her drawn by John Butler Yeats. In 1912 she published The Bird of Time, in London and in New York, a strongly nationalist book of poetry which included “In the Bazaars of Hyderabad” one of her most popular poems.
Today, India celebrates Sarojini Naidu’s birthday, February 13th, as National Women’s Day of India. #SarojiniNaidu #womenshistorymonth #nfbpwcHerstory
A Franco-Georgian politician and former diplomat, she was elected as Georgia’s last popularly elected President in 2018, and will serve until 2024, when constitutional changes will see that future heads of state are elected by a parliamentary college of electors.
She was born in France, as the daughter of prominent Georgian political refugees, and joined the French Quai D’Orsay in the 1970s. From 2003 – 2004 she was Ambassador of France to Georgia. Mutual agreement between the Presidents of France and Georgia, let her accept Georgian nationality in 2004, and she became the Foreign Minister of Georgia. During this time she negotiated a landmark treaty leading to the withdrawal of Russian forces from undisputed parts of the Georgian mainland. In 2006, she founded the Way of Georgia Political Party, which she led until 2010, and she was elected to Parliament as an independent in 2016, vacating it when she was sworn in as President. She ran as an independent for President and was endorsed by the ruling Georgian Dream Party. After the 2020-2021 Georgian political crisis, she was increasingly alienated from the Government.
A brilliant woman according to her professors, with an amazing grasp of the essentials, she has been a strong advocated for women's rights and equality through social media and from political tribunes. As the first popularly elected woman president of Georgia she has advocated for the empowerment of women and young girls. Amid the controversy around the 2019 Tbilisi Pride Parade, Zourabichvili said: “I am everyone’s president, regardless of sexual orientation or religious affiliation. No human should be discriminated against. I must also emphasize that our country is dealing with enough controversies and doesn’t need any further provocation from any side of the LGBTQ debate." This comment was met with criticism by LGBTQ organizations across the country, as well as some members of the civil society. Tbilisi Pride co-founder Tamaz Sozashvili wrote: "How can she consider peaceful citizens and aggressive fundamentalists as equal sides?"
#WomensHistoryMonth #SalomeZourabichvili #nfbpwcherstory
Lydia Liliʻu Loloku Walania Kamakaʻeha
Queen Liliʻuokalani Of the Hawaiian Islands
The only queen regnant and last sovereign monarch of the Hawaiian Kingdom, ruling from 1891 until the overthrow of Hawaii in 1893, she became Queen after the death of her younger brother, King Kalākaua. She wrote her autobiography Hawai’I’s Story by Hawai’I’s Queen during her subsequent imprisonment.
During her reign, she attempted to draft a new constitution which would restore the power of the monarchy and the voting rights of the economically disenfranchised. Threatened by her attempts to abrogate the existing Bayonet Constitution, pro-American elements in Hawaiʻi overthrew the monarchy on January 17, 1893. The overthrow was bolstered by the landing of US Marines under John L. Stevens to protect American interests, which rendered the monarchy unable to protect itself. The provisional government established under pro-annexation leader Sanford B. Dole was officially recognized by Stevens as the de facto government. The Queen temporarily relinquished her throne to the United States, rather than the Dole-led government, in hopes that the United States would restore Hawaii's sovereignty to the rightful holder. The government under Dole began using ʻIolani Palace as its executive building.
The coup d'état established the Republic of Hawaiʻi, but the ultimate goal was the annexation of the islands to the United States, which was temporarily blocked by President Grover Cleveland. After an unsuccessful uprising to restore the monarchy, the oligarchical government placed the former queen under house arrest at the ʻIolani Palace. On January 24, 1895, Liliʻuokalani was forced to abdicate the Hawaiian throne, officially ending the deposed monarchy. Attempts were made to restore the monarchy and oppose annexation, but with the outbreak of the Spanish–American War, the United States annexed Hawaiʻi.
During Kalākaua's 1881 world tour, Liliʻuokalani served as Regent, and had to handle the smallpox epidemic of 1881 likely brought to the islands by Chinese contracted laborers. She closed all the ports, halted all passenger vessels out of Oʻahu, and initiated a quarantine of the affected. The measures kept the disease contained in Honolulu and Oʻahu with only a few cases on Kauaʻi.
Liliʻuokalani was active in philanthropy and the welfare of her people. In 1886, she founded a bank for women in Honolulu named Liliuokalani's Savings Bank and helped establish a money lending group for women in Hilo. In the same year, she also founded the Liliʻuokalani Educational Society, an organization "to interest the Hawaiian ladies in the proper training of young girls of their own race whose parents would be unable to give them advantages by which they would be prepared for the duties of life." It supported the tuition of Hawaiian girls at Kawaiahaʻo Seminary for Girls, and Kamehameha School.
One of her more notable trips was as part of an 1887 delegation to attend the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria in London sent by King Kalākaua. The party landed in San Francisco and traveled across the United States visiting Washington, D.C., Boston and New York City, where they boarded a ship for the United Kingdom. While in the American capital, they were received by President Grover Cleveland and his wife Frances Cleveland. In London, Queen Consort Kapiʻolani and Liliʻuokalani received an official audience with Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace, where they were greeted with affection, and stories of Kalākaua's visit in 1881. They attended the special Jubilee service at Westminster Abbey and were seated with other foreign royal guests, and with members of the Royal Household. Shortly after the Jubilee celebrations, they learned of the Bayonet Constitution that Kalākaua had been forced to sign under the threat of death. They canceled their tour of Europe and returned to Hawaii.
Asteroid named for her, a Mars Rover named for her.
Mervat Tallawy is a prominent Egyptian figure dedicated to women’s political and social rights. She is responsible for helping draft the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and monitoring its implementation. A champion of Arab women, she actively challenges countries and individuals who use ‘culture’ as a basis for oppressing and discriminating against women.
Mervat Tallawy has been a career public servant for decades. She first joined the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1963 and has served as Egypt’s Ambassador to Austria and Japan, Assistant Foreign Minister, and a member of Egypt’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations. Through her work at the UN, she has served as Deputy Director of the UN International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (UN-INSTRAW), and head of the UN Committee on the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in 1993. Tallawy has also held positions as President of the National Council for Women in Egypt, and Executive Director of the Arab Women Organization.
Ghada Saba is Jordan’s first female cinema director and a UN Women Gender Equality Champion. A strong believer in the significance of representation in media, Saba has written, directed, and produced hundreds of documentaries and short films, specifically focused on women. She also hosts a weekly report on Ro’ya TV where she highlights success of empowered women within local communities.
Saba’s most recent project #You’re_Mine sheds light on domestic violence, which is an incredibly important issue for Saba as she organises workshops in towns and villages all over the Jordan to help those that have experienced violence within their homes, which she calls Saba Hamlet.
South African singer Zenzi Miriam Makeba was a world-renowned symbol of the fight against apartheid. Raised in segregated Sophiatown, she began singing at a ver early age. As her career took off, she was featured on various recordings and in the documentary “Come Back, Africa” which caught the attention of Harry Belafonte. She relocated to the United states, and after a year of success through anti-apartheid songs, she was barred re-entry South Africa. She married activist Stokely Carmichael andbegan touring African and Europe. Her talent and her militant engagements made her an icon in the defense of human rights.
She appeared at jazz festivals like the Montreux in Berlin. It was during this period that Makeba addressed the United Nations’ General Assembly twice, speaking out against apartheid as a Guinean delegate to the United Nations (UN). In 1986, she was awarded the Dag Hammerskjold Peace Prize from the Diplomatic Academy for Peace.
In 1990, African National Congress (ANC) leader Nelson Mandela was freed from 27 years in prison, and encouraged Miriam Makeba to return to South Africa. She returned, after 31 years in exile, and became a goodwill ambassador for South Africa to the United Nations. Makeba has received honorary doctorates from both local and international academic institutions. The city of Berkeley proclaimed the 16 June to be Miriam Makeba Day and she has received the highest decoration from Tunisia. In 1999, Nelson Mandela presented her with the Presidential Award.
She continued touring and fighting for human rights for the rest of her life.
Born Freda Josephine McDonald in 1906 in St. Louis, Josephine Baker grew up poor and wed for the first time in her early teens. A dancer, she went on to tour the United States with Vaudeville troupes and perform on Broadway before moving to Paris in 1925, where she skyrocketed to fame in the city’s music halls. Baker, whose nicknames included Black Venus and the Black Pearl, also sang and acted in movies, became a major celebrity in Europe, and a symbol of the 1920s Jazz Age. Her scorn for the Nazis’ racism coupled with her gratitude toward France, where she first experienced stardom, led Baker to serve during the war as an operative for the French Resistance. Her performing career enabled her to travel around Europe without attracting suspicion, and she attended numerous parties at embassies, gleaning whatever military and political information she could that might aid the Resistance, often smuggling intelligence secrets on invisible ink on her sheet music. She also used her chateau in southern France to hide Jewish refugees as well as weapons for the cause. She received multiple awards from the French for her contributions to the war effort. Following the war, Baker became active in the American civil rights movement, but continued to reside in France with 12 children she adopted from around the globe, whom she affectionately referred to as “her Rainbow Tribe”.
Nana Asma’u was born Asma’u bint Shehu Usman dan Fodio in Degal, present-day Northern Nigeria. Born into a powerful family of scholars, Nana Asma’u received a great education and had a passion for writing poetry. Many of her writings were used to spread the faith of Islam and focused on the leadership and right’s of women. She was an advocate for women’s education and established the yan-taru, a program consisting of female teachers who would travel to rural villages to educate women. An early feminist icon, Nana Asma’u is still a revered figure with schools bearing her name and her teachings still recited.