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
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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.
Junko Tabei, was the first woman to summit of Mount Everest and the first woman to ascend the Seven Summits, climbing the highest peaks on every continent. She has written seven books, and organized environmental projects to clean up rubbish left by climbers on Mt. Everest.
Considered a frail child, she began climbing at age 10, enjoying the non-competitive nature of the sport and the striking natural landscapes. Her family did not have the money for such an expensive hobby, so she began to study English and American literature to become a teacher. When she graduated, she joined a number of men’s climbing clubs, but many men questioned her motives for pursuing a male-dominated sport. Soon she climbed all of the peaks in Japan, and met her husband to be, a mountaineer, on an excursion up Mount Tanigawa.
She established a women only mountaineering club in 1969, with the slogan “Let’s go on an overseas expedition by ourselves.” Their first expedition in 1970 was up Annapurna III in Nepal. She realized that she and the other Japanese women struggled to reconcile traditional Japanese values of quiet strength and stoic silence with more immediate practical needs of mountaineering. It obliged women to acknowledge personal limits, and to accept help from one another.
The next year, they applied for a permit to climb Mt. Everest, accorded 4 years later. The Japanese Women’s Everest Expedition was formed, with 15 women from a range of professions, including two mothers. When seeking sponsorship, they were told women should raise children, and each woman needed to raise $5000 themselves – and many made their own equipment from scratch as a result. Despite being buried under an avalanche, and badly bruised an injured, and bouts of altitude sickness, she made it to the top, facing unanticipated challenges near the peak. Her personal goal was to climb the highest mountain in every country, and by the end of her lifetime she had completed at least 70.
She refused corporate sponsorship after Everest, and saved money by making paid public appearances, guiding climbing tours, and tutoring music and English. From 2000 she actively initiated programs to keep mountains clean of trash. In 2003 she and Sir Edmund Hillary were given a special place in the Nepalese celebrations of 50 years since the first successful summit of Mount Everest.
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.
March 8th is International Women's Day!
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.
To kick off Women's History Month, we're celebrating our founder, Lena Madesin Phillips!
Lena Madesin Phillips, born in Kentucky, was an American lawyer and founder of the International Federation of Business and Professional Women (IFBPW). A woman ahead of her time, Phillips challenged the predetermined life women were meant to live in the late 1800s, wives and mothers, and became the first woman to graduate with full honors from the University of Kentucky law school in 1917.
Lena Madesin Phillips dedicated her life to issues of child labor, equal pay for women, and endorsement of the ERA. She founded the National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs (NFBPWC) in 1919 to organize women to campaign for equal rights. In the 1920s she expanded her outreach to Europe to found the International Federation of Business and Professional Women (IFBPW) in 1930.
