Advocacy

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