Marian Farquharson
In 1885, Marian Farquharson was elected as the first female fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society—but as a woman she was still prohibited from actually attending any meetings or voting on society matters.
Category Archives: Activism
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Amy Ashwood Garvey
Jamaican activist, co-founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which was the most influential anti-colonial organisation in Jamaica for decades. Co-founder of the international Negro World newspaper, and one of the first directors of UNIA’s shipping line, the Black Star Line.
Susan Sontag
American writer and critic
Catherine Charlotte De la Gardie
Catherine Charlotte De la Gardie was influential in popularising smallpox vaccination in Sweden; she also successfully forestalled the country’s last witch trial.
Ada Harris
The first patent for a hair straightener was filed on November 3, 1893 by Ada Harris
Christiane Desroches Noblecourt
Egyptologist who spearheaded an international campaign to save 22 Nubian monuments in Egypt and Sudan, which would have been submerged by the lake created as a result of the construction of the Aswan High Dam.
Annie MacDonald Langstaff
Annie MacDonald Langstaff earned her Bachelor of Civil Law in 1914, but the Bar of Montreal refused to allow her to take the bar exam to become a practising lawyer.
Emilie Kempin-Spyri
Emilie Kempin-Spyri became Switzerland’s first female law school graduate in 1887, but women were not allowed to practise law at the time because they lacked full citizenship.
Shannon Faulkner
Shannon Faulkner was seventeen when she applied to the American military college known as The Citadel. Knowing they only accepted males, she did not include her gender on her application and marked it out on her transcripts. Although she was accepted, the school reversed that decision upon finding out she was female. She sued for violation of her civil rights, as The Citadel was a public school that received state funding.
Alice Catherine Evans
While working at the Bureau of Animal Industry, Evans began investigating the bacteria Bacillus abortus, which was known to cause miscarriages in animals.