As a Mexican-American journalist, activist, and suffragist, Jovita Idár often faced dangerous situations. However, she never backed down from a challenge. She single-handedly protected her newspaper headquarters when the Texas Rangers came to shut it down, and crossed the border to serve as a nurse during the Mexican Revolution. Idár bravely fought the injustices in her time.
Journalist, politician, and civil servant, Oveta Culp Hobby worked to better her community and her country throughout her lifetime. She is best known for serving as the director of the Women’s Army Corps and as the first secretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
In 1887, Nellie Bly stormed into the office of the New York World, one of the leading newspapers in the country. She expressed interest in writing a story on the immigrant experience in the United States. Although, the editor declined her story he challenged Bly to investigate one of New York’s most notorious mental hospitals. Bly not only accepted the challenge, she decided to feign mental illness to gain admission and expose how patients were treated. With this courageous and bold act Bly cemented her legacy as one of the foremost female journalists in history.
As a poet, author, and lecturer, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was a household name in the nineteenth century. Not only was she the first African American woman to publish a short story, but she was also an influential abolitionist, suffragist, and reformer that co-founded the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs.
Writer, performer and journalist Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette is best known for her 1944 novella Gigi.
Hajjah Rangkayo Rasuna Said was a major figure in Indonesia’s struggle for independence against the country’s Dutch colonisers.
Said was politically active from a very young age, and founded a political party – the Indonesian Muslim Association (PERMI) – in her early 20s.
An electrifying speaker who delivered speeches “like lightning during the day” according to one biography, her challenge to Dutch colonial authorities earned her the nickname Lioness. The Dutch often halted her speeches, and even imprisoned her in 1932 for 14 months.
When the Japanese invaded Indonesia during World War II in 1942, Said joined a pro-Japanese organisation, but used it to continue her independence activities.
After the Japanese were defeated, the Dutch returned to try to reimpose their control, initially with British help, and a brutal four-year conflict began, until the Dutch finally recognised Indonesian sovereignty in 1949.
Said was declared a National Hero of Indonesia by president Suharto in 1974. One of Jakarta’s main arteries is named for her (Jalan H.R. Rasuna Said) and Padang, West Sumatra.
Beate Auguste Klarsfeld is journalist who, with her husband, became famous for investigating and documenting Nazi war criminals, including Kurt Lischka, Alois Brunner, Klaus Barbie, Ernst Ehlers, Kurt Asche, among others. From the time she was about 14 years old, Beate began to frequently argue with her parents, because they did not feel responsible for the Nazi era, focused on the injustices and material losses they suffered, and blamed the Russians, expressing no sympathy for other countries. Moving to Paris in 1960, she was confronted with the consequences of the Holocaust. In 1963, she married French lawyer and historian Serge Klarsfeld, whose father was a victim of the Auschwitz concentration camp exterminations. Beate has said that her husband helped her become “a German of conscience and awareness”.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Tawakkol Karman is a Yemeni journalist, politician, and human rights activist.
Teresa Villarreal González was a feminist, labor organizer, and political activist who supported the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM) and the Mexican Revolution (1910–17).
Feminist activist and journalist Sediqeh Dowlatabadi was a pioneering figures in the Persian women’s movement who believed in the advancement of women through education.