A History of the World in 100 Women

The Women's Resource Centre presents a list of 100 women who have made their mark on history.

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• 2011-06-16

  Annie Jump Cannon

  

  Annie Cannon (1863 -1941) became a member of Pickering’s women in 1896, the women hired by Harvard Observatory director to complete the Draper Catalogue mapping and defining all the stars in the sky to photographic magnitude of about 9.

  Not long after the work on the Draper Catalogue began, a disagreement developed as to how to classify the stars. Cannon negotiated a compromise between a complex classification system and a more simple straightforward approach. She started by examining the bright southern hemisphere stars. To these stars she applied a third system, a division of stars into the spectral classes. Her scheme was based on the strength of the Balmer absorption lines. After absorption lines were understood in terms of stellar temperatures her initial classification system was rearranged to avoid having to update star catalogues.

  Annie’s work was “theory laced” but simplified. How she could see the stars or stellar spectra was extraordinary. Her Henry Draper Catalogue listed nearly 230,000 stars and was valued as the work of a single observer. Annie also published many other catalogues of variable stars, including 300 that she discovered. Her career lasted more than 40 years, during which time women gained acceptance within the scientific community.

  Annie Jump Cannon died April 13, 1941 after receiving a regular Harvard appointment as the William C. Bond Astronomer. She also received the Henry Draper Medal, which only one other woman has won.

• 2011-06-01

  Doreen Lawrence OBE 

  Lawrence (1952 - present) is a prominent British human rights campaigner dedicated to securing justice for the victims of racially motivated crime and police misconduct. She first came to public attention in 1993 as the mother of Stephen Lawrence, a black British teenager who was murdered in a suspected racial attack in south-east London.

  Following the murder of her son, Doreen and husband Neville believed that the Metropolitan Police investigation was not being conducted in a professional manner, citing incompetence and racism as prime flaws. In 1999 After years of campaigning, (with the support of many in the community, the media and politics), a wide-ranging judicial inquiry was established by Jack Straw, the Home Secretary. The inquiry was to investigate the circumstances of Stephen’s death. The public inquiry was the subject of intense media interest which became international when it concluded that the Metropolitan Police was ‘institutionally racist’ and that this was one of the primary causes of their failure to solve the case.

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  Diane Julie Abbott 

  Diane Abbott (1953 - present) is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Hackney North and Stoke Newington since 1987, when she became the first black woman to be elected to the House of Commons. In 2010, Abbott became Shadow Public Health Minister after unsuccessfully standing for election as leader of the Labour Party.

  Abbott is a frequent public speaker and until her appointment as a shadow minister in October 2010, Abbott appeared alongside the former Conservative politician and media personality Michael Portillo on the BBC’s weekly politics digest This Week. 

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  Wangari Maathai

  

  Wangari Maathai (1940 – present) is a Kenyan environmental and political activist. In the 1970s, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organisation focused on helping women to plant trees, combat deforestation, restore their main source of fuel for cooking, generate income, and stop soil erosion. Maathai has incorporated advocacy and empowerment for women, eco-tourism, and just economic development into the Green Belt Movement. Over 40 million trees have been planted. Over 30,000 women trained in forestry, food processing, bee-keeping, and other trades that help them earn income while preserving their lands and resources.

  In 1984, she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, and in 2004, she became the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for “her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.” Maathai was an elected member of Parliament and served as Assistant Minister for Environment and Natural Resources in the government of President Mwai Kibaki between 2003 - 2005.

  Maathai was one of the founders of The Nobel Women’s Initiative along with sister Nobel Peace laureates. It is the goal of the Nobel Women’s Initiative to help strengthen work being done in support of women’s rights around the world.

• 2011-04-14

  Rigoberta Menchú Tum

  

  Rigoberta Menchú Tum (1959 – Present), is an indigenous Guatemalan, of the K’iche’ ethnic group. Menchú has dedicated her life to publicising the plight of Guatemala’s indigenous peoples during and after the Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996), and to promoting indigenous rights in the country. She received the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize and Prince of Asturias Award in 1998. She is the subject of the testimonial biography I, Rigoberta Menchú (1983) and the author of the autobiographical work, Crossing Borders. Menchú is a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador. She has also become a figure in indigenous political parties and ran for President of Guatemala in 2007.

  In 2006, Menchú was one of the founders of the Nobel Women’s Initiative along with sister Nobel Peace Laureates. The Nobel Women’s Initiative helps to strengthen the work of women’s rights around the world. Menchú is also a member of PeaceJam, an organisation whose mission is “to create young leaders committed to positive change in themselves, their communities and the world through the inspiration of Nobel Peace Laureates” 

• 2011-04-08

  Mary Kelly

  

  Mary Kelly (1941 – Present) is an American conceptual artist, feminist, educator, and writer.

  Kelly has contributed extensively to the discourse of feminism and postmodernism through her large-scale narrative installations and theoretical writings.Kelly’s work mediates between conceptual art and the more intimate interests of artists of the 1980s. Her work has been exhibited internationally and she is considered among the most influential contemporary artists working today. Mary Kelly is Professor of Art at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she is Head of Interdisciplinary Studio, an area she initiated for artists engaged in site-specific, collective, and project based work.

  Kelly moved to London in 1968, she began her long-term critique of conceptualism, informed by the feminist theory of the early women’s movement in which she was actively involved throughout the 1970s. She was also a member of the Berwick Street Film Collective and a founder of the Artists’ Union. During this time, she collaborated on the film, Night cleaners, and the installation, Women & Work: a document on the division of labour in industry, as well as producing her iconic work on the mother/child relationship, Post-Partum Document. Documentation I, the infamous “nappies,” caused a scandal in the media when it was first exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London in 1976.

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  Mary Robinson

  Mary Therese Winifred Robinson (1944 - Present) served as the seventh President and first female President of Ireland from 1990 to 1997, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, from 1997 to 2002.

  Robinson’s newest project is Realizing Rights: the Ethical Globalization Initiative, which fosters equitable trade and decent work, promotes the right to health and more humane migration policies, works to strengthen women’s leadership and encourage corporate responsibility.

  In 2004, she received Amnesty International’s Ambassador of Conscience Award for her work in promoting human rights.

• 2011-04-07

  Michelle Bachelet

  

  Michelle Bachelet (1951 - Present) is a moderate socialist politician who was the first Woman President of Chile, from 2006 to 2010. She campaigned on a platform of continuing Chile’s free-market policies, while increasing social benefits to help reduce the gap between rich and poor.

  Before her Presidency, Bachelet was appointed Minister of Health. She began an in-depth study of the public health-care system that led to the AUGE plan. She reduced the saturated public hospital system waiting lists by 90%, but was unable to eliminate them completely and offered her resignation, which was promptly rejected by the President. Controversially, she allowed free distribution of the morning-after pill for victims of sexual abuse.

  In 2002 Bachelet was appointed Defence Minister, becoming the first woman to hold this post in a Latin America and one of the few in the world. While Minister of Defence she promoted reconciliatory gestures between the military and victims of the dictatorship and engaged in international peace operations.

  A moment which has been cited as key to Bachelet’s chances to the presidency came during a flood in northern Santiago where she, led a rescue operation on top of an amphibious tank.

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  Caroline Herschel

  

  Caroline Herschel (1750 - 1848) born in Hannover, Germany. She was scarred at the age of three by smallpox, and her growth was stunted by typhus when she was ten. While her father tried to provide her with an education Caroline’s mother preferred Caroline to work as a maid.

  Caroline’s brother William escaped to England during the Seven Years War and began a career in Astronomy, Caroline joined him in England and became his apprentice.

  Caroline took the opportunities to make her own observations; in 1783 she discovered three new nebulae (hazy clouds where stars form). Today, these objects are known as NGC 2360, NGC 205, and NGC 253. In 1786, Caroline discovered her first comet. The first discovery of a comet by a woman brought Caroline to the attention of the world. By 1797 she had discovered seven more comets. Her second comet is now known as periodic comet Herschel-Rigollet and returns every 155 years.

  Caroline became the first woman to receive honorary membership into Britain’s Royal Society, she received the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, election into the Royal Irish Academy, and awarded the Gold Medal for Science. In 1889, Caroline received a final honour for her achievements when a minor planet was named “Lucretia,” her middle name.

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  Nawal Saadawi

  

  Nawal Saadawi (1931 - Present) is an Egyptian feminist writer, activist, physician and psychiatrist. She has written many books paying particular attention to the practice of female genital mutilation in her society.

  In 1972 she published Al-Mar’a wa Al-Jins (Woman and Sex), which became a foundational text of second-wave feminism. As a consequence of the book and her political activities, Saadawi was dismissed from her position as Director at the Ministry of Health.

  Long viewed as controversial and dangerous by the Egyptian government, Saadawi was imprisoned in September 1981, along with many other objectors to the Jerusalem Peace Treaty. She was released one month after his assassination.

  In 1988 Saadawi was forced to flee Egypt. She began to teach at Duke University and the University of Washington. She has held positions at a number of prestigious universities including Cairo University, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, the Sorbonne, Georgetown, Florida State University, and the University of California. In 1996, she moved back to Egypt.

  She has continued her activism and considered running in the 2005 Egyptian presidential election, before stepping out due to stringent requirements.

  She was among the protesters in Tahrir Square in 2011.