5 Powerful Women to Celebrate on International Women's Day
Photo by Kiana Bosman on Unsplash
On International Women’s Day, we celebrate all women and the ways their strength, brilliance, compassion and perseverance have changed the world. This year, the International Women’s Day campaign theme is #ChooseToChallenge, recognizing that a challenged world is an aware world––and awareness leads to change. The women who have challenged the inequality, oppression and bias they faced are the very ones who have changed the world for the better and set an example we can follow. By calling out damaging patriarchal systems and actions, we’re able to create a more inclusive world for everyone.
These five women are just a few from the past hundred years who have defied social expectations and gender roles to accomplish remarkable things. You may not know their names, but their brave, pioneering work has changed the world.
Huda Sha’awari was an Egyptian activist and feminist who fought for the rights of her country and countrywomen. She began her career in activism advocating for Egypt’s freedom from Great Britain and later shifted her attention to the women’s equality movement. She pushed back against the harem system she grew up in, which confined women to “secluded apartments within the home” and required them to wear face veils when going outside. In one memorable act of defiance, Sha’awari removed her veil in public and trampled it underfoot––to mixed outrage and applause. Shortly thereafter, Sha’awari established the Egyptian Feminist’s Union in 1923. She is considered the founder of the women’s movement in Egypt.
Gwendolyn Brooks was an American author, poet and teacher. She was the first Black person to win a Pulitzer Prize, the preeminent award for writing and literature in the United States. Brooks developed a love for writing and poetry at a young age, publishing her first poem at just 13. As she continued to write, her poetry became more complex, combining examinations of racial discrimination, poverty and gender inequality with powerful metaphors and artistic phrasing. Brooks’s poetic prowess was nationally recognized by the time she was nominated as the United States Poet Laureate in 1985––the first Black woman to be appointed as the official poet of the U.S.
Elizabeth Marie Tallchief was a Native American ballerina, considered to have been the States’ first major prima ballerina. Born in Oklahoma on the Osage reservation, Tallchief started to dance at the age of 3. Recognizing her extraordinary talent, her parents moved her to Los Angeles and then to New York to continue her training. Tallchief began performing with ballet troupes and was soon singled out for her electrifying, elegant emotionality and stunning technical ability. She suffered significant discrimination and jealousy from peers and superiors in the ballet world, but she endured, ultimately making great strides to break down ethnic barriers in the world of dance.
Irena Sendler was a social worker and nurse in Poland during the second World War. Horrified by the humanitarian disaster that was the Nazi’s treatment of the Jewish people, Sendler joined the underground Polish resistance movement. Through connections at her job at the Warsaw Social Welfare Department, she was able to obtain a permit to enter the ghetto and forge documents to smuggle children out. She buried their true identities in jars in her backyard. Sendler saved more than 2,500 Jewish children before she was caught, imprisoned and tortured. She escaped just before her execution. After the war, she dug up the records of the true identities of the children she had saved and placed with adopted families, tracking them down to inform them of their pasts and connect them with the families they had left.
Flossie Wong-Staal was a Chinese-American virologist and molecular biologist. She is credited with being the first person to clone HIV and complete a genetic mapping of the virus. Born in China as Wong Yee Ching, Wong and her family escaped to Hong Kong after the communist revolution of the 1940s. In Hong Kong, Wong was able to discover and cultivate her interest in science. She continued her education in the U.S., earning her doctorate in 1972 and teaching at UCSD until her death in 2020. Wong-Staal’s research proved to be ground-breaking both in the world of cancer studies and for the growing AIDS crisis. When she successfully cloned HIV, Wong-Staal was able to identify the link between HIV and AIDS. Her work made it possible to develop tests and treatments for the novel and devastating disease.
Photo by Dario Valenzuela on Unsplash
These women and many others have been integral players in some of the most momentous events of history, challenging gender bias, inequality and social expectations to leave the world a better place than they found it. In 2021, let’s commit to recognizing and celebrating women’s achievements, big and small.
And to the women reading this: you don’t need to have cured a disease or solved world hunger to be remarkable––you already are. You too can #ChooseToChallenge.
About the Author
Emmy Luker is a writer and MDiv candidate at Fuller Theological Seminary. She is passionate about speaking and writing about what is true, and doing it in a way people can and want to hear. Originally from Colorado, she is a big fan of alpine views and mountain hikes, but she is learning to love the wind and the lake as a recent transplant in Chicago.