Inspirational Women of the World
This series of biographies was created to give girls and women encouragment to follow their dreams and to not be caught up by expectations and restrictions that are not their own. Anything is possible if you want it enough, you can change the world we live in!
Therefore, each week for eight weeks we will be posting short bios of women who have achieved great things in their public and personal lives. Each woman will be chosen from a different country to give an idea of the scope of women's achievements through out the world.
1. Angela Merkel
From: Germany
Occupation: Chancellor
Merkel was born in 1954 in Hamburg to a teacher and her Lutheran pastor husband. She grew up to become the first female Chancellor (similar to Prime Minister) of Germany, the second woman after Margaret Thatcher to chair the G8 meeting (2007) and to be the chair of the Christian Social Union from 2002-2005.
She came from humble beginnings, studying physics and co-founding a movement to start student clubs at her school, which was unheard of at the time. She studied Physical Chemistry at university and learned to speak Russian fluently.
After Germany's re-unification in 1989 she became the Minister for Women and Youth in President Helmut Kohl's 3rd cabinet. She eventually rose to become Chancellor in 2005 and was named the World Most Powerful Woman by Forbes magazine from 2006-2010.
Although she is an incredibly important woman, Merkel met her partner, and later husband, in 1981 and they were married in 1998. She is step mother to his two sons. She has been described as 'my girl' (or 'Mein Madchen') by Kohl, 'my friend' by Barack Obama and as 'brave and bold' by various newspaper critics.
Sources
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/11/power-women-09_Angela-Merkel_34AH.html
http://www.hdg.de/lemo/html/biografien/MerkelAngela/index.html
2. Ayaan Hirsi Ali
From: Somalia
Occupation: Writer, politician and activist
Hirsi Ali was born in Somalia in 1969, female circumcised (FGM) at age 5, immigrated to the Netherlands aged 23 and is now a best selling author, women's rights activist and one of the few women to speak out on fundamentalist religion and its treatment of minority groups.
Her extremely difficult and oftentimes dangerous childhood was documented in her two books Infidel and Nomad. They have highlighted the difficulties girls and women face being raised in strict African communities with few services and no freedom. Her courage and bravery in speaking out about taboos in Islamic societies has earned her both praise from world leaders and literary critics, but also threats of violence and murder from various Muslim extremists.
In 2003 she was elected a member of the House of Representatives, which is the lower house of Netherland Parliament. She represented the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy. She resigned from politics in 2006 amid heightened controversy over the nature of her citizenship and security which was being paid for by the Netherland's government.
She nows lives in America and is involved in the American Enterprise Institute, where she serves as a fellow. She continues to write, speak and campaign for various causes, including women's rights, anti-fundamentalism, peace and freedom of speech.
Sources
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/books/14grim.html?_r=1&fta=y
http://www.vvd.nl/index.php?FilterId=974&ChapterId=1147&ContentId=4977
3. Alison Hargreaves
From: England/Scotland
Occupation: Expedition Mountaineer
Alison Hargreaves was born in Derbyshire and was fascinated by mountains and climbing from an early age. She eventually worked to become the first person, male or female, to solo all the great north faces of the Alps in a single season—a first for any climber. She was also the second climber to scale Mt Everest without bottled oxygen or the aid of Sherpas, the local indigenous people who are often employed by climbers to guide them through the high altitude areas. She summitted Everest on May 13 1995.
She was married with two young children at the height of her climbing success and would make phone calls each time she summitted each peak she was climbing, to hear her children's voices before her trek down. It was unfortunate that as a woman she had been questioned for continuing to climb after becoming a mother, although many men have families and are praised for their contribution to the sport. Hargreaves pushed ahead, making a path for other women despite the criticism.
As a talented mountaineer and devoted mother, it was tragic that Hargreaves lost her life on K2, due to a storm which struck without warning in August 1995. She was a great inspiration to the climbing community, and will continue to play a role for the next generation of female climbers.
Sources:
Gutman B. 2002 Being Extreme, Citadel Press USA.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~rmvl/en/alison.html
4. Rebecca Housel
From: USA
Occupation: Feminist scholar, Social theorist and Author
Rebecca Housel was born in Boston and was raised in a dynamic and close family. She gained Bachelor and Masters degrees in English (1997, 1998 respectively) before pursuing a PhD in Australia at the University of New South Wales, which she gained in 2007. She speaks French and Hebrew and by the time she was 21 she had already overcome a battle with cancer.
In Australia, Housel studied patterns in women's cancer diagnoses, discovering through qualitative research, a connection with sustained, consistent physical and/or emotional stress six months to one year prior to a diagnosis. This research stemmed from her determination to make a difference for people with the disease.
Her writing has since made Housel well-known. She has written books on several highly population TV and film series, delving into why these ideas have been so ingrained in the national conscience. So far she has written True Blood and Philosophy, X-Men and Philosophy, Twilight and Philosophy and Ironman and Philosophy in the series.
Currently Housel is working on her new book, the charitable foundation she created called The Phoenix Fund for cancer sufferers and has given over 50 public lectures on topics on a range of topics such as disability, cancer, popular culture, writing, and the college experience.
Sources:
http://www.rebeccahousel.com/curriculum-vitae.html
http://www.pw.org/content/rebecca_housel
5. Oprah Winfrey
From: USA
Occupation: Entrepenuer, media boss, author, businesswoman
Oprah Winfrey has lead an extraordinary life by anyone's standards. Voted the Most Powerful Celebrity in the World by Forbes Magazine in 2005, 2007, 2008 and 2010, Winfrey's new TV network OWN has entered the cable market on a very high note, with high ratings and strong reviews. At one point she was the world's only black billionaire. She had extremely humble beginnings, which may have contributed to her burning ambitions and emotional endurance.
Born into a low, socio-economic family, Winfrey was sexually abused by older male relatives and was pregnant to a local boy by the time she was fourteen. Her son died at birth. Tempted to commit suicide, she struggled on to become a local radio newsreader, which was the beginning of her meteoric rise to entertainment fortune.
After taking over a talk show at the insistence of Roger Ebert, by the time she was 32 she had the highest rating daytime talk show in the USA. She then began to expand into writing, acting and philanthropy. She was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in The Color Purple and published 5 books. She later also recruited various experts to her show, thereby launching the careers of Dr. Phil, Jamie Durie and several others during the last decade. The Oprah Brand had been born.
She became a power player in the entertainment industry with particular zeal during the 1990's. By the year 2000 she was listed as the richest black person of the 20th Century, with an $800, 000, 000 fortune. By the end of 2010 her fortune had climbed to $2.7 billion. Today she resides with long-time partner Stedman Graham and runs a school for young women in South Africa.
Sources:
Forbes Special Report: The World's Billionaires (2006)
http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/win0int-1
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2005/nov/20/television.usa
6. Hoda Shaarawi
From: Egypt
Occupation: Political activist, nationalist, feminist
Hoda Shaarwari was born in Egypt in 1879. She became a pioneer feminist and nationalist, passionate about promoting her country and its interests. She grew up being taught to read the Qu'ran and writing poetry, which was rare for a female child in that era. She helped to organize Mubarrat Muhammad Ali, a women's social service organization, in 1909 and the Union of Educated Egyptian Women in 1914.
Her career also included founding the first Egyptian Feminist Union in 1923. She had previously attended the Alliance for Women's Suffrage in Rome and upon her return removed her face veil for the first time. This became a signal of feminism in Egypt. She represented her country at feminist conferences in Switzerland, France, Germany, Turkey, Belgium, Hungary and Denmark.
Travel was a difficult task in those times, with political unrest and long distances both discouragements. These did not affect Shaarawi, who made it her mission to promote feminism and Egypt's development all around the world.
Sources:
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2000/481/chrncls.htm
7. Ayelet Waldman
From: Israel
Occupation: Lawyer, novelist, essayist
Born in 1964 with her parents immigrating from Israel to the US, Waldman started her career as a lawyer. She fought cases as a public defender and graduated from Harvard Law School with a JD, in the same class as Barack Obama. She is renowned for her self-relevatory essays, her writing on the challenges of motherhood and the novel "Love and other Impossible Pursuits", which has been turned into a film with the same title.
Her family life is also rich; she married Michael Chabon, another author and they have two children. He stayed home with their first child, and she continued to practice law until their second child was born. Since she had previously published her first essays, she was able to foster her new writing career in this period. In turn, she used the experiences she had in law to inspire her writing on motherhood.Their parenting style impressed people at the time, the equality in prioritising their careers. Now she teaches legal classes at Berkeley University.
Her determination to reveal the issues that come with motherhood for women; boredom, dissatisfaction and resentment in her series on the subject: Bad Mother, Good Writer? have allowed women the freedom to express these views openly. She has made contributions in many different areas and continues to write essays and blogs while campaigning for political conventions.
Sources:
http://articles.sfgate.com/2003-10-22/entertainment/17514014_1_drug-policy-federal-drug-uc-berkeley
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jun/14/entertainment/ca-ayelet-waldman14
8. Cathy Freeman
From: Australia
Occupation: Olympic Sprinter, Indigenous activist, OAM
Catherine Freeman was born in Mackay, as one of five children. She excelled at athletics from an early age and as a teenager was competing on a national level in 100m, 200m and 400m sprints. As an adult, she came to specialise in the 400m as her signature event. Freeman was named Australian of the Year in 1998.
In her career she became the first indigenous athlete to win gold in the 400m at the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000. She was 1997 and 1999 World Champion in the event and competed all over the world. She retired at the top of her game in 2003, after a 2002 gold medal win of the Commonwealth Games 400m.
Today she is married to stockbroker James Murch and expecting her first child in 2011. She has become an activist for indigenous children's education as the Ambassador to the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation. She has also campaigned for children to participate in athletics to reduce obecity rates in Australia.
Sources:
http://www.iaaf.org/athletes/biographies/country=AUS/athcode=63105/index.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/athletics/2996526/Athletics-Making-of-a-legend.html