Aung San Suu Kyi (June 19, 1945- Present)

“Fear is a habit; I am not afraid.”

—Aung San Suu Kyi

Aung San Suu Kyi is an opposition leader in her home country of Myanmar and the winner of the  1991 Nobel Prize for Peace.

Aung San Suu Kyi returned to Burma in 1988, after years living and studying abroad, only to find widespread slaughter of protesters rallying against the brutal rule of dictator U Ne Win. She spoke out against him and initiated a nonviolent movement toward achieving democracy and human rights. In 1989, the government placed Suu Kyi under house arrest, and she spent 15 of the next 21 years in custody. In 1991, her ongoing efforts won her the Nobel Prize for Peace, and she was finally released from house arrest in November 2010.

Aung San Suu Kyi's father, formerly the de facto prime minister of British Burma, was assassinated in 1947. Her mother, Khin Kyi, was appointed ambassador to India in 1960. Suu Kyi obtained a bachelor's degree from the University of Oxford in 1969, and in 1972, she married. She had two children—in 1973 and 1977—and the family spent the 1970s and 1980s in England, the United States and India.

In 1988, Suu Kyi returned to Burma to care for her dying mother, and her life took a dramatic turn.

In 1962, Burma dictator U Ne Win staged and carried out a coup d'état in Burma, which spurred intermittent protests over his policies for the subsequent decades. By 1988, he had resigned his post of party chairman, essentially leaving the country in the hands of a military junta, but stayed behind the scenes to orchestrate various violent responses to the continuing protests and other events.

Suu Kyi returned to Burma from abroad in 1988, amidst the slaughter of protesters rallying against U Ne Win and his iron-fisted rule. She began speaking out against him, with democracy and human rights at the fore of her struggle. It did not take long for the junta to notice her efforts, and in July of 1989, the military government of Burman—which was renamed the "Union of Myanmar" in 1989—placed Suu Kyi under house arrest and cut off any communication she might have with the outside world.

Though the Union military told Suu Kyi that if she agreed to leave the country, they would free her, she refused to do so, insisting that her struggle would continue until the junta released the country to civilian government and political prisoners were freed. In 1990, a parliamentary election was held, and the party with which Suu Kyi was now affiliated—the National League for Democracy—won more than 80 percent of the parliamentary seats. The election results, though, were predictably ignored by the junta. Twenty years later, they formally annulled the results.

Suu Kyi was released from house arrest in July 1995, and the next year she attended the NLD party congress, under the continual harassment of the military. Three years later, she founded a representative committee and declared it as the country's legitimate ruling body, and in response, in September 2000, the junta once again placed her under house arrest. She was released in May of 2002.

In 2003, the NLD clashed in the streets with pro-government demonstrators, and Suu Kyi was yet again arrested and placed under house arrest. Her sentence was then renewed yearly, and the international community came to her aid each time, calling continually for her release (to no avail).

In May of 2009, just before she was set to be released from house arrest, Suu Kyi was arrested yet again, this time charged with an actual crime—allowing an intruder to spend two nights at her home, a violation of her terms of house arrest. The intruder, an American named John Yettaw, had swum to her house to warn her after having a vision of an attempt on her life. He was also subsequently imprisoned, returning to the United States in August 2009.

That same year, the United Nations declared that Suu Kyi's detention was illegal, under Myanmar law. In August, however, Suu Kyi went to trial, and was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison. The sentence was reduced to 18 months, however, and she was allowed to serve it as a continuation of her house arrest. Those within Myanmar and the concerned international community believed that the ruling was simply brought down to prevent Suu Kyi from participating in the multiparty parliamentary elections scheduled for the following year (the first since 1990). These fears were realized when a series of new election laws were put in place in March 2010: One law prohibited convicted criminals from participating in elections, and another barred anyone married to a foreign national from running for office (Suu Kyi's husband was English).

In support of Suu Kyi, the NLD refused to re-register the party under these new laws and was disbanded. The government parties ran virtually unopposed in the 2010 election and easily won a vast majority of legislative seats, with charges of fraud following in their wake. Suu Kyi was released from house arrest six days after the election.

In November 2011, the NLD announced that it would re-register as a political party, and in January 2012, Suu Kyi formally registered to run for a seat in parliament. On April 1, 2012, following a grueling and exhausting campaign, the NLD announced that Suu Kyi had won her election. A news broadcast on state-run MRTV confirmed her victory, and on May 2, 2012, Suu Kyi took her oath and took office.

Constance Georgine Markievicz (February 4, 1868 – July 15, 1927)

Constance Georgine Markievicz played an active part in the Easter Rising of 1916 and in post-1916 Irish history. Born in 1868 as Constance Gore-Booth, Countess Markievicz was sentenced to death for her part in the Easter Uprising but had the sentence commuted to life imprisonment on account of her gender.

Countess Markievicz was born in London into a wealthy family that had a large estate in County Sligo. Her father, Sir Henry Gore-Booth, was an explorer, but unlike many landowners in Ireland, he treated his tenants with concern. Therefore, Markievicz was brought up in a household that showed care and concern to those on the family estate in Lissadell. Her sister, Eva, would later involve herself in the labour movement in England - and women's suffrage. The future countess did not share, at this time, her sister's aspirations. Constance wanted to be an artist and in 1893, she went to London to study art at the Slade School. In 1898, she continued her studies at the Julian School in Paris. It was here that she met Count Casimir Dunin Markievicz. He was from a wealthy Polish family but was already married when he met Constance. However, his wife died in 1899 and he married Constance in 1901 making her Countess Markievicz.

In 1903, the couple moved to Dublin and the Countess gained a reputation for herself as a landscape artist. In 1905, the Countess founded and funded the United Artists Club which was an attempt to bring together all those in Dublin with an artistic bent. At this moment in time there was nothing tangible to link her to basic politics, let alone a drive for Ireland's independence from British rule. Then in 1906, something happened which pushed the Countess headlong into Irish politics and away from art. In 1906, she rented out a small cottage in the countryside around Dublin. The person who had previously rented it was a poet called Pádraic Colum. He had left behind old copies of 'The Peasant and Sinn Fein'. This was a revolutionary publication that pushed for independence from British rule. The Countess read those publications that were left behind and was taken in by what they wanted.

In 1908, the Countess became actively involved in nationalist politics in Ireland. She joined Sinn Fein and Inghinidhe na hEerann - a women's movement. In the same year, the Countess stood for Parliament. She contested the Manchester constituency where her most famous opponent was Winston Churchill. The Countess lost the election but in the space of two years she had gone from a life oriented around art to a life oriented around Irish politics and independence in particular.

In 1909, she founded Fianna Éireann which was a form of Boy Scouts but with a military input, including the use of firearms. Patrick Pearse said that the creation of Fianna Éireann was as important as the creation of the Irish Volunteers in 1913. In 1911, the Countess was jailed for the first time for her part in the demonstrations that took place against the visit of George V. In the lock-out of 1913, she ran a soup kitchen to aid those who who could not afford food.

When war broke out in August 1914, many in Ireland were happy to support the suspension of Home Rule until the war was over. Thousands of Irishmen volunteered to fight in Britain's hour of need. However, a hard core of people were not prepared to accept this situation and they were willing to use Britain's involvement in the war as an opportunity they could exploit. This led to the Easter Uprising of 1916 and it was almost natural for the Countess to have got involved.

The Countess played a very active role in the fighting that took place in Dublin. Having joined James Connolly's Citizen Army, she was second in command at St. Stephen's Green. Those who fought there held out for six days and surrendered only when they were given a copy of the surrender order signed by Patrick Pearse. Ironically, the British officer (Capt. Wheeler) who accepted their surrender was a distant relative of the Countess. As with many of the arrested rebels when they were paraded through the streets of Dublin, the Countess was verbally abused by Dubliners who had seen part of their city devastated.

The Countess was not the only women arrested at the end of the rebellion. In total, 70 women were but the Countess was the only one held in solitary confinement at Kilmainham Jail. It is possible that the British authorities believed that by herself she was less of a problem; allowed to socialise with other women at the prison, she might be a source of trouble. However, from her cell the Countess could hear the firing squads. She was brought before a court martial and sentenced to death. She effectively admitted her guilt by saying:

"I did what was right and I stand by it."

 However, General Maxwell, the officer commanding the court martial procedure, commuted her sentence to life in prison on account of the fact that she was female. When she was told the news, she said:

"I do wish your lot had the decency to shoot me."

The Countess was released from prison in 1917, along with others involved in the Uprising, as the government in London granted a General Amnesty for those involved in the Easter Uprising. However, her experiences did nothing to dampen her involvement in politics. In 1918, she was jailed again for her part in anti-conscription activities. While in prison she was elected an MP standing as a Sinn Fein candidate. The Countess refused to take up her seat as it would have involved swearing an oath of allegiance to the king. During the Anglo-Irish War, she was either on the run from the British authorities or she was, once again, in prison. She was a staunch opponent of the 1921 Treaty which gave Ireland dominion status within the British Empire. The Countess referred to those who supported the treaty as "traitors". Michael Collins, the man who signed the treaty, claimed that she could never understand the rationale behind the treaty as she was English.

After the civil war in Ireland, she toured America. The Countess was also re-elected to the Dáil but her staunch republican views led her to being sent to jail again. In prison, she and 92 other female prisoners went on hunger strike. Within a month, the Countess was released. The hunger-strikes of the Suffragettes had been a huge embarrassment to the British government before the war. The newly created Dáil could barely afford a similar scandal. In 1926, the Countess joined Fianna Fáil led by Eamonn de Valera. She died in 1927. It is estimated that over 250,000 people lined the streets for her funeral in Dublin and de Valera read the eulogy.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (November 12, 1815 – October 26, 1902)

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an American social activist, abolitionist, and leading figure of the early women's rights movement. Her Declaration of Sentiments, presented at the Seneca Falls Convention held in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, is often credited with initiating the first organized women's rights and women's suffrage movements in the United States.

Before Stanton narrowed her political focus almost exclusively to women's rights, she was an active abolitionist with her husband, Henry Brewster Stanton and cousin, Gerrit Smith. Unlike many of those involved in the women's rights movement, Stanton addressed various issues pertaining to women beyond voting rights. Her concerns included women's parental and custody rights, property rights, employment and income rights, divorce, the economic health of the family, and birth control. She was also an outspoken supporter of the 19th-century temperance movement.

After the American Civil War, Stanton's commitment to female suffrage caused a schism in the women's rights movement when she, together with Susan B. Anthony, declined to support passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. She opposed giving added legal protection and voting rights to African American men while women, black and white, were denied those same rights. Her position on this issue, together with her thoughts on organized Christianity and women's issues beyond voting rights, led to the formation of two separate women's rights organizations that were finally rejoined, with Stanton as president of the joint organization, approximately twenty years after her break from the original women's suffrage movement. Stanton died in 1902 having authored both The Woman's Bible and her autobiography, along with many articles and pamphlets concerning female suffrage and women's rights.

Susan Brownell Anthony (February 15, 1820 – March 13, 1906)

Susan Brownell Anthony was an American social reformer and feminist who played a pivotal role in the women's suffrage movement. Born into a Quaker family committed to social equality, she collected anti-slavery petitions at the age of 17. In 1856, she became the New York state agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society.

Abolitionist

After they moved to Rochester in 1845, members of the Anthony family were active in the anti-slavery movement. Anti-slavery Quakers met at their farm almost every Sunday, where they were sometimes joined by Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison. Anthony's brothers Daniel and Merritt were anti-slavery activists in Kansas.

In 1856 Anthony became an agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society, arranging meetings, making speeches, putting up posters, and distributing leaflets. She encountered hostile mobs, armed threats, and things thrown at her. She was hung in effigy, and in Syracuse her image was dragged through the streets.

In 1863 Anthony and Stanton organized a Women's National Loyal League to support and petition for the Thirteenth Amendment outlawing slavery. They went on to campaign for full citizenship for women and people of any race, including the right to vote, in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. They were bitterly disappointed and disillusioned when women were excluded. Anthony continued to campaign for equal rights for all American citizens, including people who had been enslaved, in her newspaper The Revolution, which she began publishing in Rochester in 1868. Anthony attacked lynchings and racial prejudice in the Rochester newspapers in the 1890s.

Educational Reformer

In 1846, at age 26, Susan B. Anthony took the position of head of the girls' department at Canajoharie Academy, her first paid position. She taught there for two years, earning $110 a year.

In 1853 at the state teachers' convention Anthony called for women to be admitted to the professions and for better pay for women teachers. She also asked for women to have a voice at the convention and to assume committee positions.

In 1859 Anthony spoke before the state teachers' convention at Troy, N.Y. and at the Massachusetts teachers' convention, arguing for coeducation (boys and girls together) and claiming there were no differences between the minds of men and women.

Anthony called for equal educational opportunities for all regardless of race, and for all schools, colleges, and universities to open their doors to women and people who had been enslaved. She also campaigned for the right of children of people who had been enslaved to be able to attend public schools.

In the 1890s Anthony served on the board of trustees of Rochester's State Industrial School, campaigning for coeducation and equal treatment and opportunity for boys and girls.

In the 1890s Anthony raised $50,000 in pledges to ensure the admittance of women to the University of Rochester. In a last-minute effort to meet the deadline she put up the cash value of her life insurance policy. The University was forced to make good its promise and women were admitted for the first time in 1900.

Labor Activist

Susan B. Anthony's paper The Revolution, first published in 1868, advocated an eight-hour work day and equal pay for equal work. It promoted a policy of purchasing American-made goods and encouraging immigration to rebuild the South and settle the entire country. Publishing The Revolution in New York brought her in contact with women in the printing trades.

In 1868 Anthony encouraged working women from the printing and sewing trades in New York, who were excluded from men's trade unions, to form Workingwomen's Associations. As a delegate to the National Labor Congress in 1868 Anthony persuaded the committee on female labor to call for votes for women and equal pay for equal work, although the men at the conference deleted the reference to the vote.

In 1870 Anthony formed and was elected president of the Workingwomen's Central Association. The Association drew up reports on working conditions and provided educational opportunities for working women. Anthony encouraged a cooperative workshop founded by the Sewing Machine Operators Union and boosted the newly-formed women typesetters' union in The Revolution. Anthony tried to establish trade schools for women printers. When printers in New York went on strike, she urged employers to hire women instead, believing this would show that they could do the job as well as men, and therefore prove that they deserved equal pay. At the 1869 National Labor Union Congress, the men's Typographical Union accused her of strike- breaking and running a non-union shop at The Revolution, and called her an enemy of labor.

In the 1890s, while president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Anthony emphasized the importance of gaining the support of organized labor. She encouraged Florence Kelley and Jane Addams in their work in Chicago, and Gail Laughlin in her goal to seek protection for working women through trade unions.

Temperance Worker

Susan B. Anthony was brought up a Quaker. Her family believed drinking liquor was sinful. While Anthony was working as head of the girls' department of Canajoharie Academy she joined the Daughters of Temperance, a group of women who drew attention to the effects of drunkenness on families and campaigned for stronger liquor laws. She made her first public speech in 1848 at a Daughters of Temperance supper.

When Anthony returned to Rochester in 1849 she was elected president of the Rochester branch of the Daughters of Temperance and raised money for the cause. In 1853 Anthony was refused the right to speak at the state convention of the Sons of Temperance in Albany. She left the meeting and called her own. In 1853 Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton founded the Women's State Temperance Society with the goal of petitioning the State legislature to pass a law limiting the sale of liquor. The State Legislature rejected the petition because most of the 28,000 signatures were from women and children. Anthony decided that women needed the vote so that politicians would listen to them. She and Stanton were criticized for talking too much about women's rights and resigned from the Women's State Temperance Society.

In the 1860s Anthony and Stanton drew attention to the case of Abby McFarland whose drunken and abusive husband, Daniel, shot and killed the man she had divorced him to marry. They protested when Daniel was acquitted of murder on a plea of temporary insanity and given custody of their son.

In the 1870s Anthony supported the Rochester women organizers of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, although she told them that women would need to get the vote to reach their goal. She refused to support Prohibition because she believed it detracted attention from the cause of woman suffrage.

Suffragist

Susan B. Anthony was convinced by her work for temperance that women needed the vote if they were to influence public affairs. She was introduced by Amelia Bloomer to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, one of the leaders of the women's rights movement, in 1851, and attended her first women's rights convention in Syracuse in 1852.

Anthony and Stanton believed the Republicans would reward women for their work in building support for the Thirteenth Amendment by giving them the vote. They were bitterly disappointed when this did not happen.

In 1866 Anthony and Stanton founded the American Equal Rights Association and in 1868 they started publishing the newspaper The Revolution in Rochester, with the masthead "Men their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less," and the aim of establishing "justice for all."

In 1869 the suffrage movement split, with Anthony and Stanton's National Association continuing to campaign for a constitutional amendment, and the American Woman Suffrage Association adopting a strategy of getting the vote for women on a state-by-state basis. Wyoming became the first territory to give women the vote in 1869.

In the 1870s Anthony campaigned vigorously for women's suffrage on speaking tours in the West. Anthony, three of her sisters, and other women were arrested in Rochester in 1872 for voting. Anthony refused to pay her streetcar fare to the police station because she was "traveling under protest at the government's expense." She was arraigned with other women and the election inspectors who had allowed her to vote in Rochester Common Council chambers. She refused to pay bail and applied for habeas corpus, but her lawyer paid the bail, keeping the case from the Supreme Court. She was indicted in Albany, and the Rochester District Attorney asked for a change of venue because a jury might be prejudiced in her favor. At her trial in Canandaigua in 1873, the judge instructed the jury to find her guilty without discussion. (The jury didn't get to discuss the verdict!) He fined her $100 and made her pay courtroom fees, but did not imprison her when she refused to pay, therefore denying her the chance to appeal.

In 1877, she gathered petitions from 26 states with 10,000 signatures, but Congress laughed at them. She appeared before every congress from 1869 to 1906 to ask for passage of a suffrage amendment. Between 1881 and 1885 Anthony, Stanton and Matilda Joslin Gage collaborated on and published the History of Woman Suffrage. The last volume, edited by Anthony and Ida Husted Harper, was published in 1902.

In 1887 the two women's suffrage organizations merged as the National American Woman Suffrage Association with Stanton as president and Anthony as vice-president. Anthony became president in 1892 when Stanton retired. Anthony campaigned in the West in the 1890s to make sure that territories where women had the vote were not blocked from admission to the Union. She attended the International Council of Women at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago.

In 1900, aged 80, Anthony retired as President of NAWSA. In 1904 Anthony presided over the International Council of Women in Berlin and became honorary president of Carrie Chapman Catt's International Woman Suffrage Alliance.

Susan B. Anthony died in 1906 at her home on Madison Street in Rochester. All American adult women finally got the vote with the Nineteenth Amendment, also known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, in 1920.

Women's Rights Campaigner

Susan B. Anthony advocated dress reform for women. She cut her hair and wore the bloomer costume for a year before ridicule convinced her that this radical dress detracted from the other causes she supported.

In 1853 Anthony began to campaign for women's property rights in New York state, speaking at meetings, collecting signatures for petitions, and lobbying the state legislature. In 1860, largely as the result of her efforts, the New York State Married Women's Property Bill became law, allowing married women to own property, keep their own wages, and have custody of their children. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton campaigned for more liberal divorce laws in New York.

In 1869 Anthony persuaded the Workingwomen's Association in New York to investigate the case of Hester Vaughn, a poor working woman accused of murdering her illegitimate child. Vaughn was pardoned, and Anthony used the case to point out the different moral standards expected of men and women and the need for women jurors to ensure a fair trial.

In 1875 she attacked the "social evil" of prostitution in a speech in Chicago, calling for equality in marriage, in the workplace, and at the ballot box to eliminate the need for women to go on the streets.

Marian Wright Edelman (born June 6, 1939- Present)

Marian Wright was born June 6, 1939 in Bennettsville, South Carolina. In 1953, her father died when she was 14, urging in his last words, "Don't let anything get in the way of your education."

She attended Marlboro Training High School in Bennettsville, and went on to Spelman College and traveled the world on a Merrill scholarship and studied in the Soviet Union as a Lisle fellow. She also became involved in the Civil Rights Movement, and after being arrested for her activism, she decided to study law and enrolled at Yale Law School where she earned a Juris Doctor in 1963.

Activism

Edelman was the first African American woman admitted to The Mississippi Bar. She began practicing law with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.'s Mississippi office, working on racial justice issues connected with the civil rights movement and representing activists during the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964. She also helped establish a Head Start program .

Edelman moved in 1968 to Washington, D.C. where she continued her work and contributed to the organizing of the Poor People's Campaign of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She founded the Washington Research Project, a public interest law firm and also became interested in issues related to childhood development and children.

In 1973, she founded the Children's Defense Fund as a voice for poor children, children of color,and children with disabilities. The organization has served as an advocacy and research center for children's issues, documenting the problems and possible solutions to children in need.

As founder, leader and principal spokesperson for the CDF, Mrs. Edelman worked to persuade Congress to overhaul foster care, support adoption, improve child care and protect children who are disabled, homeless, abused or neglected. A philosophy of service absorbed during her childhood under-girds all her efforts. As she expresses it, “If you don’t like the way the world is, you have an obligation to change it. Just do it one step at a time.”

She continues to advocate youth pregnancy prevention, child-care funding, prenatal care, greater parental responsibility in teaching values and curtailing what she sees as children’s exposure to the barrage of violent images transmitted by mass media. Edelman serves on the board of the New York City based Robin Hood Foundation, a charitable organization dedicated to the elimination of poverty.

Personal life

During a tour by Robert Kennedy and Joseph Clark of Mississippi's poverty-ridden Delta slums in 1967, she met Peter Edelman, an assistant to Kennedy. They married on July 14, 1968. Edelman and her husband, a Georgetown law professor, have three children: Joshua, Jonah, and Ezra. Joshua is an educational administrator; Jonah, a Ph.D. from Oxford University, works in education advocacy; Ezra is a television producer.

Honors and awards

1985 MacArthur Fellowship

1985 Barnard Medal of Distinction

1986 Doctor of Laws, honoris causa Bates College

1988 Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism

1991 Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards.

1992 Boy Scouts of America, Silver Buffalo Award

1995 Community of Christ International Peace Award

1996 The 2nd Annual Heinz Award in the Human Condition

2000 Presidential Medal of Freedom

2011 Rathbun Visiting Fellow at Stanford University

Kathrine Virginia "Kathy" Switzer (born January 5, 1947- Present)

Switzer was born in Germany, as the daughter of a major in the United States Army. The family returned to the United States in 1949. She graduated from George C. Marshall High School in Fairfax County, Virginia, then attended Syracuse University, where she studied journalism. She earned a bachelor's degree there in 1968 and a master's degree in 1972.

While attending college, Switzer entered and completed the race in 1967 under entry number 261 with the Syracuse Harriers athletic club, five years before women were officially allowed to compete in it. Her finishing time of approximately 4 hours and 20 minutes was nearly an hour behind the first female finisher, Bobbi Gibb (who ran unregistered). She registered under the gender-neutral "K. V. Switzer", which she insists was not done in an attempt to mislead the officials. She claims to have long used "K. V. Switzer" to sign the articles she wrote for her college paper. She was issued a number through an "oversight" in the entry screening process, and was treated as an interloper once the error was discovered. Race official Jock Semple attempted to physically remove her from the race, and according to Switzer said, "Get the hell out of my race and give me those numbers." However, Switzer's boyfriend Tom Miller, who was running with her, shoved Semple aside and sent him flying. The photographs taken of the incident made world headlines.

After the race, Boston Athletic Association director Will Cloney was asked his opinion on Switzer's competition in the marathon. Cloney was quoted as saying, "Women can't run in the Marathon because the rules forbid it. Unless we have rules society will be in chaos. I don't make the rules but I try to carry them out. We have no space in the Marathon for any unauthorized person, even a man. If that girl were my daughter, I would spank her."

As a result of her run, the AAU barred women from all competition with male runners, on pain of losing the right to compete. Switzer, with other women runners, tried to convince the Boston Athletic Association to allow women to participate in the marathon. Finally, in 1972, women were welcome to run the Boston Marathon officially for the first time ever. Jock Semple, the man who had previously attempted to remove Switzer from the race, was instrumental in this formal admission of female runners.

Switzer was the women's winner of the 1974 New York City Marathon, with a time of 3:07:29 (59th overall). Her personal best time for the marathon distance is 2:51:37, at Boston in 1975.

Switzer was named Female Runner of the Decade (1967–77) by Runner’s World Magazine and received an Emmy for her work as a television commentator. She wrote Running and Walking for Women over 40 in 1997. She released her memoir, Marathon Woman, in April 2007 on the 40th anniversary of her first running the Boston Marathon. In April 2008, Marathon Woman won the Billie Award for journalism for its inspiring portrayal of women in sports. When visiting the Boston Marathon, Switzer is glad to see other female runners:

"When I go to the Boston Marathon now, I have wet shoulders—women fall into my arms crying."

They're weeping for joy because running has changed their lives. They feel they can do anything.
She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2011 for creating a social revolution by empowering women around the world through running. Since 1967, she has worked to improve running opportunities for women in different parts of the world.

Sarla Thakral (1914–15 March 2009)

Sarla Thakral was the first Indian woman to fly an aircraft. Born in 1914, she earned an aviation pilot license in 1936 at the age of 21 and flew a Gypsy Moth solo. She had a four-year-old daughter. After obtaining the initial licence, she persevered on and completed one thousand hours of flying in the aircraft owned by the Lahore Flying Club. Her husband P. D. Sharma whom she married at 16 and comes from a family which had 9 pilots encouraged her to achieve it. She was the first Indian to get airmail pilot’s licence and flew between Karachi and Lahore.

While she was working towards the commercial pilot license in 1939, World War II broke out and civil training was suspended. Later her husband died in a crash. She abandoned her plans to become a commercial pilot, returned to Lahore and joined the Mayo School of Art where she trained in the Bengal school of painting and obtained a diploma in fine arts. She was also a dedicated follower of the Arya Samaj.

After the Partition she moved to Delhi with her two daughters where she met her second husband P. P. Thakral and married him in 1948. Sarla, also known as Mati, became a successful businesswoman, painter and began designing clothes and costume jewellery.

 She died in 2009.

Maud Stevens Wagner (February 1877 – January 30, 1961)

Wagner was born in 1877, in Lyon County, Kansas, to David Van Buran Stevens and Sarah Jane McGee.

Wagner was an aerialist and contortionist, working in numerous traveling circuses. She met Gus Wagner—a tattoo artist who described himself as "the most artistically marked up man in America" while traveling with circuses and sideshows—at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (World's Fair) in 1904, where she was working as an aerialist. She exchanged a romantic date with him for a lesson in tattooing, and several years later they were married. Together they had a daughter, Lovetta, who started tattooing at the age of nine and went on to become a tattoo artist herself.

As an apprentice of her husband, Wagner learned how to give traditional "hand-poked" tattoos—despite the invention of the tattoo machine—and became a tattooist herself. Together, the Wagners were two of the last tattoo artists to work by hand, without the aid of modern tattoo machines.

Maud Wagner was the United States' first known female tattoo artist.

After leaving the circus, Maud and Gus Wagner traveled around the United States, working both as tattoo artists and "tattooed attractions" in vaudeville houses, county fairs and amusement arcades. They are credited with bringing tattoo artistry inland, away from the coastal cities and towns where the practice had started.

Dorothea Lange (May 26, 1895 - October 11, 1965)

Migrant Mother, Florence Owens Thompson with three of her children in 1936.

Photo: Dorothea Lange

One of the preeminent and pioneering documentary photographers of the 20th century, Dorothea Lange was born Dorothea Nutzhorn on May 26, 1895, in Hoboken, New Jersey. Her father, Heinrich Nutzhorn, was a lawyer, and her mother, Johanna, stayed at home to raise Dorothea and her brother, Martin.

When she was 7, Dorothea contracted polio, which left her right leg and foot noticeably weakened. Later, however, she’d feel almost appreciative of the effects the illness had on her life. “[It] was the most important thing that happened to me, and formed me, guided me, instructed me, helped me and humiliated me,” she said.

Just before Dorothea reached her teen years, her parents divorced. Dorothea grew to blame the separation on her father and eventually dropped his surname and took her mother’s maiden name, Lange, as her own.

Art and literature were big parts of Lange’s upbringing. Her parents were both strong advocates for her education, and exposure to creative works filled her childhood.

Following high school, Lange, who’d never shown much interest in academics, decided to pursue photography as a profession. She studied the art form at Columbia University, and then, over the next several years, cut her teeth as an apprentice, working for several different photographers, including Arnold Genthe, a leading portrait photographer.

By 1918, Lange was living in San Francisco and soon running a successful portrait studio. With her husband, muralist Maynard Dixon, she had two sons and settled into the comfortable middle-class life she’d known as a child.

Lange’s first real taste of documentary photography came in the 1920s when she traveled around the Southwest with Dixon, mostly photographing Native Americans. With the onslaught of the Great Depression in the 1930s, she trained her camera on what she started to see in her own San Francisco neighborhoods: labor strikes and breadlines.

In the early 1930s, Lange, mired in an unhappy marriage, met Paul Taylor, a university professor and labor economist. Their attraction was immediate, and by 1935, both had left their respective spouses to be with each other.

Over the next five years, the couple traveled extensively together, documenting the rural hardship they encountered for the Farm Security Administration, established by the U.S. Agriculture Department. Taylor wrote reports, and Lange photographed the people they met. This body of work included Lange’s most well-known portrait, “Migrant Mother,” an iconic image from this period that gently and beautifully captured the hardship and pain of what so many Americans were experiencing. The work now hangs in the Library of Congress.

As Taylor would later note, Lange’s access to the inner lives of these struggling Americans was the result of patience and careful consideration of the people she photographed. “Her method of work,” Taylor later said, “was often to just saunter up to the people and look around, and then when she saw something that she wanted to photograph, to quietly take her camera, look at it, and if she saw that they objected, why, she would close it up and not take a photograph, or perhaps she would wait until… they were used to her.”

In 1940, Lange became the first woman awarded a Guggenheim fellowship.

Maud Gonne (December 21, 1866 – April 27, 1953)

Irish revolutionary. Born Edith Maud Gonne on December 21,1866 near Farnham, Surrey, England. Maud Gonne was born into a distinguished and wealthy family, and her father served as an army captain. Her mother died of tuberculosis when she was a child, and she and her sister were raised and educated by a French nanny. This cosmopolitan upbringing was furthered by travels throughout Europe with her father, then a military attaché.

In 1884, Maud Gonne's father died of typhoid fever, and she received a considerable inheritance. After moving to France to be with her aunt, Gonne met and fell in love with right wing politician Lucien Millevoye. Though he was already married, he instilled Gonne with his political passions. She began a nearly lifelong fight for Irish freedom from England and the release of political prisoners. She and Millevoye had two children, one whom survived, before their relationship ended.

Moved by the plight of those evicted in the Land Wars, Maud Gonne continued to campaign for the Irish nationalist cause. In 1900, she founded the Daughters of Ireland, which provided a home for Irish nationalist women. She also began a relationship with poet and playwright William Butler Yeats, though she refused his many marriage proposals. Gonne was the inspiration for many of Yeats's poems.

In 1918, Maud Gonne was arrested for being a political agitator. She became severely ill in prison and after her release, she began a crusade for improved conditions for Ireland's political prisoners. In 1903, Maud Gonne married Major John MacBride. The couple's son, Sean MacBride, was active in politics and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974. Maud Gonne's autobiography, A Servant of the Queen, was published in 1938.

Jackie Joyner-KerseeT (March 3, 1962– PRESENT)

Jacqueline Joyner-Kersee was born on March 3, 1962, in East St. Louis, Illinois. As a teen, she won the National Junior Pentathlon championships four years in a row, and received widespread honors in high school in various sports, including track, basketball and volleyball. Joyner-Kersee thrived as a basketball and track-and-field star, however, and during her junior year, she set the Illinois high-school long jump record for women, with a 6.68-meter jump.

Joyner-Kersee attended the University of Califonia, Los Angeles on a full scholarship, and continued to gain fame on both the court and field. However, in 1981, at the age of 19, she began to focus on training for the Olympics, specifically for the heptathlon—an Olympic track-and-field event comprised of seven separate events, including the 200-meter run, 800-meter run and 100-meter hurdles. She graduated from UCLA in 1985.

Regarded as one of the greatest female athletes in history, Joyner-Kersee won a silver medal in the heptathlon at the 1984 Summer Olympics, as well as gold and bronze medals in the long jump in 1988 and 1992, respectively. She is currently the heptathlon world record-holder, scoring 7,291 points—she's set a record in the heptathlon four times—at the Summer Olympics in 1988, and taking home a gold medal. Joyner-Kersee is also a former long jump word record holder; she tied world long-jump record in 1987, with a 7.45-meter jump (her record was broken in 1988 by Galina Chistyakova, who jumped 7.52 meters). Joyner-Kersee is currently the American record-holder in the long jump.

Joyner-Kersee's last Olympic run came in 1996, when she took home a bronze medal in the long jump at the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. She did not compete in the heptathlon that year due to a pulled hamstring.

In 1986, Joyner-Kersee married her coach, Bob Kersee. He also trained Joyner-Kersee's sister-in-law, the late track star Florence Joyner. Bob came under media speculation in 1988, when Florence Joyner improved her times in the 100-meter run, 200-meter run and 4-by-100 meter relay—and took gold medals in all three events—at the 1988 Olympics. Many people questioned Bob's training techniques and suggested that he could have been encouraging his runners to use performance-enhancing drugs. In the late 1990s, Bob became a volunteer member of UCLA's track and field coaching staff—a position he has held for more than a decade.

A sufferer of exercise-induced asthma, Joyner-Kersee officially retired from track and field in 2001 at age 38. Following her retirement, she founded the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Youth Center Foundation, which is aimed at encouraging youth in her underprivileged hometown to play sports. Additionally, in 2007, Joyner-Kersee helped establish Athletes for Hope along with such sports heroes as Andre Agassi, Muhammad Ali and Mia Hamm. This organization supports and encourages athletes "to make a difference in the world," according to its website.

Joyner-Kersee joined the board of the USA Track & Field organization in 2012.

Indira Gandhi (November 19, 1917–October 31, 1984)

The only child of Jawaharlal Nehru and the first prime minister of independent India, Indira Gandhi was born on November 19, 1917. A stubborn and highly intelligent young woman, she enjoyed an excellent education in Swiss schools and at Somerville College, Oxford.

After her mother died, in 1936, Gandhi became something of her father's hostess, learning to navigate complex relationships of diplomacy with some of the great leaders of the world.

Gandhi was elected president of the Indian National Congress in 1960. After her father’s death, Gandhi was appointed minister of information and broadcasting. When her father’s successor, Lal Bahadur Shastri, died abruptly in 1966, India’s congress appointed her to the post of prime minister.

She surprised her father’s old colleagues when she led with a strong hand, sacking some of highest-ranking officials. Gandhi subsequently brought about great change in agricultural programs that improved the lot of her country’s poor. For a time, she was hailed as a hero.

In 1971, the Pakistan army conducted violent acts against the people of East Pakistan. Nearly 10 million people fled to India. Gandhi invited the Pakistani president to Shimla for a weeklong summit.

The two leaders eventually signed the Shimla Agreement, agreeing to resolve the dispute of Kashmir by peaceful means. Her work eventually led to the creation of the new and independent nation of Bangladesh.

Gandhi also led a movement that became known as the Green Revolution. In an effort to address the chronic food shortages that mainly affected the extremely poor Sikh farmers of the Punjab region, Gandhi decided to increase crop diversification and food exports as a way out of the problem, creating new jobs as well as food for her countrymen.

On October 31, 1984, a trusted bodyguard, who was part of a a Sikh separatist movement developed in India, assassinated Prime Minister Ghandi on TV.

Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 – May 21, 1935)

Jane Addams was a pioneer American settlement social worker, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in women's suffrage and world peace. In an era when presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson identified themselves as reformers and social activists, Addams was one of the most prominent reformers of the Progressive Era. She helped turn America to issues of concern to mothers, such as the needs of children, local public health, and world peace. She said that if women were to be responsible for cleaning up their communities and making them better places to live, they needed to be able to vote to do so effectively. Addams became a role model for middle-class women who volunteered to uplift their communities. She is increasingly being recognized as a member of the American pragmatist school of philosophy. In 1931 she became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and is recognized as the founder of the social work profession in the United States.