In honor of International Women’s Month, over the next few weeks we will be highlighting the accomplishments and impacts of our own female designers in our editorials. However, in celebration of International Women’s Day today, we would like to share with you the stories of a few incredible, awe-inspiring, society-shifting women from around the globe.
Alice Coachman
The first black woman to win an Olympic gold medal, Alice Coachman was originally banned from many athletic facilities because of her race. In order to follow her dreams of running professionally, she made her own courses and obstacles to practice on.
Suzan Shown Harjo
A champion of Native American rights, Suzan Shown Harjo is an poet, writer and activist who has advocated for the rightful return of indigenous artifacts from museums back to their communities and helped Native peoples recover more than one million acres of tribal land.
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
Also known as “Africa’s Iron Lady”, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is the first democratically-elected female president in Africa. In 2011, was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for her lifelong work in empowering women’s causes.
Grace Lee Boggs
Spending much of her life advocating for women’s rights, labor rights and civil rights for African Americans alongside Angela Davis and Malcom X, Grace Lee Boggs was an influential Chinese-American activist who chased justice for the downtrodden in America.
Huda Sha’arawi
One of the earliest female leaders in Egypt, Huda Sha’arawi, was the first woman in her native country to remove her veil in public – a defiant act that became a symbolic event in the mid 1890’s. She dared to host women’s groups in her home and in 1923 she founded the Egyptian Feminist Union.
Junko Tabei
A Japanese Mountaineer, Junko Tabei was the first woman to climb to the top of Mount Everest. Tabei went on to found an all-women climbing club, write several books on mountaineering, advocate for environmental preservation and climb the Seven Summits, the highest peaks on all seven continents.
Andrée de Jongh
A volunteer with the Red Cross and a member of the Belgian Resistance, Andrée de Jongh assisted in saving 700 lives and personally escorting 118 escaped soldiers to safety during World War II. She survived a concentration camp and after the war, continued her bravery by volunteering in leper hospitals throughout Africa.