A research-based project organized in a list format.
Learning objective: To educate yourself on the different women who have been involved in shaping and creating the beginning to a more equal and understanding world.
Materials:
The list of women (attached below)
A computer or books historical female roles to research
A computer document or sheet of paper to compile your list
STEP ONE:
To read this list and understand what each of the women individually fought for and if they managed to accomplish it (take into account how long it took).
STEP TWO:
Use your resources to research ten OR more women who have helped or were involved in making a change in the world. Include any important information you feel is necessary (in the example shown below, a small biography was created for each woman.) Alternatively, you could also research ten things what women have done (instead of who they are) to create a change, or mix the two of them together.
Challenge! try to find the less well-known women or the ones you weren’t aware of. This will help in educating yourself and others to lesser-known empowering women that have and are currently changing the world.
STEP THREE:
Make a visual poster of your list – online or on paper.
MY LIST [ Example ]
In light of the current events happening all around the world, it has been bought to many people’s attention just how ignorant many are about the past. Whether they don't understand the extent and roots of racism, sexism, and other inequality issues, or, that they just weren’t taught about the importance of the of history of empowering women by the school system.
There are many powerful and strong women in the past and present who have fought and are still fighting for their beliefs and what is right. These inspirational women are the reason in today’s age that women have more rights, more power and more of a voice (even though it is far from being completely equal).
While many schools and news outlets are promoting and showing the works of these important women in history, there are still a lot of women, that have been left out. Here is a list of just a FEW of the vast number women who have made a change in the world – some are well-known, whether it be by their name or by what change they made. However, some may not be well-known, and it is your role to learn their names and promote their names.
1. Alice Paul
An American feminist and women's rights activist who fought to pass the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S constitution, which is an action to prohibits sexual discrimination in the right to vote. However, even though in 1923 she drafted it, nothing happened until 1972, only 5 years before she died.
2. Mary McLeod Bethune
An educator and a political activist who devoted her life to make sure that the right to be educated was given to black Americans. She taught women how to pass their literacy tests and opened one of the first schools for women. While Franklin D. Roosevelt was president, she became a director for the ‘Division of Negro Affairs in the National Youth Administration’, which made her the highest-ranking African American woman in government.
3. Rose Schneiderman
An American socialist and feminist who was ‘one of the most prominent female labour union leaders’ and focused on the needs of working women post-suffrage. During the Great Depression, she demanded relief funds to unemployed female workers and domestic workers to be covered by Social Security. This took 15 years to take effect after the law was first enacted in 1935.
4. Tarana Burke
A social activist who began using the well-known phrase "Me Too" in 2006 to help give empowerment to those who have been sexually abused and help them stand up for themselves. Over a decade later in 2017, #MeToo became a viral hashtag – popularized by Alyssa Milano. The phrase then became an international movement to support women, who were victims of sexual abuse
5. Sojourner Truth
An African-American abolitionist, who continuously fought for gender and racial equality. She was born into slavery, but escaped with her young daughter at the age of 29. She became the first black women to win a custody court battle against a white man in 1828, enabling her to recover her son. She delivered a speech titled "Ain't I a Woman?", which became widely told during the Civil War era. She recruited black troops for the Union Army and attempted to secure land grants for former slaves after abolition.
6. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
A women who has served on the US Supreme Court since 1993, and is the lead counsel for the ACLU Women's Rights Project. She began her career path as a lawyer, who fought laws which were sexist against women. Throughout the Obama administration she was known as a "feminist folk hero.
7. Ida B. Wells
An African American journalist, educator, and an early civil rights leader who was born into slavery and later freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. She was one of the founding members for the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP). She documented lynching and racial violence in the US and bought it internationally to expose what US was doing.
8. Simone de Beauvoir
An outspoken French philosopher and writer. In 1949, she wrote “The Second Sex”, which began the conversation around modern feminism. The book was prohibited by The Vatican but that didn’t stop her from ‘continuing the fight for equality’. In 1970, she ‘helped launch the French Women’s liberation Movement, by signing the Manifesto of the 343, which argued for abortion rights.’ Her fight for female equality helped begin ‘an ever-evolving conversation about what feminism is.’
9. Naomi Parker Fraley
A lot of people are familiar with her “We Can Do It” war time poster, but not the woman who inspired it. She died in 2018 and has become the representative of the thousands of women who worked in factories and shipyards during World War II. When she was 20, she went to work with her sister, at the Naval Air Station in Alameda, and was photographed with her hair tied in a red headscarf, which became the inspiration for the famous poster.
10. Malala Yousafzai
While she is incredibly well-known all around the world, her name should be one learned in EVERY school. At age 15, Yousafzai was targeted in an assassination attempt by a Taliban gunman and was shot in the head. However, she survived and her story is told all around the world and she won a Nobel Peace price in 2012, at age 17. She continues to fight for women in education.
An important thing to remember is that this list is an incredibly short compressed one and there is an unmeasurable number of women out there, not on this list and not in the books. Use this list as an encouragement for you to research more women and educate yourself and your friends, family, teachers and even strangers about these key females in our history to help promote the necessity for a change in the education curriculum and in the discussions of the past.
Enjoy making your list ☺
[ Project Credit: Jodie-Anna Hamilton ]
[ Bio ]
Hi I’m Jodie, as a 17 year old student. I am trying all I can to contribute to the causes i care strongly for. My passion in life is to help those who suffer as victims of discrimination and to shine a light on them, to help them speak their truth