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Most Famous Feminists In History
In the history of the world, women have undergone oppression but thanks to these feminist icons who took the lead on so many matters of concern, the world has progressed in many ways.
Most Famous Feminists In History
Famous feminists throughout history have helped to bring women’s fight for equality to the forefront of society’s consciousness in a variety of ways.
People have a variety of perceptions of the term ‘feminism’. At its very core, feminism is all about advocating for women’s rights on the basis of the equality of genders. Several women leaders have been fighting for the rights of women.
Women have undergone oppression in the history of the world, thanks to these feminist icons who took the lead on so many matters of concern, the world has progressed in many ways.
Here is a list of the most famous feminists throughout history you need to know:
Mary Wollstonecraft
most famous feminist in history
Mary Wollstonecraft was a British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women’s rights. Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft’s life, which encompassed several unconventional personal relationships at the time, received more attention than her writing.
A writer considered a founding feminist philosopher, she published A Vindication of Rights of Woman in 1792. She was a notable contributor to the Suffragettes movement, which resulted in declaring the right to vote for women in 1920.
Gloria Steinem
feminist in history
Gloria Steinem is one of the most prominent faces of American second-wave feminism, and her activism continues to this day. A journalist at heart, she co-founded Ms. magazine in 1971 and has received many honorable awards for her contributions, a liberal women’s glossy that steered away from the sexist narratives of other publications geared towards women at the time. A key supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment, which eliminates legal gender-based discrimination, Steinem helped organize women around the movement. She has stayed active since then, lecturing and organizing women’s social issues.
At the forefront of women’s liberation movements in the 1960s and 1970s, Gloria is also known as the ‘Mother of Feminism’. She remains a trailblazer of feminism even today.
Betty Friedan
famous feminist
Betty Friedan was an American feminist writer and activist. A leading figure in the women’s movement in the United States, her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the second wave of American feminism in the 20th century.
A strong name among women’s rights activists and a writer, she wrote The Feminine Mystique (1963), majorly contributing to the second wave of feminism. She helped organize ‘Women’s Strike for Equality’ in 1970, which led to the popularisation of the feminist movement in America.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
most feminists in history
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an American writer and activist who was a leader of the women’s rights movement in the U.S. during the mid-to late-19th century.
A leader of first-wave feminism, she organized the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, the first women’s rights convention in the United States, which directly lead to women’s suffrage in America.
Simone de Beauvoir’s
famous feminist
French author Simone de Beauvoir’s prolific writing on women’s issues has made her a significant and well-studied figure in feminist theory. One of her most popular titles published in 1949, The Second Sex, is considered the starting point of second-wave feminism. Known for writing The Second Sex, published in the year 1949, a book that lay the road to modern feminism. She is credited with making a fearless start towards the protest for feminism.
Emmeline Pankhurst
feminist in history
Emmeline Pankhurst was a British political activist who organised the UK suffragette movement and helped women win the right to vote.
Sojourner Truth
most famous feminist
Sojourner Truth was an American abolitionist and activist for Afrimerican civil rights, women’s rights, and alcohol temperance. The Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826.
Virginia Woolf
feminists
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English writer. She is considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
Malala Yousafzai
most famous feminist
Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani female education activist and the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize laureate at the age of 17. She is the world’s youngest Nobel Prize laureate, the second Pakistani, and the first Pashtun to receive a Nobel Prize. In 2013, she authored I Am Malala, which details her activism and the assassination attempt that resulted from it.
Oprah Winfrey
most famous feminist in history
Oprah Gail Winfrey is an American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and media proprietor. She is best known for her talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, broadcast from Chicago, which ran in national syndication for 25 years, from 1986 to 2011.
Among the major feminist icons in the world, she became popular with her talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show. She has been an inspiration for all women, especially women of color. She opened the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls and has also aided in building 60 schools and offered scholarships globally.
Maya Angelou
famous feminist in history
Maya Angelou was an American memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, and several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years.
Angelou received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees and was also honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
A powerful writer and a public speaker, she was an inspiration for women and Afri-American people on race and gender discrimination.
Hillary Clinton
most famous feminists in history
Clinton became the first female chairperson of Legal Services Corporation in 1978. Her powerful speech in 1995 ‘Women’s rights are human rights’ inspired many.
Clinton is the only First Lady to serve in public office as the first female Senator and the first female candidate to run for Presidential Election in 2016. She has always led the advancement of women through her work.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
famous feminists
Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death in 2020. She was nominated by President Bill Clinton to replace retiring justice Byron White, and at the time was viewed as a moderate consensus-builder.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg served as a United States Supreme Court justice from 1993 until her passing in 2020. Her endless fight for women’s rights was one of her hallmarks, voting against stricter abortion restrictions in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt in 2016.
Margaret Sanger
most famous feminists in history
Margaret Higgins Sanger was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. Sanger used her writings and speeches primarily to promote her way of thinking. She was prosecuted for her book Family Limitation under the Comstock Act in 1914.
Sanger opposed excessive sexual indulgence. She wrote that “every normal man and woman has the power to control and direct his sexual impulse.
Olympe de Gouges
most famous feminists
Olympe de Gouges was a French playwright and political activist. She is best known for her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen and other writings on women’s rights and abolitionism. Born in southwestern France, Gouges began her prolific career as a playwright in Paris in the 1780s.
Conclusion
Feminism opened the closed doors of the basic human rights that many women were deprived of for centuries. These famous feminists give us the strength to keep forging ahead, not accept injustice or suffering of any kind, chase our goals, and uplift all the women around us in the best way we can.
FAQs
Who is the most famous feminist in history?
Gloria Steinem
Who was the first woman feminist?
Mary Wollstonecraft
Who is the mother of feminism?
Mary Wollstonecraft
Who started feminism in the world?
What is the opposite of feminism?
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