Isabella Bird was born in Boroughbridge, England. Due to her father’s work as a priest, her family frequently moved, so her parents home-schooled her, teaching her botany, flora, and much general knowledge. Bird became an avid reader and writer and published her first essay at 16, discussing free trade versus protectionism. Since she was little, Bird suffered from various illnesses, including a spinal complaint, insomnia, and nervous headaches. To improve her health, she spent most of her time outdoors, learning to ride and row, skills that became helpful later in her life. After spine surgery at 23, she embarked on her first voyage to Canada and the US to strengthen her health. The letters she wrote on this trip became the basis of her first book, An Englishwoman in America, published in 1856. Following her father’s death in 1858, Bird moved to Edinburgh with her mother and sister. During the next decade, she wrote about her experiences in North America, publishing two more books and several articles. In 1872, at 41, Bird left the UK, this time to Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii. She compiled her adventures in the book Six Months In The Sandwich Islands, published in 1875. From there, she continued to Colorado, traveling 800 miles on a horse in the Rocky Mountains. Afterward, she published her letters to her sister in The Leisure Hour magazine and incorporated them into her bestseller book A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains (1879). After a short stay in Edinburgh, she packed her bags and left for Japan, where she lived with the Ainu tribe, and wrote about it in the 1880 book Unbeaten Tracks in Japan. Then, she traveled to Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, the Malay Peninsula, Egypt, and the Sinai Peninsula, where she contracted typhoid fever and returned to Scotland to recover. In 1881, Bird married Dr. John Bishop, ten years her junior; sadly, he died only five years later. Bird decided to devote her life to medical missions. In 1886, after studying medicine at St. Mary’s Hospital in London, she joined the missionary cause, and at 58, she began her journey to India via Turkey, Kurdistan, and Persia. That was the first trip in which Bird began to document her experiences by image, taking photos of the places she visited and the people she met and publishing the pictures with her writings. In India, Bird worked with the renowned medical missionary Fanny Jane Butler and founded the Henrietta Bird Hospital for Women in Punjab and the John Bishop Memorial Centre in Cashmere. By then, Bird’s recording of her extensive traveling made her a household name. Her writing style was accessible and entertaining, crafting her personal experiences relatable to all and making her readers feel like they were traveling with her. In 1890, at 59, Bird became a fellow of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, and the following year, she made history as the first woman elected as a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Later, she was also appointed a member of the Royal Photographic Society. In 1897, at 66, she traveled through China and Korea, publishing her encounters in the 1899 book The Yangtze Valley and Beyond. Bird’s final journey was to Morocco in 1900, where she joined the Berbers for a few months. Not long after her return, Bird fell ill. She died in her home in Edinburgh at the age of 73. Read more...

Mary Wollstonecraft was born in London, England, the second of seven children. The family’s financial situation was unstable, and her father was abusive toward her mother. At 19, she found her way out of her home and took a position as a lady’s companion to a widow living in Bath. After two years, she got called back home to assist her ill mother. As soon as her mother died, Wollstonecraft moved in with her friend, the educator, and illustrator, Fanny (Frances) Blood. The two had envisioned a female utopia in which they meant to support each other financially and emotionally. Wollstonecraft, her sisters, and Blood established a school in Newington Green to make a living. Later, she detailed her teaching experiences in the pamphlet Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, published in 1787. Not long after, Blood became sick, and Wollstonecraft nursed her until she died in 1785. Afterward, the school closed, and she moved to Ireland to serve as governess for the Kingsborough family. After three years, she returned to London and decided to earn a living as a writer, an uncommon profession for a woman at the time. She befriended Joseph Johnson, a publisher of radical texts, and worked for him first as a translator and later as a regular contributor to his paper, the Analytical Review. He also published her first works, including the novel Mary: A Fiction; and the children’s book Original Stories from Real Life, both published in 1788. In 1790, at 31, she published a political pamphlet titled Vindication of the Rights of Men in response to MP Edmund Burke’s critique of the French Revolution. Two years later, she published her most famous work – A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. In this groundbreaking essay, Wollstonecraft argued that women must receive education equally to men, asserting that women are more than mere wives, rather companions to their husbands, and their education is essential to the nation because they are the ones who educate the children. Although the essay aroused controversy, it didn’t lead to reforms or further interest. That same year, Wollstonecraft moved to Paris to witness firsthand the French Revolution. There, she met Captain Gilbert Imlay, an American timber merchant, and in 1794, she had her first child, Fanny. While caring for her newborn, she wrote and published the critique essay An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution. Shortly afterward, Imlay left her, and she followed him back to London. In their attempt to reunite, she joined him on a business trip to Scandinavia, documenting her accounts in Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. In 1796, on their return to London, Wollstonecraft and Imlay separated for good. She rejoined Johnson and became part of his radical group of friends, one of them was the philosopher William Godwin. Within a few months, she became pregnant, and the couple got married so their child would be legitimate. Suffering from post-partum infection, Wollstonecraft died 11 days after giving birth to her second child, who became the prominent novelist Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. By the time she died at 38, she had published 10 of her works, and seven more were published posthumously. Although her legacy has been almost forgotten for nearly a century, her name was brought back by writers of the modern feminist movement, such as Virginia Woolf and Emma Goldman, who embraced her life story and achievements. The interest in her work increased during the 1960s and 1970s with the rise of feminist criticism in academia. Today, Wollstonecraft is considered one of the founding feminist philosophers. Read more...

Millicent Garrett Fawcett was born in Aldeburgh, England. At 12, she left her family to attend a boarding school in London. There, she met the philosopher John Stuart Mill, who introduced her to women’s rights activists, including Henry Fawcett, a Member of Parliament who was 14 years older than her, and in 1867 the couple got married. After the wedding, she worked as her husband’s secretary and started her writing career. She published articles and essays discussing women’s issues and her beliefs on equal opportunities for women and specifically women’s education. At 22, Fawcett attended her first suffrage movement meeting and soon joined the London Suffrage Committee. In the following year, she gave a speech at the first public pro-suffrage meeting, after which she became one of the leading speakers of the movement, giving lectures on the importance of women voting rights, mostly in schools for girls, women’s colleges, and adults education centers. In 1870, 23 years old Fawcett published the textbook Political Economy for Beginners, which became an immediate success, running through ten editions, translated into several languages, and aspired two novels. Two years later, she and her husband published a collection of essays titled Essays and Lectures on Social and Political Subjects. In 1875, she co-founded a college for women at the University of Cambridge, Newnham Hall, and served as its council. After her husband died in 1884, Fawcett sold her houses and moved in with her sister at Gower Street, Bloomsbury. She took a year off from public speaking. On her return to the Central Committee for Women’s Suffrage, they asked her to administer the joint meetings of the suffrage societies that merged into the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) in 1897. In 1907, she was appointed president of the NUWSS. Her campaign’s approach to achieving women’s right to vote was moderate and peaceful, in contrast to the militant position of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), led by Emmeline Pankhurst. She gave lectures, wrote articles and pamphlets. During WW1, Fawcett harnessed the NUWSS activities for the war efforts, supporting the services of hospitals in training camps in Scotland and Russia. The organization continued to campaign for women’s suffrage by emphasizing the contributions of women during wartime. Fawcett’s plan worked, mainly due to the movement’s actions during the war, the Representation of the People Act passed in 1918, giving women limited voting rights. Shortly after, when she was 72, Fawcett retired from her position as the president of the NUWSS, dedicating her time to writing. She also continued to launch and support other human rights campaigns, such as equal divorce rights, criminalizing incest, raising the age of consent, women’s access to the legal profession, stopping the white slave trade, and regulating prostitution in India. One of her most notable campaigns was against the Contagious Diseases Act, which required prostitutes to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases and imprisoned if positive, while the clients who infected the women were not required to get tested. She argued that the double standards of this and similar laws would continue to exist until women would be part of the decision-making process. Fawcett died at the age of 82 after dedicating her life to giving women a voice and promoting their rights, paving the way for generations of activist, feminist women. Read more...

Josephine Elizabeth Butler was born in Milfield, England, and grew up in Dilston. Her father was a social reformer and advocator against the slave trade, and all their seven children received equal education. Having been homeschooled most of her childhood, Butler learned politics and social issues from her parents. At 19, at the height of the Great Famine, she visited her brother in Ireland, where her awareness of social injustice had deepened. In 1850, at the age of 21, she began a relationship with George Butler, an academic and clergyman, who shared her opinions and commitment to liberal reforms. Two years later, they got married. The newlyweds settled in Oxford, where Butler encountered misogyny and was often the only woman at social gatherings. In 1853, the Butlers were part of a discussion about the novel Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell, when the men criticized the “immoral behavior” of the heroine that was seduced and then abandoned by a wealthy man. Butler not only voiced her opinions but decided to take action, and she and her husband began to help women in similar conditions, especially prostitutes, inviting some of them to live in their home. In 1856, aged 28 and a mother of two, Butler began to have health issues caused by the damp atmosphere in Oxford, and the family moved to Clifton. There, the couple continued with their social activism, helping women in difficult situations. In 1864, her fourth child and only daughter died after falling 40 feet of a banister. Butler fell into a years-long depression, and her health declined. Two years later, the family relocated to Liverpool, where her husband received a teaching position. Still grief-stricken, she committed herself to charity work. She regularly went to sit, talk, and learn the bible with women who lived in workhouses, a living, and a working place for people who were unable to support themselves. She housed many women in her home, many of them were prostitutes who suffered venereal disease. When she realized she couldn’t provide shelter to all of them, Butler established two hostels that provided a place to live and appropriate work, such as sewing and envelopes manufacturing. Butler was also a loud advocate for women’s rights to vote and education. In 1867, 39 years old Butler, together with Anne Clough, founded the North of England Council for Promoting the Higher Education of Women and served as president for its first six years. Her first pamphlet, The Education and Employment of Women, argued that women deserved equal access to higher education and jobs as much as men. To further the effort, she initiated a petition for the senate of the University of Cambridge to allow women to take exams, which led to the establishment of the Cambridge Higher Examination for women the following year. And this has led to the foundation of the Newnham Women’s College in 1871. In 1869, Butler began a two-decade campaign to abolish the Contagious Diseases Acts. Introduced five years earlier as a means to reduce venereal disease, the act authorized the police to arrest and physically examine women who were suspected of prostitution, a conduct Butler referred to as surgical rape. She founded the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts (LNA), wrote dozens of letters, pamphlets and petitions, and traveled 3,700 miles across the UK to give speeches on the subject. She mainly focused on working-class family men, who were shocked that a woman had spoken publicly about sexual matters. She faced many oppositions, often life-threatening, including smashing the windows of her hotel room and arson attempts. But this did not make her stop, and she continued her campaign until the act got repealed in 1886. Butler took her social activism overseas, and throughout the 1870s-1880s, she traveled to France, Switzerland, and Belgium to speak against licensed brothels and underage prostitution. Her acts led to the establishment of many organizations and committees devoted to ending child trafficking, including the International Abolitionist Federation for the Abolition of Government Regulation of Prostitution. She became involved with the campaign of journalist William Thomas Stead against child prostitution in London in 1885, which led to the raising of the consent age from 13 to 16 years of age. She moved to London after her husband died in 1890 and lived with her son and his wife before returning to Northumberland, where she grew up. Butler continued to write pamphlets and books, and in 1896, at the age of 68, she published her most known work – Personal Reminiscences of a Great Crusade. She also initiated more campaigns to promote various causes, including women’s suffrage, Irish Home Rule, eliminating police corruption, and regulating prostitution in India. She died at the age of 78. Read more...

Emmeline Pankhurst was born to a wealthy and politically active family in Manchester, England. Her parents were abolitionists and supporters of female suffrage. Growing up, she read her mother’s Women’s Suffrage Journal, and at 14, she started going with her to meetings. For her higher education, she attended the École Normale de Neuilly in Paris, where she learned chemistry, bookkeeping, and “feminine arts” such as embroidery. In 1878, at the age of 20, she met Richard Pankhurst, a 44 years old barrister who also advocated for women’s suffrage and other social causes, including education reform and freedom of speech. They married in the following year, and within ten years, they had five children. The couple agreed that Pankhurst would not become “a household machine” and remained active at the Women’s Suffrage Society. In 1886, the family moved to London, where Pankhurst and her sister opened a fabric shop while her husband unsuccessfully ran for Parliament. At the time, their house became a meeting place for activists and intellectuals, from socialists and suffragists to anarchists and radicals. In 1889, after inside conflicts within the National Society for Women’s Suffrage, Pankhurst and her husband founded the Women’s Franchise League (WFL). The WFL focused on more aspects of equal rights for women, like divorce and inheritance. 4 years later, the family returned to Manchester, where 30 years old Pankhurst continued to promote women’s suffrage and became involved with the Women’s Liberal Federation, an adjunct organization of the Liberal Party. In the same year, Pankhurst resigned from the WFL to join the newly formed Independent Labour Party (ILP) but got denied by the local branch because of her gender, eventually joining the ILP nationally. In 1894, Pankhurst was appointed as the Poor Law Guardian in Chorlton-on-Medlock, overseeing the economic, nutrition, and hygienic needs of the poor residences in the area. Witnessing the harsh conditions at the workhouses – an accommodation and employment facilities for the poor, pushed her to promote reform in the Board of Guardians who was in charge of the institutions. In 1898, when she was 39 years old, her husband died, leaving her with debts. Pankhurst moved with her children to a small house and started working for the Registrar of Births and Deaths in Chorlton. There, she gained insight into the conditions of the women and the different treatment men and women received for the same issues, such as illegitimacy. As a member of the Manchester School Board, she saw more examples of injustice towards girls and women and the unequal treatment they receive compared to boys and men. At the time, she re-opened her fabric store to have an additional income. Throughout the years, Pankhurst’s children had different approaches to her activism. Still, after her husband died, all of them became involved with the suffrage movement, especially her daughters Christabel and Sylvia. By 1903, at 44, Pankhurst realized that moderate speeches and polite methods yielded no progress from the members of Parliament, coming to believe that only militant actions would provide results. On 10 October 1903, Pankhurst, Christabel, and other activists founded the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), which later became the Women’s Party – a women-only organization devoted solely to voting rights, guided by the motto – Deeds Not Words. At first, the WSPU took non-violent actions, such as lectures, rallies, petition signing, talking to parliament members, and publishing a newsletter. Over time, their activities became more radical, including harassing parliament members, provoking the police, vandalizing public art, window-breaking, and arson. These tactics led to recurring arrestments of the WSPU members, including Pankhurst herself, who got imprisoned seven times. Their imprisonments were sometimes deliberate, believing that it would bring publicity to the cause. In 1909, the imprisoned WSPU members began to engage in hunger strikes, which often led to violent force-feeding. During WW1, Pankhurst decided to moderate the WSPU’s activities and support the government as well as the cause by encouraging women to engage with the war efforts, taking the place of the men on factory jobs while they were fighting on the war front. Women’s contributions during wartime led to the passage of the Representation of the People Act of 1918, which gave women over the age of 30 limited voting rights. Within a few months, another bill granted women the option to be elected to Parliament. After the war, Pankhurst became concerned about the rise of Bolshevism, and she joined the Conservative Party and ran for a seat in the Parliament. Her campaign ran short due to poor health, a result of years of lecture tours, imprisonments, and hunger strikes. Eventually, she moved into a nursing home, where she died at the age of 69. Less than a month later, Pankhurst’s 40 years campaign paid off when the British Parliament gave women full equality voting rights.   Dive deeper into the inspiring story of Emmeline Pankhurst with our fun and engaging printable worksheet! Available now on Etsy and Teachers Pay Teachers. Read more...

Malala Yousafzai was born in Swat Valley, Pakistan, to a Sunni Muslim family of Pashtun ethnicity. Her father is a poet, school owner, and educational activist. He was her first teacher and educator, inspiring her curiosity and activism. In 2008, when Yousafzai was 11 years old, Taliban militants took over Swat Valley, enforcing strict Islamic law, banning music and television, forbidding women from going shopping, and preventing girls’ education by destroying and shutting down girls’ schools. In protest of the school closings, her father took her to a press club in Peshawar, where she gave her first public speech titled “How Dare the Taliban Take Away My Basic Right to Education?” In January 2009, following the shutdown of all the girls’ schools, Yousafzai began writing a blog for BBC Urdu. For three months, using the pseudonym name Gul Makai, she wrote 35 entries where she shared her experiences under the Taliban regime. During this period, 12 years old Yousafzai was interviewed for a Pakistani talk show, making her first TV appearance. After a short cease-fire, in which the Taliban allowed girls to attend school as long as they wore burkas, the Pakistani Army entered the region to gain control. For her safety, she was sent to live with relatives until the Taliban’s defeat. A few months earlier, a New York Times reporter made a short documentary about Yousafzai and her school shutdown. After the documentary aired, Yousafzai was interviewed in various newspapers and TV shows, both in Pakistan and abroad, using the platform to advocate for women’s education. Receiving the media attention, it became apparent that Yousafzai is the BBC’s blogger, and she gained recognition for her activism, was appointed chair of the District Child Assembly of the Khpal Kor Foundation, and was awarded Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace Prize. In 2011, at the age of 14, Yousafzai joined the Aware Girls, a local girls’ empowerment organization training its participants to oppose radicalization peacefully through education. With her growing familiarity, Yousafzai received death threats through social media and in newspapers that slipped under the door of her home. On October 9th, 2012, while on her way home from school, a masked gunman went on her bus and shouted “Which one of you is Malala?” and shot her in the face. The bullet traveled 18 inches from the side of her left eye, through her neck to the shoulder. Yousafzai survived the attack, suffering from damage in a nerve that paralyzed the left side of her face. Yousafzai’s attack caused an international protest and a call for action. UN Special Envoy for Global Education, Gordon Brown, introduced a petition in Yousafzai’s name, demanding that till 2015 no child be left out of school. The petition led to the ratification of the first Right to Education Bill in Pakistan. In 2012, the Pakistani President launched a $10 million education fund in Yousafzai’s honor, and the Vital Voices Global Partnership founded the Malala Fund to support girls’ education worldwide. Three months after her attack, Yousafzai was released from the hospital, continuing her rehabilitation at her new home in Birmingham. There, she attended the all-girls Edgbaston High School while continuing her activism. On July 12th, 2013, on her 16th birthday, Yousafzai addressed the UN, making her first public appearance after being shot only nine months earlier. In her speech, she urged the world leaders to focus on women’s education rights. The UN named the event “Malala Day.” She met Queen Elizabeth II and President Barack Obama and co-authored a memoir called “I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban.” In 2014, Yousafzai received the Nobel Peace Prize, alongside Kailash Satyarthi, a children’s rights activist from India, becoming the youngest Nobel laureate at the age of 17. In the following year, at age 18, she opened a school in Lebanon for Syrian refugees. After graduating high school, Yousafzai studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the University of Oxford, England, receiving her degree in 2020. She published two more books – a picture children’s book titled “Malala’s Magic Pencil” and a collection of experiences titled “We Are Displaced: True Stories of Refugee Lives.” Yousafzai continues advocating for women’s education and promoting human rights in various ways, including raising funds and establishing institutes and programs for this cause.   Dive deeper into the inspiring story of Malala Yousafzai with our fun and engaging printable worksheet! Available now on Etsy and Teachers Pay Teachers. Read more...