New biographies at fembio.org

Fadwa Tuqan

2026-02-18T19:39:00+00:00

born: 1 March 1917 in Nablus, Palestine
died: 12 December 2003 in Nablus, Palestine

Palestinian poet

"This land, my sister, is a woman" Born in Nablus, north of Bethlehem, surrounded by Israeli Settlements, Fadwa Tuqan died twenty three years ago, age 85. She died during one of the Palestinian uprisings against Israeli occupation, the Al-Aqsa Intifada. As of February 2026 Israeli forces are once again storming her beloved Old City of Nablus, imposing a violent siege against its unarmed Palestinian inhabitants. About the powerless young Palestinian stone-throwers, she wrote: They died standing, blazing on the road Shining like stars, their lips pressed to the lips of life They stood up in the face of death Then disappeared like the sun. [Martyrs of The Intifada] Hailed by Mahmoud Darwish as ‘The Poet of Palestine’, Tuqan’s resistance poetry remains as alive as ever. Such was the power of her verse, that Moshe Dayan compared it to ‘facing twenty enemy commandos’. Her words now speak to the new generation of Palestine activists defending their land, dignity, history, and…

Coretta Scott King

2026-01-28T22:53:00+00:00

born April 27, 1927 in Heiberger, Alabama
died January 30, 2006 in Rosarito Beach, Mexico

American Civil rights leader, wife and widow of Martin Luther King Jr, social activist, singer, founder of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Social Change
100th birthday on April 27, 2027

Coretta Scott King was a remarkable woman who partially subordinated her musical career to support her husband’s role as leader of nonviolent opposition to white supremacy. Yet she also played an important part in that struggle herself; her Freedom Concerts in particular raised money for the movement and merged activism with the performing arts, and she joined with her husband in many marches and protests. She leveraged her contacts (such as Robert Kennedy and Presidents Kennedy and Johnson) to gain financial and political support. Following her husband’s assassination in 1968 she expanded her activism to include women’s and gay and lesbian rights as well as the struggles for racial equality and against poverty and apartheid. She founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, a social and cultural institution in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1968. Coretta Scott, the third of four children, was born at home in Heiberger, Alabama, attended by her paternal…

Toni von Langsdorff

2025-12-10T11:22:00+00:00

born on September 30, 1884, in Heidelberg, the German Empire
died on March 24, 1976, in Essen, West Germany

German gynecologist and obstetrician; pioneer of the women's movement
50th anniversary of her death on March 24, 2026

It was the obligation that she felt to “not let things get lost that might be important to future generations” that motivated Toni von Langsdorff at the age of 91 to publish the story of her own education and training. The obstacles she faced in her pursuit of a career were the same as those encountered by practically all women of her generation; egregious misogyny and gross patriarchal arrogance were rampant. During this dark period at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century (and further beyond) there were women who were inspired to resist. The rebellion of these defiant and extraordinary women against the patriarchal norms is evidence of their indestructible will as well as their unshakeable self-confidence, but it also points to the passion with which they pursued their dreams. It was Toni von Langsdorff's dream to become a doctor, and she was one of the first women in Germany to achieve this. It took incredible courage to rebel against misogynistic laws that gave men a free…

Anne LaBastille

2025-07-31T20:15:00+00:00

INTRODUCTION “Woodswoman.” This is the first word in the titles of a series of four of Anne LaBastille’s many books. It encapsulates her lifelong desire, as a woman in the second half of the 20th century, to live and work on her own, as close to nature – especially wildlife in woods/wilderness – as she could. In her first book in this series, titled simply Woodswoman (1976 – later Woodswoman i), she recalled, “I sought peace and solitude and I found them both, in nature. In the wilderness, I rediscovered a clarity and purpose I had lost in the city.” Even as a child, LaBastille felt drawn to nature, spending as much time there as possible wherever she could find woodsy areas in and around suburban Montclair, New Jersey. She did not receive much support from her parents. Her mother in particular disapproved of her dressing like a boy and her eagerness to go camping in the woods, admonishing her with such directives as “girls don’t do that!” But LaBastille followed her…

June Jordan

2025-05-23T10:54:00+00:00

born July 9, 1936 in Harlem, New York City
died June 14, 2002 in Berkeley, California

American poet, essayist, teacher, and activist
90. birthday on July 9th, 2026

"As a black woman, as a black feminist, I exist, simultaneously as a part of the powerless and as a part of the majority peoples of the world." It seems particularly important to honour black American poet and activist, June Jordan, because of her deep association with the people of Palestine. Jordan saw the fate of Black people linked eternally to the fate of Palestinians: "two peoples facing the same empire." She described the Palestinian struggle as "the moral litmus test" of her life: "I am born a Black woman, and now / I am become a Palestinian." Her fellow activist Angela Davis wrote: When, long ago, she stood up in support of the Palestinians, June was banished from many circles. But she continued with her remarkable courage and her capacity to choose the words that summon people to produce profound insights about their own responsibility to make a better world. Another friend, Alice Walker, who wrote The Color Purple, and who herself courageously joined the Freedom…

Alexis Wright

2024-09-10T09:26:00+00:00

Born 25 November 1950 in Cloncurry, Australia

Australian Aborigine novelist and activist. Fighter for Aboriginal Sovereignty!

Alexis Wright, 74, an Australian Aborigine novelist and activist, is a truly exceptional voice for her own people and the oppressed everywhere. As a novelist she embodies a humanity, pathos, humour and complexity worthy of James Joyce. Her novels, while located in her own land, are a heartbreaking metaphor for settler colonialism, censorship, silencing and racism, so evocative of the current situation in Gaza. They also speak to climate catastrophe. Her most recent novel, Praiseworthy, at 736 pages, is “an impassioned environmental Ulysses of the Northern Territory…. Playful, formally innovative, multi-storied, allegorical, protean and dizzyingly exhilarating, it is long, lyrical and enraged – James Joyce crossed with Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges, Bruce Chatwin and Arundhati Roy” (Padel). In 2024 she won the Stella Prize (for the second time), chosen after close study by students at the University of Edinburgh: “Praiseworthy stood out to our student readers for…

Kamala Harris

2024-07-21T19:07:00+00:00

born October 20, 1964 in Oakland, California

US politician and attorney, presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, Vice President of the United States (2021 -2025), US Senator from California (2017-2021), Attorney General of California (2011-2017), District Attorney of San Francisco (2004-2011)

60th birthday on October 24, 2024

Kamala Harris has set many records: as vice president of the United States, she is the first woman, first black and first Asian American. As district attorney of San Francisco and as California Attorney General, she was the first woman and the first person of color. Harris was the second black female and first Asian American senator. The one-time “tough on crime” prosecutor has also maintained her commitment to work “for the people.” She obtained major debt relief from fraudulent banks for embattled homeowners, implemented anti-bias training programs for police and devised first-of-a-kind educational programs for non-violent offenders. As senator Harris drew attention for her sharp questioning of Trump’s Attorney Generals Jeff Sessions and William Barr and his nominee to the Supreme Court Brett Kavanaugh. As vice president, given the evenly divided senate, Harris cast more tie-breaking votes in one year than any other vice president in US history. Kamala Harris’ mother Shyamala…

Melinda French Gates

2024-07-04T23:08:00+00:00

born August 16, 1964 in Dallas, Texas

US-American omputer engineer, manager, philanthropist, activist
60th birthday on August 16, 2024

The talented young product developer Melinda French rose rapidly through the mostly male ranks of Microsoft in the early 1990’s. In 2000, together with her then husband, Microsoft founder and CEO Bill Gates, she founded the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – in 2020 the second largest philanthropic organization in the world. The primary goals of the foundation have been to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty across the world, and to expand educational opportunities and access to information technology in the U.S. The couple, which has three young-adult children, divorced in 2021, but Melinda remains co-leader of the foundation, currently named the Bill and Melinda French Gates Foundation. Since at least 2012 French Gates has focused on family planning and the availability of contraception, and increasingly on the empowerment of women around the world. In 2015 she founded Pivotal Ventures, an independent organization dedicated to finding solutions to problems of US women and…

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney

2024-01-30T17:41:00+00:00

*9 January, 1875 in New York, NY
†18 April, 1942 in New York, NY

US-American sculptor and patron of American art and artists; founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art (1930)

With courage and determination, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney broke the shackles of her family’s massive wealth and elevated but limiting social position to find meaning and fulfilment in the world of art. Lamenting her superficial and controlled existence as the highly eligible daughter of New York’s wealthiest family, Gertrude early wished to be a boy, and at age 4 even cut off her curls to get closer to that goal. She nevertheless followed her predestined path and married a suitably wealthy man. As the marriage relationship deteriorated, however, she cultivated her interest in art and became a recognized sculptor. Skillfully leveraging her extreme wealth and powerful connections, moreover, she supported living American artists in a uniquely effective way and founded the Whitney Museum of American Art, the first such US museum, in 1930, paving the way for a new appreciation of these artists and their modernist approaches. The fourth child of the immensely wealthy, socially prominent…

Prudence Crandall

2023-09-01T21:31:00+00:00

Born September 3, 1803, Carpenter's Mills, Rhode Island
Died January 28, 1890, Elk Falls, Kansas

US-American teacher, abolitionist,
founder of a school for black girls
in Canterbury, Connecticut;
Connecticut State Heroine
220th birthday September 3, 2023

“I contemplated for a while the manner in which I might best serve the people of color. As wealth was not mine, I saw no other means of benefiting them, than by imparting to those of my own sex that were anxious to learn, all the instruction I might be able to give, however small the amount.”…“My whole life has been one of opposition.” – Prudence Crandall Prudence Crandall, a young white woman originally from Rhode Island, always wanted to be a teacher. Nearly thirty years before the beginning of the American Civil War, she opened a Female Boarding School in the town of Canterbury in eastern Connecticut to young black girls exclusively. A firm believer in peaceful values and interactions between whites and blacks, Crandall – as she began to put her strong abolitionist views into practice – did not yet know just how incendiary her actions would soon become. Early…