Strong, gorgeous women!

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I am currently reading a book called:
To Believe in Women:  What Lesbians Have Done For America - A History(1999) by Lillian Faderman.

It is a wonderful read outlining the different ways women (particularly those whose lives can be described as lesbian) changed the course of history and the way we live now... Starting from the suffrage movement to the fight for higher education to social causes...  I would like to post as many of the names and faces of these women (& others) to this thread as I can.  No doubt some of them are already in here!   Here goes...

The Suffrage Movement...
"Men their rights and nothing more;
women their rights and nothing less. " S. B. Anthony





Susan B Anthony & Elizabeth C. Stanton





Ida B. Wells:



Frances Willard:



Lucy Stone:



and later, her daughter Alice Stone Blackwell:



Anna Howard Shaw:



Carrie Chapman Catt:



and her partner, Mary Garrett Hay

More to come... 

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And while on the subject of Women's Suffrage...

Here are only a few Canadian women who fought for the recognition of women's rights in their day:

Dr Emily Howard Stowe (the first female doctor to practise in Canada).



Her daughter, Augusta Stowe-Gullen



Agnes Macphail (the first woman to be elected to the Canadian House of Commons)




The following five women are sometimes referred to as The Famous Five...
Known for the Persons Case in 1927.
"They asked the Supreme Court of Canada to declare that women were persons
under the meaning of the British North America Act and therefore eligible to be appointed to the Senate. "


Nellie McClung



Irene M. Parlby



Henrietta M. Edwards



Louise McKinney



Emily Murphy

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Jane Addams,
founder of the American Settlement House movement,
and the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.




In 1889 she and her then companion
Ellen Gates Starr




co-founded Hull House
(one of the first settlement houses in the United States)

.


Mary Rozet Smith
Philanthropist and partner of Jane Addams (& active supporter of Addams' Hull house project).
(Mary Rozet Smith, left ... Addams, right)

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Mary W Dewson (1874-1962)
Feminist, political activist.

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Frances Perkins (1880 - 1965)
U.S. Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945,
and the first woman ever appointed to the US Cabinet.

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Lucretia Mott (1793 – 1880)
Abolitionist, social reformer and women's rights activist.






Mary Grew (1813 - 1896)



who shared most of her adult life with another abolitionist & suffragist, Margaret Burleigh
fought till her death, both in the antislavery and suffrage movement.

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More history...  This time:


Pioneers in Women's Higher Education
(more inspirations from L. Faderman's To Believe In Women)

Emma Willard (1787 – 1870)



founded the first women's school of higher education in 1821 -
The Troy Female Seminary (now known as Emma Willard School):



Like many women in her day who supported 'serious study for girls', she met with disfavor & criticism,
mainly for attempting to 'masculinize girls' .




Catharine Beecher (1800 - 1878)



founded Hartford Female Seminary in the 1820s..
Even though she was an avid supporter of women's education and "the higher calling [of women] to shape children and society",
she strongly opposed the feminist movement that was picking up pace in her day (later becoming a staunch anti-suffragist herself).

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Where is everyone?  Am I taking over this thread or what? 

Anyway..

More history... 

Pioneers in Women's Higher Education
(more inspirations from L. Faderman's To Believe In Women)

Mary Lyon (1797 - 1849)



and her companion, Zilpah Grant (1794 - 1874)




whom she met in 1821, "together planned a course of study for girls that would equal what boys were given in the best academies.."
Grant went on to found Ipswich Female Seminary.


Lyon and Eunice Caldwell (after working together in Wheaton Female Seminary),
opened Mount Holyoke Female (Teaching) Seminary in 1837.



Mount Holyoke is now a liberal arts women's college and is
"the oldest continuing institution of higher education for women in the world." [wikip.]

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Sophia B. Packard & her longtime partner, Harriet E. Giles



co-founded the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary in 1881,
a school for African American women that would eventually become Spelman College.




Spelman was the first historically black female institution of higher education to receive its collegiate charter in 1924.
It thus holds the distinction of being America's oldest historically black college for women. [wikip.]

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Michaëlle Jean,
Canada's first African-Canadian Governor General