Trịnh Thị Minh Hà is a Vietnamese filmmaker, feminist, writer, composer and professor of Gender and Women Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

“I am a woman with chronic schizophrenia. I have spent hundreds of days in psychiatric hospitals. I could have ended up living most of my life on a back ward, but things turned out quite differently”

Cecilia Helena Payne-Gaposchkin was a pioneer in the field of astronomy and one of the most eminent female astronomers of the twentieth century. She was the first to apply the laws of atomic physics to the study of the temperature and density of stellar bodies and to discover that stars are made mainly of hydrogen …

Miriam Makeba, nicknamed Mama Africa, was a very famous and influential South African singer and a civil rights and anti-apartheid activist. Recognized for having been the first artist to take the unique sounds of Africa to countries beyond the borders of her homeland, Miriam used her musical talent to fight against apartheid in South Africa …

“I saw them with bruises on their faces. I heard them talking with fear about getting married. They were 15 and 16 years old, but they acted like old women, tired of being alive. They were being forced to marry and they were giving up on their own lives. I wanted to talk about that …

Born in Meerut in 1946 and brought up in Hyderabad, Fahmida Riaz was a Pakistani feminist poet, writer, and human-rights activist. She was an important pioneer of women´s writing as well as for her radical and feminist political positions in Pakistan, a male-dominated state.

My body will not allow me To mingle with the men But my heart is far braver Than that of a man. -Qiu Jin

“How we react to the tragedy of one small person accurately reflects our attitude towards a whole nationality, and increasing the numbers doesn’t change much” ― Anna Politkovskaya

South African activist Lillian Ngoyi was known as ‘the mother of the black resistance’ and she served as president of the women’s league of the African National Congress. For 18 years of her life, she lived as a banned person – an attempt by the South African government to silence her.

Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, Zitkala-Sa – Red Bird, was a writer and an Indian rights activist who strove to expand opportunities for Native Americans and to safeguard their cultures, as well as a teacher and a magazine editor.