Every day women have, and are, making history. Discover their stories.
On 23 May 1907 nineteen women took their seats as the Finnish Parliament met for the first time. The women were the first female Parliamentarians in the world.
By 2018 Finland ranked fourth in the world for gender parity. At the 2019 elections, 47% of the MPs elected were women.
Continue reading “Finland’s 19 female MPs take their seats: 23 May 1907”
On 13 May 1995, professional British mountaineer Alison Hargreaves reached the summit of mount Everest in the Himalayas. She was the first woman – and only the second person – to summit without either support from a Sherpa team or supplementary oxygen.
Hargreaves had set her ambition out clearly and shown she was going for it: she would become the first woman to climb Everest, K2 and Kanchenjunga – the three highest mountains in the world – without oxygen.
Continue reading “Alison Hargreaves summits Everest: 13 May 1995”
On 7 May 1429, Jeanne d’Arc led several charges on the besieged city of Orleans in France. She was struck by an arrow, dressed the wound and returned to the fray. The next day, the English army besieging Orleans retreated and the city was freed.
Having led the lifting the of the siege, Jeanne then led the French army as they routed the English armies and freed more cities. When Charles VII of France was crowned in Reims that summer, Jeanne d’Arc knelt at his feet.
Continue reading “Jeanne d’Arc in battle in Orleans: 7 May 1429”
On 30 April 1937 almost 450,000 women in the Philippines voted for women to have the vote. With 9 out of 10 votes in favour, equal suffrage became part of the law. The plebiscite in April 1937 was the culmination of decades of activism.
Continue reading “Philippine women vote to get the vote: 30 April 1937”We’re Mags L Halliday and Moira Paul, and we started Carve Her Name in 2017 as a result of Mags being on a long rail replacement bus service. We did not attach our names to it, for a heap of reasons.
Mags is the extrovert, and has now blogged about why she didn’t attach her name – and why she is doing it now.
Mags is also happy to talk to people, take commissions for writing and the like.
Moira doesn’t do any of that but can edit wikipedia. 😉
On 25 April 1990, Violeta Chamorro was sworn in as President of Nicaragua. She was the first female President in the Americas to have come to power under a free election.
Chamorro led the country for seven years, overseeing the end of the civil war between the Sandinistas (Marxist revolutionary government forces) and the Contras (US-backed counter-revolutionary forces).
Continue reading “Violeta Chamorro sworn in: 25 April 1990”
On 18 April 1906, Baroness Bertha von Suttner becomes the first woman to collect the Nobel Peace Prize. She had been instrumental in Albert Nobel creating a prize for peace at all.
Von Suttner was an international leader in the peace movement, and continued to campaign until her death, a few weeks before Franz Ferdinand’s assassination triggered the first World War she had sought to prevent.
Continue reading “Bertha von Suttner wins the Nobel Peace Prize: 18 April 1906”
On 9 April 1939, Marian Anderson stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC and sang “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee”. A crowd of 75,000 listened to her, and millions more tuned in on the radio. She sang where she did because she had been refused the use Constitution Hall by its owners. Marian was black, and the owners had a white-artists-only clause.
Continue reading “Marian Anderson sings in Washington: 9 April 1939”
On 28 March 1900, Queen Yaa Asantewaa addressed the remnants of the Ashanti government in Kumasi, in modern-day Ghana.
I must say this: if you, the men of Asante will not go forward, then we will. We, the women, will. I shall call upon my fellow women. We will fight! We will fight till the last of us falls in the battlefields.
Her words galvanised the Ashanti Confederacy, starting their final war against British colonialism on the Gold Coast. The Ashanti leaders chose Yaa Asantewaa to be the war-leader, the first woman to hold the post, and an army of several thousand was placed at her command.
Continue reading “Yaa Asantewaa: 28 March 1900”
On 22 March 1982, around 250 women block access to the airbase at Greenham Common in the UK. It is the first time the women’s peace camp has put non-violence to the test on a large scale, and 34 women are arrested. By the end of 1982, 30,000 women would arrive for the ’embrace the base’ protest. By 1983, over 100 similar peace camps are set up near nuclear sites around the world.
Continue reading “Greenham Women: 22 March 1982”