In a 1912 New York Times article, Mabel Ping-Hua Lee was regarded as “the symbol of the new era, when all women will be free and unhampered.” At the time, sixteen year old Lee was already a recognized suffragist and activist that would help to lead almost 10,000 people in the New York suffrage parade.
Gertrud Johanna Woker was a Swiss suffragist, biochemist, toxicologist and peace activist.
Zdeňka Wiedermannová-Motyčková was a Moravian teacher, editor and women’s rights activist. After teaching for several years, she began to recognize the disparities between male and female teachers, as well as between their students. By 1898, she was publicly calling for women to receive equal pay for equal work and campaigning for equal education for boys and girls. In 1902, Wiedermannová founded and became chair of the Moravian Teachers Union, whose goal was to professionalize teaching standards. In 1903, she opened a Girls’ Academy in Brno, hoping to later expand to include secondary education. Because the Austro-Hungarian Empire provided little funding for girls’ education, she held lectures to help pay the academy’s operating costs of the academy. It was five years before she successfully established the first girls’ secondary school in Moravia, in 1908.
That same year, Wiedermannová founded and became the editor of Ženská revue (Women’s Review), a magazine featuring articles on developments in the international women’s movement. In 1909, she retired from teaching to focus on activism and became one of the most prominent Czech feminists, presenting more than a hundred lectures during her career. She founded several women’s associations and in 1910 was instrumental in creating a regional umbrella organization, the Progressive Organization of Women in Moravia, which was actively committed to women’s suffrage and the integration of women into all segments of public life.
Wiedermannová-Motyčková was an active demonstrator at rallies and participated in petition drives to secure the vote for women. She participated in international conferences and sought connections with feminists in other parts of her country. From the onset of World War I, her activism shifted to humanitarian aid for the poor and for soldiers’ families.She died in 1915, only a few years before Czech women secured the right to vote in 1918.
Dr Yvonne Sylvain was the first female doctor from Haiti and the first woman accepted into the University of Haiti Medical School, earning her medical degree in 1940. She played a vital role in providing improved medical access and tools for Haitian citizens and was a leading advocate for the physical, economical, social and political equality of Haitian women.
Selina Seixas Solomons dedicated her life to women’s suffrage and was a key player in California granting women the right to vote in 1911, with the state’s eighth amendment passing by only a 2% margin. California became the sixth state in the United States to grant the vote to women.
In 1896, California failed to pass women’s suffrage – in part, Solomons believed, due to the number of elite suffragists who were not connecting with middle and lower-class voters. In 1910, she founded the Votes for Women Club in downtown San Francisco specifically for working class women like shop girls and clerks. At the club, meals were served and the women were educated on the suffrage movement, with lectures and forums advocating the right to vote and a reading room with literature about the suffrage movement. The clubwomen joined Solomons in canvassing amongst the working-class population.
“We had kept back our womanish tears. Now we gave free rein to our emotions in both manly and womanly fashion, with handshaking and back slapping as well as hugging and kissing one another. October 10, 1911 proved to be the greatest day in my life,” she said
In 1912, Solomons published How We Won the Vote in California: a true story of the campaign of 1911, which outlined their successful strategies, from lobbying to fundraising efforts.
Born: July 29 1887, Japan Died: 10 July 1980 Country most active: Japan Also known as: 木村 駒子, Komaku Kimura or Komago Kimura (misspellings in American newspapers) Komako Kimura was […]
Born: March 19 1882, United States Died: 9 December 1964 Country most active: United States Also known as: NA Minnie Fisher Cunningham was an American suffrage activist, who was the […]
Abigail Norton Bush was an American abolitionist and women’s rights activist in Rochester, New York. She served as president of the Rochester Women’s Rights Convention, held in 1848 immediately after the Seneca Falls Convention. As such, Bush became the first woman to preside over a public meeting composed of both men and women in the U.S.
Amabel Anderson Arnold LL.M. was an American lawyer and law professor who received degrees from both Benton College of Law and City College of Law and Finance within a five-day period. On July 15, 1912, Anderson and her fellow St. Louis women attorneys organized the Woman’s State Bar Association of Missouri, the first association of women lawyers in the world. Caroline G. Thummel was the President. Prior to her law career, in 1907 she opened and managed for 6 years the Arnold Preparatory School for men and women whose early education had been neglected. Anderson and her assistants tutored them privately and placed them in nearly every department of every college and university in St. Louis and in other cities. Anderson built for herself a lasting name as a competent and modern teacher. While operating the school, Anderson also accepted a position as instructor of Latin in the Dental Department of the Saint Louis University in 1908, the only woman in the faculty. She was also a professor of medical botany at the American Medical College – again, the only woman instructor. Law and teaching came together in September 1913, when Anderson was elected director of the Woman’s Department at the University of Chicago Law School, the first woman to hold such an office in the United States. In 1914 Anderson was appointed to the regular faculty of the City College of Law and Finance as lecturer and instructor in the chair of International Law – once again, the only woman to hold such a position in St. Louis.
Anderson was also an advocate of the Equal Rights Amendment and women’s suffrage; she was a charter member of the Equal Suffrage League (St. Louis), and sent out the first invitations to business women, asking them to meet to consider the organization of a league to further suffrage.