Eminent feminists

[IamalsoSpartacus]

I have to write a couple of things around gender equality and International Women's Day and would like to reference key feminist thinkers, particularly women who advocated for access to education - then I realised I don't really know any apart from Germaine Greer.

I'd really appreciate some help. Sorry for my ignorance. Does Virginia Woolf count, with A Room of One's Own?

Miss Beale and Miss Buss set up the first girls' school, I believe.

Simone de Beauvoir. Her book The Second Sex was very important not only when it came out in 1949 but ever since. It was her we have to thank for the insight that men - mankind - are the default human beings. They are mainstream, we are a side note. There's plenty more. A brilliant book.

Susan Brownmiller's book Against Our Will: an amazing and very wide reaching analysis of rape. Then there's Our Bodies Ourselves, the first book written to empower and enlighten women through understanding our bodies. First published under this title in 1971, it resulted in women in countless feminist groups examining their genitals with mirrors and a speculum. It provided information that, at the time, just wasn't available to women unless they were HCP.

I think Mary Wollstonecraft wrote about the importance of educating girls.

Mary Somerville. She became a renowned scientist despite the obstacles to accessing education for girls at that time. She relied on her brother and uncle to pass on maths materials to her.

She wrote books on Maths Physics and Astronomy, won all kinds of awards and honours and always argued for women's education.

She was the first signatory on John Stuart Mill's petition for female suffrage and she of course has a college at Oxford University named for her.

She's the boom and just talking about her makes me go a bit mushy!

And don't forget Malala who quite literally took a bullet so girls could go to school.

Thanks! These are really helpful.

Sojourner Truth who was born a slave in the US in the 19th century and escaped to become an advocate for women's rights and an abolitionist. She gave an impassioned speech about equality to some man who dared to say that women were more delicate than men (having lived as a slave, she knew a thing or two about having to survive).

correction: Sojourner Truth was born at the end of the 18th century.

Hannah More en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_More
Margaret Cavendish en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Cavendish,_Duchess_of_Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Helen Keller en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Keller

Margaret Cavendish was cool.

Lucretia Mott is another woman who did a lot of campaigning rather ahead of her time.

And yes Virginia Woolf counts. But if you want access to education she might not be the most obvious -;privilege and all. Malala much more so, or Rosa Parks. Don't go overboard with too many names.

Virginia Woolf was specifically concerned with access to education, as detailed in the work Three Guineas.

Sheila Rowbotham, Ann Oakley, Juliet Mitchell, Emma Goldman ...