Celebrating Women (Simplified)

Celebrating Celebrating WomenWomen

Great women Great women in historyin history

8 March 2010 – 8 March 2010 – International Women’s International Women’s DayDay

By Leticia Morán Lavado

EOI Mairena del Aljarafe

On 8 March we celebrate the International Women’s Day. It is an excellent occasion to commemorate the lives of those extraordinary women who have contributed to make the world what it is today.

This is our homage to them.

AMELIA EARHART (1897-1937)

• Famous American aviation pioneer.

• First woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. • Author of best-selling books about her flying experiences.

• Instrumental in the formation of an organization for female pilots. • Member of the National Woman's Party.

• Disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean during a circumnavigational flight of the globe in 1937.

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE (1820-1910)

• An English nurse, writer and statistician.

• A pioneer in nursing during the Crimean War. Nightingale laid the foundation stone of professional nursing in the book Notes on Nursing.

•The annual International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world on her birthday.

• Prime minister of the Republic of India for three consecutive terms from 1966 to 1977 and for a fourth term from 1980 until her assassination in 1984, a total of fifteen years.

• She was India's first, and to date only, female prime minister.

INDIRA GANDHI (1917-1984)

• Spent the majority of her life in China.

•Her novel The Good Earth was the best selling fiction book in the U.S. in 1931 and 1932 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932.

•In 1938, first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938.

PEARL S. BUCK (1892-1973)

BEATRIZ GALINDO,”LA LATINA”

(1465?-1534)

• A Spanish educator,writer and humanist, preceptor of Queen Isabella of Castile and her children. • One of the most educated women of her time. • She was one of the first women to be active in public life during the Renaissance. • Founded the Hospital of the Holy Cross (Santa Cruz de Madrid) in 1506 in Madrid, which still exists.•The district in Madrid where she once lived is known today as La Latina from her nickname. There are statues of her in Salamanca and Madrid.

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT (1884-1962)

• First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. • Advocate for civil rights. An internationally prominent author, speaker, politician, and women activist.

•She supported the formation of the United Nations.

•She chaired the committee that drafted and approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The moment a woman comes home to herself,the moment she knows that she has become a person of influence,an artist of her life, a sculptor of her universe, a person with rights and responsibilities who is respected and recognized,the resurrection of the world begins.

—Sister Joan Chittister, OSB (1936 - )Benedictine nun and Chair, Global Peace Initiative of Women

PLEASE WRITE A COMMENT ON THE BLOG (www.ayeimtellingya.blogspot.com) with a short biography of an outstanding woman of your choice.