Women Activism

This is the story of Elizabeth I's inner circle and the crucial human relationships which lay at the heart of her personal and political life. Using a wide range of original sources - including private letters, portraits, verse, drama, and state papers - Susan Doran provides a vivid and often dramatic account of political life in Elizabethan England and the queen at its center.

In 1909, a young Australian actress made headlines around the world when she took to the sky over London in an airship emblazoned with the slogan 'Votes for Women' and dropped leaflets over the city. Muriel Matters was dubbed 'that daring Australian girl', and the American media declared it to be the world's first aerial protest. Just months earlier, Muriel had become the first woman to make a speech in the British House of Commons, after chaining herself to a brass grille to protest against the segregation of women in the Parliament.

Carla Del Ponte won international recognition as Switzerland's attorney general when she pursued cases against the Sicilian mafia. In 1999, she answered the United Nations' call to become the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda. In her new role, Del Ponte confronted genocide and crimes against humanity head-on, struggling to bring to justice the highest-ranking individuals responsible for massive acts of violence in Rwanda, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Kosovo.

For more than 50 years, Wendy McCarthy has been on the leading edge of Australian feminism, and her trailblazing advocacy and leadership have made her a widely respected and revered figure: a woman who shaped her times as much as she was shaped by them. Now, at 80 years of age, she shares her remarkable life and achievements. From sheltered country schoolgirl to relentless campaigner for abortion and contraception, from passionate teacher to lifelong advocate for education, Wendy smashed the glass ceiling again and again.

Queen Elizabeth I was all too happy to play on courtly conventions of gender when it suited her “weak and feeble woman’s body” to do so for political gain. But in Elizabeth, historian Lisa Hilton offers ample evidence why those famous words should not be taken at face value. With new research out of France, Italy, Russia, and Turkey, Hilton’s fresh interpretation is of a queen who saw herself primarily as a Renaissance prince—an expert in Machiavellian statecraft.

With characteristic verve and integrity, Ann Widdecombe recalls her life and highlights the people and events that most influenced her along the way. From her early family life in Singapore and her convent school days to her student ambitions at Birmingham and Oxford, and her long-serving years as an MP, this is the life story of one of our most outspoken and celebrated politicians. Offering unique insight into her time as a Minister in three Departments and the Shadow Cabinet in the 1990s, Ann also explains the roots of her conversion to Catholicism in 1993 and her deeply held views on abortion and gay marriage.

After a three-day romance, Brooklyn-born Jennie Jerome married into the British aristocracy to become Lady Randolph Churchill. At a time when women had few freedoms, she was a cornerstone of high society and behind-the-scenes political dynamo. However it was Jennie's love life that marked her out, causing scandal and earning her the epithet 'more panther than woman'.

Alice Paul has long been an elusive figure in the political history of American women. Raised by Quaker parents in Moorestown, New Jersey, she would become a passionate and outspoken leader of the woman suffrage movement. In 1913 she reinvigorated the American campaign for a constitutional suffrage amendment and, in the next seven years, dominated that campaign and drove it to victory with bold, controversial action - wedding courage with resourcefulness and self-mastery.

This is the question that has perplexed the public about Marina for the simple reason that she is the daughter of the man who has governed Malaysia for almost twenty-four years. Does she echo him in his view of the world, or does she chart her own path? Why is it that in her own public life, in her writing and speeches, she expresses opinions that seem to contradict his? This book hopes to detail how she has navigated her life as the daughter of a charismatic politician and a loving father, even as sometimes she has chafed at being constantly under his shadow.

Екатерина II — одна из самых ярких фигур эпохи Просвещения. Маленькая принцесса Фике стала самой русской из немецких правителей России и последней самодержавной императрицей в ее истории. Правлением Екатерины завершился блестящий "осьмнадцатый век" – век кровавых бунтов, военных и дипломатических побед, век разгула крепостничества и Салтычихи. Истинная дочь своего времени, Екатерина соткана из противоречий: республиканка в душе и сторонница крепостного права на деле, поборница морали, прозванная северной Кибелой. Она дружила с Вольтером и Дидро, но отправила в тюрьму просветителя Новикова.

Life in a castle isn’t always a fairytale, as the Duchess of Rutland vividly illustrates in her fascinating, revealing and funny autobiography. When Emma Watkins, the pony-mad daughter of a Welsh farmer, imagined her future it was as the wife of a younger version of her father. But then she fell in love with David Manners, having no idea that he was heir to one of the most senior hereditary titles in the land. When David succeeded his father, against all the odds Emma became the chatelaine of Belvoir Castle, ancestral home of the Dukes of Rutland.

My memoir depicts my life living in my home town of Middlesbrough. It then had the highest rates of unemployment in the UK. I witnessed the decline of its Iron and Steel, Chemical and Shipbuilding industries leaving tens of thousands of local people out of work. While living as a long time unemployed, unmarried, single mother with my two beautiful girls, both with different fathers, I found myself at the lowest echelon of society. I endured years of ostracisation, poverty and social exclusion.

Floella Benjamin was the little girl from the Caribbean who became a British household name, and along the way, received some of the highest accolades around—including a BAFTA Special Lifetime Achievement Award and a damehood—and became a peer in the House of Lords. A natural storyteller, What Are You Doing Here? is her incredibly moving and honest account of her remarkable life and her refusal to be defined by others.

Aunque de origen alemán, tuvo una excelente formación a "la francesa". Asumió el cargo de emperatriz como sucesora de su marido Pedro III, que murió en un complot en 1762 (año que Catalina tomó el poder). Por su estrategia de política interior y exterior intentó una europeización del país, y otorgó a la nobleza un puesto relevante que hasta ese momento no habían tenido. Interiormente fracasó su intento de crear un código con las ideas de Montesquieu y vivió una contienda en 1773 con los campesinos, por la nefasta situación social que la población vivía.

Margaret Thatcher var en formidabel politisk leder. Meningerne om Thatchers indsats som britisk premierminister 1979-90 er imidlertid stadig meget delte. For den britiske centrum-venstrefløj var hun en katastrofe, hvis nyliberalistiske reformer polariserede det britiske samfund, ydmygede fagbevægelsen, ødelagde den britiske fremstillingsindustri, demonterede velfærdsstaten og bar griskhed, småborgerlighed og snæversynet nationalisme frem som bærende samfundsværdier.

In the fall of 1973, the Greek oil shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, husband of President John F. Kennedy's widow, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and arguably the richest man in the world, proposed to build an oil refinery on the New Hampshire coast, in the town of Durham. But three women vehemently opposed the project. Small Town, Big Oil is the story of how the residents of Durham, led by three women, out-organized, out-witted, and out-maneuvered the governor, media, and Onassis cartel to hand the powerful Greek billionaire the most humiliating defeat of his business career.

In the early 20th century, one of the most famous women in America was Emma Goldman. Born in Russia in the late 19th century, Goldman had come to the United States and quickly grew attracted to anarchy and socialism. While many simply grumbled about the Gilded Age in private, Goldman was a woman of action, from being involved in the attempted assassination of tycoon Henry Clay Frick to publishing anarchist journals and passing around information about contraception.

Angela Merkel is a boss. A trailblazer. An icon of colorful suits. Formerly the new leader of the free world. With an entire hand gesture named after her (the “Merkel Diamond”) and celebrated in a viral meme for sparring with Trump, Angela Merkel spent a decade economically and politically revitalizing her country. No one is better positioned than New York Times Berlin correspondent Melissa Eddy to pull back the curtain on the woman who engineered Germany’s rise to wealth, power, and an economy worth 3.8 trillion in USD.

Mieux connue comme la fiancée d'Azincourt d'Henri V, de la pièce Henri V de Shakespeare, Catherine de Valois était une femme de foi, courage et conviction extraordinaire dans un âge de femmes puissantes politiquement. La plus jeune fille du roi Charles VI de France terrorisé par sa maladie mentale, Catherine de Valois survécut les ravages de sa schizophrénie, une guerre civile dans son pays, et la guerre d'Henri V contre la France pour devenir une des reines les plus courageuses et fascinantes de la Renaissance.

The lives of the Scottish queens, both those who ruled in their own right and the consorts, have largely been neglected in conventional history books. One of the earliest known Scottish queens was none other than the notorious Lady Macbeth. Was she really the wicked woman depicted in Shakespeare's famous play? Was St. Margaret a demure and obedient wife? Rosalind K. Marshall delves into these questions and more in this entertaining, impeccably researched book.