Women who persevered
They were girls in a war before they were names in a history book.
Six women who kept writing, teaching, treating and organising while the ground moved under them. Most were younger than the students we teach today.
Germany · 1921–1943
Sophie Scholl
A Munich student who wrote and distributed leaflets against the Nazi regime with the White Rose. She was executed at twenty-one.
Pakistan · born 1997
Malala Yousafzai
She wrote publicly about going to school under Taliban rule in Swat, was shot for it at fifteen, and returned to the same argument. Nobel Peace Prize, 2014.
Netherlands · 1929–1945
Anne Frank
Hidden in an Amsterdam annexe for two years, she kept a diary from the age of thirteen. She died at Bergen-Belsen; her father published what she wrote.
Iraq · born 1993
Nadia Murad
A Yazidi survivor of captivity who chose to testify under her own name rather than anonymously. She shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018.
Somalia · 1947–2020
Hawa Abdi
One of Somalia's first female doctors. The clinic she opened on her family's farmland became a camp sheltering tens of thousands through the civil war.
Liberia · born 1972
Leymah Gbowee
She organised women across religious lines into a sit-in that helped force an end to Liberia's second civil war. Nobel Peace Prize, 2011.
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