Quiz

The Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska received the 1996 Nobel Prize for Literature. Between 1952 and 1993 Szymborska published more than a dozen books of poetry. Although the style of her early poetry conformed to the style officially accepted by Poland's communist regime, she soon shifted to a more personal style, through which she expressed her dissatisfaction with Stalinism.

Fatimah (c. 605–633) was a daughter of Muhammad, the founder of Islam. Unlike Muhammad's other sons and daughters, Fatimah left a long line of descendants. She is of particular importance to Shi'ite Muslims because she was married to 'Ali, whom the Shi'ites consider the rightful heir to the authority of Muhammad and the first of their imams, and Shi'ites believe her sons, Hasan and Husayn, were the true inheritors of the tradition of Muhammad.

The Sri Lankan stateswoman Sirimavo R.D. Bandaranaike was the world's first woman prime minister. Born into a wealthy family, she married the politician S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike in 1940 and began to interest herself in social welfare. Her husband became prime minister in 1956. After he was assassinated in 1959, she was induced by his Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) to become the party's leader. The SLFP won a decisive victory at the general election in July 1960, and she became prime minister. She left office in 1965 but returned to serve two more terms (1970–77, 1994–2000) as prime minister.

Aung San Suu Kyi was the daughter of politically prominent parents in Myanmar, which was then known as Burma. As an adult, Aung San Suu Kyi lived outside her native country until 1988, when she returned home to care for her dying mother. Shocked by the government's treatment of the people, she spoke out against the unfairness she witnessed. She was placed under house arrest in 1989 and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. Although she was freed from house arrest in 1995, she was detained again in 2000 for her activities in support of democracy and against the military government of Myanmar.

In 1947 Betty Friedan, a college graduate and single working woman, married and settled down to life as a housewife and mother in a suburb of New York City. Deeply dissatisfied with her life, Friedan surveyed her college classmates and found that they felt similarly. She undertook a systematic study of the situation of American women and published her findings in 1963 in The Feminine Mystique, which became a best seller and a landmark for the U.S. women's movement.

Kate Sheppard was born in England in 1873 but spent most of her adult years in New Zealand. She advocated physical fitness for women and urged them to become involved in the social and political issues of the day. After joining the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in 1885, Sheppard began campaigning for woman suffrage. Her efforts came to fruition in 1893, when New Zealand became the first country in the world to grant women the right to vote in national elections. Sheppard helped support suffrage movements in other countries, including the United States and England.

The Norwegian skater Sonja Henie achieved success as both a professional ice skater and a motion-picture actress. Her skating titles included 6 European championships, 10 world championships, and 3 gold medals in the Olympic Winter Games. In 1936 she signed with Twentieth Century Fox, and she starred in 10 popular films. From 1937 to 1945 she was one of the leading box-office attractions in the film industry.

Murasaki Shikibu (c. 978–c. 1014) was the author of the Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji), generally considered the greatest work of Japanese literature and thought to be the world's oldest full novel. This work is of considerable interest for the delightful glimpses it affords of life at the court of the empress Joto mon'in, whom Murasaki Shikibu served. The main source of knowledge about her life is the diary she kept between 1007 and 1010.

Corazon Aquino was a political leader (from 1983) and the president (1986–92) of the Philippines who restored democratic rule in that country after the long dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. Aquino, the unified opposition's candidate in the February 1986 elections, was officially reported to have lost to Marcos, but Aquino and her supporters challenged the results. Philippine military officials publicly renounced Marcos's continued rule and proclaimed Aquino the rightful president of the Philippines. On February 25, 1986, both Aquino and Marcos were inaugurated as president by their respective supporters, but Marcos soon fled the country.

The French painter Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun is considered one of the most successful female artists and was unusually so for her time. A sensitive portraitist, Vigée-Lebrun became friends with Queen Marie-Antoinette in 1779, when she was summoned to Versailles to paint the queen's portrait. The queen sat for a total of 20 portraits by Vigée-Lebrun over the years.

The Greek lyric poet Sappho (c. 610–c. 570 BC) has been greatly admired in all ages for the beauty of her writing. In the era of Alexandrian scholarship (especially the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC), what remained of her work was collected and republished in a standard edition of 10 books. This edition did not survive the early Middle Ages. By the 8th or 9th century AD, Sappho was represented almost exclusively by quotations in other authors' works. Only one poem, 28 lines long, is complete.

Initially, Mary Cassatt (1844–1926) was a figure painter whose subjects were groups of women drinking tea or on outings with friends. Like the Impressionists, Cassatt was interested in experimentation and the use of bright colors. The principal motif of her mature and perhaps most familiar period is mothers caring for small children.

In 1925 Josephine Baker, a young African American dancer, went to Paris to dance at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in La Revue nègre and introduced her danse sauvage to France. She went on to become one of the most popular music-hall entertainers in France. She became a French citizen in 1937. During the German occupation of France, Baker worked with the Red Cross and the Resistance. She was later awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honour.

After her dead husband's kingdom in England was annexed by the Romans, Boudicca in AD 60 raised a rebellion against the Romans throughout East Anglia. The rebellion scored numerous successes until the Roman provincial governor, Suetonius Paulinus, defeated rebel fighters near London and regained the province.

Native American educator, lecturer, tribal leader, and writer Sarah Winnemucca (c. 1844–91) is best known for her book Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims (1883). Her writings, valuable for their description of Northern Paiute life and for their insights into the impact of white settlement, are among the few contemporary Native American works.

Christine de Pisan (1364–c. 1430) was a prolific and versatile French poet and author whose diverse writings include numerous poems of courtly love, a biography of Charles V of France, and several works championing women. In all, she wrote 10 volumes in verse, including Épistre au dieu d'amours (1399; “Letter to the God of Love”), in which she defended women against the satire of Jean de Meun in the Roman de la rose (The Romance of the Rose). Christine's prose works include Le Livre de la cité des dames (1405; “The Book of the City of Ladies”), in which she wrote of women known for their heroism and virtue, and Le Livre des trois vertus (1405; “The Book of Three Virtues”), a sequel comprising a classification of women's roles in medieval society and a collection of moral instructions for women in the various social spheres. The story of her life, L'Avision de Christine (1405), told in an allegorical manner, was a reply to her detractors.