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Women will have achieved true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation. – Ruth Bader Ginsburg

It’s Women’s History Month here in Canada! Cause you know, we rock, at all times.
Let’s celebrate each other and the contributions made to society and history.

Let’s also celebrate our Girls. October 11 is International Day of the Girl, a UN international observance dedicated to championing girls’ rights around the world. In Canada, this day is an important part of Women’s History Month celebrations.

There are so many heroes to celebrate, that have played an incredibly vital role in our lives and in human history.

These are just a few of the badasses that shaped our future.

Sojourner Truth (born 1797)

Courtesy of The Smithsonian

Sojourner Truth was born into slavery but fought for our freedom.
She became an outspoken advocate for abolition, temperance, and civil and women’s rights in the nineteenth century.

Elizabeth Blackwell (born 1821)

Courtesy of The Smithsonian

Elizabeth Blackwell was the first female doctor, who championed the participation of women and eventually opened the first medical school for women.

Katherine Johnson (born 1918)

Courtesy of Vanity Fair

Katherine Johnson performed complex calculations for NASA and broke gender and racial barriers to sending a man into space. Her story has been told in the book and movie adaptation Hidden Figures.

Viola Vaughn (born 1947)

Courtesy of UNICEF

Dr. Viola M. Vaughn is the founder and Executive Director of the Women’s Health Education and Prevention Strategies Alliance (WHEPSA) and 10,000 Girls in Kaolack, Senegal, West Africa. She founded WHEPSA in 2001, to develop new strategies for offering health and educational services to girls in rural Senegal.

Susan B. Anthony (born 1820)

Courtesy of Susan B. Anthony House

Susan B. Anthony led the early Women’s Suffrage Movement; the rights of labor, and equal pay for equal work. She was also a civil rights activist, who campaigned against slavery and fought for women’s right to vote.

Emily Murphy (1868–1933)

Courtesy of SFU (Simon Fraser Univerity) Digitized Collections

Emily Murphy (née Ferguson, pen name Janey Canuck), is a Women’s rights activist, jurist, author, and first female magistrate in Canada and the British Empire. Emily helped to pass the 1911 Dower Act in Alberta, legislation that protected a woman’s right to one-third of her husband’s estate.

History Revealed – In honor of Women’s History Month

Check out these books that, tells the inspiring, gripping, and sometimes hidden stories behind women’s progress over the generations and the heroes they played in shaping our modern world.

Code Girls – Liza Mundy

Code Girls is an immensely researched and riveting book, The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II. This at a time when even well-educated women were not encouraged to have careers, much less compete with men to demonstrate their mastery of hidden, technical skills, this hiring frenzy represented a dramatic shift.

Hidden Figures – Margot Lee Shetterly

Hidden Figures is the extraordinary true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped propelled some of America’s greatest achievements in space. The movie was also amazing, check that out as well.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Rebecca Skloot

Her family knew her as Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor black tobacco farmer whose cells—taken without her knowledge in 1951—became one of the most important tools in medicine, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, and more. Henrietta’s cells have been bought and sold by the billions since then.

I am Malala – Malala Yousafzai, Christina Lamb (With)

She stood up for Education and was shot. This is the inspirational autobiography of Malala. A memoir by the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize

A Few Must Reads for your Reading List

The Radical Element – Jessica Spotswood (and others)

The Radical Element: 12 Stories of Daredevils, Debutantes & Other Dauntless Girls. A collection of historical stories about young women, bold and brave, many who traverse territory slated only for men.

The Little Women – Louisa May Alcott

In The Little Women, we meet the unforgettable March sisters — Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. They live with their mother, in a small house next to the Lawrence mansion. Their father is an army chaplain, away during the Civil War.

The Hate U Give – Angie Thomas

The Hate U Give tell the story of a teen (Starr Carter) between two worlds: her school, which is rich, fancy, and white; and her neighborhood, which is poor and black. Her worlds collide when her best friend Khalil is shot and killed by police.

Bad Feminist – Roxane Gay

Bad Feminist is an insightful and funny collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism.