International Women’s Day: the 10 best feminists

On Sunday 8 March, it’s International Women’s Day. To celebrate, Helen Lewis pays tribute to 10 inspirational feminists
Have we missed someone from the list? Leave your suggestion in the comments below and it could feature in the alternative list next week

Aphra Behn
Portrait of Aphra Behn 1670
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Portrait of Aphra Behn, 1670. Photograph: Oxford University
A playwright, translator and spy, Behn (also known as Astrea) has a good claim to being the first Englishwoman to make a living out of her writing. In the centuries after her death in 1689, her plays were dismissed as indecent because of their focus on female sexuality (“The stage how loosely does Astrea tread/ Who fairly puts all characters to bed!” wrote Alexander Pope in 1737). Recent feminist scholars have rediscovered her writing, and have made the case that the publication of her prose fiction Oroonoko, the story of a slave, was a key moment in the development of the English novel.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie photographed in Grosvenor Square in Central London
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Adichie photographed in Grosvenor Square in Central London. Photograph: Richard Saker for the Observer
“Feminist: a person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes.” In the most high-profile pop-feminist moment of 2013, Beyoncé included these words – taken from a TED talk given by Adichie – on her single Flawless. In the talk, which has since been published as a book called We Should All Be Feminists, the Nigerian-born author asks: why are girls taught to shrink themselves, to compete for men, to limit their ambitions? She urges her audience to reclaim the word “feminist” and to say: “Yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today, and we must fix it.”
Nellie Bly
A formal portrait of Nellie Bly, an American journalist and around the world traveler.
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A formal portrait of Nellie Bly, an American journalist and round-the-world traveller. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis
“No one but a man can do this,” Nellie Bly’s editor told her in 1886 when she suggested travelling round the world in less than 80 days. She would need a protector, he said – and how would she ever carry all the luggage a lady would need on such a trip? Bly didn’t worry too much about the first quibble, and travelled light, crushing all her belongings into a single handbag. She made it home in 72 days. That wasn’t the first time the pioneering American journalist had attracted attention through her work – a year earlier, in 1887, she faked madness to go undercover in an asylum, exposing its poor conditions and abusive staff.
Caitlin Moran
Caitlin Moran at her home in Crouch End, London.
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Caitlin Moran at her home in Crouch End, London. Photograph: Sophia Evans for the Observer
Rarely has feminism seemed as much fun as it does in the work of Caitlin Moran. Her 2011 book, How to Be A Woman, covered a host of modern dilemmas – body image, abortions, motherhood, what to do when Lady Gaga invites you to share her loo cubicle – and kicked off a feminist publishing boom. The movement might be fuelled by anger against injustice, but who doesn’t need laughter and silliness in their life, too? Moran followed up with a novel that celebrated the sexuality of teenage girls – a subject too often marred by the prurient anxiety of their elders.
Andrea Dworkin
Andrea Dworkin in 2000.
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Andrea Dworkin in 2000. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Observer
If you only know Dworkin by reputation – a big, scary man-hater who decreed that “all sex is rape” – then a pleasant surprise awaits. Seen through her own words, a different woman emerges: still strident, still unapologetic, but with a fierce intelligence and a bludgeoning prose style that will take your breath away. Dworkin’s brand of anti-pornography feminism might have lost the “sex wars” of the late 70s and 80s, but that doesn’t invalidate her career. As feminists, we need to come to an accommodation with foremothers who are inconvenient, exasperating – or sometimes just wrong.
Malala Yousafzai
Laureate Malala Yousafzai displays her medal during the awarding ceremony of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize at Oslo City Hall, Norway.
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Laureate Malala Yousafzai displays her medal during the awarding ceremony of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize at Oslo City Hall, Norway. Photograph: Cornelius Poppe/EPA
The two great engines of progress for women’s rights are birth control and the education of girls. At the age of just 15, Malala became a symbol of the struggle to achieve the second of these goals when she was shot in the head by Taliban fighters in the Swat valley. Her survival inspired hope for the future – not just in Pakistan, but across the world. Last year, she travelled to Nigeria to put pressure on President Goodluck Jonathan to “bring back our girls” abducted by Boko Haram. Now taking her GCSEs in Britain, Malala has dealt with her sudden fame with wisdom far beyond her years.
Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie shares a laugh with Bosnian woman Babic Lena.
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Angelina Jolie shares a laugh with Bosnian woman Babic Lena. Photograph: Aziz/UNHCR
In the past five years, the film star has shugged off lurid headlines about her relationship with Brad Pitt to become an eloquent advocate of better treatment and support for victims of rape in war zones. Last year’s UN summit in London heard from grassroots activists around the world and was attended by then foreign secretary William Hague. Sexual violence as a weapon of war is one of the world’s most persistent human rights abuses : it is estimated that 12% of women in the Democratic Republic of Congo are rape survivors, and the crime affects thousands of men and children too. Brava, Angelina, for putting it on the international agenda.
Mary Beard
Mary Beard at The Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford.
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Mary Beard at The Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford. Photograph: Geoffrey Swaine/REX
Any young woman having a hard time at school or university should ask herself: “What would Mary Beard do?” The answer is usually: read another book, don’t worry about what your hair looks like, and take no crap from anybody. The Cambridge professor of classics memorably stood up to internet trolls by refusing to be ashamed when they made lewd jokes about her age and her body. She has recently opposed the trend among university societies for censoring feminists who have the “wrong” opinions on sex-work and gender. Just as importantly, Professor Beard makes it cool to be clever.
Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf photographed in the 1930s..
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Virginia Woolf photographed in the 1930s.. Photograph: The Granger Collection / TopFoto
“Chloe liked Olivia” was Virginia Woolf’s nomination for the most startling sentence she had ever read. In her essay A Room Of One’s Own, Woolf attempted to reclaim English literature from its relentless focus on men’s lives, and she explored the material conditions that make it harder for women to be creative. The book was written in 1929, but it is just as relevant today, when women wrote 11% of the 250 top‑grossing films of 2014, and the latest VIDA (Women in Literary Arts) count found that three-quarters of the authors and reviewers in journals such as the New York Review of Books and the LRB were men.
Sir Patrick Stewart
Patrick Stewart in 2011.
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Patrick Stewart in 2011. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Observer
Yes, Star Trek’s Captain Picard. In 2009, Stewart revealed that he had grown up in a household scarred by his father’s violence against his mother, Gladys. The police refused to help the family, telling Gladys: “Mrs Stewart, it takes two to make a fight.” Her son disagreed: “Violence is a choice a man makes and he alone is responsible for it.” At a time when funding cuts are hurting the women’s sector and specialist provision is being cut, the actor and activist offers a simple, heartfelt message: no woman should die, and no child should live in fear, because they cannot escape a violent man.

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