January 2

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Women peacemakers born today

  • 1857 M. Carey Thomas born Baltimore, MD (d. 1935). Feminist; president of Bryn Mawr College; reviver of Quaker Peace Testimony; co-founder of International Federation of University Women, 1919.

  • 1886 Elise Ottesen-Jensen born Høyland, Norway (d. 1973). Pioneering feminist; anarcho-pacifist; founded International Planned Parenthood, 1952.

  • 1898 Marta Vergara born Santiago, Chile (d. 1995). Chilean feminist pioneer; author and journalist. Communist; anti-imperialist opponent of US military intervention. Delegate to League of Nations. Represented Chile at Conference on Codification of International Law, 1930.

  • 1900 Mildred Osterhout Fahrni born Rapid City, Canada (d. 1992). Gandhian; Socialist; absolute pacifist; friend of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Leader of FOR and WILPF; opposed World War II; worked with pacifist Dukhobors.

  • 1982 Dalia Ziada born Cairo, Egypt. Nonviolent activist; poet. Leader of Arab Spring protests at Tahrir Square, 2011.

Women's peacemaking on this day

  • 1243 Death of Blessed Ortolana, mother of Saints Clare and Agnes, whom she followed in Franciscan mission of peace.

  • 1910 Mass rally at New York's Carnegie Hall, in support of 370 female garment workers who were arrested.

  • 1913 Alice Paul founded National American Woman Suffrage Association.

  • 1983 Italian women blocked Comiso airbase in nonviolent protest.

  • 1996 100,000 Bangladeshi women rallied in Dacca to protest Islamist clerics' attacks on women's education and employment.

  • 2013 Women vandalized Mumbai nightclub Bonobo for selling “rape cocktails.”