March 3

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Women peacemakers born today

  • 1881 Dorothy Buxton born Ellesmere, Shropshire, England (d. 1963). British humanitarian; Christian Socialist; Quaker pacifist. WILPF founding member; denied exit to Hague Women's Peace Congress, 1915.

  • 1884 Rachel Crowdy-Thornhill born Paddington, London (d. 1964). Internationalist; poet. Highest ranking woman in League of Nations Secretariat, 1919-1932.

  • 1893 Beatrice Wood born San Francisco, CA (d. 1998). “Mama of Dada.” American avant-garde artist and potter; theosophist.

  • 1895 Gladdys Muir born MacPherson, KS (d. 1967). Taught the first Peace Studies course in America at Manchester College, 1947.

  • 1904 Helen Morgan Brooks born Reading, PA (d. 1989). Quaker poet; activist.

  • 1924 Ruth Hubbard born Vienna, Austria (d. 2016). Biochemistry professor at Harvard and Woods Hole Institute. Peace activist for over 40 years with husband George Wald, opposing Vietnam War and the arms race.

  • 1939 Thérèse Paquet-Sévigny born Quebec, Canada. Canadian journalist. First female UN Undersecretary, for Public Information, 1987-91.

  • 1974 Ada Colau born Barcelona, Spain. Catalan activist, social reformer & politician. Organized protest against Iraq War; led nonviolent protests against housing evictions. Elected mayor of Barcelona, 2015.

  • 1982 Jessica Biel born Ely, MN. Actress. Climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro to publicize UN Foundation’s Girl Up program and its focus on the global water crisis, 2010; paired with Shanoah Washington against gang violence at TeenNick HALO Awards, 2011; supporter of UN refugee program.

Women's peacemaking on this day

  • 1913 50,00 women marched to the White House on the First Great March on Washington DC, led by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns.

  • 1975 Martha Tranquilli freed after serving nine months imprisonment for tax refusal.

  • 1991 One Million Signatures campaign for Moroccan women’s rights.

  • 1998 Four female protesters arrested at Clyde Naval Base after one of the first international weapons inspections.

  • 2003 As part of the Lysistrata Project, 1,029 theaters worldwide staged performances of the Greek play "Lysistrata" in protest of the American invasion of Iraq.

  • 2004 Solidarity with Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq (SOWFI) founded by Jennifer Fasulo.

  • 2011 Aya Virginie Toure led 15,000 women in black peaceful protest against coup, Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire.

  • 2011 In Abobo, Cote d'Ivoire, seven women were killed in a women's protest against Gbagbo led by Sirah Drane.

  • 2012 In Machu, Tibet, 20-year-old school student Tsering Kyi immolated herself. "We should do something for Tibet—life is meaningless if we don’t do something for Tibet."

  • 2016 Assassination of indigenous organizer Berta Cáceres, La Esperanza, Intibuca, Honduras. “Let us wake up, humankind. . . Our Mother Earth, militarized, fenced-in, poisoned, a place where basic rights are systematically violated, demands that we take action.”