list 50 women little girls should admire instead of symbols of stupidity and weakness

Isha Judd is considered an “ambassador for peace” by international leaders of opinion. Her conferences and seminars are increasingly sought after throughout the world. Isha Judd imposes no political opinions, dogmas or intellectual concepts, yet she is viewed as a modern day visionary, receiving invitations to speak in international forums, with senators, bishops and jet setters, as well as groups of ex guerilla soldiers and high security prisoners.

Born in Australia, where she lived a wide spectrum of human experiences that shook her structures from the very beginning, Isha Judd was motivated to push the boundaries of life to the limit. After learning of her adoption at a very early age, she found solace in the company of animals. Her great love for horses would eventually lead her to a fulfilling career as a racehorse breaker and trainer. After great personal losses, she developed another facet, as a singer-songwriter of soft rock. But her inner journey was motivated by something greater than external success: by the yearning to break free from the fears that still held her prisoner.

Isha Judd began to dive deep within herself, searching for that which she had always desired. Although she did not know exactly what she was looking for, a voice whispered to her, “It’s time to wake up. It’s time to wake up.” Guided by an inner conviction that seemed to speak to her from her heart, Isha Judd integrated a series of components that began bringing her back home to herself, taking her beyond the confusions and preoccupations of the intellect, into an internal state of increasing peace and fullness.
until reaching enlightenment: the awakening she had so yearned for.

As she continued expanding this internal experience,
she left behind her addictions, attachments and fears,

So it was that this experience, often considered in our culture to be almost impossible to achieve – only for the chosen few, and only after many years of abstinence and disconnection from society – today emanates from an impacting, moving being, who is at the same time grounded and modern; someone who lives in the world, not distanced from it.

Hypatia was the first woman to make a substantial contribution to the development of mathematics. She was killed by a fanatical Christian sect.

Hypatia studied with her father, and with many others including Plutarch the Younger. She herself taught at the Neoplatonist school of philosophy. She became the salaried director of this school in 400. She probably wrote on mathematics, astronomy and philosophy, including about the motions of the planets, about number theory and about conic sections.” (Jone Johnson Lewis)

Hypatia appears to have cultivated intellectual capabilities even deeper than those of her father. Most historians conjecture that she was somewhere between the ages of 35 and 45 when she reached a self-composed maturity which included lecturing to dozens of adoring students. One named Synesius, who later became Bishop of Ptolemais, wrote letters to her and about her for many years. These missives are the basis from which historians have gleaned the most knowledge of Hypatia. She dedicated her life to the pursuit of natural science and the philosophy of natural science, and she has been credited with inventing “a brass hydrometer for determining the specific gravity of liquids, an astrolabe for astronomical observations, a system of distillation and other devices.

Renowned for her beauty as well as her intellect, Hypatia wore the robes of a philosopher and socialized with such political figures as Orestes, governor of Alexandria. Like Hypatia, Orestes was a pagan; however, many Christians in town were intolerant of the pagans. According to Lewis, Orestes was an adversary of Cyril, the new Christian bishop, a man who would one day be canonized by the Catholic Church. Lewis says that Orestes “objected to Cyril expelling the Jews from the city, and was murdered by Christian monks for his opposition.” Hypatia, a pagan espouser of experimental science and friend to Orestes, was blacklisted by Cyril who was appalled at the behavior of a woman “who didn’t know her place” (Lewis). Historians believe that his tirades against Hypatia incited an angry mob of “fanatical Christian monks in 415 to attack Hypatia as she drove her chariot through Alexandria” (Lewis). They dragged Hypatia into a church, then stripped her and killed her by flaying the flesh from her bones with oyster shells. They then ripped her apart, scattered pieces of her in the streets and burned the remains in the library of Caeseareum. This was a murder of passionate hatred, a misogynistic act of epic proportions.

Hypatia was an amazing woman who inspired many in Alexandria during her lifetime. Many citizens enjoyed attending her philosophical lectures and for them, her gender appears not to have been a consideration. She was “Hypatia the Philosopher.” Cyril, a rigidly dogmatic man, grew envious of Hypatia’s popularity and intellect, and instructed his henchmen to martyr her, so as to please God. Cyril thus ironically ensured Hypatia’s longevity in history. The hypocrisy of Cyril’s actions reflect back onto Christianity which I believe is the bastion of patriarchy. There is a poster that became the icon of the Viet Nam anti-war movement: “War is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things,” in black letters on a yellow background. One could easily substitute the word “patriarchy” for “War,” as patriarchy is the war that men wage against women. Hypatia reigns as a heroine to any woman who defeats great odds to become a strong, poised, articulate woman with intellect, beauty and good self esteem. Hypatia, may you live on in the hearts of all women!

ONE of the wildest vocalists in all of popular music, Bjork Gudmundsdottir (known popularly simply as Bjork) has spent most of her life creating artful, experimental music that defies classification.

‘For a person as obsessed with music as I am, I always hear a song in the back of my head, all the time, and that usually is my own tune. I’ve done that all my life. ‘

‘I love being a very personal singer-songwriter, but I also like being a scientist or explorer. ‘

‘I’m a fountain of blood. In the shape of a girl. ‘

‘It’s incredible how nature sets females up to take care of people, and yet it is tricky for them to take care of themselves.’

‘Nature is our chapel.’

‘Usually when you see females in movies, they feel like they have these metallic structures around them, they are caged in by male energy. ‘

Arundhati Roy (born November 24, 1961) is an Indian novelist, activist and a world citizen. She won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her first novel The God of Small Things.

Roy was born in Shillong, Meghalaya to a Keralite Syrian Christian mother and a Bengali Hindu father, a tea planter by profession. She spent her childhood in Aymanam, in Kerala, schooling in Corpus Christi. She left Kerala for Delhi at age 16, and embarked on a homeless lifestyle, staying in a small hut with a tin roof within the walls of Delhi’s Feroz Shah Kotla and making a living selling empty bottles. She then proceeded to study architecture at the Delhi School of Architecture, where she met her first husband, the architect Gerard Da Cunha.

The God of Small Things is the only novel written by Roy. Since winning the Booker Prize, she has concentrated her writing on political issues. These include the Narmada Dam project, India’s Nuclear Weapons, corrupt power company Enron’s activities in India. She is a figure-head of the anti-globalization/alter-globalization movement and a vehement critic of neo-imperialism.

In response to India’s testing of nuclear weapons in Pokhran, Rajasthan, Roy wrote The End of Imagination, a critique of the Indian government’s nuclear policies. It was published in her collection The Cost of Living, in which she also crusaded against India’s massive hydroelectric dam projects in the central and western states of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. She has since devoted herself solely to nonfiction and politics, publishing two more collections of essays as well as working for social causes.

Roy was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize in May 2004 for her work in social campaigns and advocacy of non-violence.

In June 2005 she took part in the World Tribunal on Iraq. In January 2006 she was awarded the Sahitya Akademi award for her collection of essays, ‘The Algebra of Infinite Justice’, but declined to accept it.

To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget. (Arundhati Roy)

Joan of Arc, in French, Jeanne d’Arc, also called the Maid of Orleans, a patron saint of France and a national heroine, led the resistance to the English invasion of France in the Hundred Years War. She was born the third of five children to a farmer, Jacques Darc and his wife Isabelle de Vouthon in the town of Domremy on the border of provinces of Champagne and Lorraine. Her childhood was spent attending her father’s herds in the fields and learning religion and housekeeping skills from her mother.

When Joan was about 12 years old, she began hearing “voices” of St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret believing them to have been sent by God. These voices told her that it was her divine mission to free her country from the English and help the dauphin gain the French throne. They told her to cut her hair, dress in man’s uniform and to pick up the arms.

By 1429 the English with the help of their Burgundian allies occupied Paris and all of France north of the Loire. The resistance was minimal due to lack of leadership and a sense of hopelessness. Henry VI of England was claiming the French throne.

Joan convinced the captain of the dauphin’s forces, and then the dauphin himself of her calling. After passing an examination by a board of theologians, she was given troops to command and the rank of captain.

At the battle of Orleans in May 1429, Joan led the troops to a miraculous victory over the English. She continued fighting the enemy in other locations along the Loire. Fear of troops under her leadership was so formidable that when she approached Lord Talbot’s army at Patay, most of the English troops and Commander Sir John Fastolfe fled the battlefield. Fastolfe was later stripped of his Order of the Garter for this act of cowardice. Although Lord Talbot stood his ground, he lost the battle and was captured along with a hundred English noblemen and lost 1800 of his soldiers.

Charles VII was crowned king of France on July 17, 1429 in Reims Cathedral. At the coronation, Joan was given a place of honor next to the king. Later, she was ennobled for her services to the country.

In 1430 she was captured by the Burgundians while defending Compiegne near Paris and was sold to the English. The English, in turn, handed her over to the ecclesiastical court at Rouen led by Pierre Cauchon, a pro-English Bishop of Beauvais, to be tried for witchcraft and heresy. Much was made of her insistence on wearing male clothing. She was told that for a woman to wear men’s clothing was a crime against God. Her determination to continue wearing it (because her voices hadn’t yet told her to change, as well as for protection from sexual abuse by her jailors) was seen as defiance and finally sealed her fate. Joan was convicted after a fourteen-month interrogation and on May 30, 1431 she was burned at the stake in the Rouen marketplace. She was nineteen years old. Charles VII made no attempt to come to her rescue.

In 1456 a second trial was held and she was pronounced innocent of the charges against her. She was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920 by Pope Benedict XV.

Kahlo was truly an inspirational woman in history.She became a feminist cult figure towards the end of the 20th century, particularly because her intense paintings were dominated by female themes.
Pain was a huge part of her existence.

Frida Kahlo followed her heart

“…I paint because I need to.”

Frida Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907. She was involved on a tragic bus accident at the age of 19 in which she was severely injured and lost her ability to walk to later regain it. This impacted her life greatly since she continued to experience physical pain and depression. However, she managed to utilize the negativity as the sources of her greatest inspirations. At first she started painting her family and friends but later on she started projects were her canvas was her diary and expressed important events and emotions. She certainly possessed the rare ability to transport her personality traits and deep emotions in to her work of art. In fact, some of them were a bit outrageous and at times graphic since they represented deep depressive states or health issues.

Drawing on personal experiences, including her marriage, her miscarriages, and her numerous operations, Kahlo’s works often are characterized by their stark portrayals of pain. Of her 143 paintings, 55 are self-portraits which often incorporate symbolic portrayals of physical and psychological wounds. She insisted, “I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.”

Kahlo was influenced by indigenous Mexican culture, which is apparent in her use of bright colors and dramatic symbolism. She frequently included the symbolic monkey. In Mexican mythology, monkeys are symbols of lust, but Kahlo portrayed them as tender and protective symbols. Christian and Jewish themes are often depicted in her work.

She combined elements of the classic religious Mexican tradition with surrealist renderings. Kahlo created a few drawings of “portraits,” but unlike her paintings, they were more abstract. She did one of her husband, Diego Rivera,[9] and of herself.[10] At the invitation of André Breton, she went to France in 1939 and was featured at an exhibition of her paintings in Paris. The Louvre bought one of her paintings, The Frame, which was displayed at the exhibit. This was the first work by a 20th century Mexican artist ever purchased by the internationally renowned museum.