Women Who Inspire Us

When I was growing up, I wanted to be just like Queen Elizabeth I.  These days I am a fan of Jordan’s Queen Rania who posts messages on Twitter and Facebook about empowering women and children:

QueenRania: Give a girl 1yr of extra schooling and she can increase her income by as much as 20%.That’s quite a pay-rise! Plz RT

QueenRania: Developing world loses about $100bn a year not educating girls. Int’l aid to developing world? About $100bn…

QueenRania: Extra cost to world to get every kid into school? $11bn. Cost to US alone on bailouts & stimulus? $11trillion. Plz RT

And then there is Britain’s Harriet Harman who is pinch-hitting for Gordon Brown while he is on vacation.  While it gives one shudders to think what would have happened during the Bush administration if the U.S. had this policy, Harman rocks severely.  In her brief tenure she has had the gall to wonder whether we might have avoided some of  the economic hell that has been plaguing us of late if instead of the Lehman Brothers there had been the Lehman Sisters.  And then she really put the UK in a tizzy by saying that she wants to review the conviction rates under the current rape laws.

The uproar has been so loud, you can hear it all the way over on this side of the pond.  She has been accused of promoting,

vacuous feminism, a reflex loathing of men and of being either “thick” or “criminally disingenuous”. Liddle riffed about how he “wouldn’t” with Harman, even after a few beers or, for that matter, with any other Labour woman, apart from Caroline Flint.

Over on Women’s Space, Heart has a wonderful write-up about the many, many women in Iran who are fighting for justice and women’s rights.  If you don’t know who Delaram Ali, Roonak Savarzedah, Shadi Sadr, Clotilde Reiss and Paymaneh Amiri, well you should.  Very ominously, Heart reports that many of the websites of the women’s movement in Iran are no longer functional.  In addition, 43 members of the Million Signatures Campaign have been arrested.  Please read Heart’s post in its entirety.

What a wonderful thing it is that girls  today have these wonderful, courageous women as role models.  The potential this creates is enormous and inspiring.