Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy is an Indian novelist, writer and activist. She won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her first novel, The God of Small Things, and, in 2002, the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize. Ever since, 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.

More info: Wikipedia, her webpage, zmag, sawnet, ratical, narmada, World Tribunal on Iraq video, Come September video and discussion, Czech econnect link and iliteratura link, Sydney 2004 video.

Eve Ensler

"When we give in the world what we want the most, we heal the broken part inside each of us."

"Happiness exists in action, it exists in telling the truth and saying what your truth is, and it exists in giving away what you want the most."

Eve Ensler

Eve Ensler is an American playwright most famous for her books The Vagina Monologues and The Good Body, and also a founder of the global movement V-Day working to stop violence against women and girls. In this talk from 2004, Eve Ensler speaks about how she 'found' vaginae and how she started talking about vaginae with women (an innocent conversation with her friend about her 'old and dry vagina' and more and more women wanting to talk about their experience of being abused, raped, beaten).

She talks about the V-Day movement where women would gather and share their experience and fight against violence contra women. She calls "Vagina Warriors" women (or vagina friendly men) who witnessed or suffered a terrible violence, and are fighting so that this does not happen anyone else.

She goes on and speaks about women she has met on her journeys and who have been helping other women against violence.

The story of Agnes from Kenya was most fascinating for me: Agnes was mutilated when she was 10 years old. At that time she decided that she would fight against this practice. When she became older, she created an anatomical sculpture of women's body showing vagina and vagina replacement parts. She was showing what a vagina looks like and what a mutilated vagina looks like. She was traveling through the country educating people.

In 8 years Agnes saved 1500 girls from being cut, she created a alternative ritual for girls coming off age without being mutilated. When Agnes received a jeep for her travels from the V-Day movement, in that year she saved 4500 girls from being mutilated.

Rachel Correy

rafah.virtualactivism.net: 16 March 2003: 9 PM, massive attacks of the IDF in Rafah, especially in the Hay Al Salam area, until now 2 people killed, several wounded, many houses destroyed! One of the victims is Rachel Correy, an American lady, 24 years old. Her body was crushed by an IDF bulldozer while she was trying to stop it and preventing it from demolishing the house of just another innocent family...

Yet another person for the Israel-Palestine label. I came across this girl when watching a 2003 lecture by E. W. Said on "Palestine, Iraq, and U.S. Policy". Rachel (24) died when trying to prevent a Palestinian house from being destroyed by an Israeli military bulldozer. Said opened his speech by remembering her and an applause for her parents. She is one of the many victims, and not the only activist victim in the area.

UPDATE: More articles
The Guardian - March 2008 - Five years on, her diaries are being released
Blog comment

100 Women

The World's 100 Most Powerful Women, the majority of them are from the US. A full list here.

Hanan Ashrawi

Hanan Ashrawi -- is an outspoken Palestinian politician and activist fighting for the rights of Palestinians and improving their plight.

I learned about her mainly from films, at the time when I was discovering the richness of Google videos. By films I mean mainly the film "Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land: Media & the Israel-Palestine Conflict" as well as "Hanan Ashrawi: Concept, Context and Process in Peacemaking: The Palestinian-Israeli Experience 11/4/04".



Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land is a 2004 documentary which purports to show the influence of Israeli propaganda on American media coverage of the Israel/Palestine dispute. The film was directed by Sut Jhally and Bathsheba Ratzkoff, and features, among others, Noam Chomsky, Robert Jensen, Hanan Ashrawi, and Robert Fisk. (This info from en.wikipedia)

Tanya Reinhart

Tanya Reinhart -- a linguist and political activist writing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, being herself Israeli. She died on 17th March 2007.

I found about her accidentally on this blog (when watching a video with Chavez recommending Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival). There is also a lot of info on Wikipedia, in the Guardian, the Tel Aviv University (Tanya's former employer) or the Znet.

"She was one of the most courageous and honorable defenders of human rights whom I have ever been privileged to meet. As all honest people should, she focused her attention and energy on the actions of her own state and society, for which she shared responsibility – including the responsibility, which she never shirked, to expose crimes of state and to defend the victims of repression, violence, and conquest. Her numerous articles and books drew away the veil that concealed criminal and outrageous actions, and shone a searing light on the reality that was obscured, all of immense value to those who sought to understand and to react in a decent way. Her activism was not limited to words, important as these were. She was on the front line of direct resistance to intolerable actions, an organizer and a participant, a stance that one cannot respect too highly. She will be remembered not only as a resolute and honorable defender of the rights of Palestinians, but also as one of those who have struggled to defend the moral integrity of her own Israeli society, and its hope for decent survival."

In Memory of Tanya Reinhart Noam Chomsky

Buba

Buba as drawn by Jose Quintero --


This is my favorite image of a girl called 'Buba'. She is a heroin of the designer Jose Quintero... The creation and life of Buba were inspired by his daughter for which he originally drew such cartoons. Why start a 'blog on women' with this girl? She is small, she has many stories to tell and share, and as the picture shows, she seems not to be afraid of anything... :)