Woman=Human. And not just on International Women’s Day.
By Ishaba Haque
Yes, woman = human, but for years they have been deprived of many rights. But that didn’t stop us from climbing mountains, becoming world leaders, revolutionizing the music industry, making scientific discoveries, and changing the course of history.
Today, March 8, marks International Women’s Day, a day to celebrate achievements women have made in culture, society, politics, and economics. A day to celebrate their genius, beauty, and wit. This day is also a call for action to lessen the disparity in gender equality—individuals and organizations all over the world are doing their part to rally for equal rights.
Here at Tremendousness, we want to mark this special day by celebrating some of our favorite women as queens in the fields they excelled at, because after all, a queen is always a woman and women are always queens.
Benazir Bhutto
The first woman to head a Muslim majority country
Karachi, Pakistan
During a tumultuous political climate in Pakistan, Bhutto successfully ran a campaign to become the first woman to lead a Muslim majority country as Prime Minister. Even though her time as PM saw a lot of controversy, she was known as South Asia’s “Iron Lady.” She ruled with confidence and wisdom, even when the cards were stacked against her.
Nina Simone
Singer, songwriter, civil rights activist
North Carolina, USA
A legendary figure in Jazz, Simone revolutionized the genre by using her craft to speak out against social issues consuming the African American community in the 1960s. Her sensuous, raw, and explicit musical style paved the way for other African American artists to use music as a means of social reform. To this day, Simone’s work is sampled in music across various genres.
Rosalind Franklin
Pioneer molecular biologist
London, England
A hidden figure of her time, Franklin was part of the team responsible for discovering the molecular structure of DNA in 1953. The only woman in the team, Franklin often faced discriminatory behavior against her in a lab largely dominated by men. Her ideas were shot down, her findings were miscredited (stolen, that is), and her research was disregarded. Nevertheless, Franklin’s background in X-Ray photography contributed largely to the discovery of DNA structures. It was only after her death that she received credit for her work.
Junko Tabei
First woman to climb Mt. Everest
Fukushima, Japan
At 5 feet tall and just 92 pounds, Tabei is the first woman to scale Everest and ascend the highest summit in every continent. She conquered all 29,029 feet of Everest in 1975, at the age of 35. Tabei scaling the world’s largest mountain not only paved the way for other women to tackle such great feats, but also gave meaning to the phrase “big things come in small packages!”
We’re lucky to have worked with a lot of companies and organizations that take equality as seriously as we do, and have asked us to work with them on projects that put women and girls in the forefront. A couple of our favorites include Girls Who Code, an infographic we made in collaboration with Adobe to promote the significance of girls in the computer science field, and Pipelines & Promise, a Rube Goldberg-inspired magazine spread we designed for Working Mother to highlight the importance of a diverse workforce.
A woman is the full circle. Within her is the power to create, nurture and transform.
—Diane Mariechild
Since the first celebration of International Women’s Day back in 1909, there have been real and lasting developments in women’s rights and achievements. Although progress at times seems slow or stymied, now more than ever women are excelling in male dominated fields, continuing to blaze the path for a whole new generation of women to conquer, triumph, and to blaze paths of their own.
