Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett was an English political activist and writer. She campaigned for women's suffrage by legal change and in 1897–1919 led Britain's largest women's rights association, the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), explaining, "I cannot say I became a suffragist. I always was one, from the time I was old enough to think at all about the principles of Representative Government." She tried to broaden women's chances of higher education, as a governor of Bedford College, London and co-founding Newnham College, Cambridge in 1875. In 2018, a century after the Representation of the People Act, she was the first woman honoured by a statue in Parliament Square.
Sarojini Naidu was an Indian political activist and poet who served as the first Governor of United Provinces, after India's independence. She played an important role in the Indian independence movement against the British Raj. She was the first Indian woman to be president of the Indian National Congress and appointed governor of a state.
Mahadevi Verma was an Indian Hindi-language poet, essayist, sketch story writer and an eminent personality of Hindi literature. She is considered one of the four major pillars of the Chhayawadi era in Hindi literature. She has been also addressed as the Modern Meera. Poet Nirala had once called her "Saraswati in the vast temple of Hindi Literature". Varma had witnessed India both before and after independence. She was one of those poets who worked for the wider society of India. Not only her poetry but also her social upliftment work and welfare development among women were also depicted deeply in her writings. These largely influenced not only the readers but also the critics, especially through her novel Deepshikha.
Anita Desai, born Anita Mazumdar, is an Indian novelist and the Emerita John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a writer she has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times. She received a Sahitya Akademi Award in 1978 for her novel Fire on the Mountain, from the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters. She won the British Guardian Prize for The Village by the Sea (1983). Her other works include The Peacock, Voices in the City, Fire on the Mountain and an anthology of short stories, Games at Twilight. She is on the advisory board of the Lalit Kala Akademi and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, London.
Sister Nivedita was an Irish teacher, author, social activist, school founder and disciple of Swami Vivekananda. She spent her childhood and early youth in Ireland. She was engaged to marry a Welsh youth, but he died soon after their engagement.
Urvashi Butalia is an Indian feminist writer, publisher and activist. She is known for her work in the women's movement of India, as well as for authoring books such as The Other Side of Silence: Voices from and the Partition of India and Speaking Peace: Women's Voices from Kashmir.
Gargi Vachaknavi, was an ancient Indian sage and philosopher. In Vedic literature, she is honoured as a great natural philosopher, renowned expounder of the Vedas, and known as Brahmavadini, a person with knowledge of Brahma Vidya. In the Sixth and the eighth Brahmana of Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, her name is prominent as she participates in the brahmayajna, a philosophic debate organized by King Janaka of Videha and she challenges the sage Yajnavalkya with perplexing questions on the issue of atman (soul). She is also said to have written many hymns in the Rigveda. She remained a celibate all her life and was held in veneration by the conventional Hindus.
Indrani Rahman was an Indian classical dancer of Bharata Natyam, Kuchipudi, Kathakali, Odissi and beauty pageant titleholder. she popularised in the west and later settled in New York in 1976.
Tarabai Modak was born in Bombay. She graduated from the University of Mumbai in 1914. She was married to a lawyer from Amravati, Mr. Modak. Later she got a divorce in 1921.
Anutai Wagh was one of the pioneers of pre-school education in India. She was the professional colleague of Tarabai Modak. She along with Modak pioneered a programme whose curriculum was indigenous, used low cost teaching aids and was aimed at holistic development of the participants. A. D. N. Bajpai describes her as a "towering social reformer". She was a recipient of the 1985 Jamnalal Bajaj Award. an Anutai Wagh Information Autobiography-From the hill of Kosbad
Bhawana Somaaya is an Indian film journalist, critic, author and historian. She has been honoured with the Padma Shri in the year 2017 by the President of India Pranab Mukherjee. Starting her career as film reporter in 1978, she went to work with several film magazines, through the 1980s and 1990s. Eventually, she remained editor of Screen, a leading film magazine, from 2000 to 2007. She has written over 13 books on history of Hindi cinema and biographies of Bollywood stars, including Salaam Bollywood (2000), The Story So Far (2003) and her trilogy, Amitabh Bachchan – The Legend (1999), Bachchanalia – The Films And Memorabilia of Amitabh Bachchan (2009) and Amitabh Lexicon (2011).
Premlila Vithaldas, (1894–1977) known as Lady Thackersey, was an Indian educationist and Gandhian.
Sailabala Das was a social worker and politician. She was the first woman from Odisha to go to England for higher studies.
Indumati Chimanlal Sheth was an Indian independence activist, politician, social worker and educationist from Gujarat. Born in Ahmedabad and influenced by Mahatma Gandhi, she participated in the independence movement and later served as a deputy education minister of the Bombay State and education minister of Gujarat. She was awarded the Padma Shri in 1970 for her social work.
June Purvis is an emeritus professor of women's and gender history at the University of Portsmouth.
Hansa Yogendra is an Indian yoga guru, author, researcher and TV personality. She is director of The Yoga Institute in Mumbai, founded by her father-in-law Shri Yogendra. It is a government recognized non-profit organization and the oldest organized yoga center in the world, founded in 1918.
Sharda Mehta was an Indian social worker, proponent of women's education, and a Gujarati writer. Born to a family of social reformers, she was one of the first two women graduates in the modern-day Gujarat state of India. She established institutes for women's education and women's welfare. She wrote several essays and an autobiography as well as translated some works.
Kuntala Kumari Sabat (1901–1938) was an Odia poet during colonial India. She was one of the women poets who came into prominence from Odisha during India's freedom struggle. She was multifaceted personality. She was a physician, writer, poet, editor, leader of nationalist movement and social worker. She was honored with Utkala Bharati in 1925.
Nanditha Krishna is an Indian author, environmentalist and educationist. She was recognised by the Government of India who gave her one of the first Nari Shakti Awards in 2015, the highest award for women in India. She is the president of the C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation in Chennai and an author of several books.
Shoma A. Chatterji is an Indian film scholar, author and freelance journalist. She has been the recipient of a number of awards including the National Film Award for Best Film Critic in 1991 and the National Awards for Best Writing on Cinema for her study of the works of Aparna Sen in the publication, Parama and Other Outsiders: The Cinema of Aparna Sen (2002). Notably, she is the only woman to have won both the national awards. She is the author of several biographies including those on Pramathesh Barua, Ritwik Ghatak and Suchitra Sen.
