Exemplary Women

Amma Amritanandamayi Devi
(born September 27, 1953) is an Indian spiritual leader revered as a saint by her followers, who also know her as "Amma", "Ammachi" or "Mother". She is a widely respected humanitarian and called by some "the hugging saint". Since 1981, she has been teaching spiritual aspirants all over the world. She founded a worldwide organization, the Mata Amritanandamayi Mission Trust, which is engaged in many spiritual and charitable activities. From humble beginnings she undertook a journey to attain "universal motherhood". was the keynote speaker at the Global Peace Initiative of Women, at the UN in Geneva, Switzerland held in October 2002. In 2002 Mata Amritanandamayi was presented with the Gandhi-King Award for Non-Violence by The World Movement for Nonviolence at the UN General Assembly Hall (Palais Des Nations) in Geneva in recognition of her lifelong work in furthering the principles of non-violence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mata_AmritanandamayiM,,t,,

Helen Adams Keller
(June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, activist and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to graduate from college. The story of how Keller's remarkable teacher, Anne Sullivan, broke through the isolation imposed by a near complete lack of language, allowing the girl to blossom as she learned to communicate, has become known worldwide through the dramatic depictions of The Miracle Worker. What is less well known is how Keller's life developed after she completed her education. A prolific author, she was well traveled, and was outspoken in her opposition to war. She campaigned for women's suffrage, workers' rights and socialism, as well as many other progressive causes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Keller

Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova
(born 6 March 1937), is a retired Soviet cosmonaut and was the first woman to fly in space, aboard Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentina_Vladimirovna_Tereshko va

Frida Kahlo
(July 6, 1907 – July 13, 1954) was a Mexican painter, who has achieved great international popularity. She painted using vibrant colors in a style that was influenced by indigenous cultures of Mexico as well as European influences that include Realism, Symbolism, and Surrealism. Many of her works are self-portraits that symbolically express her own pain. Kahlo was married to and influenced by the Mexican/Spanish muralist Diego Rivera and shared his Communist views. Although she has long been recognized as an important painter, public awareness of her work has become more widespread since the 1970s. Her "Blue" house in Coyoacán, Mexico City is a popular museum, donated by Diego Rivera after his death in 1957.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frida_Kahlo

Lucille Ball
An iconic American, comedienne, film, television, stage and radio actress. She received 13 Emmy Award nominations and had four wins. She has been the recipient of dozens of Lifetime Achievement Awards and has been nominated dozens of other times for television and film roles. She created a television dynasty and reached several "firsts". Ball was the first woman in television to be head of a production company: Desilu.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucille_Ball
Amelia Earhart
Perhaps one of the most famous legendary aviators of all time, male or female. By October 1922, Amelia began participating in record-breaking attempts and set a women¹s altitude record of 14,000 feet. Amelia began organizing various events to further introduce women into the world of aviation. She organized the famous cross-country air race for women pilots, the Los Angeles to Cleveland Women¹s Air Derby, in 1929. Amelia also co-founded and presided over the Ninety-Nines women's pilot organization. In 1930, she broke several women's speed records. Amelia broke many records: the first woman to fly the Atlantic solo and the only person to fly it twice, the longest nonstop distance flown by a woman and a record for crossing with the shortest time. "Please know that I am quite aware of the hazards...I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others."
http://library.thinkquest.org/21229/bio/aearh.htm
Anneliese Marie "Anne" Frank
Anne and her family moved to Amsterdam in 1933 after the Nazis gained power in Germany…As persecutions against the Jewish population increased, the family went into hiding in July 1942 The diary, which was given to Anne on her 13th birthday, chronicles her life from June 12, 1942 until August 1, 1944. It has been translated into many languages, has become one of the world's most widely read books, and has been the basis for several plays and films. Anne Frank has been acknowledged for the quality of her writing, and has become one of the most renowned and discussed of Holocaust victims.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Frank#Legacy
Suzanna Arundhati Roy
Suzanna 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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arundhati_Roy
Emily Dickinson
Emily was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life. After being schooled at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she spent a short time at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before retiring to her family's house, the Homestead. Throughout her adult life she rarely traveled outside of Amherst or very far from home. Thought of as an eccentric by the locals, she became known for her penchant for white clothing and her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even leave her room. Most of her friendships were therefore carried out by correspondence...Dickinson was a prolific private poet, choosing to publish fewer than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems.[1] The work that was published during her lifetime was usually altered significantly by the publishers to fit the conventional poetic rules of the time. Dickinson's poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often utilize slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation.[2] Her poems also tend to deal with themes of death and immortality, two subjects which infused her letters to friends. In her lifetime, she wrote a total of 1,775 poems.Although most of her acquaintances were probably aware of Dickinson's writing, it was not until after her death in 1886—when Lavinia, Emily's younger sister, discovered her cache of poems—that the breadth of Dickinson's work became apparent. Her first collection of poetry was published in 1890 by personal acquaintances Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, both of whom heavily edited the content. A complete and mostly unaltered collection of her poetry became available for the first time in 1955 when The Poems of Emily Dickinson was published by scholar Thomas H. Johnson. Despite unfavorable reviews and skepticism of her literary prowess during the late 19th and early 20th century, critics now consider Dickinson to be a major American poet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Dickinson
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