Women Who Choose to Challenge
International Women’s Day is held on the 8th March each year to celebrate the achievements of women. It is a day marked worldwide, where people come together to celebrate women’s achievements or rally for women’s equality.
This year’s theme is #ChooseToChallenge and highlights the progress that can be made when we call out gender bias and inequality. By celebrating women’s achievements in all walks of life, #ChooseToChallenge aims to educate and encourage others to help create a more inclusive world. Here at Oxford International, we are looking at inspirational women helping to shape the world we live in.
Greta Thunberg
Greta Thunberg is an 18-year-old Swedish environmental activist. She is world-renowned for publicly challenging world leaders and pushing them to take necessary action against climate change.
Since her first strike for action against climate change outside the Swedish Parliament in August 2018, Thunberg has inspired millions. Her influence on school-aged peers has been described as “The Greta Effect”. In 2019, Greta became the youngest person ever to be named the Time Person of the Year.
Amanda Gorman
Born in 1998, Amanda Gorman is an American activist and poet. She focuses on issues including race, feminism, oppression and the African diaspora. In 2017, she became the first person to be named National Youth Poet Laureate. The title is awarded in the United States to a young person who shows great skill in poetry, spoken word or other arts as well as strong leadership in battling social injustice. She recently also became the youngest poet to read at a presidential inauguration in US history, delivering her poem “The Hill We Climb” at the inauguration of President Joe Biden in January of 2021.
Sanna Mirella Marin
Sanna Mirella Marin is a well-known Finnish politician who became the Prime Minister of Finland in late 2019. Born into a working-class family, Marin was the first in her family to attend university, which is where she developed more of an interest in politics. She became the youngest female state leader as well as Finland’s youngest-ever prime minister, making headlines with her coalition government of five women. She has gone on to be featured on BBC’s 100 Women, as well as Forbes’ The World’s 100 Most Powerful women among numerous other achievements.
Jacinda Ardern
Jacinda Ardern is currently serving as the 40th prime minister of New Zealand, focussing her government particularly on child poverty, social inequality and the New Zealand housing crisis. In 2017, she became the world’s youngest female head of government, aged 37. In 2018, she became the world’s second elected head of government and first prime minister of New Zealand to give birth while in office. She recently announced that all New Zealand schools will have free access to sanitary products from June 2021. The news is part of an initiative aimed at stamping out period poverty in the country.
Ardern has been praised for her leadership throughout the Covid-19 pandemic and her swift response to the outbreak. In March 2020, she announced a 14-day isolation period for anyone entering the country, the toughest border restrictions in the world at that time. In 2020, she was named by Prospect as the second-greatest thinker of the COVID-19 era.
Kathrin Jansen
Kathrin U. Jansen, PhD, is Senior Vice President and Head of Vaccine Research and Development at Pfizer Inc. Often unwell as a child, her own experiences inspired her to pursue a career in drug development. Her previous work includes the development of the HPV and PCV vaccines, and more recently the Covid-19 vaccine. With a team of over 700 researchers, Jansen has worked to create a vaccine in months rather than the typical 10-15 years. Based on results from clinical trials, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was 95% effective at preventing laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 illness. The vaccine is now being manufactured and distributed to countries all over the world.
Kamala Harris
Kamala Devi Harris is an American politician and attorney currently serving as the 49th Vice President of the United States. The daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father, she was inaugurated as the first Black, first South Asian American and first female Vice President. She is now the highest-ranking female official in U.S. history. Harris hopes that her legacy will create an easier pathway into politics for younger generations of women.
It’s important for younger generations to have relatable and inspiring role models to look up to. It is great to see women choosing to challenge stereotypes and pursue a variety of careers. It is important to note that they are inspiring because of the hurdles they have overcome to achieve what they have, rather than the fact that they are women. As Sanna Marin said in Time Magazine, “Greta Thunberg is not a role model because she’s a young girl. It’s because she’s a voice for climate. She’s talking about issues, and that’s what inspires people.”
This International Women’s Day, we want to hear which women inspire you to make the world a more equal place?