50 Fun Facts About Feminism

Which journalist went undercover as a Playboy Bunny for a 1963 exposé before co-founding Ms. magazine?

Gloria Steinem took a job at the New York Playboy Club for Show magazine and published 'A Bunny's Tale'. The article detailed how the women working in the clubs were treated.

Which wartime icon's name became attached to the 1943 'We Can Do It!' poster only after a 1980s rediscovery?

Rosie the Riveter was a 1942 song and a Norman Rockwell painting, with no wartime link to the poster. J. Howard Miller drew it for Westinghouse to show to its own factory workers.

In the slogan coined by Australian activist Irina Dunn, a woman needs a man like a fish needs what?

A bicycle was Irina Dunn's punchline, though a famous American feminist usually gets the credit. That feminist wrote to Time magazine in 2000 to say the line was Dunn's.

Which pop artist was shot in 1968 by Valerie Solanas, author of the radical SCUM Manifesto?

Andy Warhol was shot at the Factory, his Manhattan studio, a year after Solanas had appeared in one of his films. Art critic Mario Amaya was wounded in the same attack.

Which loose trousers worn by 1850s dress reformers were named after Amelia, editor of the temperance paper The Lily?

Bloomers came to Seneca Falls in 1851 with Elizabeth Smith Miller, who arrived on a visit wearing the outfit. Amelia Bloomer championed it in her paper, and her name stuck.

Which pageant's 1968 protest in Atlantic City gave rise to the lasting myth that feminists burned bras?

Miss America protesters threw bras, girdles and mops into a 'Freedom Trash Can'; an organiser said police would not let them light it. A New York Post story headlined 'Bra Burners and Miss America' likened them to draft-card burners.

Which singer sampled Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's talk 'We Should All Be Feminists' on the 2013 track 'Flawless'?

Beyoncé built the second verse of the song from Adichie's TEDx talk. The Nigerian novelist said the track led young people who had never heard of her speech to start discussing it.

Which European country did not let women vote in federal elections until a referendum in 1971?

Switzerland's men had voted the idea down by two to one in 1959 before saying yes. The last canton, Appenzell Innerrhoden, admitted women voters only when a court ordered it to in 1990.

Which comic-book superhero appeared on the cover of the first regular issue of Ms. magazine in July 1972?

Wonder Woman had been stripped of her superpowers in the comics at the time. The magazine's co-founder lobbied DC to restore them, which it did in 1973.

Which country lifted a long-standing ban on women driving in June 2018, after decades of protests by activists?

Saudi Arabia was the only country where the law barred women from driving. In 1990, 47 women drove through Riyadh in protest and were arrested, with their passports confiscated.

Which Margaret Atwood novel inspired the red cloaks and white bonnets worn at women's rights protests worldwide?

The Handmaid's Tale is set in Gilead, a theocracy that has overthrown the US government and forces fertile women to bear children for its rulers. Atwood published it in 1985.

Which Harry Potter star launched the United Nations HeForShe campaign with a 2014 speech in New York?

Emma Watson spoke as a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador, inviting men and boys to join the push for gender equality. The launch drew more than a million #HeForShe tweets within two weeks.

Which actress delivers the speech about the conflicting standards women face in Greta Gerwig's 2023 film Barbie?

America Ferrera plays Gloria, a Mattel employee whose outburst restores Barbie's confidence and helps free the other dolls. The role earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

Which British pop group turned 'girl power', a slogan from a 1991 punk zine, into a 1990s catchphrase?

The Spice Girls took the phrase mainstream, but it was coined by the American punk band Bikini Kill. The second issue of the band's zine carried the subtitle 'Girl Power'.

Which 1980 comedy starring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton was inspired by a real office workers' group?

9 to 5 grew out of Jane Fonda's meetings with 9to5, a group of women clerical workers that began in Boston. The group ran 'worst boss' contests to publicise how secretaries were treated.

Which singer imagined how the world would treat her as a male star in 'The Man', from the 2019 album Lover?

Taylor Swift directed the video herself and played 'Tyler Swift', a swaggering male alter ego voiced by Dwayne Johnson. It won her the MTV Video Music Award for Best Direction.

Which test, born in a 1985 comic strip, asks whether two women in a film talk about something besides a man?

The Bechdel test first appeared in Alison Bechdel's strip Dykes to Watch Out For. She credits the idea to her friend Liz Wallace and to the writings of Virginia Woolf.

Which activist began using the phrase 'Me Too' in 2006, eleven years before the hashtag went viral?

Tarana Burke started Me Too as a youth programme addressing sexual violence in her community. Actress Alyssa Milano's 2017 tweet, sent in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein cases, turned it into a global hashtag.

Which Russian punk collective had members jailed after a 2012 protest in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour?

Pussy Riot staged the performance as part of protests against Vladimir Putin's re-election. Three members were convicted of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.

Which senator's silencing during a 2017 Senate debate inspired the rallying cry 'Nevertheless, she persisted'?

Elizabeth Warren was reading a 1986 letter by Coretta Scott King when the Senate voted to stop her speaking. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's account of the vote became a feminist slogan.

Which 1963 Betty Friedan bestseller described the unhappiness of suburban housewives as 'the problem that has no name'?

The Feminine Mystique began as a reunion survey of Friedan's Smith College classmates, many of whom said they were unhappy as housewives. It is widely credited with sparking second-wave feminism in the US.

Which suffragist was arrested for voting in the 1872 presidential election and refused to pay her $100 fine?

Susan B. Anthony told the judge, 'I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty', and she never did. He declined to jail her until she paid, a move that stopped her taking the case to the Supreme Court.

Which founding US document did Elizabeth Cady Stanton rework in 1848 to read 'all men and women are created equal'?

The Declaration of Independence gave Stanton both her wording and her form. Her version was signed by 68 women and 32 men at the Seneca Falls Convention, about a third of those who attended.

Which abolitionist's 1851 speech in Ohio gave bell hooks the title of her book Ain't I a Woman?

Sojourner Truth gave the speech at a women's convention in Akron, and it had no title at first. The famous refrain comes from a very different version that Frances Gage published 12 years later.

Which future First Lady urged her husband in a 1776 letter to 'remember the ladies' when making new laws?

Abigail Adams warned John that the ladies were 'determined to foment a Rebellion' if they were ignored. Women, she wrote, would not be bound by laws in which they had no voice.

Which 1972 US law against sex discrimination in federally funded education is best known for reshaping school sports?

Title IX made no explicit mention of sports in its original text. A failed attempt to exempt revenue-earning teams is what fixed its reputation as an athletics law.

Which 1973 Supreme Court abortion ruling was named for a pseudonymous Texas plaintiff and a Dallas district attorney?

Roe v. Wade set 'Jane Roe', whose real name was Norma McCorvey, against prosecutor Henry Wade. The Supreme Court overruled the decision in 2022.

Which future Supreme Court justice won five of the six sex-discrimination cases she argued there in the 1970s?

Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued them as head of the ACLU's Women's Rights Project. She sometimes chose male plaintiffs, to show that discrimination by sex harmed men as well as women.

Whose 1991 Senate testimony against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas made sexual harassment a national issue?

Anita Hill had worked for Thomas at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The Senate still confirmed him 52–48, at the time the narrowest margin for a justice in more than a century.

Which tennis champion founded the Women's Tennis Association in 1973, the year she beat Bobby Riggs in Houston?

Billie Jean King beat the 55-year-old Riggs 6–4, 6–3, 6–3 at the Astrodome in the 'Battle of the Sexes'. An estimated 50 million Americans watched on television.

Which legal scholar coined the term 'intersectionality' in 1989 to describe how race and sex discrimination overlap?

Kimberlé Crenshaw drew on a lawsuit against General Motors. The court saw no bias because the firm hired Black men for its factories and white women for its offices, so the Black women who sued lost.

Which author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman died days after giving birth to the creator of Frankenstein?

Mary Wollstonecraft died of septicaemia at 38, eleven days after her daughter Mary Shelley was born. Her 1792 book argued that women only appeared inferior to men because they lacked education.

Which 1949 Simone de Beauvoir book declares that 'one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman'?

The Second Sex took Beauvoir about 14 months to research and write. The Vatican answered by placing it on its List of Prohibited Books.

Which Virginia Woolf essay invents Judith, Shakespeare's equally gifted sister, to show what held women writers back?

A Room of One's Own grew from two lectures Woolf gave at Cambridge women's colleges in 1928. The title comes from her claim that a woman needs money and a room of her own to write fiction.

Which Australian writer became a household name with her 1970 bestseller The Female Eunuch?

Germaine Greer saw the first print run sell out in a day. Her book argued that the suburban, consumerist nuclear family represses women, and it has never been out of print.

Which poet and essayist wrote in Sister Outsider that the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house?

Audre Lorde described herself as a 'Black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, mother, warrior, poet'. Her essay attacked what she saw as unacknowledged racism within the women's movement.

Which term did Alice Walker coin for a movement she likened to feminism 'as purple is to lavender'?

Womanism grew from the word 'womanist', which Walker first used in her 1979 short story 'Coming Apart'. The movement has been championed mainly by Black feminists.

Which two-word phrase for the unseen barrier keeping women from top jobs did Marilyn Loden coin in a 1978 speech?

The glass ceiling later gained a cousin, the 'glass escalator'. That one describes men being carried quickly upward in professions where most of the workers are women.

Which philosopher argued in the 1990 book Gender Trouble that gender is a repeated performance, not a fixed identity?

Judith Butler's book has sold more than 100,000 copies in several languages. Its theory of 'gender performativity' holds that gender is a set of acts that can change over time.

Which writer turned her Columbia doctoral thesis into Sexual Politics, a 1970 landmark of feminist literary criticism?

Kate Millett landed on the cover of Time that August, in a portrait painted by Alice Neel. The magazine called her study a 'remarkable book'.

In which country did about 90% of women stop work and housework for a 'Women's Day Off' in October 1975?

Iceland's parliament passed an equal rights law the following year. Organisers chose 'day off' over 'strike' because women could be fired for striking but could not be denied a day off.

Historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich wrote in a 1976 article that which kind of women 'seldom make history'?

Well-behaved women, Ulrich meant, were being overlooked by historians; she was not urging anyone to rebel. The line comes from a scholarly article about Puritan funeral services.

Which anonymous group of women artists, formed in New York in 1985, campaigns in masks against sexism in museums?

The Guerrilla Girls hide behind gorilla masks, a pun that one story credits to an early member's spelling mistake. In interviews they borrow the names of dead women artists such as Frida Kahlo.

Which suffragette died after stepping in front of King George V's horse Anmer at the 1913 Epsom Derby?

Emily Davison had hidden overnight in a cupboard in the Palace of Westminster on census night two years earlier. A House of Commons official duly recorded her there on the form.

Which conservative activist led the STOP ERA campaign that helped defeat the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s?

Phyllis Schlafly said STOP stood for 'Stop Taking Our Privileges'. The amendment needed 38 states to ratify it and stalled at 35, with Indiana the last to sign on in 1977.

Which suffragist ran for US president in 1872 for the Equal Rights Party, with Frederick Douglass as running mate?

Victoria Woodhull named Douglass without his knowledge, and under the Constitution she was too young to take office. Two years earlier she had opened the first woman-run brokerage on Wall Street.

Which British newspaper coined the word 'suffragette' in 1906 for the militant followers of Emmeline Pankhurst?

The Daily Mail's label was embraced by the militants, who even made it the title of their own newspaper. They stressed the hard 'g': they meant to 'get' the vote.

Which British law of 1913 let hunger-striking suffragettes out of prison, then had them rearrested once they recovered?

The Cat and Mouse Act took its nickname from a cat's habit of letting its prey escape before pouncing again. It was passed after the force-feeding of prisoners caused a public outcry.

Which 19th-century suffragist kept her birth name after marrying Henry Blackwell, defying the custom of her day?

Lucy Stone saw a wife taking her husband's surname as the legal annihilation of a married woman's identity. American women who keep their own names are sometimes called 'Lucy Stoners' after her.

In which country did Huda Sha'arawi found a Feminist Union in 1923 and cause a stir by removing her veil in public?

Egypt's women followed her lead: those who came to greet Sha'arawi on her return from a suffrage congress in Rome were shocked, then applauded, and some removed their own veils.