In 2011, the world celebrated the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day. In honor of this occasion, we have developed a list of prominent women from various fields and backgrounds to serve as the focal point of this year’s Kids in Print Contest.
All links were active as of the date of this posting.
Area women:
Longmeadow resident Lucia Giuggio Carvalho, founder of Rays of Hope: A Walk Toward the Cure of Breast Cancer that since 1994 has raised more than $10 million for area programs that research, treat and educate about breast cancer.
Anti-bully advocate and Springfield resident Sirdeaner Walker
Women’s Basketball Hall of Famer Rebecca Lobo
Mary Reardon Johnson, who heads the Springfield -based YWCA of Western Massachusetts that aids victims of domestic violence and parenting teens
Astronaut Cady Coleman of ShelburneFalls
Women in politics:
Irish President and peacemaker Mary McAleese
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, women's rights activist Leymah Gbowee from Liberia and democracy activist Tawakkul Karman of Yemen, all winners of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize
Women in the arts
Harry Potter author JK Rowling
Maya Angelou, author
Amy Tan, author
Maya Lin, architect of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Joyce Yang, 25-year-old heralded as the most gifted young pianist of her generation.
Womenempowered
Businesswomen and media mogul Oprah Winfrey
First Lady Michelle Obama
Women’s rights advocate Gloria Steinem
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor
Civil rights advocate Ruby Bridges (Hall)– As a 6-year-old girl, Ruby integrated New Orleans’ Public Schools in 1960 with an escort of four U.S. marshals. Her historic first day was depicted in Norman Rockwell’s “The Problem We All Live With,”
For art contest participants, here are additional notes on the composition of Rockwell’s painting from Maureen Hart Hennessey, former curator of The Norman Rockwell Museum and editor of Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People:
“The Problem We All Live Withstrikes directly at the heart and exemplifies Rockwell’s hallmark approach: strong horizontals, close foreground, and, especially, telling details which draw the viewer into concluding a narrative, one orchestrated to move him. The perceptive viewer notes not only the confident posture and countenance of the young girl- her escorts are cropped and anonymous agents of the law -but the writ in the pocket of the advancing guard, the contrast of schoolbooks with the graffiti on the wall, the smashed tomato (the least of projectiles launched in those times).”