November 13 - 150th of Women Who Worked for Women's Rights

nPosted on November 13, 2019

Key Points

nToday is the 150th birthday of two women who were born in 1869:

nHelene Stöcker, born in Wuppertal, Germany – an author, feminist, activist, and pacifist…

nand Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams, born in Saint Petersburg, Russia – a journalist, feminist, activist, and politician…

nYou might note that, aside from these two women sharing the same birthday and birth year, they were also both feminists, activists, and writers. Another thing they had in common: they both died in the United States.

nHelene Stöcker worked hard on everything from legalizing abortion to rights for lesbians, but when World War I broke out, she turned her attention to promoting peace. She helped start an organization by the name Paco, which is “peace” in the artificial language Esperanto. When Nazis came to power in Germany, Stöcker fled to Switzerland and then to England; she was in Sweden when the Nazis invaded Norway, so she took the Trans-Siberian Railway to Japan (! of all nations), and she finally ended up in the U.S. She lived in New York City until her death at age 73.

Stöcker was honored on this date in 2017, pictured in green
against a background of modern feminists and LGBTQ activists.
She was a woman ahead of her time – and a woman who pushed
society in the right direction!

nAriadna Tyrkova-Williams worked on women’s rights, including the right to vote. Her husband, Harold Williams, was from New Zealand, which was a British colony, so when she decided to leave Russia, a year after the Bolshevik Revolution, she went to Britain. After her husband’s death, Tyrkova-Williams immigrated to the U.S. and lived in Washington, D.C., until her death at age 92.