English Access Microscholarship Program
Influential American Women
Suggested Activities for the English Classroom
for International Women’s Day (March 8)
This activity aims to acquaint students with American women who have made a
contribution to society in a variety of fields.
Brief bios are provided for 10 different women (Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Betty
Friedan, Helen Keller, Oprah Winfrey, Faye Abdella, Madeleine Albright, Barbara
Walters and Gloria Steinem). These women serve as role models for today’s youth.
Divide students into small groups or pairs. Each group or pair is assigned (or selects)
one of the ten women, and reads the bio.
Students discuss the significance of the individual’s influence on society, the
community, civil rights, women’s rights, education, and so on. Students discuss how
they identify with the woman, and consider ways they might emulate her in their
community.
Talking Points for Follow-Up Discussion or Written Assignment

Why is it important to …?

What is needed in order to make a contribution?

How can you get other people involved…?

I think that …

It is important that…

When women … it makes/ causes…

I respect this woman because…
Suggested Follow-up

Prepare posters and display them on school bulletin boards.

Imagine you could meet the woman. Prepare 10 questions you would ask
her.

Write her a letter telling her what impressed you about her achievements
Vocabulary
battered
women
violent/ violence
awareness
deaf, blind,
mute
gender
equality
discriminate,
discrimination
contribute
mental,
physical
activist
focus
stereotype
suffering
community
health, health
care
domestic
the poor
under-privileged
minority,
majority
slave, slavery
abuse, abuser
influence,
influential
segregation
empower
policy
represent
set a standard
a women's
shelter
needy/ needs
civil rights
to overcome
disability,
handicap
Rosa Parks (1913-2007)
"I would like to be known as a person who is concerned about freedom and equality
and justice and prosperity for all people," said Rosa Parks on the occasion of her
77th birthday. And so she is.
Parks, known as "the mother of the civil rights movement," walked into history on
December 1, 1955 when she refused to give up her seat for a white man on a
Montgomery, Alabama bus. Parks was arrested for her defiance, and she agreed to
challenge the segregation order in court. After this tactic failed, Parks and others
organized the Montgomery bus boycott: "For a little more than a year, we stayed off
those busses. We did not return to using public transportation until the Supreme
Court said there shouldn't be racial segregation."
Parks and others lost their jobs, and she was harassed and threatened. The boycott
held, and an important corner was turned in the movement. Parks and her family
eventually moved to Detroit, where she worked for many years for Congressman
John Conyers. She founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for SelfDevelopment to offer guidance to young African-Americans in preparation for
leadership and careers.
Adapted from: http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/par0bio-1
Harriet Tubman (1820 - 1913)
Born a slave on the eastern shore of Maryland, she fled north to freedom. There she
joined the secret network of free Blacks and white sympathizers who helped
runaways - the "underground railroad." She became a 'conductor" who risked her
life to lead her people to freedom. Tubman returned time after time to her native
Maryland, bringing out her relatives and as many as 300 other slaves.
The shadowy figure of the conductor "Moses" became so feared that a huge reward
was put on "his" head, for slave owners did not at first believe a woman capable of
such daring. Cool, resourceful, skilled in the use of disguise and diversions, she is said
to have carried a pistol, telling the faint-hearted they must go on or die. Apparently
only illness prevented Harriet Tubman from joining John Brown in the raid on
Harper's Ferry.
When the Civil War began, she worked among the slaves who fled their masters and
flocked to Union lines. She organized many of them into spy and scout networks that
operated behind Confederate lines from bases on islands off the coast of the
Carolinas. After the war she devoted herself to caring for orphaned and invalid
Blacks, and worked to promote the establishment of freedmen's schools in the
South.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1535.html
Betty Friedan (1921-2006)
Betty Friedan was an American writer, activist, and feminist.
Betty was the founder of and a leader in the Women's Movement in the United
States. Her book The Feminine Mystique ( 1963) is often said to have started the
"second wave" of American feminism ( ‫ )התנועה לשוויון הנשים‬in the twentieth century.
In her book she pointed out that woman were kept from participating in society as
equals as professionals such as: doctors, lawyers, professors, businesswoman,
scientists. She stressed that women have the potential to be more than just
housewives and mothers and that American society was preventing them from
fulfilling themselves by not accepting them into colleges and professions. In 1966,
Friedan founded the National Organization for Women, which aimed to bring
women "into the mainstream of American society in fully equal partnership with
men".
In 1970 Friedan organized the nation-wide Women's Strike for Equality which
enlarged the feminist movement. 1971, Friedan joined other leading feminists to
establish the National Women's Political Caucus (a political lobby –‫)קבוצת לחץ פוליטי‬.
Friedan was also a strong supporter of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the
United States Constitution. Betty supported abortion and founded the National
Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws .
Women in America today owe her much for beginning the change towards more
gender equality.
Adapted from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Friedan
Helen Adams Keller (1880 –1968)
Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, political
activist, and lecturer. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a bachelor of
arts degree.
Helen Keller was born with the ability to see and hear. At 19 months old, was left
both deaf and blind following a serious illness. The story of how Keller's
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 widely known through the dramatic depictions of the play and film The
Miracle Worker.
Determined to communicate with others, Keller learned to speak, and spent much of
her life giving speeches and lectures. She learned to "hear" people's speech by
reading their lips with her hands. She became proficient at using braille and
reading sign language with her hands as well. She is remembered as an advocate for
people with disabilities, amid numerous other causes.
A prolific author, Keller was well-travelled and outspoken in her convictions. A
member of the Socialist Party of America and the Industrial Workers of the World,
she campaigned for women's suffrage, labor rights, socialism, and other radical
left causes. She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1971.
Adapted from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_keller
Oprah Winfrey (1954- )
At the heart of everything Oprah Winfrey does, there is a consistent message - that
individuals should take personal responsibility for their lives, and to improve the
world.
Winfrey is the first African-American woman to own her own production company; a
talented actress nominated for an Academy Award in her first movie; television's
highest-paid entertainer; producer and actress in her own television specials; and
the successful host of a syndicated television talk show that reaches 15 million
people a day. She does all that she can to eradicate child abuse. As a victim herself,
Winfrey knows the damage abuse does to young lives, and she was a major force in
the drafting, lobbying and passage of the National Child Protection Act, signed into
law by President Clinton in 1994. The Act establishes a national registry of child
abusers to help employers and those working with children to screen out dangerous
people. Winfrey is also a committed philanthropist, providing significant assistance
to schools (Morehouse College, Tennessee State University, Chicago Academy of
Arts) as well as to the Chicago Public Schools. She also funds battered women's
shelters and campaigns to catch child abusers.
Adapted from: http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/win0bio-1
Faye Glenn Abdellah (1919 - )
Faye Glenn Abdellah helped transform nursing theory, nursing care and nursing
education.
Dr. Abdellah was the first nurse and the first woman to serve as Deputy Surgeon
General and to receive the rank of a two-star rear admiral. She wrote more than
150 publications, which changed the focus from a disease-centered approach it to a
to a patient-centered approach including care of families and the elderly. Her
"Patient Assessment of Care Evaluation method" is now the standard for the nation.
Her development of the first tested coronary care unit has saved thousands of lives.
As, Dr. Abdellah developed educational materials in many key areas of public health,
including AIDS, the mentally handicapped, violence, hospice care, smoking cessation,
alcoholism, and drug addiction. Dr. Abdellah's work pioneered research in aging.
Adapted from: http://www.answers.com/topic/faye-glenn-abdellah
Madeleine Korbel Albright (1937 - )
Madeleine Korbel Albright became the first female Secretary of State and the
highest ranking woman in the United States government as well as the U.S.
representative to the United Nations. She created policies and institutions to help
guide the world into a new century of peace and prosperity. Among her
achievements are ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention and progress
toward stability in Eastern and Central Europe.
As a refugee whose family fled Czechoslovakia, first from the Nazis and later from
the Communists, Albright represents the highest ideals and aspirations of
immigrants who come to America seeking to make major contributions to our
society. As a leader in international relations, she has helped change the course of
history and, in so doing, has also set a new standard for American women and for
women around the world.
Adapted from: http://www.answers.com/topic/madeleine-albright
Marian Wright Edelman (1939 - )
Marian Wright Edelman, civil rights activist and founder of the Children's Defense
Fund, has dedicated her life to those who cannot always lift themselves up.
Edelman obtained a law degree at Yale and worked in Mississippi, becoming the first
African-American woman to be admitted to that state's bar. As a leader with the
NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund, Edelman helped coordinate the Poor
People's Campaign. She founded the Children's Defense Fund in the 1970s, to apply
pressure on the federal government to help poor children, and to coordinate
nationwide activities to help children. Considered the nation's most powerful
children's lobby, CDF secured the 1990 Act for Better Child Care, bringing more than
$3 billion into daycare facilities and other programs. Many consider this law the first
federal government acknowledgment that children matter. With 14.3 million
American children living in poverty, Edelman continues her advocacy, focusing on
expanding Head Start, health care and support for homeless children..
Adapted from:
http://www.change.org/changemakers/view/marian_wright_edelman
Barbara Walters (1929 – )
Barbara Gill Walters is an American broadcast journalist, author, and television
personality. She has hosted morning television shows Today and The View, the
television news magazine 20/20, co-anchored the ABC Evening News, and is a
contributor to ABC News. Barbara Walters was the first woman to co-anchor a
network's nightly news.
Walters first became known as a television personality when she was a writer and
segment producer of "womenʻs interest stories" on the morning NBC News
program The Today Show, where she began work with host Hugh Downs in 1962,
once even modeling a swimsuit when an expected model did not show up. Because
of her excellent interviewing ability and her popularity with the viewers, and when
other women left the program, she was eventually allowed more air time.
From 1979 to 2004, Walters worked as co-host and producer for the ABC
newsmagazine 20/20. From 1976 to 2010, she contributed as an anchor, reporter,
and correspondent for ABC News, along with producing and hosting her own special
interview programs several times yearly. Since 1997, she has created, and appears as
co-host on The View.
Adapted from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Walters
Gloria Steinem (1934- )
Gloria Marie Steinem (born March 25, 1934) is an American feminist, journalist, and
social and political activist who became nationally recognized as a leader of, and
media spokeswoman for, the women's liberation movement in the late 1960s and
1970s. A prominent writer and key counterculture era political figure, Steinem has
founded many organizations and projects and has been the recipient of many
awards and honors. She was a columnist for New York magazine and cofounded Ms. magazine. In 1969, she published an article, "After Black Power,
Women's Liberation", which, along with her early support of abortion rights,
catapulted her to national fame as a feminist leader.
In 2005, Steinem worked alongside Jane Fonda and Robin Morgan to co-found
the Women's Media Center, an organization that works to amplify the voices of
women in the media through advocacy, media and leadership training, and the
creation of original content. Steinem currently serves on the board of the
organization. She continues to involve herself in politics and media affairs as a
commentator, writer, lecturer, and organizer, campaigning for candidates and
reforms and publishing books and articles.
Adapted from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Steinem