Women's Equality Day is observed on August 26 to honour the adoption of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gave women the right to vote. Women may not always be in a position to stand up for their values and feel empowered around the world.  However, some women have fought for equal rights with men throughout history, including the right to own property, the right to vote, the right to work for equal pay, the right to have children, and even the right to freely love.


Women’s Equality Day 2022: Inspirational Quotes By Famous Women Across The World


Here is a list of women who have fought for equal rights and have been advocates of equality throughout the years.



  • Tarana Burke: Tarana Burke is a New York-based American activist who founded the #Me_Too movement. Burke began using #Me_Too in 2006 to assist other women who had similar experiences of sexual abuse in standing up for themselves and to raise awareness of the pervasiveness of sexual abuse and assault in society. Over a decade later, in 2017, Alyssa Milano and other women began using the hashtag #MeToo to discuss the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse cases. The phrase and hashtag quickly became a widespread, and eventually international, movement. She works as a Senior Director for Girls for Gender Equality at the moment, plans workshops to help schools, workplaces, and places of worship improve their policies, and concentrates on assisting victims of sexual assault not placing the blame on themselves.



  • Ai-Jen Poo: American labour activist Ai-Jen Poo is the National Domestic Workers Alliance's president. She also serves as the director of Caring Across Generations, a coalition of 200 advocacy groups working to change the US long-term care system with a focus on the requirements of senior citizens, people with disabilities, and the caregivers of these individuals. She is a prominent figure in the women's movement and an award-winning organizer, writer, and writer, and is also a well-known authority on the state of the labour market and issues affecting women of colour.



  • Frida Kahlo: Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits and works inspired by the nature and artefacts of Mexico. The artist, who was openly bisexual, used her work to depict taboo subjects such as abortion, miscarriage, breastfeeding, and birth, among other things, facilitating discussion on these subjects. She rejected patriarchal society's conception of what it meant to be a woman and celebrated traits that were seen as "unfeminine" while sporting a unibrow and a moustache.



  • Menaka Guruswamy: Menaka  Guruswamy is a senior advocate of the Supreme Court of India. She is renowned for having had a significant impact on numerous Supreme Court precedent-setting cases, such as the Section 377 case. The Indian Supreme Court invalidated Section 377 of the IPC, which made sexual acts that were "against the order of nature" illegal, on September 6, 2018. The long-term campaign led by public-interest litigators Arundhati Katju and Menaka Guruswamy resulted in this historic decision. For LGBTQ+ rights in India, this was a significant advancement. Apart from this, she also impacted the case involving administrative reforms, the Augusta Westland bribery case, the Salwa Judum case, and the case involving the right to education. She is serving as Amicus Curie for the Supreme Court in the case involving the alleged extrajudicial killings of 1,528 people in Manipur.



  • Arundhati Katju: A well-known Supreme Court attorney Arundhati Katju has taken on numerous noteworthy cases, including the Jessica Lal murder case and the fight for transgender rights. She also participated in the 2G spectrum corruption case and fought for justice there. Fighting against Section 377 has been her most significant contribution. The battle against this outdated law was greatly aided by Katju, who feels that "The law was an expression of Victorian morality, but it had come to be understood as an expression of conservative Indian social values; it is a criminal law that crushes your aspirations." Katju received two fellowships in 2016: The Women's International Leadership Program Fellowship at International House in New York and the Human Rights Fellowship from Columbia University in New York. She also received the Herman N. Finkelstein Memorial Fellowship from Columbia Law School.



  • Opal Tometi: Opal Tometi is a co-founder of #BlackLivesMatter and a Nigerian-American writer, strategist, and community activist based in New York. The groundbreaking political initiative was started after Trayvon Martin was killed. It aims to explicitly combat anti-black racism and implicit bias as well as to defend and uphold the worth and beauty of all Black lives. She co-founded the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) and established it in 2006, which works with the African-American, Afro-Latino, African, and Caribbean immigrant communities to promote racial justice and immigrant rights. Leading institutions all over the nation have recognized the award-winning BAJI organization. The fight for equal rights for women is far from over. Gender-based discrimination in the workplace and in business dealings still affects women's economic power today due to the wage gap between men and women. We need to educate women and support their education to ensure that they are not oppressed by anyone.