∘ The Girls Guide 🌸 | Lifestyle Advice ∘

∘ Inspirational Women - Sapphire ∘

So this is a bit of a different topic to look at in this book. I've decided to show you a famous female from each Continent in our world. These females may not be well know however, they have influenced some of our nations today.

Let's start!

#1 Sally Ride - North America

Many people remember the good old story of how the US sent the first astronauts to the Moon in 1969. Well this woman was the first ever female astronaut to go to the moon and back. In 1983, Sally Ride joined the males on the Challenger space shuttle. She said that she never thought of herself as different from men, she saw herself as one person, an astronaut.

Ride has a Bachelor's degree in the Arts for English and a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics. She went on to get her Masters and PHD in Physics.

Sally was chosen out of 8000 men and women to participate in a space program. Only 35 made, and 6 of these people were women! From this program, she was chosen to go on a Moon expedition that NASA were setting up.

Sally Ride died in 2012 of pancreatic cancer.

For more information about Sally Ride and her journey, follow this link:

#2 Argelia Laya - South America

Women were always known for being the lesser gender. Throughout history, we have females titled a 'suffragette' that fought for female rights and equality. One of these beautiful people was Argelia Laya. On the 10 July 1926 till the 27 November 1997, Argelia was fighting for the rights of women. Some of the topics that she spoke about were abortion, pregnancy rights and education. Being an educator herself, these factors were very important in her life.

She dedicated her life to show her fellow citizens not to discriminate women who were pregnant and studying in schools or universities. Laya helped found the Movement of Socialism. An organisation that 'pressed for anti-discrimination regulations to gain socio-economic parity for minorities, workers and women'.

Argelia Laya died on the 27th of November 1997, she was 71 years old. Throughout her home country of Venezuela, equality programs were formed in honour of her.

#3 Julia Gillard - Australia

Every Australian female knows about this woman. She was the 27th Australian Prime Minister and the former leader of the Labor party. Being the first female to hold both of these titles. If you cannot tell, Gillard is an Australian politician. In 2001, Julia Gillard was elevated from a backbencher to a front, given the shadow portfolio of immigration and population. She has also served time as the shadow minister for reconciliation and indigenous affairs in 2003. Later that year, she took on the role of the shadow heath minister.

The Australian public had no satisfaction with the current Prime Minister John Howard, the leader of the Australian Liberal Party. Australia held an election and Julia Gillard became the deputy Prime Minister under the Labor Party leader, Kevin Rudd.

Mr. Rudd was changing Australia in a way that the people did not like, so in 2010, Gillard decided to oppose a leadership challenge against Rudd. And she succeeded Kevin Rudd to be Australia's 27th Prime Minister. And the first female one in Australian history. She was Prime Minister until 2013 where she stepped down for Mr. Rudd to come back in and take her place. And she did not contest for her seat in the next Australian Election.

In 2017, Ms. Gillard became chairperson for Beyond Blue, a company that deals with mental health issues like depression.

To find out more, you can read her memoir, My Story or go to this link:

#4 Gemma Chan - Asia

For the movie fans out there, Gemma Chan is well known for her role in Crazy Rich Asians (CRA). Though she is not officially from Asia, she is of Asian descent. Gemma grew up in Hong Kong and became an actress.

However, before she got her role in CRA Ms. Chan worked with Save the Children in Lebanon. Her work helped increase the knowledge of Siberian refugees that are often pushed away from their own families. During an interview, she made this statement, "There are small things that we can do, whilst we keep pushing our Government to push from an international level for a solution to this, we can still help in small ways," she was pushing for Governments to change their ways. Wich is a really powerful message to me.

#6 Caster Semenya - Africa

When writing about female influencers, I have to have at least one athlete. Ms. Caster Semanya is an Olympic gold medallist in sprinting. However, her life was not all smooth sailing. Ms. Semenya was told that she looked to masculine to compete in a female race. According to an interview that she partook in, she has high levels of testosterone and is in fact female. However, the haters are going to hate and she just shook it off!

After participating in the 2016 Olympic Games, there was a new rule that was created last year saying that if a woman had this many ML of testosterone in their body, they were not allowed to play. And if they were to continue to participate, they had to be on medication to lower their levels. Many people believe that this rule was made to benefit other females. However, a select group of supporters believe that this was made to target Caster. Ms. Semenya said that she felt physically and mentally drained and abused with this being created.

Unfortunately, this rule also means that we will not be seeing Caster Semenya participate in the 2020 Olympics or any official federation competitions.

#7 Rosa Luxemburg - Europe

Rosa Luxemburg was born in what is now known as Poland. Ms. Luxemburg played a key role in the founding of the Polish Social Democratic Party and the Spartacus League. She believed in democracy and fought for Germany to have it.

Rosa's party (Polish Social Democratic Party) backed the German Government in WW1, however Ms. Luxemburg went straight to the opposition. With other level-headed men, she formed the Spartacus League that rebelled against the Nazis.

Rosa Luxemburg passed on the 15th of January 1919 in Berlin Germany. She was actually quite the hero in European history because her last name became the country Luxemburg (it was either her or one of her families descendants).

Thank you all so much for reading! I hope you learned something new about a woman in the history of your continent. I have had lots of fun writing these up and I do really hope you go on and do some further research on some of these women.

If you do have any corrections on these brief profiles, please contact me to let me know.

~ Sapphire

@Sapphire_TGA