PZ Meyers has a great post up about the problem of naming women in science and a challenge to name 10 female scientists. I can’t name 10, I admit, but no one has gotten around to naming Emilie du Chatelet yet. So there. Without her, Einstein would never have figured out relativity.

But in that same vein, can you name 10 female revolutionaries? I think it’s important to remember that it’s not just dudely dudes who fight to change systems. And women don’t just fight for girly things like voting and abortion (girly not being used in a pejorative there- I am super fucking girly and a feminist. So what?)

1) Emma Goldman – anarchist, feminist, poor, funded her speaking tours with midwifery. It’s important to remember that FDR’s New Deal only happened because the elites were scared of the tactics of people like Emma. No matter what your stand on violence as a tool, it was a massive dose of fear of the violent unwashed masses that made reform possible.

2)Countess Constance Markiewicz– Irish revolutionary and politician. She was a lieutenant in the Eastern Uprising and founded the IRA version of the scouts to train girls and boys in the use of firearms. She was the first woman elected to the British Parliament, but she never took her seat there.

3)Patience Wright– the original wikileaker. Wright moved from New Jersey to England to practice her wax sculpture art just in time for the revolutionary war to break out. Loyal to America, she smuggled information she learned in England back to the states by hiding it in her art. Julian Assange doesn’t have to be quite that creative. (note that the wikipedia entry is very poorly written- consider this a personal plea to wikipedia to fix that shit)

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