We were taught what women won. We weren't always taught what women paid.We should talk more about the women who died fighting for women’s civil ri
We were taught what women won. We weren’t always taught what women paid.
We should talk more about the women who died fighting for women’s civil rights. Women did not simply wake up one morning with the vote, schools, political representation, shelters, freedom of movement, protection from violence, and a seat at the table.
Women organized. Women resisted. Women were threatened. Some were imprisoned. And some women were killed.
Their stories stretch far beyond Britain and the United States. They belong to Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and the rest of the world.
Here are ten women whose names deserve to be remembered.
1. Meena Keshwar Kamal — Afghanistan
Meena was only 20 when she founded the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, known as RAWA, in 1977.
She organized women, promoted literacy and education, helped women develop economic independence and publicly challenged political forces that denied Afghan women freedom.
She knew she was in danger.
She continued anyway.
Meena was murdered in 1987 at age 30. Her organization continued the work after her death.
Remember her: Sometimes women’s rights survive because a woman built something strong enough to live after she was gone.
2. Safia Ama Jan — Afghanistan
Safia Ama Jan believed girls should learn.
Under Taliban rule, that simple belief became dangerous.
She secretly operated a school for girls from her home. Later, she became Kandahar’s provincial director of women’s affairs, working for women’s education and opportunities.
On September 25, 2006, gunmen assassinated her outside her home.
UNESCO’s director-general said plainly that she had been murdered because of her defense of women’s rights and determination to educate Afghanistan’s girls.
Think about that.
Teaching girls became dangerous enough to get a woman killed.
3. Sitara Achakzai — Afghanistan
Sitara Achakzai encouraged women to work, participate in public life and demand equal rights.
She served on Kandahar’s provincial council and organized women publicly, including an International Women’s Day gathering.
On April 12, 2009, gunmen murdered her outside her home. The Taliban claimed responsibility. Human Rights Watch later described the chilling effect her assassination had on other Afghan women who wanted to participate in public life.
One woman was killed.
Many other women received the warning.
That is one reason violence against prominent women can be so politically effective: the bullet reaches further than one body.
4. Yanar Mohammed — Iraq
This one is painfully recent.
Yanar Mohammed spent decades fighting violence against women in Iraq.
She co-founded the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq and helped establish shelters for women escaping abuse, forced marriage, trafficking and so-called honor violence.
On March 2, 2026, gunmen shot her outside her home in Baghdad. She died from her injuries.
Amnesty International called for accountability for her killing. Months later, women’s-rights advocates reported that her assassination had frightened other Iraqi women into reducing their public activism or working anonymously.
She protected women who needed somewhere to run.
Then someone came to her own door with a gun.
Do not forget her name.
AFRICA
5. Salwa Bugaighis — Libya
Salwa Bugaighis was a lawyer, democracy advocate and leader in Libya’s women’s movement.
She fought for women’s political participation and resisted efforts to push women out of public decision-making.
On June 25, 2014, she went out and exercised one of the rights she had fought for:
She voted.
Later that day, armed men entered her home and murdered her.
UN Women mourned her specifically as a Libyan leader and women’s-rights advocate. The organization later noted that her murder had a chilling effect on other Libyan women human-rights defenders.
There is something especially haunting about that sequence.
She cast her vote. Then she was killed.
6. Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti — Nigeria
Long before many people knew the name Fela Kuti, his mother was already making history.
Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti organized Nigerian women against unfair taxation and colonial political control. The Abeokuta Women’s Union mobilized thousands of women, challenged powerful traditional and colonial authorities and demanded greater political representation.
She became one of Nigeria’s great feminist and anti-colonial figures.
In 1977, Nigerian soldiers stormed her son’s compound. Funmilayo, then in her seventies, was thrown from an upper-floor window. She never recovered from her injuries and died in 1978.
Her death was not simply an assassination ordered because of her women’s-rights organizing, and we should not rewrite the history to say that it was.
But neither should we erase who the woman thrown from that window was.
She had spent decades teaching Nigerian women that government belonged to them, too.
THE CARIBBEAN
7. Patria Mirabal — Dominican Republic
8. Minerva Mirabal — Dominican Republic
9. María Teresa Mirabal — Dominican Republic
They were sisters.
They were mothers, organizers and political resisters.
And on November 25, 1960, the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo had Patria, Minerva and María Teresa Mirabal murdered.
The sisters had helped lead an underground resistance movement against his regime.
Their deaths became so important to women’s movements that November 25 was eventually designated by the United Nations as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. UN and UNESCO histories describe the sisters as enduring symbols of resistance to political and gender violence.
That means something extraordinary:
Every year when the world observes November 25 and talks about ending violence against women, it is standing on a date marked by the murder of three Caribbean women.
Say their names separately.
Patria.
Minerva.
María Teresa.
They were not simply “the Mirabal sisters.”
They were women.
10. Shaimaa al-Sabbagh — Egypt
Shaimaa al-Sabbagh was an Egyptian poet, activist and young mother involved in movements demanding political freedom and human rights.
On January 24, 2015, she joined a peaceful march carrying flowers to commemorate people killed during Egypt’s 2011 uprising.
She never made it to the memorial.
Egyptian security forces dispersed the demonstration. Shaimaa was shot and died from her wounds. Human Rights Watch concluded that video and other evidence strongly indicated that security forces had shot her.
Shaimaa’s activism was broader than women’s rights alone, so I would not inaccurately call her death a feminist assassination.
But women cannot have women’s rights without the right to speak, assemble, protest, and participate in public life. Without the presence of any male, for any reason.
She died exercising those freedoms.
Women’s Rights Have Graves Behind Them
There is a way women’s history sometimes gets told that makes progress sound almost administrative.
A law changed.
A policy changed.
Women were “granted” something.
Women “gained” something.
And the blood disappears from the paragraph.
But women know better.
There were women who taught girls when teaching girls could get them killed.
Women who opened shelters when violent men and powerful institutions wanted those doors closed.
Women who voted when women’s political participation made them targets.
Women who organized other women.
Women who refused dictators.
Women who stood in streets.
Women who said:
No.
And sometimes somebody decided that a woman saying no was dangerous enough that she had to die.
That history belongs beside every other history of people who died fighting for human freedom.
Women’s rights were not delivered to women as a gift. Women argued for them, organized for them, suffered for them, and sometimes died while reaching for them.
And perhaps one of the greatest acts of gratitude we can offer them is very simple:
Learn their names.
Tell the girls their names.
Do not let the world turn their sacrifice into a footnote.
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