Regina Maria Silva Gomes, with support from Coca-Cola’s Coletivo program, helped clear the once trash-strewn streets of her Brazilian favela and organized local women artisans to transform plastic bottles and other debris into charming bird feeders, toys, and decorative items that are sold for cash.

Instituto Coca-Cola® Brasil

 

On a visit to the White House, teen girls in ANNpower—a national mentoring program that is a partnership between ANN INC. and Vital Voices—met with Hillary Clinton and other notables, including ANN INC. CEO Kay Krill (center, with sunglasses).

ANN INC./photo by Micky Wiswedel

 

After surviving U.S. Airways’ “Miracle on the Hudson” landing—thanks to Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger (right)—Pam Seagle, a Bank of America senior marketing executive, rethought her priorities. “I wanted to live with purpose,” she recalls. Her goal: to help other women.

Chuck Burton/AP Images

 

In 1993, her first year as first lady, Hillary Clinton broke precedent by setting up her own office in the West Wing of the White House, where she helped shape administration policy on health care and other domestic issues. On May 2, when this photo was taken, Hillary and Melanne traveled to Baltimore to participate in an event with working women.

White House Photo Office

 

A survivor of gang rape, Sunitha Krishnan (right) of Hyderabad now helps India’s victims of sexual slavery through the school she founded, Prajwala. Diane von Furstenberg (left) is a passionate supporter of her efforts.

Courtesy of Sharon Farmer/sfphotoworks.com

 

Dr. Ebby Elahi, an oculofacial surgeon and director of global health at the Virtue Foundation, examines a patient on a medical expedition. His extensive work with the youngest-known victim of acid violence spurred important legal reforms in Cambodia.

Virtue Foundation

 

Ann Claire Williams, the first woman of color to be appointed to the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, addresses a conference hosted by Cornell Law School’s Avon Global Center for Women and Justice, which assists women judges from more than forty countries in preventing violence against women.

Virtue Foundation

 

In a rare public appearance together, all four women ever to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court gather to honor Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (second from left), the first woman to serve on the Court. From right, in photo, are Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Kim, seated at the far left, is the cofounder of Seneca Women, which hosted the tribute.

Kevin Wolf/Invision for Seneca Women/AP Images

 

Two of the most powerful women in the world, Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, and Hillary Clinton, former secretary of state, high-five each other while being interviewed onstage at the 2014 Women in the World Summit in New York City.

Women in the World/Tina Brown Live Media

 

The upper ranks of America’s regulatory agencies and boards are increasingly populated with women. Among them is Sharon Bowen (at podium), the first African-American woman on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, who also acts as a mentor to many women lawyers, including Kim.

U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission

 

When Zainab Salbi (second from left) read about the so-called rape camps in Bosnia in 1993, she took the money she’d been saving for her honeymoon and used it to start what became Women for Women International, which works with women in war-torn countries.

Courtesy of Zainab Salbi

 

Microcredit pioneer Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank, Melanne, and Kim celebrate the appointment of Andrea Jung (far left) as president and CEO of Grameen America, which provides microloans to women in the United States.

Courtesy of Clayton Collins

 

Give a woman a loan, and the next thing you know she’s lifted her whole family, and her village, out of poverty. And odds are she’ll swiftly pay back the borrowed sum. That’s what Muhammad Yunus learned when he launched Grameen Bank’s now much-copied program of microloans. Melanne saw that multiplier effect firsthand when she visited Grameen clients in Bangladesh in 2012.

Nurjahan Chaklader, Grameen Bank, Bangladesh

 

The nonprofits Women’s Business Enterprise National Council and WEConnect International created the Women Owned logo to alert consumers to products made by women-owned companies.

WBENC

 

“Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights”: First Lady Hillary Clinton’s ringing words at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 helped inspire an international wave of activism and legislation.

National Archives and Records Administration

 

Described as “equal parts Rambo and Mother Teresa,” Dr. Hawa Abdi has protected more than 100,000 people from Somalia’s rampant violence, chaos, and privation, sheltering them at her farm near Mogadishu.

Vital Voices/G. Court

 

More than 7,000 communities in eight African countries have publicly renounced female genital cutting and child marriage. Some credit goes to Tostan—a nonprofit that arms communities with health and hygiene information and encourages them to make their own decisions—and its founder, Molly Melching, seen here with Tostan clients and Hillary Clinton in 1997.

White House Photo Office

 

After becoming the first woman in her Kenyan village to attend college in the United States and earn a doctorate, Kakenya Ntaiya returned and started the Kakenya Center for Excellence, the first primary boarding school for local girls.

Kakenya Center for Excellence

 

In her films and TV shows, America Ferrera portrays realistic Latina characters that young women can identify with. For crusading journalist Nicholas Kristof’s documentary series Half the Sky, she traveled to India to visit a shelter that provides schooling for children of sex workers.

Courtesy of Jamie Gordon and Mikaela Beardsley/photo by David Smoler

 

The star of Thelma and Louise and A League of Their Own, Geena Davis is also the founder of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, dedicated to original research into how women are portrayed on TV and in film.

Toby Canham/Getty Images

 

One of the world’s bravest and best-known schoolgirls, Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai is a living symbol of the importance of universal education.

Nigel Waldron/Getty Images

 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men and women are created equal.” Deliberately echoing the language of the Declaration of Independence, the groundbreaking Declaration of Sentiments issued by the Seneca Falls Convention in July 1848—the first national convention for women’s rights—was signed by 68 women, including organizer Elizabeth Cady Stanton (depicted here in a later engraving), and 32 men, among them abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

Eminent Women of the Age, 1868

 

Malak Jân, a revered sage and influential thinker, at home in her rural village of Jeyhounabad in western Iran. Blind from the age of twenty, she revolutionized the role and value of women and girls in her community. At great personal risk, she led reforms that included the equal feeding of girls and boys, access to education for girls, and equal inheritance and property rights.

© 2015 The Nour Foundation