Women activists who pushed boundaries and helped equate gender

6. Wangari Maathai

Wangari Maathai, born in 1940 and lived until 2011, founded the Green Belt Movement and won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

Maathai was born in Nyeri, Kenya, and got a degree in Biological Sciences from Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison, Kansas in 1964, a Master of Science degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1966 and acquired doctoral studies in Germany and the University of Nairobi, topping it with  a Ph.D. in 1971 from the University of Nairobi. At Nairobi, she was a professor of veterinary anatomy.

She was the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree. Professor Maathai also headed the Department of Veterinary Anatomy and was an associate professor in 1976 and 1977. She was the first woman to have accomplished such academic feats in the region.

She wrote The Green Belt Movement,  Unbowed: A Memoir, The Challenge for Africa and Replenishing the Earth. Maathai and the Green Belt Movement also were featured in the documentary Taking Root: the Vision of Wangari Maathai in 2008, according to greenbeltmovement.org.

Wangari Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize for aiding in the effort to create a “sustainable development, democracy and peace," and because,  according to the prize committee, she, “stands at the front of the fight to promote ecologically viable social, economic and cultural development in Kenya and in Africa. She has taken a holistic approach to sustainable development that embraces democracy, human rights and women’s rights in particular. She thinks globally and acts locally."