Standing Up For Yourself and What You Believe In

FemWealth Issue #13

Jun 06, 2021

Dear FemWealth Friends,

Naomi Osaka's decision to withdraw from the French Open tournament to prioritize her mental health and wellbeing resonated a lot with me and inspired today's edition of FemWealth.

It reminded me of many powerful women who stood for what they considered essential in their lives and the public space. Even though they are different in many ways, they all have in common the courage and resilience to make their voices heard and ignite meaningful conversations.

Get to know their stories:

Naomi Osaka, Tennis Player

I am not well enough to do this right now.
Some of us were groomed not to go along to get along. Power is knowing their table doesn’t fit your chair.

Born to Japanese and Haitian parents, Osaka grew up in the US. At 23, she is a four-time Grand Slam tournament winner and world No. 2 in the WTA ranking. She represents Japan and is the highest-earning female athlete.

Osaka made headlines for withdrawing from the French Open tournament after being fined and threatened with a ban for refusing to speak to the press. Osaka stated she had ‘suffered long bouts of depression since winning her first grand slam in 2018 and wanted to prioritize her mental health. Her decision started a debate over the relationship between athletes, the media, and issues of mental health.

🎥 24 Hours With Naomi Osaka | Vogue

📖 Tennis Star Naomi Osaka Stood Up For Herself, Bravely Shared Her Mental Health Issues And Walked Away From The French Open

📖 Naomi Osaka – the talented introvert who makes a point of getting people talking

Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Astrophysicist

If you don't get a Nobel prize, you can actually do rather better. Whereas if you get a Nobel prize, people feel that they can't match it and you get nothing thereafter. So I've been in the wonderful position of having a party most years, or every few years, as I get yet another award. So it's been pretty good.

In 1967, Bell Burnell, then a Ph.D. student at the University of Cambridge, discovered pulsars - small, dense stars, consisting primarily of neutrons, that rotate at a precise rate, emitting radiation as they spin. The discovery opened up a new branch of astrophysics and provided the first evidence for validating Einstein's Theory of Gravity. It even resulted in winning the Nobel Prize by Antony Hewish, Bell Burnell's Ph.D. supervisor.

Passed over for the Nobel Prize, Bell Burnell went on to build a high-profile academic career. In 2014 she was appointed the first female president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science.

She received the 2019 Breakthrough Prizes in Fundamental Physics for the discovery of pulsars and a lifetime of scientific leadership. She donated the $3-million prize money to create Ph.D. studentships for people from under-represented groups in science.

📖 Dame Jocelyn Bell-Burnell: Portrait honour for 'trailblazing' NI scientist

🎥 She Discovered the Pulsar, But the Nobel Went to Her Supervisor

🎥 Give Me Inspiration! The Paradigm Shift with Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell

Françoise Gilot, Painter

The most important thing in life is to be true to yourself.
Art doesn’t come from what is around you, but from what is inside of you.

A French artist of the post-World War II School of Paris, Françoise Gilot's career spans over seven decades. Her love for art originated early in her childhood. At age five, she decided that she would become a painter. Mentored by the surrealist Endre Rozsda, she had her first major exhibition in Paris in 1943.

That same year, she met the famed painter Pablo Picasso, with whom she began a decade-long relationship. Gilot lived in his shadow as his muse, student, assistant, and mother to their two children. She was the only woman to walk away from Picasso.

After their separation, Gilot pursued her artistic work and traveled the world. Her artworks are included in the permanent collections of the Museums of Modern Art, New York; the Women's Museum, Washington, DC; the Musée Picasso, Antibes; the Musée Tel Aviv, Israel; and the Bibliothèque National and Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris. Almost a centenarian (she will turn 100 in November), she lives in New York.

🎥 Françoise Gilot – 'You Put Your Energy Into the Painting' | TateShots

📖 Françoise Gilot, 97, Does Not Regret Her Pablo Picasso Memoir

📖 Françoise Gilot: How Picasso's former muse became a force of her own in the art world

📚 About Women: Conversations Between a Writer and a Painter, by Lisa Alther and Francoise Gilot (Author)

Dame Mary Beard, Classicist and Broadcaster

If women aren’t percived to be within the structures of power, isnt’t it power that we need to redifine?
When it comes to silencing women, Western culture has had thousands of years of practice.

A Professor at the University of Cambridge, Mary Beard is the world’s most famous classicist and a media-savvy cultural critic and feminist. In her work, she debunks the myths of the Ancient World, draws parallels between contemporary society and the Ancient World, revisits the gender agenda, and shows how history has treated powerful women.

Author of several books, including SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome and Women & Power: A Manifesto, by Mary Beard, Classics editor of the TLS, and a broadcaster, Beard is one of the most prolific public intellectuals of the 21st century.

She takes on her sexist detractors and slays online trolls with intelligence and wit. Follow her on Twitter.

📖 Mary Beard Keeps History on the Move

📖 Ancient Rome Will Never Get Old. Take It From Mary Beard

🎥 Mary Beard on what the classics can teach us

🎥 BBC Inside Culture series

Malala Yousafzai, Female education activist, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Founder of The Malala Fund & Extracurricular

I tell my story not because it is unique, but because it is the story of many girls.
With more than 130 million girls out of school today, there is more work to be done.

A fearless girls education activist, Malala Yousafzai stood up for her and other girls’ right to education, almost at the cost of her life. In 2012, aged 15, she survived an armed attack by a Taliban member in her native Swat Valley. After life-saving medical interventions in the UK, Malala returned to school and activism.

In 2013, she established the Malala Fund, a charity that champions every girl’s right to 12 years of safe, free, quality education. She also wrote her bestselling memoir “I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban.” Malala was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in December 2014, becoming the youngest-ever Nobel laureate.

Malala is the founder of Assembly, a digital publication for girls and young women, and Extracurricular, a production company. She graduated from Oxford University in 2020 with a Bachelor in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.

📖 “I Know The Power A Young Girl Carries In Her Heart”: The Extraordinary Life Of Malala

🎥 Malala & Apple CEO Tim Cook Talk Life After Covid, Activism & Learning To Code

🎥 Malala Yousafzai in Conversation at Emirates Literature Foundation

Support the Malala Fund

ICMY

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