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Entity looks at 5 feminist foremothers from 1970-today.

Sometimes, it’s easy to forget about our roots. Women in the past have broken down barriers that have opened us to new discourses to explore, experiences to be had and ideas to be shared. But once these opportunities have been made available to us, their pioneers become lost all too easily in the discussions.

So let’s pay tribute to the last five decades of leading ladies, the women who became female “firsts.”

1 1970s: Brenda Eichelberger

After the National Black Feminists Organization (NBFO) dissolved in 1975, Brenda Eichelberger and others impassioned by feminism created the National Alliance of Black Feminists (NABF). Eichelberger was established as the organization’s first executive director in May 1976 and her work in the black feminist movement in Chicago encompassed the media’s portrayal, politicalization and preservation of black women’s culture.

READ MORE: A History of the Women’s Liberation Movement

As one of the forerunners of intersectional feminism, Eichelberger and her colleagues concentrated on potential policies, such as the Equal Rights Amendment, to make sure that their provisions did not cater specifically to white women alone. Today, we remember Eichelberger as a significant contributor to the black feminist movement, allowing for discourse to flourish in the past four decades.

2 1980s: Georgia O’Keeffe

In 1986, the famous floral painter Georgia O’Keeffe passed away, though her work is considered to have inspired the entire feminist art genre. Especially since many of the prominent artists of her time were men, both O’Keeffe’s standing as a woman in such a male-dominated field and her works which contained subtle, yonic imagery truly isolates her as an artist who broke down the barriers for women in art. O’Keeffe’s eye for the female anatomy in nature also likened the beauty of a flower to that of a vulva, fostering a discourse within the sex-positive movement that addressed body positivity.

READ MORE: Cindy Sherman: Feminist or Female Artist?

3 1990s: Eve Ensler

If you know theater, you know “The Vagina Monologues.” This piece of work, first performed in 1996, was written by Eve Ensler, a feminist playwright from New York City. Ensler received much acclaim for the play, including the New York Times’s proclamation that it is “the most important piece of political theater of the last decade.”

Especially since political theater typically isn’t an incredibly popular genre, “The Vagina Monologues” promoted discussions on sexual assault and the female anatomy within a setting where these conversations were unlikely to be had.

4 2000s: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

As the first elected female head of state in Africa and the first elected black female president in the world, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has been using her rule over Liberia to address issues of women’s rights and safety in a nonviolent manner. For this work, Johnson Sirleaf shared the award of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize with Tawakkol Karman, a Yemeni human rights activist and journalist.

After serving her term as the President of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, also known as the “Iron Lady,” ran for re-election in 2011 and won to represent black women in a presidential role twice.

READ MORE: Breaking Boundaries for Women: Postmodern Feminist Fiction

5 2010s: Beyonce Knowles-Carter

This could come as no surprise, but Beyoncé Knowles-Carter has asserted herself as a female pioneer in several discourses not limited to music. With entertainers of her magnitude, it’s uncommon that you see the politics of feminism – or, especially in Beyoncé’s case, black feminism – surface in music for fear of losing an audience.

But it seems that Beyoncé’s introduction of more politically-engaged work, even with little to no prior marketing, has only increased her popularity. This is especially true of Beyoncé’s most recent album, “LEMONADE,” which incorporates socially-conscious messages into its tracks, setting the bar high for other artists to follow.

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