Amplify: Women in History

Amplify is a once a month series written by HerStry columnist, Joycelyn Ghansah. Each month Joycelyn explores one of the lives lesser known from women in history. It is our goal to bring these women’s stories and works to the forefront so that their stories are not forgotten. 

Coming Soon:

A new movement series, from July to October 2022!


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Micaela Bastidas Puyucahua, Lead Stratgiest and Revolutionary Icon

Have you ever heard the story of the lead strategist and propaganda creator who helped lead an uprising against colonizers in Peru in the late 1700s? Who united multiethnic groups in the name of freedom and resistance against tyranny? She recruited not only Indians, but also mestizos, Blacks, Creoles, and “good” Spaniards, something unheard of in eighteenth-century Peru. Famously known as the wife of rebel leader Túpac Amaru II, Micaela Bastidas Puyucahua was second-in-command of the most significant uprising in Spanish colonial history.

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AMPLIFY: The Women of Greenham Common, Camping For Peace and Nuclear Disarmament

What’s your ideal camping trip? Does it involve about 250 of your closest girlfriends, some in witch's costumes and military gear? What about a 36-woman-human chain surrounding an army base, a couple of arrests, fights with the UK government and police, and disarming nuclear missiles? If your answer is yes, you'd fit in with the Women of Greenham Common Camp.

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AMPLIFY: Soledad Estorach, Anarcha-Feminist Breaking Tradition in Times of War

What happens when an anarcha-feminist creates an organization, or even two, in the middle of the Spanish civil war? You get a movement of 30,000 members fighting for women’s liberation, with some working-class empowerment thrown in! Breaking tradition, demanding independence and freedom from the patriarchy, and fighting for equality, is what Soledad Estorach was all about.

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AMPLIFY: The Lavender Menance, Disrupters of the Feminist Movement

This month’s AMPLIFY is about the Lavender Menace action during the second wave of the feminism movement in the 1970s. The Lesbian members felt, or rather they were excluded from many of the feminist movement activities. They started the Lavender Menace action and fought for their voices to be heard. They made sure they were heard as well not only their issues but the issues of the WOC and lower SES women issues.

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AMPLIFY: Dorothy Roberts

This month’s AMPLIFY features scholar and social justice and reproductive justice advocate/activist Dorothy Roberts. Dorothy Roberts is a Critical Race Sociologist, and the 14th Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor with joint appointments in the Departments of Africana Studies and Sociology and Law School at the University of Pennsylvania. Her studies and work focus on the intersection of race, gender, and socioeconomic status through a policy lens.

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