Fun, Fearless Females 150 women served, and counting.…
TULSI GABBARD, 31,
Congresswoman (D-HI) The Island Overachiever
EMILY WOLF, 28, Our second Hawaiian president?
Fun, Fearless Females THESE WOMEN ARE KICKING ASS AND MAKING A DIFFERENCE. By Malia Griggs
A journalist who would not be silenced
JINETH BEDOYA LIMA, 39, Editor at El Tiempo The Super-Brave Journalist
In 2000, Lima was a 26-year-old journalist reporting on arms smuggling in Colombia when she was kidnapped and raped by a paramilitary group, then left on a desolate road. Today, Lima is an editor at Colombia’s largest newspaper, using her platform to speak for “thousands of women victims like me, who don’t have the same opportunity to be heard.” Her campaign, No Es Hora de Callar (It is Not the Time to Remain Silent), pushes for harsher punishments for sex crimes and encourages women to report these crimes and seek support. Her captors are still at large. “I’d be lying if I said I had no fear,” she says, “but I must live my life to the limit.”
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President of Fordham Law Students for Reproductive Justice The Contraceptive Crusader
COSMOPOLITAN | February 2013
AVA DUVERNAY, 40, Film director The Self-Made Mogul
DuVernay has advice for aspiring filmmakers: Forge your own path. “They say you have to go to film school, that you have to look a certain way, that you have to have a specific amount of money, but you have to find your own way to make films.” She certainly did, working her way up from a childhood in Compton, California, to become the first black woman to win the best director award at the Sundance Film Festival for last year’s love story Middle of Nowhere. She’s also founded a filmdistribution company dedicated to getting movies made by people of color in front of wider audiences. “Films by black women about black women are for everyone,” she says. We couldn’t agree more.
After entering Fordham law school in 2010, Wolf was shocked to find out that the Catholic university in New York City would not prescribe her birth control through its health center. “I need the prescription to control the effects of my endometriosis,” she says. When a survey found that not a single student had received contraceptives for any health issue on campus, she joined Law Students for Reproductive Justice in opening a pop-up birth-control clinic, which has helped 150 students access birth control. “If I can inspire women to make their own sexual health decisions, that’s amazing,” she says.
She wants you to make a movie too.
COUNTERCLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: JUDY PAK PHOTOGRAPHY; ISLAND ECHOES PHOTOGRAPHY; FILIBERTO PINZÓN/EL TIEMPO; LIZ O. BAYLEN/CONTOUR BY GETTY IMAGES.
When Gabbard was 21, voters made her the youngest person ever elected to state office in Hawaii. Then she cut her term short to join the National Guard, serving two tours in the Middle East. Now she has become the first Hindu in Congress and one of its first two female combat veterans. “When I decided to run for Congress, I was told left and right, ‘Tulsi, you’re a nice girl, but you’re too young and inexperienced. It’s not your time.’ And these are the people who ask, ‘Where’s the next generation of leaders?’” Gabbard says. “On the trail, I was inspired by a 65-year-old woman who told me how inspired she was by my courage and for accomplishing something that almost everyone said was impossible. It gave her courage to pursue her own goals, and that’s what motivates me.”