Clothed with Strength and Dignity Quiz

Answer: Golda Meir

Born in Kyiv in 1898, Golda Meir spent part of her childhood in the United States before emigrating to the region known as the British Mandate for Palestine in 1921, where she became deeply involved in the Zionist movement. One of only two women to sign Israel's Declaration of Independence in 1948, she later served as the country's fourth Prime Minister between 1969 and 1974, and led the nation during the turbulent years of the Yom Kippur War. Known for her plain speaking, relentless work ethic, and refusal to be intimidated by political opponents, she famously remarked that she would rather be remembered for helping build a nation than for breaking barriers as a woman.

Answer: Corrie ten Boom

Born in Haarlem, the Netherlands, in 1892, Corrie ten Boom was a watchmaker whose family's Christian faith led them to hide Jewish people and members of the resistance during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. After the family was betrayed in 1944, Corrie and her sister Betsie were sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp, where Betsie died; Corrie survived and later shared her story in "The Hiding Place", one of the best-known memoirs of the Holocaust.

Particularly remarkable was her lifelong commitment to forgiveness, including publicly forgiving one of her former camp guards after the war. She 'went home' in 1983, but her sayings and books still enjoy immense popularity.

Answer: Caroline Chisholm

Born near Northampton, England, in 1808, Caroline Chisholm arrived in Sydney in 1838 and quickly recognised the hardships faced by newly arrived migrants. Rather than simply advocate for reform, she personally met immigrant ships, found employment for new arrivals, established accommodation for vulnerable women, and created practical pathways for families to settle successfully in the colonies.

Her tireless efforts assisted thousands of migrants and earned her the enduring title of "The Immigrants' Friend".

Her legacy was recognised when she was featured on the reverse side of Australia's first paper $5 banknote, which was issued in 1967. Caroline Chisholm (1808-1877).

Answer: Catholic saint

Born in 1842 in Fitzroy, Melbourne, to Scottish immigrant parents, Mary MacKillop became a nun at the age of 24. She dedicated her life to ensuring that children in rural and disadvantaged communities had access to education. In 1866 she co-founded the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart with Father Julian Tenison Woods, establishing schools and charitable works across Australia and New Zealand.

Although she endured significant opposition during her lifetime (including a brief excommunication that was later revoked), she persevered in fulfilling the tasks she beieve God was calling her to. She died in 1909, and in 2010, she became Australia's first Catholic saint. Her Feast Day is celebrated annually on 8 August.

Answer: Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo was born in Coyoacan, Mexico City, in 1907, and transformed personal suffering into extraordinary art. A devastating bus accident at the age of eighteen left her with lifelong pain, undergoing numerous surgeries in an unsuccessful attempt to correct the damage.

It was during her recovery that she began creating the vivid self-portraits that would make her famous. Drawing on Mexican folklore, culture, politics, and her own experiences, she created a unique body of work, and today remains one of the most recognisable and influential artists of the twentieth century.

She died in 1954.

Answer: Queen Mother

Born into the British aristocracy in 1900, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon never expected to become queen. Her life changed dramatically when her husband became King George VI following the abdication of his brother, Edward VIII, in 1936. During the Second World War she became a powerful symbol of national resilience, refusing to leave London during the Blitz and regularly visiting bomb-damaged communities. Living to the age of 101, she witnessed a century of immense change, becoming known affectionately throughout the Commonwealth as the 'Queen Mother'.

Answer: Kate Sheppard

Born in Liverpool in 1847, Kate Sheppard emigrated to New Zealand in 1868, where she became the leading figure in the campaign for women's suffrage. Through petitions, public advocacy, and years of meticulous organisation, she helped achieve an historic victory in 1893, when New Zealand became the first self-governing nation in the world to grant women the right to vote.

Her image now appears on New Zealand's ten-dollar note, a fitting honour for a woman whose determination changed the course of democratic history.

She died in 1934.

Answer: Rosa Parks

Born in Alabama in 1913, Rosa Parks became one of the defining figures of the American Civil Rights Movement when she refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery on 1 December 1955. Her arrest sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a pivotal campaign that helped dismantle racial segregation in the United States. Often described as quiet and reserved, Parks possessed extraordinary moral courage, and demonstrated that a single principled act can alter the course of history. Parks died in 2005, aged 92, in Detroit, Michigan.

Answer: Catherine the Great

Born a German princess in 1729, Catherine the Great arrived in Russia as a teenager and, after staging a coup d'état that overthrew her husband, Emperor Peter III, eventually became one of the country's most successful rulers. Reigning from 1762 until her death in 1796, she expanded Russian territory, championed education, corresponded with leading Enlightenment thinkers, and helped establish Russia as a major European power. Among her lesser-known achievements was the creation of the Smolny Institute in Saint Petersburg, one of Europe's first state-funded institutions for the education of women.

Answer: DNA

Born in London in 1920, Rosalind Franklin was a brilliant chemist and X-ray crystallographer. Her meticulous scientific work, along with that of her PhD student Raymond Gosling, proved crucial to understanding the structure of DNA..Her famous image known as "Photo 51" (the 51st in a series of diffraction photographs taken) provided key evidence that helped reveal the double-helix structure, although her contribution was not fully recognised during her lifetime. Beyond DNA, she also made important discoveries in many diverse areas relating to coal, graphite, RNA, and viruses, achievements made all the more remarkable given that she died in 1958 from ovarian cancer, at just thirty-seven years of age.