We Are Women, Hear Us Roar Trivia Quiz

Answer: Amelia Earhart

Amelia Earhart was an aviation pioneer, and the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She took her first plane flight when 23 and knew then she had to learn to fly. This was despite her illness and ongoing sinus infections caused by the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918.

In 1922 she set a world record for female pilots, by taking a plane to an altitude of 14000 feet. She received her pilots licence in 1923, only the 16th American woman to do so. In 1937 planning for an around-the-world flight began with Earhart as the pilot and Captain Henry Manning as navigator.

The first attempt failed after crashing on take-off from Luke Field, Pearl Harbour. The second attempt began soon after. Following her departure from Lae, New Guinea, she was due to touch down at Howland Island.

The plane was running low on fuel and there were discrepancies in their position. All radio signals from the plane were lost and search craft found no trace of Earhart's plane.

Answer: Sandra Day O'Connor

With a reputation for rigorous and careful thought and preparation, the Stanford educated Sandra Day O'Connor was appointed to the US Supreme Court in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan. She was the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court, with unanimous confirmation from the Senate.

She served in that role until 2006. This high point was achieved after earlier in her career being forced to work as a secretary as her legal qualifications were not recognised.

Answer: Jacinda Ardern

Jacinda Ardern became New Zealand's 40th Prime Minister in 2017 aged 37. She had a strong career in politics previously as a researcher for Prime Minister at the time Helen Clark and a policy adviser to British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

She demonstrated her leadership on such issues as New Zealand housing crisis, child poverty, and social inequality. However it was the compassion she showed the victims of the Christchurch mosque shootings with the subsequent introduction of strict gun laws that made the world take notice. She again made international headlines in 2020 with her tough stance on border protection to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Answer: Dawn Fraser

Dawn Fraser is an Australian swimmer and the first person to win three consecutive Olympic Gold medals for the same event, in this case, the 100m freestyle. She has won a total of 8 Olympic medals and two world records in her 1956, 1980 and 1964 campaigns.

In 1962 Dawn became the first female to swim 100m freestyle in under one minute. She was named Australian of the Year in 1964, made a Member of the British Empire in 1967 and appointed an Officer of the order of Australia (OA) in 1998. Her Olympic career is not without controversy though.

In the 1964 Tokyo Games, she marched in the opening ceremony against the wishes of the Australian Swimming Union, and she also refused to wear the team swimming costume as she found it uncomfortable. She was accused of, and banned for 10 years, for swimming across Emperor Hirohito's moat to steal a flag, a fact she later denied.

Answer: Janet Guthrie

Janet Guthrie was born in 1938 and immediately made her presence felt in a traditionally male world when she became an aerospace engineer. She began car racing in 1963 and became a full time driver in 1972 She had two class wins in the 12 Hours of Sebring endurance race, become the first woman to drive in a NASCAR Winston Cup race placing, first women to compete in the Daytona 500 (placing 12th) and became the first woman to compete in the Indianapolis 500 in 1977. For her achievements in motor sport, Ms Guthrie was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 2019 as the fifth women to be inducted

Answer: Gina Rinehart

Gina Rinehart is the daughter of West Australian iron ore magnate, Lang Hancock. Following his death in 1982 of heart disease, Gina inherited Hancock Prospecting. Her net worth then was AUD $75 million. In 2019 "Forbes" magazine and the "Australian Financial Review" estimated her worth at least 13 billion dollars and one of the world's richest women and also one of the most powerful.

Answer: Valentina Tereshkova

Born in 1937,Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova showed great aptitude for skydiving (parachuting) even while she was working in a factory to support her father. Her thoughts and efforts soon turned to the 'Space Race' and in 1962 she was selected in teh female cosmonaut corps. On the 16th June, 1963, aboard Vostok 6, Tereshkova became the first woman in space.

She orbited the earth 48 times in a flight duration of just under 3 days. No other woman over the next 50 years has flown solo in space. She was awarded numerous honors, including 'Hero of the Soviet Union' in 1963. Always politically active, Tereshkova was elected to the State Duma in December 2011, after several unsuccessful attempts.

Answer: Mary Pickford

Canadian born Gladys Louise Smith (1892 - 1979) is much better known by her professional name of Mary Pickford. A classic case of being in the right place at the right time and making the right connections, Pickford was performing with her two sisters when selected for a supporting role in the 1907 'The Warrens of Virginia' , a Broadway play written by William de Mille, whose brother Cecil was also in the cast. Less than two years later she was working with D.W. Griffith.

Her work ethic was astounding shown by the 51 films she appeared in during 1909 alone. Within a decade she'd achieved movie stardom as 'America's Sweetheart'. Also an extremely astute business woman, she co-founded the movie studio United Artists with Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith and Douglas Fairbanks (who soon afterwards became her husband).

The studio gave all of them much greater artistic control over their movies.

Answer: Amy Johnson

Amy Johnson, born 1903 in Yorkshire, England, was a pioneer aviator who was the first woman to fly solo from London to Australia in 1930. She set other records around this time such as London to Moscow in just one day, and continued on to Siberia and Tokyo setting another record. She set a solo record of London to Capetown in 1932 beating her husband, Jim Mollison's record.

In the Second World War she flew in the Air Transport Auxiliary. On a routine ferry run from Blackpool to Oxford in 1941, she was off course and her plane crashed into the Thames Estuary. What happened to her is disputed, however, she was never seen again.

Answer: Princess Diana

Diana Frances, the former Princess of Wales, married Prince Charles of England in 1981. During her marriage, her position allowed her to become involved in humanitarian work for women (particularly in Africa) and set the spotlight on illnesses like Leprosy and was involved in more than 100 charities.

After her divorce, Diana worked on fewer causes, including Leprosy, but they had greater impact. Her work with HIV/AIDS broke the myth that you could catch AIDS by touching a patient. Prince Harry later continued her work for Aids. Arguable, Diana's most notable humanitarian work was with the Halo Trust against the use of landmines.

In 1997 and wearing a visor and breastplate, she walked through a minefield in Angola to highlight the dangers faced by the local population where one in every 333 people was an amputee due to the mines. 20 years after the mines were planted, it is thought that only a third of them have been removed.