Who Run the World? Girls! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Matilda of England

Matilda (or Maude) married Henry V of Germany at just 8 years old. By the time she was in her early teens, she was assisting her husband with political and military matters, and rode with her husband and his armies to Italy in 1116-1117.

Matilda was the daughter and only surviving legitimate child of King Henry I of England on his death, and thus heir to the English throne. She fought a war known as the Anarchy to reclaim the throne from her cousin Stephen, who had crowned himself king after her father's death. She captured London and was called the Lady of the English, but was never anointed queen. Her son became king of England after Stephen's death.

(Elizabeth of York was, in fact, her father's heir after the death of her brothers, the famous princes in the tower. Her claim was not considered seriously; however, her position as her father's only daughter helped bolster the legitimacy of her son's and husband's rules.)

Answer: Joan of Arc

Joan of Arc's trial for heresy and subsequent death in 1431, when she was just 19, is well-known. Less well known, perhaps, is that she was a French military leader, who was arrested by a bishop who favored the English.

She was the daughter of a farmer and claimed to have visions and instructions from God to lead her country to victory. Even though she was a young peasant girl, she convinced French generals and nobility to allow her to advise them on military matters, and was instrumental in the lifting of the siege of Orléans and the defeat of the English in the Battle of Patay.

Answer: Isabel I of Castile

Isabel's negotiations with her brother King Enrique IV allowed her the right to approve of her husband. She and her husband, Ferdinand II of Aragon, reigned over the kingdoms of Castile, Leon, and Aragon, and united Spain. They were called 'the Catholic Monarchs' due to their reputation for piety. They completed the Reconquista, waging war against Muslim monarchs, and violently expelled Jews and Muslims from Spain.

She ascended the throne in 1474, and lead her armies to her first military victory within the year. This victory was against the Portuguese king who went to war on behalf of Isabel's niece, Juana (Enrique's daughter, but long rumored to be illegitimate), who was a rival claimant to the throne.

Isabel's daughter Juana succeeded her, but Juana's power was usurped by Isabel's husband, Juana's wife, and Juana's son successively.

Answer: Lucrezia Borgia

Lucrezia Borgia was the illegitimate daughter of Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, who later became Pope Alexander VI, a Renaissance-era Pope. She was married three times, and had nine children. In 1499, she was appointed governor of Spoleto in her own right (and her second husband Alfonso d'Aragon did not have any jurisdiction in Spoleto). Later in life, she would assist her third husband, Alfonso d'Este in administering his dukedom of Ferrara.

There are numerous rumors and stories of scandal and infamy surrounding the Borgia family, especially Lucrezia's brother Cesare, but the veracity of these reports is doubtful. Her life and her family's has been the subject of multiple TV shows and films.

Answer: Artemisia Gentileschi

Artemisia Gentileschi was the daughter of a painter, Orazio Gentileschi, who taught her painting in his workshop. She moved to Florence after the trial; there, the Medici family were among her patrons. Her most famous works are drawn from Biblical stories, and the vast majority of her art focused on women as central figures. One of her best known paintings, Susanna and the Elders, was completed when she was just 17, in 1610.

She was raped by Agostino Tassi. When he refused to marry her, Orazio took Tassi to trial. Tassi was found guilty, but not before Artemisia was tortured during her testimony.

Answer: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Mary Shelley's first book, "Frankenstein", was published in 1818; she started working on the book in 1816, at 17, in Switzerland. It remains her most well-known novel, although she continued to write later in life.

Her mother was the women's rights activist Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman", a seminal feminist text. Her husband was the poet and author Percy Bysshe Shelley, whose most famous works include the epic, "Prometheus Unbound", and the poem ,"Ozymandias".

Answer: Fanny Mendelssohn

Fanny Mendelssohn was a talented 19th century composer and received instruction from highly skilled tutors, but was not known to be a public performer. She was friendly with the renowned female composer and pianist Clara Schumann. The majority of her pieces were lieder, which is poetry set to music.

Fanny Mendelssohn and the famous composer Felix Mendelssohn, who composed "Songs Without Words", were siblings. Felix was broadly supportive of her musical compositions, although initially expressed some reluctance about publication, convincing his own publisher to publish Fanny's works under her own name just six months before her death.

Answer: Cecilia Payne

Cecilia Payne's doctoral thesis, published in 1925, used the intensity of light emitted and absorbed by stars to posit that stars were made primarily of hydrogen and helium. She turned out to be correct, but at the time she wrote her thesis, her ideas were challenged and undermined by male colleagues and supervisors.

She was considered a trailblazer who opened many doors for women in astrophysics, and received the Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy for extraordinary young female astronomers. Interestingly, much of her research built on Cannon's own work on spectral intensities of stars.

Answer: Claudette Colvin

Colvin was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus 9 months before Rosa Parks was. Colvin, however, was young, pregnant, and unmarried, and was not considered a figurehead in the boycotts that followed Rosa Parks' arrest. She was, however, one of the plaintiffs in the court case Browder v. Gayle, which resulted in the end of bus segregation laws in Alabama.

She was charged in juvenile court with multiple charges. One of the charges was for assaulting a police officer, even though her protest was non-violent and, in fact, police officers harassed *her* after her arrest.

Answer: Maria Sharapova

Sharapova is the third-youngest woman to win a Grand Slam, a major championship tournament in tennis. She first became world No. 1 in 2005, a year after her first Grand Slam win in Wimbledon. She has completed a career Grand Slam in 2012; only nine women had completed a career Grand Slam before this.