Writing
Gisèle Freund
Gisèle Freund was a European intellectual and writer, a sociologist, a historian of photography, a socialist, a Jew, and one of the world’s greatest photographers.From her photographs of a rally in Berlin to her insightful portraits of Evita Perón, Freund captured the early twentieth century. In 1991, she was the first photographer honored with a retrospective at the Musée National d’art Moderne.
Miriam Freund-Rosenthal
Betty Friedan
Carl Friedman
Carl Friedman was a Dutch writer who published several international bestsellers about the Holocaust and second generation trauma. Though writing from a Jewish perspective, in 2005 it was revealed that Friedman did not have a Jewish background. The controversy marred Friedman’s literary career.
Jaclyn Friedman
Esther Friesner
Norma Fields Furst
Higher education was not merely a family priority for Norma Fields Furst; it also became her professional focus. Furst used her positions of authority at different colleges and universities to garner support for civil rights and gender equality within academia.
Luisa Futoransky
Mamie Gamoran
Evelyn Garfiel
Evelyn Garfiel’s Jewish scholarship on topics like the prayer book and the Hebrew language helped make Jewish study accessible to the broader public. She served on the boards of several Jewish women’s organizations and published a book in 1957 that explored the prayer book and explained the origins and purpose of different prayers.
Ruth Gavison
Ruth Gay
Through her writing, Ruth Glazer Gay captured an engaging view of the Jewish community, both past and present. As a writer, journalist, and archivist, she demonstrated throughout her life the possibility of having an intellectually vibrant career while still accommodating marriage and motherhood.
Abraham Geiger
Abraham Geiger (1810-1874) was one of the most influential Jewish thinkers of the nineteenth century. He was one of the major intellectual leaders and founders of the Reform movement in Germany and a strong supporter of Jews entering European society. As part of his vision of Judaism, he argued for a Judaism oriented around the home and domestic life, but also a Judaism that both elevated and sidelined the women that had long created that domestic life.
Sylva Gelber
Sylva Gelber dedicated her life to social work, labor politics, and women’s rights. She was the first student to enroll in Henrietta Szold’s School of Social Work in Jerusalem after immigrating to Palestine in 1932. When she returned to Canada in 1948, Gelber became nationally recognized as as a political advocate for women’s rights.
Elisabeth Rozetta Geleerd
Elizabeth Rozetta Geleerd’s work on extreme psychological conditions such as amnesia and schizophrenia led to new methods for treating seriously disturbed children and adolescents. Along with opening her own private practice, Geleerd became a training analyst and a member of the educational committee of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute and helped shape its child and adolescent analysis program.
Lillian Mellen Genser
Karen Gershon
Writer and poet Karen Gershon escaped the Holocaust by being sent to England on the Kindertransport. Her best-known book, We Came as Children (1966), documented the collective experiences of refugee children and established her literary reputation in England. Her introspective poetry often reflects on her family and the Holocaust.
Gloria Gervitz
The Mexican Ashkenazi poet Gloria Gervitz (1943–2022) is known for her award-winning, book-length poem Migrations (Migraciones). This poem, an epic journey through the individual and collective memories of Ashkenazi women emigrants to Mexico, which she began writing in 1976, took her 44 years to complete. In 2018, Gervitz won the prestigious Pablo Neruda Ibero-American Poetry Award for Migraciones.
Masha Gessen
Sheyna Gifford
Sheyna Gifford’s passion for both scientific exploration and writing has enabled her to work for NASA in many different capacities, from science journalist to health and safety officer on a year-long simulated mission to Mars.
Melissa Gilbert
Élisabeth Gille
Élisabeth Gille (1937-1996) was a French author known most of all for biography of her mother, best-selling novelist Irène Némirovsky, murdered at Auschwitz. It was written borrowing Némirovsky’s voice, narrated in the first person as “dreamt memoirs.”
Carol Gilligan
The pioneering work of American psychologist Carol Gilligan changed the way the field of psychology studied women and, arguably, the way society views women. Challenging mainstream psychology through her interrogation of the accepted benchmarks of moral and personal development, she proposed that women and men have different moral criteria and follow different paths in maturation.
Mirra Ginsburg
Natalia Ginzburg
Natalia Ginzburg was an Italian novelist, short story writer, essayist, and political activist. Ginzburg is considered one of the greatest Italian writers of the twentieth century, and her award-winning literary work is recognized for its exploration of family relationships and politics throughout fascism in modern Europe and during World War II.
