Blog of Awesome Women / Aung San Suu Kyi

The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the highest honors a human being can receive; I like to think of it as the designation for the truly evolved! The lore behind the prize is that Alfred Nobel was always interested in the cause of peace, but he was moved to do something about it by his friend, baroness Bertha von Suttner. She became involved in the international movement against war founded in the 1890s and inspired Nobel to back it financially. By January 1893, Alfred wrote the good baroness a letter of his intentions to establish a prize for “him or her who would have brought about the greatest step toward advancing toward the pacification of Europe.” Clearly this prestigious endowment has spread to include the whole world and includes women and men from many different ethnicities and backgrounds. Since 1901, over 100 Peace Prizes have been awarded. So far, women recipients have received the laurel for a 10 percent average, but as of the last decade, women are catching up. Here are ten priestesses of pacifism:

Aside from Mother Teresa, the Nobel shero receiving the most publicity has to be Burmese Buddhist and political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi, who won in 1991. Deeply inspired by the work of Mahatma Gandhi, Aung San based her life and actions on what she calls “a profound simplicity,” delineated beautifully in her book Freedom From Fear. Her dedication to freeing the people of Burma from their government under a brutally oppressive dictatorship has gained the respect of the world. Aung San was jailed after winning an election that opposed the military government of Myanmar (Burma). She is not only the national shero of her country but of the world for her unswerving courage in the face of a cruel and corrupt power.

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Women by Becca Anderson, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

Original post here!