Women’s History Month: 60 Empowering Facts About Women

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Somali-born woman who was a victim of genital mutilation and married off to her cousin. She escaped and sought asylum in the Netherlands, eventually being elected to the Dutch parliament. She is now an activist for women's rights and opposes honor violence and child marriage.

52. Two women had their daughters swapped at birth. After one divorced, a paternity test was done notifying her she wasn't The mother of her own child. Once discovered, both mothers decided to keep the daughter they Raised for so long.

53. In 2004, Van Gogh's great-grandnephew, Theo was murdered for making a film about violence against women in Islam. He was shot more than 8 times, cut in the throat to decapitate him, stabbed in the chest and stabbed with another knife attaching a note that threatened Western countries & Jews.

54. A pregnant single mom was investigated for welfare fraud after a DNA test showed she wasn't the mother of her own children. When she went in for follow-up tests, doctors realized she was a chimera.

55. Up until 1974, banks could refuse to issue a credit card to a woman unless she was married and her husband co-signed for the card. A divorced woman was considered too much of a risk because she "couldn't keep a marriage under control."

 A former teacher named Mohan Kumar would befriend young women, have sex with them and convince them to take a "morning after pill". Little did they know, the morning after pills were cyanide capsules made by him. He killed twenty women this way.

57. International Women's Day was first celebrated in the Soviet Union and used to be called International Working Women's Day until 1975.

58. Nikola Tesla was voluntarily chaste, despite numerous women "vying for his affections some even madly in love with him", because he believed sex inhibited his abilities to think in a scientific manner.

59. There was a custom in ancient Babylon compelling all women at least once in their lives to go to the temple of Aphrodite and have sex with a stranger.

60. Women account for 85% of consumer spending in the United States.