Countdown to Connections 2012 -- The Power of Passion: 30 Women Who Changed Our World

Women have the power to change our world. Our 'Countdown to Connections' highlights 30 women whose passion has made our world a better place.

4.  Esther

"She lifts the shadows from my blackest griefs, and makes even my darkest days serene ones." -- Jean Racine, from Esther

The Biblical heroine of the book named for her, Esther was a young Jewish woman living in exile in the Persian diaspora, who through her youth and beauty became queen of the Persian Empire, and then by her wits and courage saved the Jewish people from destruction. The message of the Book of Esther, a work of historical fiction written in the diaspora in the late Persian—early Hellenistic period (fourth century b.c.e.), gives encouragement to the exiled Jews that they, although powerless in the Persian Empire, can, by their resourcefulness and talents, not only survive but prosper, as does Esther.

Women have the power to change our world. Our 'Countdown to Connections' highlights 30 women whose passion has made our world a better place.

6.  Gloria Steinem

"Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else."

Gloria Steinem was 10 years old when her parents separated. Her mother suffered from an unspecified mental illness that included delusions and occasional violent behavior; her father finally left Steinem and her mother behind in 1944. Stranded in economically challenging circumstances, Steinem interpreted her mother's inability to hold a job as a symptom of society's injustice and hostility toward working women, and understood doctors' treatment of her mother as a further sign of misogyny -- which led to her growing identity as a feminist. After attending Smith College, she spent two years in India on a fellowship, and then worked for the Central Intelligence Agency before launching her career as a freelance writer in 1959.