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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O PQ R S T U V W XYZ

" give a man a fish and he eats for the day. Teach him how to fish and you get rid of him all weekend"

Zenna Schaffer

HER NAME IS X or Y or Z..

X

* Xiaoving Zeng

born 1929

.....  FIRST woman in China to become a conductor

* Xinran

..... China's FIRST 'agony aunt' who hosted a groundbreaking radio programme, discussing personal issues in a society where such talk was taboo. After listening to her caller's experiences she wrote The Good Women Of China which became an international bestseller

* Xu-Jing

..... deputy leader of a Chinese expedition in 1960 which was the FIRST to climb Mt Everest from the north and survive

Y

* Y Johnston - Miss

..... FIRST woman President of the United Nations

* Yann Piat

..... FIRST French Member of Parliament to be murdered since the Second World War when in 1995 she was shot in her car by two men on a motorbike. She was the god-daughter of Jean Marie Le Penn of the National Front

* Yoko Ono

born 1933

..... wife of the Beatle John Lennon and the FIRST woman to read philosophy at Tokyo's Gakushuin University

* Yomi Mambu

born 1930  died June 2000

..... born in Sierra Leone she became the FIRST black Lord Mayor in Manchester, England. She had been a nurse for nearly 30 years and came to England in 1958 from Freetown to join her husband who was studying at Oxford.  When she was sworn in she wore the traditional regalia and took the oath of allegiance to the Queen but at her request the fur was trimmed off the civic robe in her protest against the skinning of animals

* Yoshioka Yayoi - Dr

..... in 1900 in Japan she established the Tokyo Joigakko, the Tokyo Women's Medical School, the FIRST training college in the country for women doctors

* Ysabel Greenway

..... FIRST person to be awarded the Cornish Concept for Writing by Cornwall County Council. On 6th June 1996  The Royal Cornwall Show opened and it was the FIRST time that poetry was on exhibition, not in the usual form of a book, but as individual items and hers was amongst them

* Yung Yung Wah

..... one of the most dynamic forces in Manchester's Chinese community she was the  FIRST Chinese woman to become a magistrate on the Manchester, England bench and she set up the FIRST comprehensive Chinese library service in the country

* Yve Newbold

..... in 1990 she was elected the FIRST woman governor at the London Business School

* Yvette Cooper

..... the FIRST serving minister in the British Parliament to take maternity leave  and in August 2001 she gave birth to a son, Joel.  She was MP for Pontefract and Castleford and as Minister for Public Health was responsible for maternity services

* Yvonne Brewster

..... Britain's FIRST black woman Arts Council Officer in 1982 and also the FIRST black woman theatre director

* Yvonne Braithwaite Burke

neé Pearl Yvonne Watson

born 1932

..... FIRST black student to attend a model school at the University of Southern California and one of the FIRST two African-American girls in a women's honour society at her high school. She was the FIRST black woman elected to the California General Assembly and the FIRST to be elected to the US Congress and once there became the FIRST representative ever to be granted maternity leave. After she received her bachelor's degree from the University of California at Los Angeles and her law degree from the University of southern California she found it impossible to find a job with a law firm as at that no black people, women or Jewish people were being hired by white law firms. Yvonne looked round for other opportunities and found them in government where she fought such discrimination through the legislative process and achieved enormous success

* Yvonne Connolly

..... Jamaican who was Britain's FIRST coloured headmistress in February 1969 when employed at Islington in London

* Yvonne Cormeau

..... FIRST woman radio officer to be parachuted into France by the British on 22nd August 1943 . She was part of the Special Operations Executive, a unique organisation which involved approximately 10,000 men and 3,200 women and like many other women agents she was chosen from the ranks of the WAAF

* Yvonne Hopkins

..... FIRST full-time Wren to pass the Navy's diving course in 1992. She joined the 19,000 ton aircraft carrier, Invincible, where her duties included checking the hull for damage and clearing propellers of any debris

* Yvonne Murray

..... FIRST British woman to win a World Cup individual event in running when she won the 3000m in Barcelona

* Yvonne Pritchard

 ..... FIRST Welsh woman to complete the Welsh Grand Prix 50-mile water ski-race 

* Yvonne Robertson

..... FIRST Mayoress of Partington Manchester from 1990 to 1991

* Yvonne Claire Rudellat

neé Cerneau

born 1897 died in Belsen cApril 27th 1945

..... pioneer woman agent who was the FIRST British agent sent to German occupied France in July 1942. She was a member of the Women's Transport Service (F.A.N.Y) and was posthumously awarded the MBE (Military) although she was recommended for a Military Cross, but did not receive it as she was a woman.  Her nom de guerre was Jacqueline Gautier and she led a Resistance group in the Loire valley which carried out sabotage missions against electric and railway lines, factories and German trains. She was captured after being shot and wounded in a car chase after being stopped at a German roadblock in 1943 and when she died in Belsen in 1945 she did not disclose her real name even to the British troops who liberated the camp and was buried in a mass grave. Her story is told in the book "Jacqueline: Pioneer heroine of the Resistance" by Stella King and she is commemorated by an obelisk at Romorantin in the Loire Valley and by a plaque at St Paul's Church, Knightsbridge which commemorates 52 members of the F.A.N.Y's (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) who gave their lives for King and country

Z

* Zaha Hadid

..... Iraquian who became the FIRST female to win America's most prestigious architecture award - the $100,000 Pritzker - 2004

* Zara Phillips

..... FIRST of the younger royal generation to assume a public role - August 2000 - after her appointment as president of the junior members' club at Cheltenham racecourse. Daughter of Princess Anne, the Princess Royal, she was aged 19 at the time and it was thought that such a high-profile president would help Cheltenham to reverse the decline in its junior membership which had dropped to 300. In the New Years Honour List 2007 she became the FIRST member of the Royal Family to receive an MBE when she received the award for services to equestrianism

* Zawadi Madawili

born 1953

..... FIRST woman subaltern in Tanzania as a 2nd Lt in the Tanzanian army and was among the FIRST group of women to join the Tanzanian People's Defence Force in 1972

* Zein-Al-Sharaf - Queen

born August 2nd 1915 died 1994

..... mother of King Hussein of Jordan she became the FIRST chairman of the Jordanian Women's Federation in 1944 and where she served until 1953

* Zena Latcham

..... FIRST woman to win a title in the British Sports Association for the Disabled Snooker Championships in 1991 when she won 2-1 in the class for standing competitors with arm disabilities

* Zena Scott-Archer

..... FIRST woman President of the Association of British Investigators

* Zenith Meer

..... FIRST woman 'supergrass'. Thomas Wisbey was the last of nineteen people to be convicted at the Old Bailey on her evidence and she had to be kept underground by armed detectives after a threat on her life

* Zerbanoo Gifford

..... FIRST Asian woman councillor for the Liberal Alliance and sat on her party's  Status of Women Commission

* Zhang Zilin

..... China's FIRST Miss World when crowned at the 57th Miss World event held in the Chinese resort of Sanya on December 1st 2007

* Zoe Ball