Bernadette Devlin

In 1969, the year she was twenty-one, Irish woman Bernadette Devlin (McAliskey) was elected to the British Parliament, authored a book on discrimination against Catholics in Northern Ireland, and was convicted of inciting a riot, for which she served a short jail sentence. Fortunately, this did not keep her from being re-elected the next year. Unfortunately, however, she was suspended shortly thereafter for punching the Home Department Secretary of State for reporting that the British Army only shot and killed thirteen Irish demonstrators in self-defense on a day that has since come to be called “Bloody Sunday.” Fortunately, Devlin went on to serve another three years as an elected official. Unfortunately, she was eventually the victim of a brutal attempted murder when she was shot multiple times, including in the head -- apparently for her radical activism. Fortunately, in-your-face woman that she is, she lived through it!