Kato Mikeladze

1878-1942 / journalist, public figure

Kato went to Europe to study in 1906. After graduating from Brussels University with a degree in social and political sciences, she settled in Paris, where she remained until 1915, familiarizing herself with the experience of the women's movement in Europe.

In 1916, having returned to Georgia, Kato began gathering like-minded people and fighting for women's political and civil rights.

In 1917-18 she established the Women's League regional network, which brought together women from all regions of western Georgia. At around the same time she published and edited the paper Voice of the Georgian Woman, which consolidated information about Western experience needed for the Georgian Women's Liberation Movement, as well as for a number of other societal problems.

Unfortunately, the newspaper closed down during the first Georgian Republic (1918-21) and the subsequent epoch of Bolshevik terror threw the ideas of Kato Mikeladze and others devoted to the concept of gender equality into the "waste bin of history" as the regime considered them "bourgeoisie perversion".