5 Women Who Changed Georgia

CBW celebrates remarkable women who changed Georgia and takes a look back at the achievements of them through amazing things they have done and left their mark on history.

1. Maro Makashvili

Maro Makashvili was a young Georgian woman who was killed during the 1921 Red Army invasion of Georgia. In 2015, she was the first woman to be awarded the Georgian Order of National Hero.^[1]

She was born in a noble family, her father Konstantine Makashvili was a poet and her maternal grandmother was the writer Ekaterine Gabashvili.

Maro Makashvili was a student at the Tbilisi State University when the Red Army launched its invasion of Georgia in February 1921. She volunteered as a nurse and was sent to Kojori, where she was killed by splinters from a shell two days later.

2. Nutsa Gogoberidze

Nutsa Gogoberidze was a film director, whose "Ill-tempered" taken in 1934 was the first Georgian feature film in the Soviet Union shot by a woman.

She married Levan Ghoghoberidze, a Communist Party activist. In the 1930s, because of his activities, she was repressed. Following his execution in 1937, she was exiled for ten years.

Upon her return, she abandoned the film industry and joined the Linguistics Institute in Tbilisi. Her daughter and granddaughter, Lana Gogoberidze and Salome Aleqsi-Meskhishvili are also film directors.

3. Kato Mikeladze

Kato Mikeladze was a Georgian feminist, who fought back in the 1910s for women's rights. She founded The Inter-Partial League of Women backed by The Voice of Georgian Women, a Georgian newspaper edited and published by her, in order to encourage Georgian women to become politically active.

Prominent and pioneer Georgian feminist, Kato Mikeladze went to Europe to study in 1906. After graduating from Brussels University with a degree in social and political sciences, she remained in Paris for several years. During that time she was familiarizing herself with the experience of the women's movement in Europe.

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

However, unfortunately, her newly-published newspaper was closed down during the first Georgian Republic. The subsequent epoch of Bolshevik Terror considered Georgian female activists devoted to gender equality as "bourgeoisie perversion".

4. Barbare Kipiani

Barbare Kipiani was the first Georgian scholar woman.

After graduating from St. Nino's educational institution, she continued studying at the medical faculty of Brussels University. In 1908, she was already a scientific secretary of Brussels University's magazine, Revue Psycholigue.

She established the Georgian department in the international museum of Brussels in 1910. Therefore, she was actively engaged in public activities. 

A granddaughter of Georgian public figure, Dimitri Kipiani, worked in Europe as the first women psycho-physiologist. Her scientific papers on children's physiology and pathology were awarded golden prizes.

She was forced to leave her homeland country in 1921, after the Sovietization of Georgia.

5. Christine (Chito) Sharashidze

During studying at St. Nino gymnasium in Kutaisi, Christine (Chito) Sharashidze started to be actively engaged in political activities. While spreading illegal literature and handwritten newspapers, she was expelled from the school. Christine also was an active participant in revolutionary rallies staged in Tbilisi in 1905 and 1906.

In 1919, after elections, Christine (Chito) Sharashidze became a member of the National Council of Georgia from the Social-Democratic Party.

on 25th February, 1922, after the fall of the Democratic Republic of Georgia, on one year's anniversary of Sovietization, Christine Sharashidze went on strike in protests against Sovietization with students. She was arrested several times. 

From 1940, she started working on the research of Georgian manuscripts upon the invitation of Ivane Javakhishvili and Simon Janashia. She also worked in the department of manuscripts at the State Museum of Georgia and the Academy of Science of Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic.