For every Che Guevara, Leon Trotsky and Robespierre, there's a lady equivalent who hasn't got half of the history lessons, dedicated biographies and iconic T-shirts they deserve. Today, in the spirit of 1968 and all that, we celebrate the political firebrands who prove that women can get just as ruddy angry as the men. Oh, and if anyone asks, we're saving Sylvia Pankhurst for a Cult Dame next week.

Dolores Ibarruri

More commonly known as La Pasionaria – which as nicknames go, is pretty tasty (it means The Passion Flower en Espanol) – Dolores was a member of the Spanish Communist Party, seeing through the General Strike of 1917, the Spanish Civil War and the death of Franco in 1975. She contributed to a left-wing miners' newspaper before editing communist periodical Mundo Obrero and then becoming the secretary general of the Spanish Communist Party in 1944, and chairwoman of the party until her death in 1989. She received Soviet gongs the Order Of Lenin and the Lenin Peace Prize, and there's even a statue of her in Glasgow, as a thank you to the Scots who fought in the Civil War.

Rosa Luxemburg

Executed without trial in 1919, Rosa Luxemburg was a prolific writer and revolutionary who co-founded the Internationale group, which later became the Spartacist League and then the Communist Party of Germany. She was also behind its newspaper, The Red Flag. Born in Poland, she moved to Germany via Switzerland, to avoid being imprisoned for her left-wing views. Annoyingly for her, she didn't escape imprisonment, but in jail managed to write articles which her friends smuggled out and published. Look on the bright side, and all that.

Celia Sanchez

Celia Sanchez fought in the Cuban Revolution against US-supported dictator Batista, living in the mountains and organising the underground network practically single-handedly, helping with rebel landings and basically doing Fidel Castro and Che's jobs with her eyes shut. She was the daughter of a well-off doctor, and became a rowdy guerrilla fighter who, according to Fidel, (who was also rumoured to be her lover) was the most important person, man or woman, when it came to beating Batista. After she died in 1980, Fidel ruled the country in the way he thought she would have wanted.

Angela Davis

Former Black Panther and American Communist Party member Angela Davis is one of the few women to ever appear on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list – on false charges, might we add. She's a fighter for equality in all shapes and forms, is anti-prison and, to bring in the pocket money, is also a professor at the University Of California - where she was sacked from her position as a philosophy lecturer over 35 years ago after they found out about her Communist Party membership. Another Lenin Peace Prize recipient, she was imprisoned for 16 months when the FBI tracked her down, but an international campaign, and that old pesky thing "lack of evidence", saw her released.

Annie Besant

Social reformer and feminist Annie Besant's revolutionary ideology started to take roots when she ditched her clergyman hubbie and became a member of the National Secular Society. That's got to suck for him. She then went on to write for secular paper the National Reformer and covered such forward-looking topics – for the 1870s – as universal suffrage and birth control. Besant, a Fabian Society member, is perhaps most famous for organising a strike of the female workers at an east London match factory, where they were being paid pittance and becoming ill from their daily contact with phosphorus.