THE PROJECT
Portrait
  

ABOUT THE PROJECT

The WOW Women Project was founded by Artist Shaina Shah in 2020. It is an Art Project that tells the story of 196 unique women from all 196 countries of the world through Portraits and Stories. The Project is in three parts: Portraits, Stories and Letters written by these WOW Women to the world at large.

The WOW Project team shares the portraits and brief stories on its social media accounts and website. While you can witness the entire tripart compilation in the upcoming WOW Women book.

THE REASON

Having grown up in a very gender neutral environment, Shaina was never treated like a girl growing up: She was treated like a person. Having had a long standing career in the financial sector and then in the development sector, Shaina realised early on that this is not how the world worked. The main aim of this Project is to shed light on the various aspects, facets, personalities, achievements as well as failures of women across the world. The aim is to also amplify the voices of women from each and every country - talking about moments of joy, tears, laughter, loss, wins that each woman went through while doing some unbelievable things. The stories shall be unfiltered, raw and real.

Shaina truly believes that the purpose of Art is to raise questions and shed light on many aspects of humanity, and just maybe, inspire social change.

THE WOW WOMEN

Why WOW? Well, for us WOW stands for Women of the World as well as 'WOW' is our natural response to the kind of feats the women on this project have achieved. The WOW Women are selected in a very methodical way. We research each country for its top developmental needs (yes, even developed countries). We then look for women who are addressing these needs in some way or another. We select the top 25 women we find and write to them, selecting the final WOW Woman based on their profile. We are featuring women in science, technology, sports, astronomy, mathematics, politics, arts, literature, and many more.