Highlighting 12 trans woman on International Women’s Day who ruled silver screen globally

Having been catapulted to fame by the 2012 Netflix Original Orange Is The New Black, Laverne Cox is the first transgender woman to receive an Emmy nomination in any acting category.

She was also the first transgender to appear on TIME magazine’s cover and in 2017, she became the first transgender person to play a transgender series regular on broadcast TV on CBS’s Doubt.

It was in her later college years that Cox began identifying as a female and started the medical process of transitioning. While in college, the LGBTQ advocate had already starred in several off-Broadway shows and independent student films. In 2007, she got inspired by Candice Cayne and sent out almost 500 postcards to filmmakers and directors which landed her two episodes in Law & Order and parts in I Want to Work For Diddy.

Notably, in 2014, Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word won a Daytime Emmy in the Outstanding Special Class Special category and Cox received the honour as executive producer of the TV documentary movie. The icon has always emphasised the correct usage of queer-friendly terms and believes that the obsession around questions of gender-affirming surgeries limits and restricts trans people while also affecting public policies.

2. Caitlyn Jenner

It was 2015 when one of America’s most favourite sportspersons, a gold medalist decathlete at Olympics 1976, came out as a transgender woman.

Caitlyn Jenner, who was then known as Bruce Jenner, was the waterskiing East Coast overall champion in 1966, 1969, and 1971. After a very successful career as an active sportsperson, the all-American hero went on to be a sports commentator. In 1991, fame hit Caitlyn differently when she got married to Kris Kardashian.

When the TV series Keeping Up With The Kardashians aired in 2007, Caitlyn was an important part of it with Kylie Jenner and Kendall Jenner being young teens then.