52 Women You May Not Know Who Changed History
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There’s so many trailblazing women that may have slipped under our collective radars for years — and they're so inspiring.
In honor of Women's History Month, let's take a look at 52 amazing women:
1.Yosano Akiko
Yosano Akiko was born in the 1800s in Japan, when women were expected to be gentle and modest, with domestic and societal roles focused on raising children. However, Akiko released a collection of 400 poems which expressed concepts and issues around womanhood that were not “acceptable” to be voiced publicly, as she showed women as lively, free, sexual and assertive people in their own right.
Her female protagonists were active and bold instead of passive and meek, and her work was severely criticized for going against the patriarchal values of the time. She was even accused of “corrupting public morals”. I mean, think of all the press coverage on the back of women reading Fifty Shades of Grey in the 21st century, and now imagine the uproar Akiko caused in early 1900s Japan.
Akiko also wrote frequently for all-women’s literary magazines, encouraging women to become independent financially, stating that men and women should equally partake in raising a child, and exploring the idea that her identity was more than just that of a mother to her children. She is one of the most noted, and most controversial, poets in Japan, and known as a pioneering feminist and pacifist.
2.Dr. Mae C Jemison
We’ve all heard of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, but have you heard of Dr Mae Jemison? She was the first African American woman to travel in space. A doctor, engineer, NASA astronaut and author, she has won many awards and been inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame and the International Space Hall of Fame.
Growing up, Jemison loved dance and science. She liked to pass the time by watching the Apollo airings on TV, but was upset that there were no female astronauts. She was inspired by Lieutenant Uhura of Star Trek, and, in a poetic turn of fate, later had a cameo in Star Trek: The Next Generation!
Jemison attended Stanford University, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering, as well as a Bachelor of Arts in African and African American Studies. Straight after graduating, she attended medical school and earned a Doctorate in Medicine.
She’s fluent in Russian, Japanese, Swahili and English, served in the Peace Corps, helped at refugee camps, set up several initiatives for developing science and technology and leading social change, as well as non-profits and youth programs. She’s on the Board of Directors for a ton of organizations and taught at Dartmouth College. Honestly, think of an achievement and Dr. Jemison’s probably got it!
3.Margaret Sanger
Margaret Sanger, also known as Margaret Sanger Slee, opened the first birth control clinic in the U.S., and established organizations that evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She was a birth control activist and sex educator, and her efforts contributed to several judicial cases that helped legalise contraception in the U.S. She argued that women should have a more equal footing in society, and they should be able to determine when they were ready to bear children.
Sanger opened the first birth control clinic, which was staffed by only female doctors, as well as a clinic in Harlem with an all African-American advisory council and African-American staff. She worked closely in Black communities and would not tolerate bigotry in her staff force, nor any refusal to participate in interracial projects. Her work earned praise from the NAACP, W.E.B. Du Bois and Coretta and Martin Luther King Jr. She is widely regarded as the founder of the modern birth control movement, and was arrested more than once for her work.
4.Rosalind Franklin
DNA. It’s what we’re made of, and is a crucial part of scientific study, crime scene investigation, health scans and tons more. But how do we know what DNA actually is and how we can use it?
Well, we’ve got Rosalind Franklin to thank for that. Franklin graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1941 when women were not recognised as full members of the university, entitled to a degree award or even allowed in the cafeteria. She and her PhD student Raymond Gosling took “Photograph 51”, which revealed the double helix structure of DNA.
According to The Conversation, a colleague called Maurice Wilkins showed the photograph to Francis Crick and James Watson at King’s College in London in 1952 without Franklin’s knowledge or consent, along with a report of hers which contained extra experimental information which Crick used to crack the final piece of the puzzle. Crick, Watson and Wilkins went on to win the Nobel Prize, and Franklin’s mentee Aaron Klug received a Nobel Prize for the work they had done together on viruses and protein-nucleic crystal structures after Franklin died at age 37.
5.Jillian Mercado
Actor, model and activist Jillian Mercado fighting for disability and racial inclusion. Founder of Black Disabled Creatives, Mercado is one of the few professional models with a visible physical disability (muscular dystrophy) in the fashion industry.
Speaking to Vogue, Mercado said that when people began sharing lists of Black-owned businesses in a bid to become more inclusive following the revival of the Black Lives Matter movement, she created Black Disabled Creatives to “help build communities within the disability community and make these connections that can lead to conversations.”
She spoke about how disabled people have historically been refused work on the basis of being unable to go into a physical office, yet the pandemic showed that companies can function well with their whole organization working remotely. She said that she “wanted to give the opportunity to brands who, you know, are ‘talking the talk’, but they should ‘walk the walk’ as well. My whole thing is that if you want to talk about race and inclusion, you can’t leave out the disability community.”
Mercado, who has starred in modeling campaigns for Tommy Hilfiger, Diesel and Beyonce, also works to change the fashion industry from the inside out, spreading awareness of the importance of representation and adaptable fashion.
6.Fe del Mundo
Fe del Mundo was a Filipina pediatrician who founded the first pediatric hospital in the Philippines, and is celebrated for the way she shaped the modern children’s healthcare system in her country.
Her work spanned eight whole decades, and she won many awards and titles including the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, an Order of Lakandula and the title of National Scientist of the Philippines — the first woman to earn that title. She was also the first female president of the Philippine Pediatric Society, the first Asian to be elected president of the Philippine Medical Association, and the first Asian to be voted president of the Medical Woman’s International Association.
del Mundo sold her home and most of her personal belongings and took out a loan to begin her children’s hospital, where she lived on the second floor and continued to make early morning rounds in her wheelchair until she passed away at 99 years old.
7.Empress Theodora
Theodora was a Byzantine empress and the wife of emperor Justinian I, who reigned from 527 to 565. According to Britannica.com, she is possibly the most powerful woman in Byzantine history.
Her intelligence and clever handling of political affairs caused many to think that it was she who ruled Byzantium as opposed to her husband. Her name appears in nearly all laws passed during that period, and few significant laws were passed during the time between her death and her husband’s.
Theodora is recognized as one of the first rulers to recognize the rights of women, passing laws to prohibit the trafficking of young girls and altering divorce laws to give greater benefits to women.
8.Beulah Louise Henry
Beulah Louise Henry was an inventor often referred to as “Lady Edison” for her many impressive creations. Over her career, she received 49 patents and had around 110 inventions in total, which were often “quality of life improving products for women”.
She invented many items, including but not limited to:
- A vacuum ice cream freezer
- The first bobbinless sewing machine
- A “protograph”, which worked with a typewriter to create four copies of the typed document
- “Miss Illusion”, a doll with eyes that could blink and change color
- Hair curler
- Vanity case
- “Dolly Dips” soap filled sponges for children
- “Kiddie Clock” to help children learn to tell the time
- A snap-on parasol that allowed women to change the parasol’s pattern to match their outfit without needing to buy a new parasol
- Parasol bag
- Double-chain stitching sewing machine
- Typewriting machine
- Can opener
- Direct and return mailing envelopes
I could go on! Henry was a prolific inventor and well-respected, being inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Game in 2006.
9.Annie Easley
If you’ve seen 2016’s Hidden Figures, you’ll be aware of the outstanding work of Mary Jackson, Katherine Jonhson and Dorothy Vaughan, three African American women known as “human computers” who were crucial to key parts of NASA’s work. However, they’re not the only women in NASA that history has kept hidden away.
Annie Easley was a computer scientist, rocket scientist and mathematician with a career spanning 34 years. Easley developed and implemented computer code that analyzed power technologies, helping determine viable solar, wind and energy projects as well as identifying energy conversion systems and alternatives to solve energy problems.
However, she’s best known for her work on Centaur, described as “America’s workhorse in space” and used for over 220 rocket launches. In fact, when Surveyor 1 landed on the moon, it was the first American space probe to land on an extraterrestrial body, and it was powered by a Centaur rocket. Her work also contributed to the 1997 launch of Cassini, a project involving NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency which saw a probe sent to study Saturn and its system, rings and natural satellites.
Easley also used her education to help others and fight against racial inequality during a time when Jim Crow laws were in place to maintain deliberate inequality.
10.Andrée de Jongh
Andrée de Jongh took it upon herself to lead Allied airmen on a perilous path from occupied Belgium to safety at the British Consulate in Bilbao, Spain. She led between 24 and 33 expeditions across occupied France, over the Pyrenees to Gibraltar. Her route was nicknamed the Comet escape line due to the speed soldiers were hustled along it to safety. She personally escorted 118 servicemen to safety, with at least 300 more escaping via the Comet line.
Her operation was complex and dangerous, requiring the recovery fallen airmen, sourcing of civilian clothing and faking of identity papers, as well as provision of medical aid, shelter and food the soldiers as they took the thousand-mile trek to safety. De Jongh warned recruits to expect to be dead or captured within six months. Her own father was captured and executed, along with 22 others in her team. De Jongh herself was captured by the Germans in 1943, but due to her age and the fact that she was a “slip of a young woman”, they did not believe she was behind the scheme and sent her to a concentration camp. There, she became so unrecognizable that the Gestapo couldn’t identify her for questioning.
She later worked in hospitals for those with leprosy in the Belgian Congo and Ethiopia, and was made a Belgian countess in 1985. Her work during World War II was hugely important, saving hundreds of lives, signifying hope to Allied nations, and getting critical information to the right people.
The soldiers themselves said her inspiration was sometimes all that kept the exhausted men going on the 1000-mile route. Bob Frost, a bomber crew member, is quoted in the New York Times saying: “It was her eyes - they were absolutely burning and there was an air of supreme confidence about her.”
11.Junko Tabei
Junko Tabei was the first woman to climb Everest. She faced sexism at every turn, defying cultural expectations especially in her home country of Japan, where women were expected to be quiet homemakers who tended to their family and husbands — certainly not pioneering adventurers who break world records!
Her 1975 “Japanese Women’s Everest Expedition” was made up of 15 women, who struggled to find funding for their trip, being told by potential sponsors that they should focus their efforts on raising children instead. The group each had to pay close to a year’s salary each. Tabei was the only woman climber in her group to reach the summit - on her hands and knees after being injured in an avalanche.
Tabei returned to school in 2002 to study ecology, becoming a leading figure in the protection and preservation of wild places and the director of the Himalayan Adventure Trust of Japan, a group which aimed to protect fragile high-alpine environments from any impact caused by hikers and climbers.
Tabei was sadly diagnosed with cancer in 2012, but climbed until she couldn’t possibly climb any more. She passed away in 2016, leaving a legacy of environmental activism and determination which changed the tides for women in climbing history.
12.Martha Gellhorn
Gellhorn was a novelist, travel writer, and journalist who is considered one of the leading war correspondents of the 20th century. She reported on virtually every major world conflict that happened during her 60-year career.
She was the third wife of Ernest Hemingway, but stated that she had no intention of “being a footnote in someone else’s life”, and was known to insist her husband’s name not be mentioned when granting interviews as a way to ensure they were there for her work and not to dig for gossip based on her reflected fame as a wife of a famous novelist.
Her legacy lives on through the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, a blue English Heritage plaque at her former home in London, and Purple Plaque on a cottage she once lived in as part of a national scheme to commemorate women of note.
13.Susan Kare
Kare is a notable graphic designer who developed some of the key interface and typeface elements for the Apple Macintosh. With no art school background, she worked from a $2.50 grid notepad to create 16x16 pixel art to make the interface as user-friendly as possible.
Despite their humble beginnings, her icons are some of the most recognisable in computing today, including the Genius Command key and the trash can, as well as the Lasso Tool in Photoshop. She focuses on simplicity to create visual metaphors that users understand and enjoy.
She has also been a design consultant for Microsoft, IBM, Sony Pictures, Facebook, and Pinterest, has been called a “pioneer of pixel art and of the graphical user interface”, and lauded as one of the most significant technologists of today.
14.Hedy LaMarr
Okay, hear me out. I know you’ve probably heard of movie star Hedy LaMarr for her roles in Oscar-nominated films. But did you know she actually filed a patent for the frequency-hopping technology that became the basis for what we now use as wifi, GPS and Bluetooth?
Living in Beverly Hills, the Austrian born inventor socialized with John F. Kennedy and Howard Hughes, who provided her with equipment to run scientific experiments in her trailer when she wasn’t acting. Her frequency-hopping technology aimed to protect war-time radio communications by hopping frequencies so that Allied torpedoes couldn’t be detected by the Nazis.
However, to this day, neither LaMarr nor her estate have seen any money from the multi-billion dollar industry her idea laid the foundations for, despite the U.S. military publicly acknowledging her contributions to technology. (Source: Forbes)
15.Wangari Maathai
Maathai was a Kenyan social, environmental and political activist, and the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. She was also the first woman in East and Central Africa to become a Doctor of Philosophy. Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, which is a grassroots non-governmental organization focused on environmental conservation, the planting of trees, and women’s rights.
Her organization spread outside of Kenya, leading to the foundation of the Pan-African Green Belt Network, with 45 representatives from 15 African countries traveling to Kenya to learn how to set up similar initiatives in their own countries to combat issues such as desertification, deforestation, water crises, and rural hunger.
16.Donyale Luna
When I say “supermodel”, it’s likely Naomi Campbell or Tyra Banks springs to mind, but there was a time when supermodels were made up of only white women. Donyale Luna, born Peggy Ann Freeman, was the first African-American model to appear on the cover of the British edition of Vogue, and the first Black person to be sketched for the cover of Harper’s Bazaar.
She was a cover girl around 11 times between 1965-75, and is said to be the first Black model who “really began to change things; to enable more diverse beauty paradigms to break through.”
17.Dr Chien-Shiung Wu
Chien-Shiung Wu was a Chinese-American particle and experimental physicist known as the “First Lady of Physics”. She performed a historic experiment that overturned the law of parity, which was considered a fundamental law of nature. Discoverer of fission Otto Robert Frisch said people would often say her discovery was the most significant since the experiment that inspired Einstein's theory of relativity, the Michelson-Morley experiment.
The very experiment that led to this discovery was called the Wu Experiment, yet physicists T.D. Lee and C.N. Yang received Nobel Prizes in 1957 for their part in the experiment while Wu herself did not. She didn’t even get recognition for her contributions to nuclear physics until the 70s.
18.Sylvia Rivera
You’ve likely heard of gay liberation activist Marsha P. Johnson, but do you know Latina pioneer Sylvia Rivera? She was a close friend of Johnson’s, and a gay liberation and transgender rights activist.
She co-founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) group, which was dedicated to helping homeless young drag queens, gay youth and trans women, and also fought for the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act in New York, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in employment, housing, public accommodation, education, credit and the exercising of civil rights.
19.Victoria Cruz
Another person less known than they should be, Victoria Cruz is a queer trans woman and former activist who fought alongside Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson.
Featuring in The Life and Death of Marsha P. Johnson documentary, director David France described her as a “witness to a time that most of us can’t even imagine.” Cruz was at the very first Gay Pride March in 1970, as well as at the Stonewall Inn at the time of its eponymous raids and riots.
She worked at a nursing home, and following a sexual assault by four female co-workers, Cruz began working with the Anti-Violence Project, first to report the attack, and then as a volunteer and later, an administrative assistant. She has devoted her life to helping LGBT victims of violence.
20.Althea Gibson
We know the power that is sisters Venus and Serena Williams, but have you heard of Althea Gibson? Althea was an American tennis player and professional golfer, and was the first African American to win a Grand Slam title, then Wimbledon, then the US Nationals - then win the latter two again in 1958. Overall, she won 11 Grand Slam tournaments, and was also voted Female Athlete of the Year twice. She was also the first Black player to compete on the Women’s Professional Golf Tour.
Bob Ryland, former coach of Venus and Serena Williams, said in Born to Win: The Authorized Biography of Althea Gibson: “Martina Navratilova couldn’t touch her. I think she’d beat the Williams sisters.” Venus Williams herself said: “I am honored to have followed in such great footsteps. Her accomplishments set the stage for my success, and through players like myself and Serena and many others to come, her legacy will live on.”
21.Sandra Day O'Connor
Sandra Day O’Connor is the first woman to be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the land. Her vote was often the swing vote in divisive cases, and she tackled issues such as gender discrimination, abortion rights, sexual harassment and freedom of religion. When O’Connor attended law school in the 1950s, only 2% of students were women, but by the time she retired in 2006, a massive 48% of law students were women.
22.Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett
Dr Corbett and her team were behind the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. Dr Corbett is a viral immunologist, and was the scientific lead of the Vaccine Research Center’s COVID-19 team, with research efforts focussing on vaccines for the virus. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases, said: “Her work will have a substantial impact on ending the worst respiratory-disease pandemic in more than 100 years.”
Corbett also takes part in programs to inspire youth in underserved communities.
23.Sonia Sotomayor
Sotomayor is the first woman of color, the first Hispanic and the first Latina member of the Supreme Court of the United States. She was nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by President George H.W. Bush in 1991, then nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit by President Bill Clinton, then nominated to the Supreme Court by Barack Obama in 2009.
She has been identified as someone with concern for the rights of the defendants, calls for reform of the criminal justice system, and for “making impassioned dissents on issues of race, gender and ethnic identity”.
24.Christine de Pizan
Christine de Pizan (sometimes written as Pisan) was an Italian poet in the 13-1400s whose works are considered to be some of the earliest feminist writings. She began as a court writer, but developed a love of writing ballads, which caught the attention of wealthy patrons and propelled her success. She earned the title of the first professional woman of letters in Europe.
De Bizan was embroiled in a controversy when she questioned Jean de Meun’s popular Romance of the Rose, which painted women as one-dimensional seductresses, and published her own book The Tale of the Rose, as a direct attack on his book. In it, she accused de Meun of being misogynistic, vulgar, immoral and slanderous to women. Erm, does this mean the first diss track was back in 1402?!
25.Florence Howe
Often dubbed the “Mother of Women’s Studies”, Florence’s work focused on closing the gender gap in education. She began teaching in colleges and universities in the 1950s, and noticed a significant gender gap in the books being taught. She told The New York Times in 1972: “I was teaching women’s studies at Goucher College in Maryland at the time, and there weren’t enough materials. The publishers I spoke to all said, ‘Wonderful idea, but there’s no money in it.’”
Her husband, Paul Lauter, suggested that they publish the books themselves and came up with the name the Feminist Press. Praised for the way it “recover(ed) and made available a legacy of writing by and about women in American history and scholarship”, the Feminist Press has published authors including Zora Neale Hurston, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Barbara Ehrenreich, Willa Cather, Alice Walker and the members of Russian feminist performance group Pussy Riot.
Florence was also an activist, forming an interracial and interfaith sorority at university, organising a protest against a racially segregated movie theatre in Baltimore, aiding with registering Black voters and also opening and running a Freedom School for Black children.
26.Rachel Carson
A lover of nature, marine biologist and nature writer, Rachel Carson catalyzed the global environmental movement with her book Silent Spring. The book demonstrated the dangers of chemical pesticides on ecosystems and humans, and led to a nationwide ban on several, sparking the movement that would eventually lead to the inception of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Chemical companies labeled her a “hysterical woman”, but President John F. Kennedy’s Science Advisory Committee Report validated her research and made pesticides a public issue.
Carson was awarded medals from the National Audubon Society and the American Geographical Society, and also won a National Book Award, a national science writing prize and a Guggenheim grant.
27.Vilissa Thompson
Social worker and founder and CEO of Ramp Your Voice!, Thompson provides consultations for disabled students and veterans, as well as life coaching, sensitivity training and motivational speaking in order to promote “empowerment, education, inclusion and self-advocacy for and among disabled people.”
She also discusses intersectionality, and how racism, politics and being a Black disabled woman matters to her - she was the founder of the viral #DisabilityTooWhite hashtag back in 2016, aiming to address the lack of diversity and representation in the disability community and the media. In her own words, she “unapologetically makes good trouble”!
28.Gertrude Elion
When she was 15, Elion witnessed her grandfather’s painful death due to stomach cancer. That experience propelled her into a career path with a determination to alleviate human pain. At age 19 with a degree in chemistry under her belt, Elion got her break when World War II diminished the number of male chemists and finally gave her a chance to work in a lab, where - you guessed it - women weren’t generally allowed.
Her first major discovery was used to treat leukemia patients, often taking patients said to be months from death into remission. During her career, her name appeared on 45 patents for life-saving and life-changing drugs, including medications to help Epstein-Barr, chickenpox, shingles, AIDS, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, and more. She received a Nobel Prize in 1988. She passed away in 1999, but her work is still saving lives and has changed the way drugs are developed. She pioneered a new, scientific approach to drug development that “forever altered — and accelerated — medical research.”
29.Amani Al-Khatahtbeh
Amani Al-Khatahtbeh is an activist, author and tech entrepreneur who has appeared in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. She grew up in New Jersey to Arab parents, and despite feeling close to her Muslim identity, she noticed both Islamophobia and a lack of online communities for young Muslim women.
When she was 17, she decided to make MuslimGirl.com, publishing blogs which explored issues of concern to young Muslim women. She also created Muslim Women’s Day to increase representation of Muslim Women in the media, and was the first person of her race to represent New Jersey’s 6th congressional district, becoming the first Muslim woman in New Jersey to run for federal office.
30.Mary Anning
Anning was an English fossil collector, dealer and palaeontologist who reached worldwide acclaim following her discovery of Jurassic marine fossil beds in the cliffs along the English Channel. Her discoveries included the very first correctly identified ichthyosaur skeleton when she was just 12 years old, the first two nearly complete plesiosaur skeletons, the first pterosaur skeleton located outside of Germany, and also fish fossils.
Anning was from a very poor family and struggled financially for most of her life. Due to the fact that she was a woman, she was unable to join the Geographical Society of London, not granted access to a proper education and did not often receive full (or any) credit for her contributions. Her friend Henry de la Beche painted the book “Duria Antiquior - A More Ancient Dorset” in 1830, raising money for Mary. The book was the first pictorial representation of prehistoric life based on fossil evidence.
However, when Mary passed away from breast cancer at just 47, she was still struggling to make ends meet despite a lifetime of extraordinary discoveries which catalyzed the understanding of palaeontological science and history. Today, the Natural History Museum in London showcases several of Anning’s finds, and what is now known as the “Jurassic Coast” is a UNESCO World Heritage Site where scientists and adventurers gather to hunt for the next big discovery.
31.Alice Coachman
Coachman was the first Black woman to win an Olympic gold medal. She grew up in the 1920s, when she was unable to access training facilities or join any organized sports due to her race - and on top of that, she was a woman during a time when there was widespread opposition to women in sport.
She broke several college and national high jump records, and dominated the Amateur Athletic Union’s outdoor high jump championship from 1939 through to 1948. She also won national championships in the 50 meter dash, 100 meter dash and 400 meter relay team. As if that wasn’t enough, she also won three conference championships in the Tuskegee women’s basketball team.
She was unable to compete in the 1940 and 1944 Olympics due to their cancellation because of World War II, but went on to break the 16-year high jump record in her qualifier for the 1948 games, then beat her own record on her first try during the high jump finals.
She was also the first African-American woman to endorse an international product when she was signed as a spokesperson by the Coca-Cola Company, who featured her on prominent billboards.
32.Margaret Hamilton
Margaret Hamilton was a key part of the team that created the software that landed Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon. Her work also benefited Skylab, the first U.S. Space Station in the 1970s. She was one of the creators of the now commonly known phrase “software engineering”, was director of the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, and founded two software companies.
Hamilton has published over 130 papers, and received a NASA Exceptional Space Act Award in 2003, granting her the biggest financial prize that the agency had ever awarded to one person until that time. In 2016, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama for her work.
She’s built quite the legacy, and now we can build her from tiny plastic bricks thanks to Lego’s Margaret Hamilton figure!
33.Ada Lovelace
Lovelace, daughter of famous poet Lord Byron and mathematician Lady Byron, is known as the first computer programmer. At 17, she met Charles Babbage, who designed the foundations for the very first digital programmable computer. She was the first to recognise that the machine had application beyond pure calculation, and published the first algorithm for the machine.
34.Katia Krafft
Along with her husband Maurice, the two were often the first at active volcanoes. Their footage of the effects of volcanic eruption often played a key part in gaining the cooperation of local authorities faced with volcanic threats in order to safely evacuate areas in time and keep people safe.
Katia was known for her fearlessness, going right to the edge of a volcano that had suddenly erupted after thousands of years of inactivity and even taking a raft into a lake of acid to get proper readings. She wrote many books to fund her trips, and created a documentary, The Volcano Watchers.
She and her husband were killed while filming eruptions at Mount Unzen in Japan, when a pyroclastic flow unexpectedly swept out and onto the ridge they were standing on. However, Katia’s close-up documentation, readings and knowledge, plus Maurice’s video footage, led to a better understanding of volcanic eruptions and how they affect the ecosystem.
35.Nellie Bly
Nellie Bly was a fearless investigative journalist who demanded to write serious pieces for both men and women. Think Veronica Corningstone’s outrage in Anchorman when she’s assigned fluffy stories and not taken seriously enough to cover hard news due to her gender, but multiply that glass ceiling by a thousand because Bly lived in the late 1800s - early 1900s.
Bly found it hard to find work, and when an editor declining her story challenged her to investigate one of New York’s most notorious mental hospitals, she decided to show him her caliber and went one step further, feigning mental illness in order to expose how patients were treated from the inside. Her approach is the foundation for what became what we now know as investigative journalism.
She also broke the world record for traveling around the world in 72 days after reading Around the World in 80 Days!
36.Bessie Coleman
Bessie Coleman was the first African-American and first Native American to hold a pilot license. She was also the first Black person with an international pilot’s license. She achieved all this in a time when African Americans, Native Americans and women had no opportunity for flight training.
She became a high-profile pilot in daring air shows in the U.S., becoming known as Queen Bess and Brave Bessie. She hoped to open a school for African-American fliers, but unfortunately died in a plane crash in 1926, aged just 34. However, her legacy was an inspiration to early women pilots, and the Native American and African American communities.
37.Amelia Bloomer
Amelia Bloomer was the first woman to own, operate and edit a newspaper for women, and was known for her work for women’s rights. The Lily, as her newspaper was called, was a model for later publications for women’s suffrage.
Despite not inventing bloomers, her name is given to the item of clothing due to her campaigning for less restrictive dress for women, encouraging comfort, health and usefulness as opposed to boned corsets which literally changed the shape of women’s skeletons. She began wearing loose trousers gathered at the ankles under a tunic or dress, which was nicknamed “The Bloomer Costume” and ridiculed in the press and in person. Bloomer sold The Lily in 1854, but remained a suffrage pioneer and writer who made significant contributions to the women’s rights movement, particularly around dress reform.
38.Florestine Perrault Collins
Florestine Perrault Collins was an African-American woman born during a time when it was unacceptable to be a woman with a career, let alone a Black woman with a career. Her photography is noted for having brought to life portraits of African-American clients that “reflected pride, sophistication and dignity”, as opposed to racial stereotypes.
bell hooks, author and feminist, said: “The history of Black liberation in the United States could be characterized as a struggle over images as much as it has been a struggle over rights.” Collins, through her work, challenged the stereotypes of Black women and children by showing them in domestic settings as opposed to portraying them as primitive, with her career mirroring a “complicated interplay of gender, racial and class expectations.”
39.Homai Vyarawalla
Homai Vyarawalla was India’s first female photojournalist. In the early years of her career, her work was published under her husband’s name due to her status as a woman. Vyarawalla said that because women were not taken seriously as journalists, she was able to take high-quality, revealing photos without interference. Her career included work for The Illustrated Weekly of India, The Bombay Chronicle, Life Magazine, and the British Information Services, where she spent over 30 years of her career.
40.Coretta Scott King
You know Martin Luther King Jr, but do you know his wife, Coretta Scott King? (She was mentioned briefly back in Margaret Sanger’s entry, so have a cookie if you remembered!) She was a leader for the civil rights movement in the 1960s, a singer who incorporated civil rights into her music, and an advocate for African-American equality.
She took on the leadership of the racial equality movement when her husband was assassinated, and was also active in the Women’s Movement. Coretta founded the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, and campaigned for MLK’s birthday to become a national holiday.
She also fought for LGBTQ rights and opposition to apartheid. She is often dubbed the “First Lady of the Civil Rights Movement”, yet a lot of the time, she and her work is overshadowed by her famous husband. His work is incredibly important, but it’s shocking how often Coretta is excluded from stories about this time period and the movement she spearheaded alongside him.
41.Kimberlé Crenshaw
Crenshaw is a civil rights advocate and leading scholar of the field of critical race theory. You’ve likely heard of the term “intersectional feminism”, which is bandied about often these days, but Crenshaw actually introduced it to feminist theory way back in the 1980s. Intersectionality was not new at that point, but was not formally recognised until Crenshaw’s work.
Intersectionality looks at aspects of a person’s social and political identities and how they combine to create different routes of discrimination or privilege. Previously, feminism was very much focussed on white, middle-class women, so Crenshaw’s work helps to expand the lens to focus on the full picture as opposed to smaller parts of the puzzle, ultimately leading to more equal footing for all in society.
42.Lilian Bland
Lilian Bland was one of the first women in the British Isles and potentially even the world, to design, build and fly an aircraft. She was a determined and adventurous person, even improvising with a whisky bottle and a deaf aunt’s ear trumpet as an engine hose when the petrol tank was not ready to power her aircraft! She was the first woman to fly an aircraft in Ireland back in 1910, and her plane, the Mayfly, became the first powered biplane in Ireland. I guess Lilian heard the age-old adage that the sky’s the limit!
43.Zara Rutherford
Speaking of inspirational aviators, add Zara Rutherford to your list. The Belgian-British 19 year old is the youngest female pilot to fly solo around the world, as well as the first person to complete a full navigation around the world in a microlight aircraft. She aims to raise awareness about the gender gap in fields like science, technology, engineering, math, and aviation, and has partnered with charities Girls Who Code and Dreams Soar.
44.Annie Smith Peck
Peck was a teacher who took up mountaineering before becoming a public lecturer, mountaineer and travel guide author. She explored Latin America and promoted peace between the Americas.
In 1895, Peck climbed the Matterhorn in the Alps, but her accomplishment was buried under a press avalanche about her attire during the climb - a tunic, tall climbing boots, a pair of baggy-kneed knickerbocker trousers, and a felt hat secured with a veil. The media was scandalized and debated publicly on the question of “what women should do and what they can aspire to become.”
Undeterred, she climbed Pico de Orizaba in Mexico in 1897, becoming the highest ascent in the Americas ever made by a woman. She climbed many more mountains across Europe, helped found the American Alpine Club, and even has a peak of the Peruvian Cordillera Blanca mountain chain Huascarán named Cumbre Aña Peck in her honour. An ardent feminist, she climbed Coropuna in Peru at age 61, and placed a “Votes for Women” banner at the summit.
45.Madame C.J. Walker
Born Sarah Breedlove, Madame C.J. Walker is recorded in the Guinness World Book of Records as the first female self-made millionaire in America. She made her money by developing and marketing cosmetics and haircare products for Black women, but was also known for her philanthropy and activism.
Walker used her fortune to donate to numerous organizations and opened her lavish 34-room mansion as a social gathering place for the African-American community. Walker also used her wealth to give a leg-up to other women, employing upwards of 20,000 women by 1917 as sales agents for her beauty products. She showed the women how to budget, build their own businesses, and encouraged them to become financially independent.
46.Joan Clarke
Joan Clarke never sought the spotlight, but her work as a codebreaker during World War II earned her awards, citation and recognition regardless. She was recruited to the Government Code and Cypher School by Gordon Welchman, her academic supervisor in Geometry at Cambridge.
She was the only woman in the team attempting to break the German Enigma Code, the code with which Nazi Germany encrypted their messages. She became the only female practitioner of Banburismus, a cryptanalytical process developed by Alan Turing which streamlined the decryption of German encrypted messages. Hugh Alexander, Head of Hut 8 where she worked, was regarded the best of the “Banburists” but said Clarke was easily “one of the best Banburists in the section”.
47.Marie Van Brittan Brown
You know those video doorbells that seem like a pretty new invention? Well, Van Brittan Brown invented that way back in the 60s!
She lived in a neighborhood in Queens where the crime rate was high, and was often home alone due to her husband’s work hours. When she noticed how slow police were arriving in her neighborhood when there was an emergency, she decided to invent what would go on to become the first home security system.
She created three peepholes in her door — one for tall people, one for average height, and one for children. Her next step was a camera that could adjust from peephole to peephole to enable people inside the house to see who was outside, attached to a wireless television system. Along with the video system, she worked with her husband, who was an electronics technician, to set up a two-way microphone to allow communication between those inside the home and whoever may be at the door. Van Brittan Brown and her husband submitted a patent for the invention in 1966, which was granted in 1969.
As well as this, Brown invented a system to unlock doors remotely, and one to call the emergency services at the tap of a button. Her work was the first CCTV security system, and the foundation for video monitoring, remote-controlled door locks, push-button alarms, instant messaging to security providers and emergency services, and two-way voice communication.
48.Claudia Gordon
Claudia Gordon is the first deaf, Black female attorney in the U.S, and the first deaf person to work at the White House in a detailee capacity. She has worked at the National Association of the Deaf Law and Advocacy Center, been a consultant to the National Council on Disability, and been a senior policy advisor at Homeland Security.
She is also active in the National Black Deaf Advocates and the National Coalition for Disability Rights, and won a Paul G. Hearne Leadership Award from the American Association of People with Disabilities.
49.Anna May Wong
Wong Liu-tsong, known by her stage name Anna May Wong, was the first Chinese American Hollywood movie star and the first Chinese American actress to gain international recognition. She will also be one of the first women on the reverse of a quarter in the 2022-2025 American Women quarters series, and the first Asian American to appear on any U.S. currency.
Wong documented her experience touring China and exploring its culture on film, becoming one of few female directors in Hollywood. She also starred in several movies for Paramount Pictures with the aim of portraying Chinese and Chinese Americans in a positive light, and made history by creating and starring in the first ever U.S. TV show with an Asian American lead, The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong.
She used her roles to humanise Chinese Americans during a time when racism and discrimination was rife. Her legacy lives on through literature, awards in her name and depictions on screen.
50.Wilma Mankiller
Wilma Mankiller was the first female Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, and the first woman elected as chief of a major Native tribe. She devoted her life to furthering and fighting for the rights of Native Americans.
She worked to empower Native communities in California, with the belief that restoring pride in their shared heritage could reduce the number of Native youth growing up on the streets. She was director of Oakland’s Native American Youth Center, assisted other tribes with legal battles, took up a role as a social worker, and after seeing Native children placed in families with no knowledge of Native culture and traditions, eventually had a law passed that made it illegal to place Native children in non-Native families.
Children at school bullied Wilma for her surname, but in the Cherokee language, “Mankiller” or “Asgaya-dihi” refers to a traditional Cherokee military rank, like captain or major. Looking back at her achievements, it seems a pretty apt name for her!
51.Simi Linton
Simi Linton is an author, filmmaker and arts consultant, as well as a public speaker. She works to change the perception and representation of disability, educating people on internalised ableism and the “disability-as-a-tragedy” concept. She also focusses on film, TV, theater and museum exhibitions to “improve and increase the way disability is depicted in all forms.”
52.Ibtihaj Muhammad
Ibtihaj Muhammad is an American sabre fencer and member of the U.S. fencing team. She is the first Muslim woman to compete for the U.S. wearing a hijab, and the first to win an Olympic medal wearing one. She told The Telegraph that she chose to keep her hijab to “inspire women and young girls around the world to break boundaries and pursue their desires even while wearing a hijab.”
She has worked to promote diversity and inclusion, and after commenting that none of her dolls had hijabs when she was growing up, she inspired Mattel to create a hijabi Barbie and a fencer Barbie designed around Ibtihaj for their International Women’s Day campaign. Through the creation of a hijabi Barbie, it reinforced Muhammad’s belief that young girls and boys should see themselves reflected in toys and the media, and that inclusiveness and diversity should be valued.
