Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D. (1821-1910), was the first woman to graduate from medical school in the United States and is often thought of as America’s first woman doctor. A dedicated public health advocate, social reformer, and prolific writer, Blackwell changed the course of modern medicine, founding hospitals and medical colleges for women in the United States […]
Qiu Jin, Chinese feminist & revolutionary martyr
Qiu Jin (1875–1907) was a Chinese writer & poet, a strong-willed feminist who is considered a national hero in China. Also called “Jianhu Nüxia” (Woman Knight of Mirror Lake”), she was executed after participating in a failed uprising against the Qing Dynasty. Qiu Jin was born in 1875 to a family of the gentry, and […]
Indra Devi, Mother of Western Yoga
Indra Devi was not only a female pioneer in the field of yoga; she helped spread the ancient discipline to Western civilization. Yoga was the domain of men from its inception. The earliest visual evidence of yoga comes from about 2500 BC. Men were the teachers and practitioners of yoga from that point until the […]
Queen Liliʻuokalani, first and last queen regnant of Hawaii
Liliʻuokalani (1838–1917), born Lydia Liliʻuokalani Loloku Walania Wewehi Kamakaʻ, was the first female monarch of Hawaii to reign in her own right. Up until the 1890s, the Kingdom of Hawaiʻ was an independent sovereign state, officially recognized by the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, and Germany. During Liliʻuokalani’s reign, the Overthrow of the […]
Sarah Guppy, Eclectic English Inventor
I used to live in Richmond Hill in Bristol and was aware of the green plaque a few doors down advising the world that it used to be the home of Sarah Guppy, an English inventor who lived between 1770 and 1852. Indeed I always parked my car in the tree-filled garden opposite her home […]
Marguerite D’Youville, the First Canadian Saint
On December 9th, 1990 thousands of North Americans converged on St. Peter’s to celebrate the canonization of Marguerite d’Youville (1701–1771), the first Canadian-born saint. Born over 245 years ago outside Montreal, Marguerite d’Youville was an 18th century Mother Teresa who dedicated her life and work to the poor, the ill and the destitute. This foundress […]
Fanny Blankers-Koen, wife, mother, and four-time Olympic gold medalist
Fanny Blankers-Koen (1918–2004) was a Dutch Olympic athlete known as the Flying Housewife. In the 1948 Olympics in London, the 30-year-old mother of two won four gold medals and set world records — while pregnant with her third child. She was the first woman to win four Olympic gold medals, and the first one to […]
Wilma Rudolph, Olympic gold medalist & civil rights pioneer
Wilma Rudolph (1940–1994) was considered the fastest woman in the world in the ‘60s, and the first American woman to win three gold medals in track & field in the 1960 Olympics. This was the first year that the Olympics were covered internationally on television, which helped Wilma become an international star. In the 1960 […]
Gay Allis Rose Clifford, poet & scholar
Gay Allis Rose Clifford (1943-1998) was a poet and a literary theorist whose most influential piece, Transformations of Allegory, has been cited by over a hundred subsequent works and is still a major work today in the field of allegory in literature. Gay Clifford left her mark not only in the world of literature, but […]
Miss Florence Smith, factory manageress at Tate & Lyle
Researching my book The Sugar Girls, about female workers at Tate & Lyle’s East End sugar and syrup factories in the years during and after the Second World War, I met many remarkable women, and heard about many more. But one character stood out – a legendary figure to all the women I interviewed, remembered […]
