Mary Treat, Victorian Entomologist and Visionary Biologist
Her meticulous observations earned the respect of leading scientists and challenged established ideas, demonstrating how much careful study of the natural world could uncover.
Women worth knowing
All Stories
Extraordinary women, overlooked stories, and a more complete history. Explore the lives, ideas, and achievements that changed the world.
19th century women
Women’s lives, work, and ideas, 1801–1900.
Explore the lives of women who lived during the 19th century. Their stories reveal ambition, creativity, and struggles for change, including lives that crossed into the centuries on either side.
Clara Barton, Humanitarian and Founder of the American Red Cross
She brought care to wartime battlefields, then built a relief organization that extended its work to communities facing floods, famine, epidemics, and other disasters.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Feminist Writer, Lecturer, and Thinker
Her fiction and arguments for economic independence challenged restrictive ideas about women’s lives, helping readers imagine alternatives to the roles society expected them to accept.
Melanie Klein, the Founding Mother of Children’s Psychology
She took children’s inner lives seriously, developing theories that challenged her peers and helped reshape psychoanalysis despite her unconventional path into the profession.
Cathay Williams, AKA William Cathay, American Civil War soldier
She enlisted under a male name when the army excluded women, claiming a place in military service despite the racism and restrictions surrounding her.
Henrietta Dugdale, Australian women’s rights and suffrage pioneer
Her writing and organizing helped build a women’s suffrage movement, turning anger at inequality into sustained pressure for the right to participate in politics.
Elizabeth Yates, the British Empire’s first female mayor
Her election as mayor challenged expectations of women in public office. Fierce opposition exposed how much resistance remained even after women won the vote.
Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D., America’s first female doctor
She earned a medical degree when the profession excluded women, then helped build hospitals and schools that made it possible for others to follow.
Qiu Jin, Chinese feminist & revolutionary martyr
She used poetry, journalism, and revolutionary organizing to demand education and freedom for women, risking her life to challenge the political and social order.
Queen Liliʻuokalani, first and last queen regnant of Hawaii
She defended her people’s sovereignty as foreign interests threatened their kingdom, while her music preserved a love of homeland that political defeat could not erase.
Sarah Guppy, Eclectic English Inventor
She devised practical inventions for bridges, boats, and the home, pursuing useful solutions when women faced formidable barriers to owning and patenting their ideas.
Esther Howland, the Mother of the American Valentine
Esther Howland turned paper lace and an upstairs workshop of women into a thriving valentine business, helping Americans send their love.
Madam C. J. Walker, self-made millionaire
She built a haircare business that created jobs for Black women, then used her wealth to support education, community institutions, and resistance to racism.
Suzanne Valadon, self-taught artist of Bohemian Paris
She learned to paint while modeling for other artists, then built a celebrated career of her own with bold work that challenged artistic conventions.
Edmonia Lewis, African-American & Native American sculptor of international fame
She built an internationally celebrated sculpture career despite racism and sexism, creating art that inspired other Black and Indigenous artists to pursue their ambitions.
Nana Asma’u: princess, poet, reformer of Muslim women’s education
She turned poetry into a powerful tool for women’s education, training traveling teachers who carried knowledge into communities and helped other women become educators.
Alice Austen, photographer
Her photographs preserved everyday life that might otherwise have disappeared. Their rediscovery brought recognition and helped lift the photographer herself out of poverty.