As with many fields of study, the canonical works of the social sciences are overrun with the findings of white males. But in the field of psychoanalysis, Melanie Klein, a Viennese Jewish woman, made an impact on the field with her unlikely-sounding theories published in her book The Psychoanalysis of Children, where she documents infants’ […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Rose-Adélaïde Ducreux, French painter, composer, and musician
Though the art world of the 18th century was dominated by men, quite a few women were trained as artists and held their own in exhibits and sales. One of these women was Rose-Adélaïde Ducreux, whose portrait of herself tuning her harp is a gorgeous and historically fascinating work of art. Rose was born in […]
Suzanne Valadon, self-taught artist of Bohemian Paris
Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938) was a successful, self-trained artist of Montmartre in Paris. She began her career modelling for such artists as Toulouse-Lautrec and Renoir, and was close friends with Degas and the composer Erik Satie (who proposed to her immediately — but she turned him down). Watching how the artists painted her, she taught herself […]
Lady Anne Clifford, patron of the arts
Lady Anne Clifford, (1590–1676) was the only surviving child of George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland and his wife Lady Margaret Russell, daughter of Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford. In 1605, she became the 14th Baroness de Clifford in her own right, and hereditary High Sheriff of Westmorland. When her father died in 1605, […]