HISTORY86 - 15 Women Who Changed the World

Recently, I’ve written about historic inventions that changed the world, and some of the famous productive people of history.  Most of these articles involved men.  I decided it was time to write about some of the important women who changed the world. 

My principal sources include “100 Women Who Changed the World,” historyextra.com; “60 Famous Women in History Who Changed the World,” marieclaire.com; “15 Famous Women Throughout History and Their Lasting Impact,” womanday.com; and numerous other online sources.

Introduction

It was obvious to me from the sources listed above and others that there are hundreds of women throughout history who had a major impact on the world.  Some of these lists were very broad, including such categories as entertainment and sports - way too many people to meaningfully discuss in a blog article.  So, I decided, what the heck, this is my blog, and I’ll write about subjects (in this case women) that interest me. 

I selected 15 women to talk about; my list includes four rulers of countries, four scientists, three social activists, two supreme court justices, the first nurse, and a prominent publisher.  I’ll talk about these women in the order of their birthdates.

Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122 - 1204)

Eleanor of Aquitaine was queen of two great medieval European powers - England and France.  One of the wealthiest women in Europe, she played an active role in government affairs.

Born in about 1122, Eleanor became Duchess of Aquitaine, a region in what is now south-western France, after her father’s death in 1137.  The teenage Eleanor suddenly became the most eligible bride in Europe.

She was Queen of France from 1137 to 1152 as the wife of King Louis VII, Queen of England from 1154 to 1189 as the wife of King Henry II, and Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right from 1137 until her death in 1204.  She was the mother of Richard I (the Lionheart) and John of England.  (How this all happened is a soap opera and much too complicated to explain here.) 

As the heiress of the House of Poitiers, which controlled much of southwestern France, she was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in western Europe during the High Middle Ages.  Militarily, she was a key leading figure in the Second Crusade.  Culturally, she was a patron of the arts.  Eleanor and her court were also responsible for the development of courtly love, ideals, and etiquette governing the courtship of knights and ladies, which became the accepted mode of behavior for the nobility throughout medieval Europe.

Eleanor of Aquitaine is considered by many to have been the most powerful and enlightened woman of the 12^th century, if not the entire medieval epoch.

 

Queen Elizabeth I (1533 - 1603)

Queen Elizabeth I was Queen of England and Ireland from 1558 until her death in 1603.  Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, and had an unpromising start, being declared illegitimate following her mother’s execution.  She survived interrogation and imprisonment during the reigns of her half-siblings to become England’s greatest ruling queen.  Elizabeth was the last monarch of the House of Tudor and is sometimes referred to as the "Virgin Queen.”

Elizabeth depended heavily on a group of trusted advisers led by William Cecil.  One of her first actions as queen was the support of the English Protestant church, established by her father Henry VIII in the 1530s, that evolved into the Church of England. 

Elizabeth was cautious in foreign affairs, maneuvering between the major powers of France and Spain. 

Elizabeth's reign became known as the Elizabethan era.  Elizabeth presided over a period of exploration and great invention.  The period is famous for the flourishing of English drama, led by playwrights such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, the prowess of English maritime adventurers, such as Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh, and for the defeat of the Spanish Armada. 

It was expected that Elizabeth would marry and produce an heir; however, despite numerous courtships, she never did.  She was eventually succeeded by her first cousin twice removed, James VI of Scotland, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots; this laid the foundation for the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Queen Elizabeth I ruled England for 70 years.

 

Catherine the Great (1729 - 1796)

Russia’s longest-ruling female leader, Catherine was head of the country as it modernized, expanded, and strengthened.  A patron of arts and a supporter of education, her reforms led her to become one of the most influential rulers in Russian history.

She led her country into full participation in the political and cultural life of Europe.  With her ministers, she reorganized the administration and law of the Russian Empire and extended Russian territory, adding Crimea and much of Poland.

Catherine II, (born Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst in Germany), most commonly known as Catherine the Great, was the reigning empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796.  She came to power after overthrowing her husband, Peter III.  Under her long reign, inspired by the ideas of the Enlightenment, Russia experienced a renaissance of culture and sciences, which led to the founding of many new cities, universities, and theaters, along with large-scale immigration from the rest of Europe, and the recognition of Russia as one of the great powers of Europe.

Assisted by highly successful generals, she governed at a time when the Russian Empire was expanding rapidly by conquest and diplomacy.  In the south, the Crimean Khante was annexed following victories over the Bar Confederation and Ottoman Empire in the Russo-Turkish War.  With the support of Great Britain, Russia colonized the territories of New Russia along the coasts of the Black and Azov Seas. In the west, the Polish - Lithuanian Commonwealth - ruled by Catherine's former lover, King Stanislaw August Poniatowki - was eventually partitioned, with the Russian Empire gaining the largest share.  In the east, Russians became the first Europeans to colonize Alaska, establishing Russian America.  An admirer of Peter the Great, Catherine continued to modernize Russia along Western European lines. 

The Manifesto on Freedom of the Nobility, issued during the short reign of Peter III, and confirmed by Catherine, freed Russian nobles from compulsory military or state service.  The construction of many mansions of the nobility, in the classical style endorsed by the empress, changed the face of the country. 

As a patron of the arts, she presided over the age of the Russian Enlightenment, including the establishment of the Smolny Institute of Noble Maidens, the first state-financed higher education institution for women in Europe.  In 1764, Catherine the Great founded the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, adjoining the Winter Palace.  The gallery served as a private gallery for the extensive art amassed by the empress.

Catherine the Great is often included in the ranks of the enlightened despots.  

Russia’s Catherine the Great modernized, expanded, and strengthened her country.

 

Ada Lovelace (1815 - 1852)

Ada Lovelace is considered to be the first computer programmer, an industry that has since transformed business, our lives, and the world.  In an industry still dominated by men, it’s particularly striking that the first programmer was a woman.  Lovelace is particularly intriguing as, not only was she a woman working during a period when men dominated the fields of science and mathematics, but she also had a unique and farsighted insight into the potential of computers.

Ada Lovelace (née Byron) was an English mathematician and writer.  She was the only legitimate child of poet Lord Byron and Lady Byron.  (All of Byron's other children were born out of wedlock to other women.)  Byron separated from his wife a month after Ada was born and left England forever.  He died in Greece when Ada was eight.  Her mother remained bitter and promoted Ada's interest in mathematics and logic in an effort to prevent her from developing her father's eccentricities. 

Ada Lovelace had a fascination with science and mathematics that defied the expectations of her class and gender at the time.  Ada pursued her studies assiduously. She married William King in 1835.  King was made Earl of Lovelace in 1838, Ada thereby becoming Countess of Lovelace.

When she was 18, her mathematical talents led her to a long working relationship and friendship with fellow British mathematician Charles Babbage, who originated the concept of a general-purpose digital programmable computer.

Today Ada Lovelace is chiefly known for her assessment and notes on Charles Babbage's proposed computer, the Analytical Engine. 

Her notes are the first description for computer software and are important in the early history of computers, especially since they contained what many consider to be the first computer program - that is, an algorithm designed to be carried out by a machine.  She also developed a vision of the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculating or number-crunching, while many others, including Babbage himself, focused only on those capabilities.

Years ahead of her time, Ada Lovelace is one of the many figures in the history of science whose work was only properly appreciated posthumously.

Ada Lovelace was the first computer programmer.

 

Queen Victoria (1819 - 1901)

Victoria remains one of the United Kingdom’s most iconic monarchs, more than a century after her death.  Crowned in 1837, she oversaw the nation and its empire throughout a remarkable period of social, technological, and economic change.

Her reign of 63 years and 216 days, which was longer than any of her predecessors, is known as the Victorian era.  It was a period of industrial, political, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom.

Over the course of her reign, Victoria witnessed a mammoth expansion of the British Empire.  During her first 20 years on the throne, Britain’s imperial conquests had increased almost fivefold.  By the time she died, it was the largest empire the world had ever known, and included a quarter of the world’s population.  As the monarchy was seen as a focal point for imperial pride, and a means of uniting the empire’s disparate peoples, Victoria’s image was spread across the empire.

Victoria was the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn (the fourth son of King George III), and Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld.  She inherited the throne at age 18 after her father's three elder brothers died without surviving legitimate issue.  Victoria, a constitutional monarch, attempted privately to influence government policy and ministerial appointments; publicly, she became a national icon who was identified with strict standards of personal morality.

Victoria married her first cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1840.  In their 21 years of marriage, they had nine children, five daughters and four sons.  As a means of extending Britain’s influence and building international allegiances, several of their sons and daughters were married into various European monarchies, and within just a couple of generations, Victoria’s descendants were spread across the continent.  Her 42 grandchildren could be found in the royal families of Germany, Russia, Greece, Romania, Sweden, Norway and Spain.

After Albert's death in 1861, Victoria plunged into deep mourning and avoided public appearances.  Years later, Victoria was eventually coaxed back into the limelight.  Her golden and diamond jubilees of 1887 and 1897 were crucial to restoring her reputation.  Designed to be show-stopping crowd-pleasers, these national festivities reinvented the “widow of Windsor” as a source of national (and imperial) pride and celebration. Grand processions and military displays were jam-packed with patriotic pomp, while Victoria’s face was plastered on all manner of commemorative products.

Victoria proved herself to be a remarkably adept linguist.  As well as being fluent in both English and German, she also spoke French, Italian and Latin.

Victoria died at the age of 81. The last British monarch of the House of Hanover, she was succeeded by her son Edward VII of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

 

Queen Victoria ruled the British Empire for over 63 years.

Florence Nightingale (1820 - 1910)

Florence Nightingale is credited as the founder of modern-day nursing.  She was also an English social reformer and statistician.

Florence Nightingale was born into a wealthy and well-connected British family in Florence, Tuscany, Italy, and was named after the city of her birth.  She benefited from her father's advanced ideas about women's education.  She studied history, mathematics, Italian, classical literature, and philosophy, and from an early age, displayed an extraordinary ability for collecting and analyzing data which she would use to great effect in later life.  She rejected the expected role for a woman of her status to become a wife and mother.  Nightingale worked hard to educate herself in the art and science of nursing, in the face of opposition from her family and the restrictive social code for affluent young English women.

Nightingale came to prominence while serving as a manager and trainer of British nurses during the Crimean War, fought between Britain and Russia (1853-56), in which she organized care for wounded British soldiers at Constantinople.  As well as tirelessly tending the sick, Nightengale reported back to the army medical services on how to reduce avoidable deaths by improving hygiene and living standards. 

Nightingale gave nursing a favorable reputation and became an icon of Victorian culture, especially in the persona of "The Lady with the Lamp," making rounds of wounded soldiers at night.  Queen Victoria was one of her biggest supporters.

Nightingale continued her work after the war and was instrumental in establishing a permanent military nursing service and implementing improvements to the army medical services.  In 1860, she laid the foundation of professional nursing with the establishment of her nursing school at St Thomas' Hospital in London.  It was the first secular nursing school in the world, and is now part of King's College London.  In recognition of her pioneering work in nursing, the Nightingale Pledge taken by new nurses, and the Florence Nightingale Medal, the highest international distinction a nurse can achieve, were named in her honor.  The annual International Nurses Day is celebrated on her birthday.

Her social reforms included improving healthcare for all sections of British society, advocating better hunger relief in India, helping to abolish prostitution laws that were harsh for women, and expanding the acceptable forms of female participation in the workforce.

Nightingale was also a pioneer in statistics; she represented her analysis of medical data in graphical forms, including “pie charts” and “histograms” to better visualize data, and ease drawing conclusions and determining actions.  She used her passion for statistics to campaign for better food, hygiene, and clothing for soldiers and the poor.  She also traced relationships between illnesses and such factors as age, sex, and poverty.

Nightingale was a prodigious and versatile writer. In her lifetime, much of her published work was concerned with spreading medical knowledge.  Some of her tracts were written in simple English so that they could easily be understood by those with poor literary skills. 

Florence Nightingale was the founder of modern nursing.

 

Marie Curie (1867 - 1934)

Marie Curie was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who did pioneering work developing the theory of "radioactivity" - a term she coined, and who discovered two new chemical elements.  She received a Nobel Prize (in Physics) in 1903 for her research in "radiation phenomena.”  She won another Nobel Prize (in Chemistry) in 1911 for her discovery of the elements, polonium and radium.  She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields. 

Marie Curie (nee Maria Skłodowska) was born in Warsaw, in what was then the Kingdom of Poland, part of the Russian Empire.  She studied at Warsaw and Paris, and conducted her subsequent scientific work in Paris.  In 1895, she married the French physicist Pierre Curie, and she shared the 1903 Nobel Prize with him and with the physicist Henri Becquerel. 

In 1906, Marie Curie became the first woman professor at the University of Paris.

She founded the Curie Institute in Paris in 1920, and the Curie Institute in Warsaw in 1932; both remain major medical research field hospitals.

Marie Curie died in 1934, at age 66 of aplastic anemia, likely from exposure to radiation in the course of her scientific research and in the course of her radiological work.  In addition to her Nobel Prizes, she received numerous other honors and tributes; in 1995 she became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Paris Panthéon, and Poland declared 2011 the Year of Marie Curie during the International Year of Chemistry.

 

Marie Curie is the only person to a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields.

Margaret Sanger (1879 - 1916)

Margaret Sanger was a feminist and women's rights activist.  She wrote pamphlets and opened a women's health clinic decades before her biggest achievement - getting the Food and Drug Administration to approve the first oral contraceptive, Enovid, in 1960, six years before her death.

Margaret Sanger was born Margaret Louise Higgins in 1879 in Corning, New York.  In 1902, she married architect William Sanger.  Suffering from consumption (recurring active tubercular), Margaret Sanger was able to bear three children, and the five settled in Westchester, New York. 

Sanger worked as a birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse.  She popularized the term "birth control,” opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established organizations that evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

She was prosecuted in 1914 for her book Family Limitation under the Comstock Act of 1873 that defined birth control as obscene and made it a federal offense to send contraceptive devices or references to it through the mail.  She feared the consequences of her writings, so she fled to Britain until public opinion had quieted.  Sanger's efforts contributed to several judicial cases that helped legalize contraception in the United States.

Sanger drew a sharp distinction between birth control and abortion, and was opposed to abortions, declining to participate in them as a nurse.

In 1916, Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the U.S., which led to her arrest for distributing information on contraception, after an undercover policewoman bought a copy of her pamphlet on family planning.  Her subsequent trial and appeal generated controversy.  

Sanger felt that for women to have a more equal footing in society and to lead healthier lives, they needed to be able to determine when to bear children.  She also wanted to prevent so-called back-alley abortions, which were common at the time, because abortions were illegal in the U.S.  She believed that, while abortion may be a viable option in life-threatening situations for the pregnant, it should generally be avoided.  She considered contraception the only practical way to avoid them.

In 1921, Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, which later became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.  In New York City, she organized the first birth control clinic to be staffed by all-female doctors, as well as a clinic in Harlem which had an all African-American advisory council, where African-American staff was later added.  In 1929, she formed the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control, which served as the focal point of her lobbying efforts to legalize contraception in the United States.  From 1952 to 1959, Sanger served as president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation. 

Sanger remains an admired figure in the American reproductive rights movement.  

 

Margaret Sanger is widely regarded as a founder of the modern birth control movement. 

Rosa Parks (1913 - 2005)

African American Rosa Parks is famous for being the catalyst of the Civil Rights Movement.  In 1955, Parks refused to give up her front seat so that a white person could sit down on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, for which she was jailed and fined.  The experience led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and countless other Civil Rights protests, and cemented Parks as a symbol of dignity and strength amidst racial segregation.  Her protest was supported by many other African Americans and sparked the civil rights movement which, in the 1960s, eventually won equal rights.  Four years after her death in 2005, Barack Obama became the first African-American U.S. president.

Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama.  In 1932, Rosa married Raymond Parks, a barber from Montgomery.  He was a member of the NAACP, which at the time was collecting money to support the defense of the Scottsboro Boys, a group of Black men falsely accused of raping two white women.  Rosa took numerous jobs, ranging from domestic worker to hospital aide.  At her husband's urging, she finished her high school studies in 1933, at a time when fewer than 7% of African Americans had a high-school diploma.

Parks became a NAACP activist in 1943, participating in several high-profile civil rights campaigns. On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks rejected bus driver James F. Blake's order to vacate a row of four seats in the "colored" section in favor of a white passenger, once the "White" section was filled.  Parks was not the first person to resist bus segregation, but the NAACP believed that she was the best candidate for seeing through a court challenge after her arrest for civil disobedience in violating Alabama segregation laws.  She helped inspire the black community to boycott the Montgomery buses for over a year.  The case became bogged down in the state courts, but the federal Montgomery bus lawsuit Browder v. Gayle resulted in a November 1956 decision that bus segregation is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Parks' act of defiance and the Montgomery bus boycott became important symbols of the Civil Rights movement. She became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation, and organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including Edgar Nixon and Martin Luther King Jr.   At the time, Parks was employed as a seamstress at a local department store and was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP.

Although widely honored in later years, she also suffered for her act; she was fired from her job, and received death threats for years afterwards.  Shortly after the boycott, she moved to Detroit. 

From 1965 to 1988, she served as secretary and receptionist to John Conyers, an African-American U.S. Representative for Michigan. She was also active in the Black Power movement and the support of political prisoners in the U.S.

After retirement, Parks wrote her autobiography and continued to insist that there was more work to be done in the struggle for justice.  Parks received national recognition, including the NAACP's 1979 Spingarn Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, and a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall.  Upon her death in 2005, she was the first woman to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda.  The United States Congress has honored her as "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement.”

Rosa Parks was the catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement.

 

Katherine Graham (1917 - 2001)

Katharine Graham was an American newspaper publisher. She led her family's newspaper, The Washington Post, from 1963 to 1991.  Graham presided over the paper as it reported on the Watergate scandal, which eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.  She was the first 20^th century female publisher of a major American newspaper and the first woman elected to the board of the Associated Press.

Katharine Graham (nee Meyer) was born into a wealthy family in New York City.  Her father, Eugene Meyer, was a financier, and later, Chairman of the Federal Reserve.  He bought The Washington Post in 1933 at a bankruptcy auction.  Eugene Meyer was Chairman of the Washington Post Company until his death in 1959.

In 1940, Katherine Meyer married Philip Graham, a graduate of Harvard Law School and a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter.  At Eugene Meyer’s death, his son-in-law Philip Graham took over The Washington Post and the company expanded with the purchases of television stations and Newsweek magazine.

Katharine Graham assumed the reins of the company and of the Post after Philip Graham's suicide in 1963, after a long period of mental illness.  She held the title of president and was de facto publisher of the paper from September 1963.  She formally held the title of publisher from 1969 to 1979, and that of chairwoman of the board from 1973 to 1991.

In 1971, Katherine Graham oversaw the publication of the Pentagon Papers and coverage of the Watergate scandal that toppled President Nixon.

After taking the company public in 1972, she became the first female Fortune 500 CEO, as leader of the Washington Post company.  As the only woman to be in such a high position at a publishing company, she had no female role models, and had difficulty being taken seriously by many of her male colleagues and employees.  Graham outlined in her memoir her lack of confidence and distrust in her own knowledge. The convergence of the women's movement with Graham's control of the Post brought about changes in Graham's attitude and also led her to promote gender equality within her company.

Graham published her memoirs, Personal History, in 1997.  The book was praised for its honest portrayal of Philip Graham's mental illness and received rave reviews for her depiction of her life, as well as a glimpse into how the roles of women have changed over the course of Graham's life.  The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998.

Although Graham retired from the Washington Post Company in 1991, she remained Chairman of the Board until her death from an accidental fall in 2001 at the age of 84.

 

Katherine Graham was a female trailblazer in the world of publishing and media.

 

Rosalind Franklin (1920 - 1958)

We can thank British scientist Rosalind Franklin for much of today’s knowledge of DNA, the molecule that carries genetic information for the development and functioning of humans. Using X-ray diffraction methods, she discovered DNA's density, and more importantly, its molecular structure.  This enabled James Watson and Francis Crick's discovery that DNA is shaped in a double helix. 

Franklin’s discovery changed how scientists view genetics and how genes are passed down in families. The life-changing innovations that followed - mapping the human genome, test-tube babies, genetic engineering - all depend on understanding the chemical foundations of heredity.

Rosalind Franklin was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer (using X-rays to determine the atomic and molecular structure of a crystal) whose work was central to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), RNA (ribonucleic acid), viruses, coal, and graphite.  Although her works on coal and viruses were appreciated in her lifetime, Franklin's contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA were largely unknown, and thus unrecognized during her lifetime. 

Franklin was born in Notting Hill, London, into an affluent and influential British family.  In 1941, she graduated with a degree in natural sciences from Newnham College, Cambridge.  Her research on coal helped Franklin earn a PhD from Cambridge in 1945.  Moving to Paris in 1947 as a postdoctoral researcher, she became an accomplished X-ray crystallographer.  In 1951, she joined King's College in London as a research associate. 

Franklin is best known for her work on the X-ray diffraction images of DNA while at King's College, particularly a photo taken by her student Raymond Gosling in 1952, that led directly to the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA.  The crucial piece of evidence in the famous X-ray picture was a dark cross of dots, the signature image of a concealed molecular spiral.  Using this photograph and subsequent work by Franklin and themselves, James Watson and Francis Crick announced the double-helix nature of DNA in 1953, with only a footnote acknowledging the unpublished contributions of Rosalind Franklin.

Franklin’s X-ray diffraction image of DNA was critical to solving the double-helix mystery.  But she was not credited and died in 1958 at age 37 before the record could be corrected.

In 1962, Watson and Crick received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA.

In April 2023, based on new evidence, scientists concluded that Franklin was a contributor and "equal player" in the discovery process of DNA.  Many today, think that Franklin deserved a posthumous Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her DNA work.

Franklin also led pioneering work on the molecular structures of viruses.  In 1958, on the day before she was to unveil the structure of the tobacco mosaic virus at an international fair in Brussels, Franklin died of ovarian cancer. Her team member Aaron Klug continued her research, winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1982.

 

Rosalind Franklin was instrumental in the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA.

Sandra Day O’Connor (1930 - present)

Sandra Day O'Connor is an American lawyer, former politician, and jurist who served as the first female associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 to 2006.  Nominated by President Ronald Reagan, the Senate vote to appoint her was unanimous.  A moderate conservative, O'Connor was known for her precisely researched opinions. She was considered a swing vote for the Rehnquist Court and the first four months of the Roberts Court.  She was key in upholding big cases, like Roe v. Wade,  in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States generally protected a right to have an abortion.

Sandra O’Connor (nee Day) was born in El Paso, Texas, the daughter of a rancher.  She grew up on a 198,000-acre family cattle ranch near Duncan, Arizona.  When she was 16 years old, Day enrolled at Stanford University.  She graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in economics in 1950.   She continued at Stanford Law School for her law degree in 1952.  Six months after her graduation, in December 1952, O'Connor married lawyer John Jay O’Connor at her family's ranch. 

Upon graduation from law school O'Connor had difficulty finding a paying job as an attorney in a law firm because of her gender.  At the time, only a very small percentage of lawyers in the United States were women.

O'Connor found employment as a deputy county attorney in San Mateo, California, after she offered to work for no salary and without an office, sharing space with a secretary.  After a few months, she began drawing a small salary as she performed legal research and wrote memos. 

When her husband was drafted, O'Connor decided to pick up and go with him to work in Germany as a civilian attorney for the Army's Quartermaster Corps.  They remained there for three years before returning to the states where they settled in Maricopa County, Arizona, to begin their family.  Following the birth of their third son, O'Connor took a five-year hiatus from the practice of law.  She volunteered in various political organizations, such as the Maricopa County Young Republicans, and served on the presidential campaign for Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater in 1964.

O'Connor served as Assistant Attorney General of Arizona from 1965 to 1969.  In 1969, the governor of Arizona appointed O'Connor to fill a Republican vacancy in the Arizona Senate.  She ran for and won the election for the seat the following year.  By 1973, she became the first woman to serve as Arizona's or any state's Majority Leader.  She developed a reputation as a skilled negotiator and a moderate, while serving two full terms.

In 1974, O'Connor was appointed to the Maricopa County Superior Court, serving from 1975 to 1979 when she was elevated to the Arizona State Court of Appeals.  She served on the Court of Appeals-Division One until 1981 when she was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan.

Over the next 25 years, Sandra Day O’Connor cast the decisive votes to resolve the most emotional debates that came before the Court, including a series of abortion and affirmative action cases.  O'Connor most frequently sided with the Court's conservative bloc but demonstrated an ability to side with the Court's liberal members.  Avoiding ideology, she decided on a case-by-case basis and voted with careful deliberation in a way that she felt benefited individual rights and the Constitution (which she viewed to be "an ever-changing work in progress").  During her time on the Court, some publications ranked O'Connor among the most powerful women in the world.  

After serving 25 years on the Supreme Court, O’Connor retired in 2006 to care for her husband, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s, and who died in 2009.   Samuel Alito was nominated to take her seat in October 2005 and joined the Court on January 31, 2006.

After retiring from the Supreme Court, O’Connor remained active, hearing cases in district courts as a visiting judge, giving speeches and engaging in philanthropic and policy work. 

She succeeded Henry Kissinger as the Chancellor of the College of William & Mary.  On August 12, 2009, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.

In October 2018, she circulated an open letter sharing news of her failing health and complete withdrawal from public life. 

O’Connor’s service as the first woman Supreme Court justice proved beyond doubt that the Court, and the country, are well-served by having women justices - a belief now shared regardless of political party or ideology.   

Sandra Day O’Connor was the first woman justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

 

Ruth Bader Ginsberg (1933 - 2020)

Ruth Bader Ginsberg was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death in 2020.  As the second woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, Ginsburg was a pioneer for women's rights and gender equality.  During her time serving in the highest court of the country, she made many landmark decisions, including 1996's United States v. Virginia, which held the Virginia Military Institute could not refuse to admit women. 

As a pioneer of gender equality, Ginsberg co-founded the Women's Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, which "empowers poor women, women of color, and immigrant women who have been subject to gender bias and who face pervasive barriers to equality."

Ruth Ginsberg (nee Bader) was born and grew up in Brooklyn, New York.  In 1945, she earned her bachelor's degree at Cornell University and married tax attorney Martin D. Ginsburg, becoming a mother before starting law school at Harvard, where she was one of the few women in her class.  Ginsburg transferred to Columbia Law School, where she graduated at the top of her class in 1959.  Ginsburg was the first woman to be on two major law reviews: the Harvard Law Review and Columbia Law Review. 

Despite her excellent credentials, Ginsberg, as Sandra Day O’Connor before her, struggled to find employment as a lawyer, because of her gender and the fact that she was a mother. 

During the early 1960s, she worked with the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure, learned Swedish, and co-authored a book with Swedish jurist Anders Bruzelius; her work in Sweden profoundly influenced her thinking on gender equality.  She then became a professor at Rutgers Law School and Columbia Law School, teaching civil procedure as one of the few women in her field.

Ginsburg spent much of her legal career as an advocate for gender equality and women's rights, winning many arguments before the Supreme Court.  She advocated as a volunteer attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, and was a member of its board of directors and one of its general counsels in the 1970s. 

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed Ginsburg to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where she served until 1993, when Ginsberg was nominated by President Bill Clinton to replace retiring justice Byron White on the Supreme Court.  Ginsburg was the first Jewish woman and the second woman to serve on the Court, after Sandra Day O'Connor.

Architect of the legal fight for women's rights in the 1970s, Ginsburg subsequently served 27 years on the nation's highest court.  During her tenure, Ginsburg authored the majority opinions in many cases.   Later in her tenure, Ginsburg received attention for passionate dissents that reflected liberal views of the law.  She was dubbed "the Notorious R.B.G.,” a moniker she later embraced.

Between Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement in 2006, and the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor in 2009, she was the only female justice on the Supreme Court. 

Despite two bouts with cancer, and public pleas from liberal law scholars, she decided not to retire in 2013 or 2014, when President Obama and a Democratic-controlled Senate could appoint and confirm her successor.  Ginsburg died at her home in Washington, D.C., in September 2020, at the age of 87, from complications of metastatic pancreatic cancer.  The vacancy created by her death was filled 39 days later by Amy Coney Barrett, nominated by Republican President Donald Trump. 

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg was a pioneer for women's rights and gender equality.

 

Gloria Steinem (1934 - present)

Gloria Steinem is an acclaimed journalist, trailblazing feminist, and one of the most visible, passionate leaders and spokeswomen of the women’s rights movement in the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries.

Steinem was born in 1934 in Toledo, Ohio.  After graduating high school, she attended Smith College in Massachusetts where she studied government.  She graduated magna cum laude in 1956 and earned the Chester Bowles Fellowship, which enabled her to spend two years studying and researching in India.  Her time abroad inspired an interest in grassroots activism, which would later manifest itself in her work with the women’s liberation movement and the Equal Rights Amendment.

Steinem started her professional career as a journalist in New York, writing freelance pieces for various publications.  Getting plumb assignments was tough for women in the late 1950s and 1960s, when men ran the newsrooms, and women were largely relegated to secretarial and behind-the-scenes research roles. 

Undeterred, Steinem gained national attention in 1963 when Show magazine hired her to go undercover to report on the working conditions at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Club.  While Steinem’s exposé revealed the not-so-glamorous, sexist, and underpaid life of the bunny/waitresses, Steinem struggled to be taken seriously as a journalist after this assignment.  She worked hard to make a name for herself, and in 1968, she helped found New York magazine, where she became an editor and political writer.

At New York magazine, Steinem reported on political campaigns and progressive social issues, including the women’s liberation movement.  Steinem first spoke publicly in 1969 at a speak-out event to legalize abortion in New York State, where she shared the story of the abortion she had overseas when she was 22 years old.  The event proved life-changing, sparking Steinem’s feminism and engagement with the women’s movement.  She attended and spoke at numerous protests and demonstrations, and her strong intellect and good looks, made her an in-demand media guest and movement spokesperson.

Steinem soon realized the value of a women’s movement magazine, and joined forces with journalists Patricia Carbine and Letty Cottin Pogrebin to found Ms. Magazine.  

Steinem’s life has been dedicated to the cause of women’s rights, as she led marches and toured the country as an in-demand speaker.  In 1972, Steinem and feminists such as Congresswoman Bella Abzug, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, and feminist Betty Friedan formed the National Women’s Political Caucus.  It continues to support gender equality and to ensure the election of more pro-equality women to public office.  Other organizations Steinem has co-founded in her vast career include the Women’s Action Alliance (1971), which promotes non-sexist, multi-racial children’s education; the Women’s Media Center (2004) to promote positive images of women in media; Voters for Choice (1977), a prochoice political action committee; and the Ms. Foundation for Women.  In the 1990s, she helped establish Take Our Daughters to Work Day, the first national effort to empower young girls to learn about career opportunities.

In 2000, at age 66, the long single Steinem married for the first time in a Cherokee ceremony in Oklahoma. Her husband, entrepreneur and activist David Bale, sadly died of lymphoma four years later.

An award-winning and prolific writer, Steinem has authored several books, including a biography on Marilyn Monroe, and the best-selling My Life on the Road.  Her work has also been published and reprinted in numerous anthologies and textbooks.  In 2013, President Barack Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor.  In her honor, in 2017, Rutgers University created The Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies.

 

Gloria Steinem has been one of the most passionate leaders and spokeswomen of the women’s rights movement.

Jane Goodall (1934 - present)

Ethologist (science of animal behavior) and conservationist Jane Goodall redefined what it means to be human and set the standard for how behavioral studies are conducted through her work with wild chimpanzees.   Her extensive research (which has spanned almost 60 years) has provided some of the most groundbreaking insight into the minds and social lives of our closest relative, chimpanzees.

Jane Goodall, was born in Bournemouth, England.  As a child, she had a natural love for the outdoors and animals.  Goodall was unable to afford college and instead elected to attend secretarial school in South Kensington, where she perfected her typing, shorthand, and bookkeeping skills. 

In 1957, she met famed paleoanthropologist Dr. Louis Leakey, who offered her a job at a natural history museum.  She worked there for a time before Leakey decided to send her to the Gombe Stream Game Reserve (what is today Gombe Stream National Park) in Tanzania to study wild chimpanzees.   His hope was that by studying our closest living relatives (chimpanzees, who share a common ancestor with humans) he could discover more about what early humans were like − things he could not learn from fossils alone.

During the years she studied at Gombe Stream National Park, she made three observations that challenged conventional scientific ideas: (1) chimps are omnivores, not herbivores, and even hunt for meat; (2) chimps use tools; and (3) chimps make their tools (a trait previously used to define humans).  Beyond the significance of her discoveries, it was Goodall’s high standard for methods and ethics in behavioral studies that may have had the greatest impact in the scientific community.

Goodall continued to work in the field, and with Leakey’s help, began her doctoral program without an undergraduate degree in 1962. At Cambridge University, she found herself at odds with senior scientists over the methods she used − how she had named the chimpanzees, rather than using the more common numbering system, and for suggesting that the chimps have emotions and personalities.  She further upset those in power at the university when she wrote her first book, My Friends, the Wild Chimpanzees, published by National Geographic, aimed at the general public rather than an academic audience.  The book was wildly popular, and her academic peers were outraged.  Dr. Jane Goodall earned her Ph.D. on February 9, 1966, and continued to work at Gombe for the next twenty years.

Goodall shifted from scientist to conservationist and activist after attending a primatology conference in 1986, where she noticed that all the presenters mentioned deforestation at their study sites worldwide. Goodall knew that she had to take action to protect the forest and preserve the critical habitat of the chimpanzees.

Her first mission was to improve the conditions for chimpanzees held at medical research facilities.  Goodall helped set up several refuges for chimps freed from these facilities or those orphaned by hunters.  She established the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) in 1977, a global community-centered conservation organization, and JGI’s program Roots & Shoots in 1991, which encourages young people around the world to be agents of change by participating in projects that protect the environment, wildlife, or their communities. 

Goodall is still hard at work today raising awareness and money to protect the chimpanzees, their habitats, and the planet we all share. She talks to government officials and business people around the world encouraging them to support wildlife conservation and protect critical habitat.

 

Jane Goodall has provided groundbreaking insight into the minds and social lives of our closest relative, chimpanzees.

Conclusions

I’m satisfied that I picked a reasonable group of 15 extraordinary women to talk about.  While there were many candidates, I am really impressed with the contributions these 15 women made to our World.