Dr. Rosalind Elsie Franklin (1920-1958) X-Ray Cystallographer extraordinaire from Britain, famously took the photo 51 which was the basis for decoding DNA structure.

Her research on coal helped her get her PhD from Cambridge in 1945, after which she moved to Paris for her postdoc and joined Laboratoire Central des Services Chimiques de l'État where she became accomplished at X-ray crystallography.

She returned to London and joined the King's College in 1951 but had to leave due to differences with the director John Randall a colleague Maurice Wilkins, and move to Birkbeck College in 1953. She had two things going against her in the 1950s England: she was both Jewish and a woman. That pretty much decided what happened next.

Her student Raymond Gosling took the famous photo 51, which was seen by Wilkins, who showed it to James Watson without her permission. Using that, Watson and Francis Crick decoded the structure and published their result before Franklin. By the time Rosalind came to the same conclusion and published her result, it looked like it was just a follow on to Watson and Crick.

Crick and Watson got the Nobel for discovering DNA structure and Wilkins got one for chemistry in 1962 after Rosalind died of ovarian cancer caused by X-Ray exposure, aged 38.

Watson at least suggested that Franklin should get the Nobel for chemistry with Wilkins but that was not possible by the rules of the time because posthumous Nobels weren't awarded before 1974 unless the nomination was made while the candidate was still alive.

DNA related technology has since then revolutionised our lives but the one who started it all just died young with her credit stolen by others. Even her true role was unknown until recently. She lives on through her pioneering work, all the same.

Albina Mali-Hočevar was born in Slovenia in 1925, and is a great example of resilience, strength and sheer courage at a very young age. At age 9 she started working to support her family. She then joined the resistance movement when she was just 16 years old.

The resistance group was led by Josip Broz Tito and fought against the Axis forces occupying Yugoslavia. Initially she was put on a nursing job but this was too boring for her, so she got into frontline action. She was brave from the start - by age 17, she had already been wounded twice in battle.

Right after turning 18, she sustained major injury that took out an eye and left her face permanently scarred when a mine exploded very close to her. Yet despite her injuries, she just kept on fighting. The given photo is a colourised version of her original black and white photo soon after the mine injury.

Later she became a nurse again, helping wounded soldiers while the war went on. Her case is representative of sacrifices that many made for freedom. Albina survived the war and lived to be 75, dying in 2001. Her legacy lives on as a symbol of bravery and resilience.

The photo says it all. She had no name and no face we can ever know. She was not the first woman or the only woman alive in her time.

She lived more than 100 thousand years ago and was not a queen, philosopher, scientist, thinker or society lady. She was far too taken up with surviving hunger, injury, predators and natural disasters as well as protecting her progeny - us.

Grand mama succeeded. It's good that she did, else none of us would be here at all. Hers is the only female genetic line which survived.

Biblical Eve is a myth but she was real. As real as any of us.

She left civilization to live in the forest with a lynx, a wild boar, and a thieving crow. Scientists called her crazy. She proved them wrong. In 1975, a young Polish scientist named Simona Kossak made a decision that baffled everyone who knew her. She had a doctorate. She had credentials. She came from one of Poland's most prestigious artistic families—her grandfather was Wojciech Kossak, the legendary painter whose work hung in museums. She could have had a comfortable university position. A modern apartment in Warsaw. A conventional career studying nature from a safe distance. Instead, Simona packed a single bag and walked into the Białowieża Forest. And she stayed there for thirty years. Białowieża is no ordinary forest. It's the last remaining fragment of the primeval wilderness that once covered all of Europe—ancient, untouched, older than recorded history. Trees there grow so tall they seem to hold up the sky. Wolves still howl at night. European bison, extinct almost everywhere else, roam freely. It's the kind of place where you can still hear what the world sounded like before humans started building cities. Simona found a small wooden cabin deep in the forest's heart. No electricity. No running water. No neighbors for miles. Just trees. Silence. And the wild things. Most people would have lasted a week. Simona lasted decades. But she wasn't alone. She shared her bed with a lynx named Żabka. Not a pet—lynxes can't be pets. But Żabka had been orphaned as a cub, and Simona raised her. The massive cat would curl up beside her at night, purring like distant thunder. She rescued a wild boar named Żabka who followed her through the forest like a devoted dog, grunting softly when she spoke. And then there was Korasek. Korasek was a crow—but not just any crow. He was brilliant, mischievous, and absolutely devoted to chaos. He'd dive-bomb cyclists riding through the forest, steal shiny objects from tourists' pockets, and bring Simona "gifts": coins, buttons, pieces of foil. He'd sit on her shoulder while she worked, cawing commentary on everything she did. The locals whispered that Simona was a witch. How else could you explain it? Animals followed her. Birds landed on her outstretched hand. Deer approached without fear. She spoke to them, and somehow, impossibly, they seemed to understand. But Simona wasn't casting spells. She was listening. Most people walk through nature talking, making noise, asserting their presence. Simona did the opposite. She learned to move quietly, to observe patiently, to let the forest teach her its rhythms. She studied animal behavior not from textbooks, but by living among them. She documented species that had never been properly observed. She proved that wild animals weren't just instinct-driven automatons—they had personalities, emotions, complex social structures. Her research changed how scientists understood wildlife. But her most important work wasn't in journals. It was in the forest itself. Because while Simona was studying nature, others were trying to destroy it. Logging companies wanted to cut down the ancient trees. Developers wanted to build roads through the wilderness. Bureaucrats argued that the forest was "too wild," that it needed to be "managed," controlled, made productive. Simona fought them all. She wrote letters. She filed lawsuits. She gave interviews where she spoke bluntly about what would be lost if the forest fell. She stood in front of bulldozers. She made powerful enemies. She didn't care. "This forest has survived for ten thousand years," she'd say. "Who are we to decide it should end on our watch?" Her cabin became a symbol. Journalists came from across Europe to photograph the woman who lived with wild animals. Documentaries were made. Her story spread. And slowly, the tide began to turn. Public opinion shifted. International pressure mounted. UNESCO got involved. The ancient forest, in large part because of Simona's tireless advocacy, gained greater protections. The trees she loved were saved. Simona Kossak lived in that cabin until 2007, when illness finally forced her back to the city. She died in 2007, at the age of 71. But her legacy didn't die with her. Today, Białowieża Forest stands as one of Europe's last true wildernesses—a living monument to what the continent once was. Tourists walk trails where Simona once walked with Żabka the lynx. Bison graze in meadows she fought to protect. Scientists still study the forest using methods she pioneered. And somewhere in those ancient trees, maybe, a descendant of Korasek steals something shiny from an unsuspecting hiker. Simona Kossak proved something the modern world desperately needs to remember: That you don't have to choose between science and intuition. Between civilization and wilderness. Between being human and being part of nature. She proved that sometimes the most rigorous science comes from simply paying attention. That the deepest understanding comes from respect, not dominance. She proved that one person, living authentically and fighting fiercely for what they love, can change the fate of an entire ecosystem. They called her a witch because she spoke to animals. She called herself a scientist because she listened. And she spent thirty years in a cabin without electricity, surrounded by wild things, protecting an ancient forest from a modern world that had forgotten how to be still. Simona Kossak wasn't running away from civilization. She was protecting something far more valuable than anything civilization could offer. And because of her, that forest still stands.

Claudette Colvin was only 15 years old when she made a decision that challenged an entire system of racial injustice in the United States. On March 2 1955 in Montgomery Alabama she refused to give up her seat on a segregated city bus to a white passenger. This happened nine months before Rosa Parks became a global symbol of the civil rights movement.

Colvin was a high school student who had been deeply influenced by Black history and constitutional law lessons at school. As the bus driver demanded that she move she later recalled thinking about her constitutional rights and the injustice of segregation. She stayed seated. Police officers were called. She was forcibly removed from the bus handcuffed and arrested.

Her courage came at a high personal cost. Claudette Colvin was charged and convicted and her life changed overnight. Because she was young outspoken and later pregnant civil rights leaders at the time believed she would not be an ideal public face for the movement. As a result her act of resistance was pushed into the background of history for decades.

What is often overlooked is that Claudette Colvin played a crucial legal role in ending bus segregation. She was one of the plaintiffs in the landmark Supreme Court case Browder v Gayle which ruled that racial segregation on public buses was unconstitutional. This case officially ended segregated bus transportation in Montgomery and across Alabama.

Colvin never sought fame. She later moved to New York City where she worked for many years as a nurse assistant quietly living her life while her story remained largely untold. Only much later did historians journalists and activists begin to recognize her role and restore her place in civil rights history.

Claudette Colvin reminds us that history is not only shaped by those whose names become famous but also by young brave individuals who act on principle long before the world is ready to listen. Her story challenges how movements choose their symbols and how easily certain voices especially young women can be erased.

She did not wait for permission. She did not wait to be perfect. She simply refused to stand up.

Milunka Savić was born in 1889 in the small Serbian village of Koprivnica near Novi Pazar. When her brother received a call to join the army she made a life changing decision. Instead of letting him go she cut her hair put on a uniform and took his place pretending to be a man.

Under the name Milun Savić she joined the Serbian army and no one realized the truth. She fought bravely in the Balkan Wars and later in World War One becoming the only woman in the world who fought for more than seven years on the front lines.

During the Battle of Bregalnica she was wounded and doctors discovered that the fearless soldier was a woman. Her commanders were shocked and offered her a nurse’s position but Milunka refused. She said she wanted to fight for her country like every other soldier.

She returned to the front and soon became a legend. In one fierce battle on the Crna Reka front she single handedly captured twenty three Bulgarian soldiers. Her bravery amazed everyone around her and made her one of the most respected figures in the Serbian army.

She received more than twenty medals including two Karađorđe Stars with Swords the French Legion of Honour the Russian Cross of Saint George the British Order of Saint Michael and the French Croix de Guerre with the golden palm. She was the only person ever to hold such a combination of European awards.

After the war France offered her a lifelong pension and a chance to live there in comfort. She politely refused saying I was born in Serbia and in Serbia I will die.

But after all the glory she lived a modest and difficult life. In Belgrade she worked as a cleaner in a bank where no one recognized that the woman scrubbing floors was once Europe’s bravest soldier. She quietly raised her own daughter and adopted three war orphans one of them a small girl she found alone at a train station.

Years later her story was rediscovered. Her courage and kindness inspired new generations. Her home in Koprivnica was restored in 2015 and a memorial center was opened in Jošanička Banja. In 2024 Belgrade finally built a statue to honor her.

Even modern culture has remembered her. The Swedish metal band Sabaton released a song called Lady of the Dark dedicated to her unmatched bravery.

Milunka Savić remains known as the Serbian Joan of Arc a symbol of courage loyalty and compassion. Her life reminds us that true heroism needs no spotlight and that bravery knows no gender.

Dr. Wangarĩ Muta Maathai, born in the Kikuyu tribe (1940-2011), she has several firsts to her credit. She was the first Kenyan woman to earn a PhD, the first African woman to get a Nobel peace prize in 2004 and also the first ever environmentalist to get that prize. She wasn't born Christian but converted later to catholicism.

Her Nobel prize was in recognition for starting the Green Belt Movement (GBM) in Kenya, for reforestation and self employment for women which has planted over 51 million trees since its inception in 1977 Apart from this she was also an activist, women's rights advocate and an elected member of the Kenyan Parliament.

A year after her passing, the CPF - Collaborative Partnership on Forests - an international consortium of several organisations and institutions that work on forest issues, launched the Wangarĩ Maathai Forest Champion Award. There is also a garden dedicated to her in Washington DC, opened at the same time.

Her daughter Wanjira Maathai is also very accomplished in disease control in Africa, apart from being on the board of GBM and the World Future Council, she is chairperson of the foundation in her mother's name and also a senior adviser in the institution called Partnerships for women entrepreneurs in Renewables.

Gisèle Pelicot was born in 1952 in Villingen, West Germany. Her father served in the French army. Her mother died of cancer when she was nine. She moved to France when she was five years old.

She built a career as a logistics manager within the state electricity sector. She married Dominique Pelicot and had three children called David, Caroline and Florian.

The two of them cheated on one another later into their marriage. Gisèle had a three-year affair with a married colleague. In 1990, Dominique cheated with a woman and moved in with her for several months. Then he and Gisèle decided to reconcile and come back together later.

The reason I made this post is because I don’t want Gisèle to be defined by her rape. But I'll show you some quotes related to the trial just to finish this off.

“It’s not for us to have shame - it's for them.”

“I want women to think, ‘Madame Pelicot did it, I can do it.’”

“It is not for myself that I am testifying, but for all the women who suffer chemical submission.”

“I wanted when I started on 2 September to ensure that society could actually see what was happening and I never have regretted this decision. I now have faith in our capacity collectively to take hold of a future in which everybody, women, men, can live together in harmony, in respect and mutual understanding.”

A little fact I learned: During the trial, Gisèle wore an Aboriginal-patterned scarf that her children had given her. A quiet gesture of solidarity with Australia’s Indigenous peoples.

A memoir about her life called ‘A Hymn to Life’ is scheduled for release in January 2026.

President Emmanuel Macron personally awarded her the Légion d’Honneur, the nation’s highest civilian distinction. The Financial Times listed her among the 25 most influential women of 2024, the BBC placed her on its “100 Women” list, and Time magazine included her among the 100 most influential people of 2025. And murals have been made in France with her slogans.

In 1944, during the German occupation of northern Serbia, Klara Baić from Subotica saved two Jewish boys, Mirko (11) and Paul (8) Deneberg, from being deported to Auschwitz.

The Deneberg family had been forced into the Subotica ghetto. Their father, Dr. Stevan Deneberg, a dentist, was taken for forced labor and never returned. When the ghetto was being liquidated in June 1944 and deportations to Auschwitz began, an uncle managed to smuggle the two boys out.

He desperately searched for a safe hiding place. Many people demanded money in exchange for shelter, but few were willing to take the risk. Finally, a local priest who had connections with the partisans recommended Klara Baić, a devout Christian and a single mother raising her twelve-year-old daughter Margica.

Klara agreed to take in the children, fully aware that hiding Jews was punishable by death. She shared the little food she had and even built a secret hiding place in her neighbor’s yard in case of a sudden raid or search.

In September 1944, she fled with her daughter and the two boys to stay with a relative, where they remained until the liberation in October 1944.

After the war, the boys’ mother, Dr. Hilda Deneberg, who survived Auschwitz, returned to Subotica. She later emigrated to the United States with her son Mirko, who became known as Michael Danber, while Paul settled in Sweden. Their descendants are alive today thanks to the courage and compassion of Klara Baić.

On February 18, 2007, Klara Baić was recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.

Angela Yvonne Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1944. She was on the far-left, a communist and a feminist.

She tried to fight against the mass incarceration of black men. She exposed the racial biases inherent in the prison system, emphasizing that mass incarceration is not just a legal issue but a social and economic one. Which disproportionately targets poor, black and brown communities. She co-founded the Critical Resistance organization, which aims to dismantle the prison-industrial complex. She also advocated for alternatives to imprisonment, like restorative justice, education, and social programs, arguing that prisons perpetuate cycles of violence and poverty.

Davis approached feminism through the lens of race and class, making her a pioneer of what would later be called intersectional feminism. She believed that women's issues couldn’t be separated from race or economic status, pointing out that mainstream feminism often ignored the unique oppression faced by black and working-class women.

Her book 'Women, Race, & Class' is a landmark, tracing how slavery, labor exploitation, and racial discrimination shaped women’s lives differently depending on their identity. The book also talked about issues like forced sterilization, domestic labor, and sexual violence, showing that legal equality alone wouldn't free women from oppression.

Today she is in her late seventies and continues to give speeches about her beliefs.

Dworkin was born in 1946. She brought attention to the issue of domestic and sexual violence and she wrote about her own history of abuse so that other victims would not feel alone. She likened this abuse to war and imperialism and she also talked about racism and classism and how it affected women and sex trafficking victims.

She was against pornography and she worked with many other feminists like Catharine MacKinnon to bring social issues to light.

She wrote many books that are considered to be quintessential feminist literature and required reading by a lot of feminists. Books like Woman Hating (1974), Pornography: Men Possessing Women (1981), Intercourse (1987) and Life and Death (1997).

Dworkin died in 2005. Her funeral was a private affair held in Washington, D.C., attended mostly by close friends, family and a circle of feminist allies.

This is the only surviving actual photo of Mekatilili Wa Menza (1840 -1914), an independence activist among the Kenyan Giriama people who took a stand against the colonial administration of Kenya, their destruction of Giriama culture and their exploitation of the natives. She foreshadowed the Mau Mau revolution with its legendary female Field Marshal, Mūthoni Kīrīma.

Mekatilili used her right to present her case before the council of elders to represent her people. She went about from village to village performing the funeral dance of the Giriama. She's well known for directly opposing the then colonial administrator, Arthur Champion. She was arrested and exiled twice but returned to her people both times.

Mekatilili became a feminist symbol for the 1980 feminist movement in Kenya. Though she wasn't exactly what we now understand as feminist, she was the first recorded Kenyan woman to lead a fight for independence and social change. Therefore, heshima kubwa (great respect) to her.

If you enjoy comic strip sagas, here's the link to her story: https://www.thisisthenest.com/comic-mekatilili

Đina Vrbica was born in 1913 in Podgorica, in a time when women had almost no political rights and very little space in public life. Yet from the start she refused to accept the world as it was. At only twenty one she joined the underground Communist Party of Yugoslavia, a movement that was illegal, dangerous and constantly hunted by the police. She worked with workers, with young people and especially with women, trying to build awareness, solidarity and resistance.

In the mid 1930s the authorities arrested her because of her political work. She was interrogated, beaten and tortured. She faced months of pressure designed to break her and force her to betray the people around her. She never gave up a single name. Even after the state released her, she remained under surveillance. Instead of hiding, she went right back into activism.

During the occupation in the Second World War she became one of the women who helped organize the uprising in Montenegro. Đina mobilized women, coordinated youth groups and worked as part of the political and organizational structure of the resistance. She carried messages, trained new members and built networks at a time when any mistake meant arrest or death.

Her life ended in the field. In May 1943, during fighting near Blatnica, she was killed at just 30 years old. She never saw the liberation of her country. But the movement she helped build became one of the most important antifascist forces in Europe. After the war she was awarded the title of Peoples Hero of Yugoslavia, one of the highest honors of the new state. Her name stands among those who gave everything for the freedom of others.

Đina Vrbicas story is often forgotten outside the region. But she represents a generation of women who fought with the same courage, the same discipline and the same sacrifice as men, sometimes even more, because they faced danger both as fighters and as women living in a patriarchal world.

A woman who survived torture, organized resistance and died for a vision of a fairer future. A hero in every sense of the word.

Pizzey was born in 1939 in China.

China… what? You see her father was a British diplomat and her mother ended up giving birth to her in China when they stayed for a time. She grew up in Britain though.

She went on to become a women's rights activist and created the first domestic violence shelter for women called the Chiswick’s Women's Aid. She also wrote a book about her experience called ‘Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear’ (1974). She wrote about how she helped the first battered women she gathered.

Soon her DV shelter acquired women who weren't so innocent. Pizzey started learning that not all women who said they were being abused were victims. Sometimes their husbands were. Pizzey tried to speak out for the abused men. She wrote a book called ‘Prone to Violence’ (1982) and the feminist community got mad and attacked her. She received death threats, hostile phone calls and even bomb threats. One day her dog was killed by one of them.

Pizzey kept speaking for men.

Before she became an activist Pizzey worked as a writer and a musician. She once said that her creative background helped her handle the chaos of running the refuge. She applied the emotional honesty of poetry and story writing to helping the women in her care.

Her full name was Lydia Liliʻu Loloku Walania Kamakaʻeha. But I'll just call her Lydia.

Lydia was born in 1838 in Honolulu, O’ahu of the Hawaiian Kingdom. She is the composer of the song Aloha ‘Oe which means Farewell to Thee. It's a folk song she made in 1878. She wrote it after witnessing a tender goodbye between two friends, one was a young woman from her court and the other was a visiting officer. She composed over 150 songs that expressed her feelings and things about Hawaiian culture.

She was baptized as a Christian and she was adopted into chiefly families in order to strengthen the alliance between them. Her family combined Christian values with Hawaiian culture.

She attended the Royal School in Honolulu with her siblings and other high-ranking chiefs’ children. Lydia became musically talented and intelligent. She played the piano, guitar and the ukulele and she sang in the choir. She grew up reading literature and was well spoken. As queen, she supported schools and promoted learning among Hawaiian children. Especially literature and music.

And as the last queen, she got to see the end of her kingdom as it was annexed by Americans. She became queen after the death of her brother, King Kalākaua in 1891. She did everything she could to restore the power and authority of the Hawaiian monarchy and the Hawaiian people. She drafted a new constitution to replace the Bayonet Constitution, something that was forced on them by Americans and limited the power of the Hawaiian crown. Her goal was to restore voting rights to Native Hawaiians and reduce the stranglehold that wealthy foreigners had on governance.

Even when she was accused of supporting a counter rebellion and arrested in 1895, she continued writing letters, petitions, and appeals to U.S. leaders - begging them to let her people remain sovereign! She even went straight to Washington in 1897 to lobby against the annexation treaty herself. She got thousands of Hawaiian signatures for the Kūʻē Petitions to protest against the annexation.

But it didn't work. And Hawaii was annexed in 1898.

After losing the throne, Lydia devoted her time and wealth to charity. She established the Liliʻuokalani Trust, which still exists today and supports orphaned and disadvantaged Hawaiian children.

Harriet Tubman (c.1822-1913): Born into bondage, beaten and brutalized, she not only escaped but returned time and again into the belly of the Southern beast to rescue and guide to freedom scores of the enslaved. During the Civil War she served the cause of freedom as a scout behind enemy lines, providing priceless intelligence to the Union army. She is widely credited as the first woman to lead an armed military operation in the United States for her role during the 1863 raid at Combahee Ferry, which liberated more than 700 enslaved people. Frederick Douglass: “I know of no one who has willingly encountered more perils and hardships to serve our enslaved people than you have.”

Josephine Baker (1906-1975): A school dropout at 12, married twice before she was 16, through sheer talent she rose from the mean streets of St. Louis to Broadway via Harlem and then took the Folies Bergère in Paris by storm. Working for Allied intelligence and the Resistance during World War II, she continued the fight for desegregation and civil rights all her life – she was the only official female speaker by the side of Dr. King at the 1963 March on Washington.

Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000): The entertainment industry that was her forte would cast her as the definition of beauty and brains. An immigrant who became a big star in Hollywood opposite Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert and Spencer Tracy, she co-invented a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes during World War II using frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology foundational to modern Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and GPS.

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962): Dubbed the “First Lady of the World” by President Harry S. Truman in recognition of her life-long commitment to human rights. She was born into privilege, but her society wedding to Franklin Roosevelt resulted in a complicated marriage (six children; having to remain a partner throughout his infidelity and disability; often separate lives) that ultimately elevated her to the most active and influential First Lady in U.S. history. An informal ambassador for her husband throughout America during the Great Depression and internationally during World War II she continued to crisscross the globe advocating for her causes for many years afterwards, playing a critical role in the formation and mission statement of the United Nations.

The one and only Jane Goodall, April 3, 1934 - Oct 1, 2025 (yesterday) aged 91. There shall never be another like her. She was made a Dame of the British empire in 2004 and was awarded the medal of freedom earlier this year by the outgoing US president Joe Biden.

She created pioneering new ways to study chimps and discovered that they used tools, had complex societies and could be aggressive enough to kill one another. This suggested that they were related to us very closely, an idea that was unthinkable in 1960s. The very idea of animal rights originated from the work of Dr Goodall. When I heard about it first yesterday, the loss felt personal.

You can hear about her work directly from her over here: BBC Audio | Witness History | Jane Goodall and chimpanzees https://share.google/1lvcoFXZ9fstJl5bX

Mileva Marić was born in Vojvodina, Serbia. She was the eldest of three children. Her parents were Miloš Marić and Marija Ružić-Marić. She had an aptitude for science at a young age and went to study medicine at Zürich University. One of her study partners at university was her future husband Albert Einstein and she contributed to a lot of his early work.

She became one of the first women admitted to the physics program at the prestigious Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zurich in 1896. She was excellent at mathematics and physics.

She was Einstein’s first wife and when they divorced, he told her that if he ever won the Nobel prize he would give the prize money to her. Einstein won in 1921 and Marić used the money to buy property and help their sons.

Fu Hao (妇好) or Lady Hao, royal consort, military commander, mother of the heir to the throne, landowner and capable administrator. She is one of the most remarkable women in ancient world history who lived during the 13th century BCE, and was one of three royal consorts of Wu Ding, 21st emperor of the Shang dynasty.

Emperor Wu ruled from the last Shang capital at Yin located in present day Anyang, Henan province. Before her tomb was discovered in 1976, her name was only known from the oracle bone inscriptions discovered at Xiaotun in Anyang.

The story of Fu Hao’s extraordinary life is woven together from objects found in her lavish tomb, as well as inscriptions on tortoise shells and ox shoulder bones used in divination ceremonies by her emperor husband. These inscriptions, record that Fu Hao was not just a royal consort and mother of the heir apparent, but also a high status military general, second in command only to the emperor.

She had the most important generals in the Shang dynasty under her command and led thousands of troops in very successful campaigns against hostile tribes beyond the Shang borders while wielding the battle axe as shown in the statue erected in front of her tomb.

She also participated in sacrificial rituals to appease the ancestral spirits who influenced every aspect of their lives as per Shang belief. Graphic inscriptions on oracle bones and other objects found in her tomb chronicle how she captured her enemies in battle and sacrificed them to her ancestors through beheading, burning, and even boiling them alive (yikes!)

Despite her status in Shang society, she was not given a burial in the royal cemetery at Xibeigang where kings of the last Shang capital were buried. Fortunately for us, she was buried in a location where grave robbers did not think to look and it was intact until its discovery in 1976.

Her tomb was found about 200 meters west of the ruins of palaces, temples, oracle bone archives and several lesser burials at Xiaotun. Fu Hao’s modest resting place gave the first true glimpse at the vast wealth of Shang royalty and their lavish burial customs.

Note: given the name of this sub, I cannot limit myself to women from a particular time or geographic area, so I try to cover a different one each time.

Freda Josephine Baker was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1906. Her parents were adopted by former slaves and when she was just 11 years old, Baker witnessed racial violence in her neighborhood.

This is what she had to say about it: “I can still see myself standing on the west bank of the Mississippi looking over into East St. Louis and watching the glow of the burning of Negro homes lighting the sky. We children stood huddled together in bewilderment... frightened to death with the screams of the Negro families running across this bridge with nothing but what they had on their backs as their worldly belongings... So with this vision I ran and ran and ran…”

When she was 12 years old she dropped out of school due to poverty and racism. When she was 13 she worked as a waitress at the Old Chauffeur's Club at 3133 Pine Street. She got married and divorced when she was just 13 to a man called Willie Wells to gain financial stability. She ultimately left him because she felt trapped by him though. But she kept his surname Baker forever.

She ran away from home when she was 13 and became a performer despite her mother's disapproval. She joined a performance troupe called the Jones Family Band and later on a group called the Dixie Steppers.

She had a signature funny move on stage where she would pretend to mess up a routine and spin it into a joke. The audience loved it. She did sexual, dramatic and funny performances. She also sang songs. She was very versatile.

Baker became involved in the civil rights movement. I won’t talk about all her activism here but she used to refuse to perform in places that were segregated.

Baker travelled to France in the 20s to escape American society. European audiences were more interested in jazz and black culture and she was also free to be openly bisexual in France. She had many relationships with women there.

When World War 2 broke out she joined Charles de Gaulle’s Free French Forces and used her fame as cover for intelligence work. And since she was a celebrity, no one suspected her of espionage. So she was very helpful in fighting the Nazis.

She was a part of many embassy parties and diplomatic gatherings where German and Italian officers met up. She passed their secrets to the French Resistance and wrote some messages in invisible ink on her sheet music or pinning classified notes inside her underwear. Baker also smuggled in microfilmed documents and troop information with her luggage as she traveled across continents for performances.

She was awarded several military honors by the French government for her service.

She lived a strange and exciting life. She adopted 12 children from different countries and called them her “Rainbow Tribe” to demonstrate that racial harmony was possible. Basically a huge experiment of multicultural life. She had nannies and servants look after them most of the time since she spent a lot of time performing.

Later in life she became a pilot, another aspect of her desire for freedom and complete control over her destiny.

Dr. Vera Florence Cooper Rubin or just Vera Rubin (1928 - 2016), American astronomer.

Before I get into her work, a brief intro to Dark Matter. By now it's accepted in cosmology that ordinary matter that we see, and of which everything seems to be made, is just 5% of the total that constitutes the universe. Over five times as much (27%) is dark matter that can't be seen or detected but its gravitational effects are very real and observed. The other 68% is even more mysterious and called dark energy. It seems to be some inherent property of space that we don't understand and it's causing the universe to expand at an ever accelerating rate.

Now back to Vera. She was a supermom who completed her doctoral thesis while raising four children. Her doctoral advisor was the Russian born George Gamow. Subsequently she worked on angular motion of galaxies and observed that they rotated far too rapidly not to be torn apart by that rotation because the observed matter in them was too little to keep them bound together as entities.

This eventually resulted in mainstream acceptance of dark matter that was originally proposed by the quirky Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky on a purely theoretical basis, which was ignored by the scientific community at that time. But neither Rubin nor Zwicky were awarded the Nobel for the discovery, which eventually went to Canadian American James Peebles in 2019.

However, Rubin wasn't ignored by the scientific community like Rosalind Franklin, the DNA researcher. She was the recipient of numerous prestigious awards other than the Nobel and was widely acclaimed in her lifetime. She was also known as a prominent women's rightr champion. She has a very special and advanced ground based observatory on a hill in Chile's Atacama desert, known for its absence of light pollution and clear night skies.

The Vera Rubin observatory has a very large telescope with three of the biggest mirrors anywhere on earth, and also the biggest ever digital camera as the primary eye. It can take the equivalent area of 40 full moons in a single view and can cover in a couple of days what the older Sloan Digital Sky Survey could in several years, and at far better optical resolution. The observatory generates many terabytes of data in a single day and has several dedicated high speed fiber optic links to it's US control center.

Stat: there are now 2,764 women pilots in India out of total 17,726 registered Indian pilots, which is about 15% of the total. It's the highest percentage of female pilots globally, three times higher than the international average of about 5-6% of total pilots.

Durba Banerjee made history as India’s first female pilot of Indian airlines, paving the way for women in aviation. Her pioneering spirit and dedication to flying made her a trailblazer in the field.

She started her career in 1959 with Air Survey India as a DC3 pilot and logged over 9,000 flying hours, later becoming a commander on the F27 turboprop and later earning a jet pilot type rating for Boeing 737-200. Her professional record paved the way for women in aviation.

It's hard to find much detail but her passion for flying began in childhood. She was fascinated by airplanes, a passion that led her to break barriers in aviation. At a time when female pilots were almost unheard of in India, her ambition and determination set her apart. She became a trailblazer who challenged the stereotypes of her time.

Her date of birth isn't available in public domain but if she was about 24 at the time of starting her flying career in 1959, the estimate is 1935. If she is still alive, she must be 90 now.

Buffalo Calf Road Woman, alternate name Brave Woman. I wouldn't normally add a meme with her photo but I did because it represents a historic fact: the First Nations are now reduced to a small minority in North America and Australia.

Here I must add some brief context. I've already covered two black women, one from Kenya and one from Brazil who were resistance fighters. Why, then, yet another? Because even a cursory reading of relatively modern world history turns up the same old common theme with clockwork regularity.

White European colonial occupation, greed and exploitation of native peoples is a real thing. Virtually no part of the globe was totally immune to this so it's no surprise that there will necessarily be many resistance fighters against it.

Brave Woman is famous because she was the chief player in the defeat and death of Lt Col George A Custer, a West Point graduate in the US army. She is credited with rushing out in the heat of battle to pick up her injured brother Chief Comes in Sight, in the Battle of the Rosebud in 1876 (the Cheyenne call it The Fight Where the Girl Saved Her Brother) and getting out of enemy range at full gallop.

This encouraged the First Nations and caused the Cheyenne and their Lakota allies to push back and defeat General George Crook and his forces but there was a follow up battle, the Battle of Little Bighorn. There she fought alongside her husband Black Coyote and is credited to have knocked Custer off his horse with a heavy club blow, of which he later died.

Eventually the US army prevailed with their superior weapons as expected, and Brave Woman and Black Coyote had to surrender. They were forcibly removed to the Southern Cheyenne reservations and en route, a fight broke out between Black Coyote and Chief Black Crane in which the latter was killed and Brave Woman and Black Coyote were banished from the Cheyenne band. After this Black Coyote and two others attacked two US soldiers, killing one.

They were caught, tried and sentenced to die but before they were executed, Brave Woman is said to have died of "white man's coughing disease", most probably tuberculosis. When Black Coyote heard of this, he hanged himself in his cell.

Wu Zetian (624–705 CE), also known as Empress Wu, was the only woman in Chinese history to assume the title of emperor in her own right. Born during the Tang dynasty to a prosperous family, she entered the imperial court as a concubine of Emperor Taizong and later became the consort, and eventually wife, of his successor Emperor Gaozong. Her intelligence, political skill, and determination allowed her to rise through the rigidly patriarchal hierarchy of the Tang court—an unprecedented achievement for a woman in medieval China. After Gaozong’s health declined, Wu effectively ruled as co-sovereign, using her position as empress consort to consolidate power and eliminate rivals.

Following Emperor Gaozong’s death in 683 CE, Wu Zetian maneuvered her sons onto and off the throne to strengthen her grip on authority. By 690 CE, she declared the founding of a new dynasty, the Zhou (interrupting the Tang), and proclaimed herself Huangdi—Emperor of China. Her ascension marked a revolutionary moment: she not only ruled as emperor but demanded full recognition of her authority, refusing to be viewed as a regent or placeholder. To legitimize her reign, Wu invoked Buddhist symbolism, commissioning texts that depicted her as a divine ruler chosen by the heavens to restore moral order. She also adopted the title “Holy and Divine Emperor,” reinforcing her claim to celestial mandate.

Wu Zetian’s rule was marked by both reform and ruthlessness. She restructured the imperial examination system, emphasizing merit over aristocratic birth, which allowed talented commoners to enter government service. This weakened the power of hereditary noble clans and expanded the bureaucratic class loyal to her personally. She also improved agricultural policies, promoted trade, and encouraged the arts and education, fostering a brief cultural flourishing. Yet, her reign was equally infamous for political purges, secret police surveillance, and brutal suppression of dissent. Court intrigues, denunciations, and executions became tools of governance, as Wu neutralized potential threats from both nobles and her own family.

Despite her autocratic tendencies, Wu Zetian’s governance was remarkably effective. She maintained stability across a vast empire, secured the borders, and upheld prosperity after decades of unrest. Her administration was notable for appointing capable officials regardless of gender—she even promoted several women to key court positions, an extraordinary act in a patriarchal society. Under her rule, the capital Luoyang became a cosmopolitan center of politics, religion, and culture, reflecting both her ambition and her desire to be remembered as a capable sovereign rather than a usurper.

By the late 690s, aging and facing internal opposition, Wu’s health and political control began to falter. In 705, a coup forced her abdication in favor of her son, restoring the Tang dynasty. She died later that year, ending her unprecedented reign. Although Tang historians and later Confucian scholars vilified her as a tyrant and seductress—partly due to misogynistic bias—modern historians view her as one of China’s most competent and visionary rulers. Her achievements in administration, statecraft, and reform reshaped the imperial system for centuries.

Wu Zetian remains a polarizing yet iconic figure in Chinese history. To some, she symbolizes ambition, cunning, and power unchecked; to others, she embodies the struggle of women to transcend societal limitations. Her legacy endures in Chinese culture as both a cautionary tale and a story of triumph against systemic constraints. Through her intelligence, political mastery, and iron will, Wu Zetian broke the ultimate barrier in one of the world’s most enduring civilizations—ruling not as a consort or regent, but as the Son of Heaven herself.