76 Inspiring Women From History Who Achieved So Much Despite Nobody Believing Them

Hedy Lamar was an Austrian-born American actress, film producer, and inventor.

Her acting career started off in Austria-Hungary, however in 1937 after she fled to London to escape her current husband, she met the head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) studios, Louis B. Mayer. He offered her a movie contract with Hollywood, and began promoting her as “the world’s most beautiful woman”. She became a star from her first American film, ‘Algiers’ (1938). In 1960, she honoured with a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Katherine Johnson was a mathematician who worked for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Her work was vital for the success of the first and following crewed spaceflights, using geometry to figure out the paths for the spacecraft to orbit around Earth and land on the Moon. She worked for NASA for over 30 years.

During her life she broke many boundaries. NASA noted that “she was one of the first African-American women to work as a NASA scientist”. She also one of three African-American students to join West Virginia’s graduate schools.

Katherine Johnson sadly died in February 2020 at the age of 101, but her legacy will never be forgotten.

Sojourner Truther on her carte de visite, 1864. She sold it to raise money. “I sell the shadow to support the substance”.

Mary Shelley was an English novelist who wrote the 1818 gothic novel ‘Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus’. The novel is an early example of science-fiction.

Amelia Earhart just prior to her 17 June 1928 transatlantic crossing.

Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, with Yuri Gagarin, Pavel Popovich, and Nikita Khrushchev, in 1963. She was the first and youngest woman to have flown in space, with a solo mission on Vostok 6 in 1963.

Jeanette Rankin, the first woman to be sworn in to the House of Representatives in 1916, speaking from a balcony at the National American Woman Suffrage Association on 2nd April 1917. This was the same day President Wilson declared “The world must be safe for democracy”.

Betty Friedan was an American feminist activist and writer. Her book “The Feminine Mystique” (1963) is often credited to starting the second wave of American feminism in the 20th Century.

In 1966, Friedan co-founded and was elected the president of the National Organisation of Women. The organisation aimed to bring women into society and being equal to men. She was opposed to the extreme factions of feminism that led to the attacking of groups such as men and homemakers.

In 1970, Friedan organised the nationwide Women’s Strike for Equality. The strike went beyond expectations, and broadened the feminist movement.

Friedan was a strong supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment, which passed through the House of Representatives and the Senate in the early 1970s.

She remained active in politics and activism into the 90s.

Betty Friedan passed away in 2006, at the age of 85

Raised in Pennsylvania, Nelly Bly was a journalist who made significant contributions to reform in the treatment of the mentally ill. She spent two years writing for the Pittsburgh Dispatch, before moving to New York City to write for the New York World.

One of her first assignments was her 1887 exposé on the conditions of asylum patients at Blackwell’s Island. She spent ten days on the island, posing as a mental patient. The operation was a success, highlighting disturbing conditions at the institution, including neglect and physical abuse.

The exposé’s popularity sparked a large-scale investigation of the asylum, which in turn led to legislation improving a whole host of conditions for mentally ill patients in institutions across New York State, including more funding, physician appointments and regulations against overcrowding and fire hazards.

Her achievements aren’t limited to the improvements in the mental health sector. Endorsed by the New York World, Nellie took a trip around the world, aiming to beat the fictional 80-day record of Phileas Fogg in the Jules Verne novel Around the World in Eighty Days. She completed the trip in just over 72 days, setting a real-world record which was beaten a year later.

From an unassuming background in Dresden, Melitta Bentz was a German entrepreneur who revolutionized the way we brew coffee.

Tired of finding coffee grounds in her cup and the mess of cleaning the grounds from the pot, Melitta experimented with ways to filter coffee before pouring it out to drink.

After a few rounds of trial and error, she poured the coffee through a leaf of her son’s notebook paper, finding it to meet her needs: the coffee was free of grounds, and the makeshift filter could easily be discarded.

Based on this success, Melitta designed the disposable paper coffee filters used all over the world today, receiving a patent from the German authorities in 1908, setting up a business that she ran from the family’s apartment. Today the Melitta Group employs over 4,000 people across the world. Not only did she contribute a straightforward, clean way to brew coffee, her company was one of the most progressive employers of its time, introducing Christmas bonuses, five-day working weeks, and a three-week vacation period for its employees. This set a standard for other companies to follow suit later in the 20th century.

Marilyn Monroe in 1944, working in the Radioplane Company, a munitions factory in Van Nuys.

Republican militia women in training during the Spanish Civil War in 1936.

Mary Wollstonecraft was an English writer and advocate for women’s rights. She is now regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers.

She is best known for writing ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’ (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear so due to a lack of education. She suggests that men and women should both be treated as rational beings, and social order founded on reason.

After her passing, a memoir of her life was released that tarnished her reputation for nearly a century. Upon the turn of the twentieth century and the emergence of the modern feminist movement, her teachings and views became increasingly important.

Her daughter was Mary Shelley, the author of ‘Frankenstein’.

Mary Wollstonecraft passed away in 1797, at the age of 38.

The former Prime Minister of India and daughter of the first Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi was the first, and to date, only female Prime Minister of India.

Her father Jawaharlal Nehru, first Prime Minister of India, had attempted to unify into one nation the fragmented cultural, ethnic and religious tribes that had existed together as British India.

When Indira gained power in 1966, she was confronted with the same problems, and struggled to sanction dissidents without taking an authoritarian approach. Despite this, she established many social reform programs and led India to a stunning victory over Pakistan in the Bangladesh War, so she received widespread support by most of the population.

After being thrown out of office in 1977, Indira took office for the second time in 1980, until her assassination in 1984. Indira's life was taken by her own Sikh bodyguards, which sparked four days of riots, leaving over 8,000 Indian Sikhs dead in revenge attacks.

Indira’s son, Rajiv, succeeded her as prime minister.

The official Diamond Jubilee photograph of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom in 1893.

Emmeline Pankhurst in prison, wearing prison dress, in circa 1911. She described her first incarceration as “like a human being in the process of being turned into a wild beast”.

Chien-Shiung Wu, here in 1963. She verified the problem with Xenon in the B nuclear reactor for the Manhattan Project’s physicists and engineers.

Female munition workers guiding 6 inch howitzer shells being lowered onto the floor at an ammunition factory in Chilwell, Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom, in July 1917.

Renowned American nurse and founder of the American Red Cross, a photograph of Clara Barton from circa 1865.

Annie Kenney (left) and Christabel Pankhurst (right), leading figures of the suffrage movement in the United Kingdom, in 1908. They were members of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), better known as the Suffragettes.