Curiosities,Interesting FactsOCT 19, 2026

40 Inventions And Discoveries That Are Known To Be Made By Men But They Were Actually Women’s Hard Work

Women are often seen as powerhouses because they can multitask, create, do, and manage it all at once. That’s also why they’ve come up with so many creative ideas, inventions, and discoveries throughout history, but the past hasn’t been exactly kind to them.

So many women created things and then had to watch while someone else stole all the credit. That’s why we decided to shine a spotlight on the ladies behind the amazing things we use in our lives, so they can finally get the acclaim they deserve.

#1

40 Inventions And Discoveries That Are Known To Be Made By Men But They Were Actually Women’s Hard Work

Lizzie Magie created The Landlord's Game in 1903 to illustrate the negative effects of land monopolies. Years later, Charles Darrow saw the game and sold it to Parker Brothers as his own creation, turning Monopoly into a global phenomenon and stripping Magie of proper credit for her concept.

Individualchaotin, The Brodix Publishing Company

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#2

Gabrielle Colette was a bestselling French novelist. Her husband locked her in a room, forced her to write, and then published the work under his own name.

Sarah_the_Virgo, pinimg

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#3

Not an invention, but a classic example would be the discovery of DNA's double-helix structure. Watson and Crick get the credit, but Rosalind Franklin was central to the discovery and rarely got mentioned until after her passing.

casg355, Warren Umoh

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Women have been creating things for a long time, but they haven't been getting the recognition they deserve. According to Venner Shipley, which is a full-service European intellectual property firm, the number of women in science, engineering, and tech fields is increasing but still lower than the proportion of men.

Even though many campaigns focus on increasing the number of girls and women in STEM, many still drop out on the way from undergraduate to postgraduate study and then into research. Women are also less likely to promote their successes and may therefore not speak up when they need credit. In addition, funding and commercialization barriers may hinder female inventors.

#4

The classic Rider-Waite tarot cards had a third co-creator: Pamela Colman Smith. She did all of the illustrations and was very talented, but she's barely recognized for her input. People rarely call it the Rider-Waite-Smith deck.

[deleted], hilobrow

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#5

Sophia Andreevna Tolstaya basically transcribed and edited all of Leo Tolstoy's work. Without her contributions, he probably couldn't have published nearly as much.

Fast_Bee_9759, Sof'ja Tolstaja

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#6

Mary Anning discovered a lot of fossil specimens, but she wasn't allowed to join the Geological Society because she was a woman. She was also struggling financially, so rich men bought the fossils she found and published research about them without properly crediting her.

CynicalPomeranian, sedgwickmuseum

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In the past, women researchers definitely seemed to be pushed to the sidelines and not given their due. Luckily, the tide seems to be changing, and more women are being named as creators and inventors, with 13% being added to patent applications compared to 2% in the 1970s.

The pace of change is still quite slow, and it is estimated that it might take more than 20 years for the gender gap between inventors on patent applications to level out. Until then, we must note that figures vary by country and region, but it is encouraging that women seem to be getting the credit they deserve.

#7

As an artist, I have to talk about the painter Janet Sobel. She was creating drip paintings before Jackson Pollock became famous for a similar technique. Her work was shown in galleries, but critics dismissed it as 'primitive' and treated it like the hobby of a housewife, while Pollock became closely associated with the style.

[deleted], Gary Snyder Fine Art

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#8

As a postgraduate student, Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered and analyzed the first radio pulsars in 1967. Despite doing the foundational work, her supervisor, Antony Hewish, received the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics alongside Martin Ryle. Bell Burnell was excluded entirely.

P1nealColada, hubblesite

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#9

In 1856, Eunice Newton Foote was the first to show that carbon dioxide retained more heat than the other gases she tested and suggested that rising levels could warm the planet. Her work was largely overlooked, while John Tyndall published related findings three years later.

Silamasuk, Ant Rozetsky

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For women working in academic professions, it is important to make their mark and encourage other young girls to flourish in these careers. When one person lifts others up, it can start a chain reaction and help more women stay in STEM fields, despite the challenges. This kind of mentorship and guidance is always invaluable.

Another thing academically oriented women can do is try to find older women in similar fields who can share their wisdom and knowledge. They might also offer good advice on how to navigate one’s career alongside motherhood, lifestyle, and other responsibilities, which can be an obstacle.

#10

Lise Meitner helped explain nuclear fission, but Otto Hahn alone received the Nobel Prize.

P1nealColada, Lise Meitner and the Dawn of the Nuclear Age

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#11

A man wrote a paper about a similar phenomenon and still excluded the woman who supplied the data. Harriet Zuckerman's interviews with Nobel Prize winners helped supply the research behind Robert K. Merton's 'Matthew effect,' and Merton later acknowledged that the paper should have had joint authorship. You can't make this up.

bee-sting, Vitaly Gariev

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#12

Marion Donovan, an inventor’s daughter, created a leakproof, reusable diaper cover from parachute cloth with snaps instead of safety pins, which became a hit at Saks Fifth Avenue in 1949. She then invented a disposable paper diaper, but paper companies laughed her off, and nearly ten years later Victor Mills built on the idea to create Pampers.

Nathan Dumlao

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Women definitely face many challenges when trying to make a name for themselves in science and technology. That’s why it’s important for ladies to start a women’s innovation network in their university or institution to make it easier for other girls to find support and encouragement.

Both women and men can question the gender biases in their workplaces and help guide people toward change. These concepts may take time for folks to accept, but calling out unfair behavior can create better systems for future generations.

#13

Hollywood star Hedy Lamarr, who used time between takes on set to invent, teamed up with composer George Antheil during World War II to create a frequency-hopping radio system to guide torpedoes. The U.S. Navy brushed the idea off, only to use the technology later, and it became the basis for today’s Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth.

ebay

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#14

Chinese American physicist Chien-Shiung Wu was one of the few women on the Manhattan Project and the first woman hired to teach physics at Princeton. In 1956, her famous experiment proved a theory by physicists Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang, but only the two men received the Nobel Prize for it.

Smithsonian Institution

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#15

In the 1940s, six young women programmed ENIAC, one of the first all-electronic computers, as part of a secret U.S. Army project, working without any programming languages or tools. When the computer was unveiled to the press in 1946, the women weren’t even introduced.

boredpanda

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As you’ve probably realized from this list, so many incredible women inventors have untold stories and were pushed to the sidelines. One such lady was Jeanne Villepreux-Power, a French naturalist well known in her day for inventing a glass aquarium that helped advance marine studies.

A Mighty Girl blog mentions that Jeanne began her scientific studies in 1832 and tried to understand the paper nautilus. So to figure out whether it took its shell from another organism, she made a see-through box with controlled conditions to observe it. She also designed two more variants of this and was later rewarded for her groundbreaking work.

#16

In the music world Alma Mahler and Clara Schumann were both top tier composers but couldn’t eclipse their husbands.

Margaret Hamilton basically invented modern software engineering for the Apollo program. Grace Hopper was an early pioneer of symbolic programming languages, like COBOL.

theunixman

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#17

The movie Big Eyes was like this. Margaret Keane's husband took credit for her work. He was actually great at marketing and made the paintings nationally recognized. They settled the issue when a judge asked them both to paint a picture in court. Margaret painted one, and her husband did nothing. She painted for the rest of her life.

blueavole

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#18

The Gill-man, the creature from Creature from the Black Lagoon, was designed by former Disney illustrator Milicent Patrick. Her role was deliberately downplayed by makeup artist Bud Westmore, who received the credit for the design for decades.

Grateful_J561, Creature from the Black Lagoon

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When we go grocery shopping or order something, we don’t stop to think twice about the paper bag we’re using. In fact, Margaret E. Knight invented it, and she was considered one of the most famous creators of the 19th century. At 30, she built a machine that folded and glued paper in a specific way to make a flat-bottomed paper bag.

Unfortunately, this design was so popular that a man stole the idea and tried to patent it himself, but she took him to court and won by proving she created the machine. Even more inspiring, she invented over 100 different machines over her lifetime and patented at least 20.

#19

Trotula of Salerno, a medieval Italian physician often called the world’s first gynecologist, wrote important works on women’s health to teach male doctors about the female body. Over the centuries, people doubted a woman could have written them or that she even existed, which let male physicians put their own names on her work.

boredpanda

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#20

One of the first known calendars was a bone with 28 notches, which some scholars believe would have been a woman's calendar to track her period.

WickedWitchof

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Poll Question

Which female inventor's work surprised you the most?

Justinas KeturkaBoredPanda Staff

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