# Awesome Women in History



## HoopyFrood (Mar 8, 2013)

With all the talk about gritty and medieval fantasy lately it was mentioned that stories set in that time seem to be about men doing manly things.

So here's a thread dedicated to all the Awesome Women in History. Because there were lots, doing very interesting things.

This was inspired by Greg Jenner's twitter feed today (anyone who watches Horrible Histories will recognise his face). In honour of International Women's Day, he's been tweeting about some brilliant women and their stories throughout history.

So I put them together into a Storify. Click to take a look, they're so good! He's still going on his Twitter feed, so I'm likely to edit that Storify and add them later on.

This one is definitely my favourite:







Although I also love the flinging honey one, too.

And absolutely great inspiration for some kickass women in our own pieces of work, no?

Anyway, if you have any stories about Awesome Women in History, please add!


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## Gordian Knot (Mar 9, 2013)

Cool subject. My favorite amongst a great many awesome women is Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra (now in Syria). 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenobia


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## Susan Boulton (Mar 9, 2013)

*Nancy Grace Augusta Wake AC GM. And all the other woman that were part of SOE.*

*These would, for me, knock the socks off any of the so called, "kickass woman", that litter fiction today.*


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## Mirannan (Mar 9, 2013)

Ok, here goes. Without any explanations:

Elizabeth I of England. Amelia Earhardt (sp?) and Amy Johnson. Marie Curie. Margaret Thatcher.  Boudicca. Jeanne D'Arc. Jocelyn Bell. (Who? you might well ask!) Ada Lovelace. Mary Shelley (who ought to be practically sacred to SF forum visitors!). Queen Cleopatra. Florence Nightingale.


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## Glisterspeck (Mar 10, 2013)

Empress Theodora was pretty awesome.


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## AnyaKimlin (Mar 10, 2013)

Mary Magdalene - amazing lady and so misrepresented.
Deborah the prophetess from the bible.
Cartimandua the Brigante Queen who's sexual intrigue and game playing could make for wonderful stories.
Empress Matilda/Maude - she fought for her throne.
Cornelia - Roman Matriach, mother of the Grachii 
Aphra Behn - first novelist
Charlotte Bronte
Sylvia Pankhurst and Millicent Fawcett - suffragettes/suffragists
Nell Gwyn
Annie Besant (her article sparked the Matchgirls Strike)
Ethelflaed/Lady of the Mercians - Anglo Saxon war leader/pirate
Ching Shih - Chinese prostitute turned pirate.
Katharine Parr - little is known of her but she left behind some books and seems scholarly.
Isabella Beaton - her life story is amazing.
Aung San Suu Kyi - still alive but inspirational.
Harper Lee - for writing To Kill a Mockingbird
Rosa Parks
Again still alive: Joan Armatrading - her music is amazing her life story what little of it that is known is again inspiring.


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## Toby Frost (Mar 11, 2013)

Following on from SJAB's post, Noor Khan and Violet Szabo. Also, the rather obscure WW2 character Ursula Graham Bower: anthropologist, explorer and guerilla leader of a tribe of headhunters. According to Wikipedia, she managed to wear out two machine guns through use and was the subject of an American comic book. Quite a life!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_Graham_Bower


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## Abernovo (Mar 11, 2013)

Mirannan said:


> Mary Shelley (who ought to be practically sacred to SF forum visitors!).


And, never forget her mother, *Mary Wollstonecraft*, a writer, philosopher and proto-feminist.

There is also *Eleanor of Aquitaine*, Queen and at times Regent of England, but ruler in her own right in her birth lands; fierce fighter for her people and her family.

On a less violent note:
*Elizabeth Garrett Anderson* - the first woman to hold a medical licence in Britain, and she set up a medical school to help more women do the same; helping future generations.
In the US, a similar figure, and born in the same decade, was *Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler*, the first female African American physician, who also wrote medical books.

*Pauline Gower*, and all the women she commanded, in the Air Transport Auxiliary in the Second World War, ferrying planes and people. I know the US had a similar organisation, the WASPs. They proved their worth as vital pilots.

On a personal note, there's *Jane Goodall*, primatologist and campaigner - still alive, she inspired me many years ago, and still does.


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## nixie (Mar 11, 2013)

Most of the ones I would have gone for have been mentioned although I cant believe no one has mentioned Boudecia, Grace O'Malley , Isobel MacDuff or Lilliard to name but a few.


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## Foxbat (Mar 12, 2013)

I've always admired local historical figure Agnes Randolph (aka Black Agnes).

As Countess of Dunbar and March, she held the castle for six months with a few servants and a handful of guards against an English army led by William Montague of Salisbury. Legend has it that she sarcastically dusted the walls after they had been pelted by catapults. Eventually, the English left with the castle still under the steadfast leadership of 'Black Aggie'.

Today, children of Dunbar still speak of her ghost wandering the town and of the (as yet) undiscovered secret passage leading to the bowels of the, now ruined, castle.


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## paranoid marvin (Mar 16, 2013)

I would imagine that there's at least one famous historical fella who was in actual fact a woman.


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## HoopyFrood (Mar 16, 2013)

Oh, yeah! One's mentioned in Jenner's tweets. There's another I read about, though her name is slipping my mind now...I think around the 1920s/30s...


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## AnyaKimlin (Mar 16, 2013)

paranoid marvin said:


> I would imagine that there's at least one famous historical fella who was in actual fact a woman.



There are several my favourite was James Barry/Margaret Ann Bulkley.  She was a military surgeon in the late 1800s she rose to be the Inspector General in charge of military hospitals and the secret only discovered after his/her death.

I believe it was discovered that she had also given birth at some point.

There was also the jazz musician Billy Tipton.


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## Victoria Silverwolf (Mar 16, 2013)

Although not much is certain about her life, and all of her works are lost, I am fascinated by Hypatia, the first outstanding female mathematician known to history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia


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## HoopyFrood (Mar 16, 2013)

AnyaKimlin said:


> There are several my favourite was James Barry/Margaret Ann Bulkley.  She was a military surgeon in the late 1800s she rose to be the Inspector General in charge of military hospitals and the secret only discovered after his/her death.
> 
> I believe it was discovered that she had also given birth at some point.



Yeah, that's the one Jenner mentioned!



> There was also the jazz musician Billy Tipton.



Ah, and that may well be the other I was thinking of!


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## Mouse (Mar 16, 2013)

AnyaKimlin said:


> There are several my favourite was James Barry/Margaret Ann Bulkley.  She was a military surgeon in the late 1800s she rose to be the Inspector General in charge of military hospitals and the secret only discovered after his/her death.
> 
> I believe it was discovered that she had also given birth at some point.



Just reading about him now. Thanks for that, Anya. Fascinating.


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## Hex (Mar 17, 2013)

Alexandra Kollontai (revolutionary) and Anna Akhmatova (poet).


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## BigBadBob141 (May 12, 2014)

To me one of the most outstanding women of her time was Amy Johnson, I even named one of my cats after her.
In 1930 she flew from England to Australia in a De Havilland DH.60 Gipsy Moth, a small open cockpit biplane, in 1932 she broke the record flying from London to Cape Town in a DH Puss Moth.
During WW2 she joined the Air Transport Auxiliary, an amazing group of pilots, mainly women, who's job were to ferry planes from factory to airfield.
What made them so amazing was the variety of aircraft they would fly from day to day, one day maybe a Tiger Moth or Harvard trainer the next a four engine Lancaster heavy bomber or a Spitfire high performance fighter, or even a massive Short Sunderland flying boat.
On the 5th of January 1941 Amy was flying an Airspeed Oxford when she was forced to bail out over the Thames Estuary, her body was never recovered.


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## Stephen Palmer (May 12, 2014)

Did anyone watch the programme about forgotten women pop-artists last weekend? A real eye-opener. Should be on iPlayer if you missed it.


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## Mouse (May 12, 2014)

No, I saw it advertised and thought it looked good.


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## farntfar (May 12, 2014)

Ok, so a little bit of politics.

Bertha von Kinsky was Alfred Nobel's housekeeper and companion for some time and is believed to have suggested to him that he create the Peace Prize in his legacy along with all the others. 
(Nobel had believed that his creation of dynamite would end warfare as it would almost certainly bring the prospect of mass civilian deaths into war as well as the deaths of soldiers.)

She later (and as Bertha von Suttner, following her mariage) created a number of organisations promoting the peace movement, writing pamplets, speaking across Europe and in the States and writing a novel ("Lay down your arms").

She was the first woman to receive the Nobel peace prize in 1901.


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## Curt Chiarelli (May 13, 2014)

Hypatia of Alexandria has got my vote!


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## Parson (May 13, 2014)

A couple of English women who should be much more famous:

Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntington
Hannah Moore,
Dorothy Sayers

Women I never heard of in my College level English History course.


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## Mouse (May 13, 2014)

I thought I'd mentioned Julie d'Aubigny - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia but apparently I hadn't. So... yeah. Love her.


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## JoanDrake (May 14, 2014)

paranoid marvin said:


> I would imagine that there's at least one famous historical fella who was in actual fact a woman.




Pope Joan? The author's note at the end of Donna Woolfolk Cross's fictional bio of her makes a convincing argument for her not being entirely legendary, and why DO they make all prospective Holy "Fathers" sit in that terribly undignified chair?


Pope Joan: a Novel by Donna Woolfolk Cross


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## JonH (May 21, 2014)

Aspasia, mistress of Pericles: a woman who taught rhetoric to Pericles, whose philosophy influenced Socrates and who is mentioned by name in Plato. Her household was an intellectual centre of Periclean Athens.


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## Mirannan (May 21, 2014)

I'm quite impressed with Hedy Lamarr, who was not only a film star (in the early days, natch) but became one after escaping from Nazi Germany and a controlling (and extremely Nazi) husband - and, not content with that, was instrumental in the invention of spread-spectrum radio, which you may be using to read this as it forms part of the design of wi-fi and cellphone technology.


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## ralphkern (May 25, 2014)

We may come from an egalitarian age... relatively speaking... but I wonder how much more could have been accomplished if women, through history, had been treated as the equals of men.

I'm no bra burning feminist,  I work in a 'masculine' industry, yet some of the best line managers I've worked for have been women.


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## Aquilonian (May 25, 2014)

A important thread about an important issue. Much as I like Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, his contemptuous dismissal of Zenobia Queen of Palmyra lowers my opinion of his reliability. In such a man's world, Zenobia must have been something special to rule in her own right, let alone to defy the Roman Empire. Sadly, all records of her have come down to us through hostile and misogynistic channels.

Noor Inayat Khan G.C. is one of my great heroes, especially at the present time when bigoted fundamentalist Wahabis claim to speak for the entire Muslim world. She was the daughter of a prominent Sufi (Muslim mystic) teacher who volunteered for the Special Operations Executive, parachuted into occupied France, evaded capture for a long time, resisted interrogation and was eventually kicked to death in a concentration camp. She had deliberately left her pistol behind because she didn't want to kill anybody!

Anne Bonny the 18th century woman pirate was a somewhat different type, but equally courageous. At one point she sailed out of some harbour where the authorities had hoped to capture her, with all guns blazing, topless in full view on her quarterdeck, her female lover at her side! (Presumably she went topless to demonstrate that she really was a woman). 

James Barry the army surgeon is one of many interesting characters discussed in the book "Imposters" which I strongly recommend. The book describes several 18th-19th century women who lived much or all of their lives in male guise, mainly to obtain the opportunities that were limited to men in those days. Very sad really when you think what inconvenience and frustration she must have endured, when now 150 years or so later we take women doctors for granted. 

An interesting point the book makes is about how the psychological phenomenon of cognitive dissonance favoured these women. People were so convinced that no woman could possibly be a soldier or sailor or doctor or stagecoach driver or whatever that when faced with clear evidence they automatically ignored it or found some other explanation. Thus for example one of the female sailors was flogged at one point- the bosun who administered the flogging commented that he'd "never seen such breasts on a man", but did not make the obvious connection, because the idea of a female sailor was literally unthinkable. 

Mary Gentle has a cross-dressing female character in one of her books but I won't say which as it would spoil the dramatic effect when she is recognised.


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## alchemist (May 25, 2014)

Who was the first woman elected to the House of Commons?


No, not Lady Astor (as I've seen erroneously on at least two TV quizzes) but Constance Markievicz in 1918. Artist, suffragette, revolutionary, parliamentarian, the spelling of her name (and the football ground named after her) has been the bane of Irish schoolchildren for decades. Amongst other things, she came from landed gentry and over time, gave away all her wealth to the poor, while in her revolutionary days, as an officer in the 1916 Rising in Dublin...



> Fashion advice attributed to her was: "Dress suitably in short skirts and strong boots, leave your jewels in the bank and buy a revolver.


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## Jo Zebedee (May 25, 2014)

alchemist said:


> Who was the first woman elected to the House of Commons?
> 
> 
> No, not Lady Astor (as I've seen erroneously on at least two TV quizzes) but Constance Markievicz in 1918. Artist, suffragette, revolutionary, parliamentarian, the spelling of her name (and the football ground named after her) has been the bane of Irish schoolchildren for decades. Amongst other things, she came from landed gentry and over time, gave away all her wealth to the poor, while in her revolutionary days, as an officer in the 1916 Rising in Dublin...





That woman’s days were spent 
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.

A fascinating woman ( who, sadly, my history lessons taught me nothing of, () but my mother's love of Yeats did) - and, whether agreed with or not, was a woman of principle.


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## alchemist (May 25, 2014)

There you go, out-Yeatsing me again, and I'm the one who went to his grave!


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## Jo Zebedee (May 25, 2014)

alchemist said:


> There you go, out-Yeatsing me again, and I'm the one who went to his grave!



Been there, done that.  and Tor Ballylee. And Maud Gonne's place. It was a riveting holiday for a ten year old...  (but never forgotten.)


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