Happy Women's History Month!

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 Let’s Celebrate...

Women’s History Month!

Whether it was your mother, a teacher, or Ruby Bridges, your live has probably been influenced or impacted by at least one woman. Throughout history, women, famous, infamous, and unknown, have been changing our world by being change-makers, leaders, firsts, and so much more. This month, we celebrate those who paved the way for us today by highlighting just a few influential women throughout history!

Anna Julia Cooper

Anna Julia Coper was an educator who fought for women’s rights and the rights of people of color. She was an excellent student, with an aptitude for mathematics, even teaching math part time when she was 10! Through education, Anna Julia Cooper fought for black women’s rights throughout the world.

 Chien-Shiung Wu

Chien-Shiung Wu was a Chinese born American physicist. She is considered to be one of the premier experimental physicists in the world, having worked on and proving many theories in her live, including the principle of parity conservation and investigations into the structure of hemoglobin.  


Jeannette Rankin

Jeannette Rankin was the first woman member of the US Congress. Throughout her lifetime she fought for equal gender rights, including, and most especially, introducing the first bill to allow women to live more independently. Jeanatte Rankin also fought for the women’s right to vote, as legislative secretary of the National American Woman Suffrage Associating before working in congress.


Katherine Johnson

Katherine Johnson, a Virginia native, was an American mathematician who worked for NASA. She was the first woman to author and co-author and receive credit for her research and mathematical calculations that would help send astronauts to orbit and eventually the moon. Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan became the inspiration and main characters of Margot Lee Shetterly’s book, Hidden Figures: The American Dream the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race.

Margaret Sanger

Margaret Sanger was an obstetrical nurse in New York City where she observed the affect that poverty had on women and families, leading to high rates of infant and maternal mortality, illegal abortions which often resulted in the woman’s death, and more. Margaret Sanger worked to remove the legal barriers to educating women on the facts of contraception, coining the term birth control. Her advocation of birth control was not well received publicly, and she was arrested, though her arrest lead the public to learn more and start advocating for reproductive rights and birth control. Her legal work in this area prompted federal courts to reinterpret the Comstock Act and made contraceptives more easily prescribed.


Nellie Bly

Elizabeth Cochran was an America journalist who got her job as a reporter for the Pittsburgh Dispacth when she wrote a letter to the editor in response to an article entitles What Girls Are Good For. Her writing impressed the editor and she began writing under the pen name “Nellie Bly.” She wrote about working conditions, life in poverty, and official corruption and poverty in Mexico. One of her most notable articles was entitled Ten Days in a Mad House, written after she committed herself to a mental hospital in New York to expose the conditions of the patients. This article lead to a grand-jury investigation and improvements in patient care.

Patsy Takemoto Mink

Patsy Takemoto Mink was the first Asian American woman to be elected to Congress. Born in Hawaii she was the second Hawaiian woman in congress as well. During her time in Congress, she fought in support of civil rights, public education, and labor unions, while also working to bring more equality to academic and athletic federal funding.


Sarah Breedlove

Madam C.J. Walker, nee Sarah Breedlove, a successful business woman and philanthropist, was the first self-made African American woman millionaire in the United States. Born on a cotton plantation, Sarah’s life is one of perseverance and bravery. She was orphaned at the age of 7, married at 14, widowed just 6 years later with a young daughter, and worked for many years as a washerwoman. Throughout her life, she worked and learned about personal hygiene and ointments that would help with various maladies affecting the people at a time when indoor plumbing was not accessible to most. She created the “Walker Method” and opened the Lelia College of Beauty Culture. Later, after moving to Indianapolis, she opened the headquarters of the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company, providing career opportunities and economic independence for thousands of African American women and even expanded internationally.

Valentina Tereshkova

Valentina Tereshkova is the first woman to travel to space. In 1963, she was launched in the Vostok 6 and, over the course of 71 hours, completed 48 orbits around the earth. Valentina had no training in flying aircraft, but was an amateur parachutist, which is how she was accepted into the training program for this mission.


Wilma Rudolph

Wilma Rudolph was the first American woman to win 3 track and field gold medals, for her sprinting, in just one Olympic Games. Though Wilma started as a child who could not walk without an orthopedic shoe until after she turned 11, she persevered and became a basketball player and sprinter in high school. Her sprinting skills got her a position on the Olympic team. As a sprinter, she won many medals and even set the world record for the 200 meter race, finishing in just 22.9 seconds.


This is just a small fraction of the courageous, perseverant, amazing women who have helped shape our world and lives. We highly suggest you learn about many more women like, Clara Barton, Dorothy Levitt, Georgia Gilmore, Junko Tabei, Marie Curie, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Sylvia Rivera, and many more in the following articles and books.