In
case you've forgotten what women in America have accomplished,
here's a refresher. These are the mega-mentors -- women
whose inspiring accomplishments help us recognize our
potential, banish stereotypes
and shatter the glass ceiling.
Start
at Beginning of Great Women List
Also
see our: Quotations by
Women
Lydia
Moss Bradley
( 1816 - 1908) Educator, founder
of Bradley University and coeducation advocate.
Myra Bradwell
(1831-1894) America's first woman
lawyer.
Mary Breckinridge
(1881-1965) the United States
foremost pioneer in the development of midwifery
and provision of care to rural areas.
Gwendolyn Brooks
(1917- ) poet and novelist.
Brooks was the first Black woman to win the Pulitzer
Prize (1949).
Pearl S. Buck
(1892-1973) novelist writing of two different
cultures, American and Asian.
Charlotte Ann Bunch
(1944- ) founder and director
of the Center for Women's Global Leadership at
Rutgers University.
St. Frances Xavier
Cabrini (1850-1917) first
American citizen to be canonized a saint.
Mary Steichen Calderone,
MD, MPH (1904 - )
pioneering sex educator and acknowledged
"mother of sex education."
Annie Jump Cannon
(1863-1941) astronomer who
perfected the universal system of stellar
classification.
Rachel Carson
(1907-1964) zoologist whose
concern over the damaging effects of pesticides and
other poisons on the environment led to her
groundbreaking work, Silent Spring.
Mary Ann Shadd Cary
(1823 - 1893) educator and
abolitionist. First Black woman to enroll
in and graduate from Howard University Law School
and first Black woman to vote in a
federal election.
Mary Cassatt
(1844-1926) American impressionist
painter who captured the soul of family life, women,
children, interiors and gardens.
Willa Cather
(1873-1947) newspaperwoman and
editor who became an outstanding novelist with the
publication of O Pioneers in 1913.
Carrie Chapman Catt
(1859-1947) tenacious
women's suffrage organizer whose efforts at the
helm of the National American Women Suffrage
Association put forth the "winning plan" that
led to
state-by-state enactments of suffrage and the final
victory in 1920.
Shirley Chisholm
(1924- ) first Black woman elected
to the U.S. Congress.
Jacqueline Cochran (1906-1980) first woman aviator
to break the sound barrier.
Elizabeth Jane Cochrane
(Nellie Bly) (1864 - 1922)
trail-blazing journalist considered to be the
"best reporter in America" who pioneered
investigative journalism.
Eileen Collins
(1956- )first American woman to pilot
a spacecraft.
Ruth Colvin
(1916- ) founder of the Literacy
Volunteers of America, a group which she began in
her upstate New York home.
Joan Ganz Cooney
(1929 - ) founder of the Children's
Television Workshop for Public Television and
creator of Sesame Street.
Gerty Theresa Radnitz
Cori (1896 - 1957) first
American woman to receive the Nobel Prize in science.
Jane Cunningham Croly
(1829-1901) journalist and
driving force behind the American Club women's
movement which inspired thousands of women into
a wide range of social reform activities.
Emily Dickinson
(1830-1886) one of the world's
greatest poets.
Dorothea Dix
(1802-1887) one of the nation's
earliest and most effective advocates for better care
of the mentally ill.
Elizabeth Hanford
Dole (1936- ) first woman to hold
two cabinet positions as Secretary of Transportation
under Ronald Reagan and Secretary of Labor for
President George Bush.
Anne Dallas Dudley
(1876-1955) was central to the
campaign to pass the 19th amendment to the U.S.
constitution.
Amelia Earhart
(1897-1937) the first woman to fly
across the Atlantic Ocean, and the first to fly solo
across the Pacific Ocean.
Catherine East
(1916-1996) "the midwife of the
contemporary women's movement."
Mary Baker Eddy
(1821-1910) the only American
woman to found a lasting American-based religion,
the Church of Christ (Scientist).
Marian Wright Edelman
(1939- ) attorney and civil
rights advocate who founded the Children's Defense
Fund, the nation's strongest advocacy group for
children.
Gertrude Belle Elion
(1918- ) 1988 Nobel Prize
winner who has spent a lifetime creating drugs to
combat leukemia, gout malaria, herpes and other
auto-immune diseases.
Alice Evans
(1881-1975) scientist who found the
organism which caused undulant fever, a killer
disease.
Geraldine Ferraro
(1935- ) first woman nominated
by a major political party as a candidate for Vice
President of the United States.
Ella Fitzgerald
(1917-1996) world-renowned jazz
singer and the first pop musician awarded the
Lincoln Center Medallion.
Betty Friedan
(1921- ) reshaped American attitudes
toward women's lives and rights through decades of
social activism and powerful writing.
Margaret Fuller
(1810-1850) literary critic, editor,
teacher and author.
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