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.
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Women
Lillian
Moller Gilbreath
(1878-1972) industrial
engineer and expert in motion studies, Gilbreath was
a pioneer in the relationship between engineering
and human relations.
Charlotte Perkins
Gilman (1860-1935) philosopher,
writer, educator and activist who demanded equal
treatment for women as the best way to advance
society's progress.
Ella Grasso
(1919-1981) first woman elected a state
governor in her own right.
Martha Wright Griffiths
(1912- ) Congresswoman
from Michigan 1955-1975, known for
successfully adding sex discrimination as a
prohibited act in he 1962 Civil Rights Act.
Sarah Grimke
(1792 - 1873) and Angelina
Grimke
Weld (1805 - 1879) sisters who
wrote numerous
published papers which championed abolition
and women's rights.
Mary A. Hallaren
(1907- ) leader who championed
permanent status for women in the military after
World War II as director of the Women's Army
Corps.
Fannie Lou Hamer
(1917-1977) Mississippi
sharecropper and organizer of the Mississippi
Freedom Party, which challenged the white
domination of the Democratic Party.
Alice Hamilton
(1869-1970) physician pathologist
who specialized in industrial diseases.
Helen Hayes
(1900-1993) a major actress in all
entertainment areas, from live theater to films and
radio.
Dorothy Height
(1912- ) began as a volunteer with
the National Council of Negro Women and became
its president.
Oveta Culp Hobby
(1905-1995) shaped the
development of two major government institutions
as first Director of the Women's Army Corps and
first Secretary of the Department of Health,
Education and Welfare.
Wilhelmina Cole Holladay
(1922- ) founder of the
National Museum of Women in the Arts in
Washington, D. C.
Grace Murray Hopper
(1906-1992) mathematics
genius, computer pioneer, inventor and teacher. She
was the first woman to attain the rank of Rear
Admiral in the U.S. Navy.
Julia Ward Howe
(1819 - 1910) suffragist and author
of Battle Hymn of the Republic.
Dolores Huerta (1932 - ) co-founder (with Cesar
Chavez) of the United Farm Workers union, which is
dedicated to helping immigrant/migrant people of all
ages.
Helen Hunt
(1949 - ) creative philanthropist who has
used her own resources and others to create
women's funding institutions.
Lora Neale Hurston
(1891-1960) novelist,
anthropologist and folklorist who contributed
greatly to the preservation of African-American folk
traditions and to American literature.
Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643) religious leader who
insisted on practicing her religious faith as she
chose, including holding religious meetings in her
home, the first woman in the new world to do so.
Mary Jacobi (1842-1906) physician who founded
the Association for the Advancement of Medical
Education of Women.
Frances Wisebart
Jacobs (1843-1892) driving force
behind the concept of today's United Way, and
founder of what became the National Jewish
Hospital for Immunology and Respiratory Medicine.
Shirley Ann Jackson,
Ph.D. (1946 - ) first woman to
chair the United States Nuclear Regulatory
Commission and the first African-American woman
to serve on the Commission.
Mae Jemison
(1956- ) physician, engineer and
astronaut.
Mary Harris,
"Mother" Jones (1860-1930), labor
organizer and agitator who was a major figure in the
American labor movement.
Barbara Jordan
(1936-1996) first black woman
elected to Congress from the south and the first
Black woman to deliver the keynote address at the
convention of a major political party (Democratic
Convention, 1976).
Helen Keller
(1880-1968) author and lecturer. An
illness at the age of 19 months left her deaf, blind
and mute. She learned to overcome these handicaps
and became a powerful national spokesperson on
behalf of others with similar disabilities.
Nannerl O. Keohane
(1940- ) the first contemporary
woman to head both a major women's college
(Wellesley) and a research university (Duke).
Billie Jean King
(1943- ) dominated the world of
tennis for more than 20 years, winning 20
Wimbledon titles and 13 U.S. Open titles.
Maggie Kuhn
(1905-1995) after a forced
retirement at age 65, Kuhn began work forming the
Gray Panthers, an organization which addressed age
discrimination and pension rights.
Susette La Flesche
(1854-1903) member of the
Omaha Tribe and a constant campaigner for native
American rights.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
(1906- ) author of
numerous essays, journals and other books.
Belva Lockwood (1830-1917) first woman to practice
law and argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court
(1879).
Juliette Gordon Low
(1860-1927) founder of the Girl
Scouts of America in 1915.
Shannon W. Lucid,
Ph.D. (1943 - ) astronaut who
set the American record for the longest space flight
by an American (July 15, 1996).
Mary Lyon
(1797-1849) founder of Mt. Holyoke, the
first college for women, in 1837.
Mary Mahoney
(1845-1926) first black woman to
study and work as a professionally trained nurse.
Wilma Mankiller
(1945- ) first woman elected
Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation.
Maria Goeppert Mayer
(1906-1972) first U.S.
woman and second woman ever to win the Nobel
Prize in Physics.
Barbara McClintock
(1902-1992) geneticist who
pioneered work in maize genetics and the complex
mechanisms which control cell development.
Katharine Dexter
McCormick (1875 - 1967)
Co-founder (with Carrie Chapman Catt) of
the League of Women Voters.
Louise McManus
(1896-1993) first American nurse
to earn a Ph.D.
Margaret Mead
(1901-1978) anthropologist whose
book, Coming of Age in Samoa , caused scientific
and social rethinking of adolescence.
Maria Mitchell
(1818-1889) astronomer who
discovered a new comet in 1847 and first woman
named to membership in the American Academy of
Arts & Sciences.
Constance Baker Motley
(1921- ) attorney and jurist
who, after performing landmark work with the
NAACP with Thurgood Marshall and others,
became the first black woman elected to the New
York State Senate.
Lucretia Mott
(1793-1880) Quaker anti-slavery
advocate, who, after meeting Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, became a leader in the women's right's
movement.
Antonia Novello
(1944- ) first woman and first
Hispanic to be named Surgeon General of the United
States.
Annie Oakley
(1860-1926) markswoman, was
probably the nation's finest.
Sandra Day O'Connor (1930-) first woman
appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Georgia O'Keeffe
(1887-1986) artist and perhaps the
best-known American woman painter.
Rosa Parks
(1913- ) known as "the mother of
the
Civil Rights Movement," when, in 1955, she refused
to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man in
Montgomery, Alabama.
Alice Paul
(1885-1977) social reformer and founder
of the women's party.
Frances Perkins
(1880-1965) public office and first
woman to hold a Presidential Cabinet office and first
woman Secretary of Labor.
Esther Peterson
(1906- ) catalyst for change in the
labor, women's and consumer movements and the
force behind President Kennedy's creation of the
first Presidential commission on Women in 1962.
Jeannette Rankin
(1880-1973) first woman elected to
the U.S. Congress, serving two separate terms.
Ellen Swallow Richards
(1842-1911) the nation's
first professional woman chemist, an important
figure in opening careers in science to woman.
Linda Richards
(1841-1930) received the first
diploma awarded by the nation's first school of
nursing.
Sally Ride
(1951- ) first American woman astronaut
(1983), when she road aboard the Challenger into
space.
Ambassador Rozanne
L. Ridgway (1935 - )
foreign policy advisor under six consecutive
U.S. presidents from Richard Nixon to William Clinton.
Edith Nourse Rogers
(1881 - 1960) Massachusetts
Congresswoman who introduced the "G.I. Bill of
Rights"
Act and Women's Army Auxiliary Corp (WAC) legislation.
Eleanor Roosevelt
(1884-1962) trailblazing First
Lady and wife of President Franklin Roosevelt.
Ernestine Lousie
Potowski Rose (1810-1892) early
advocate for women's rights traveling for more than
three decades giving eloquent speeches and
seeking petition signatures.
Sister Elaine Roulet
(1930- ) crusader for some of
society's most sharply disadvantaged, children of
women in prison.
Wilma Rudolph
(1940-1994) first American woman
ever to win three gold medals in the Olympics.
Josephine St. Pierre
Ruffin (1842-1924) black leader
from New England, was a suffragist, fought
slavery and founded several organizations for black
women, including the Boston branch of the NAACP
and the League of Women for Community Service.
Florence Sabin
(1871-1953) first woman graduate of
the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the first
woman to teach there.
Margaret Sanger
(1883-1966) nurse and social
reformer.
Katherine Siva Saubel
(1920- ) born on a
reservation in great poverty, Saubel became
determined to preserve her tribe's culture and
language, despite overwhelming odds.
Betty Bone Schiess
(1923- ) religious leader, led the
successful effort in 1974 to have women ordained as
priests in the Episcopal Church in America.
Patricia Schroeder
(1940- ) served as the senior
woman in Congress, first elected in 1972 from
Colorado.
Felice N. Schwartz
(1925 - 1996) founder in 1962
of Catalyst, the premier organization working with
corporations to foster women's leadership.
Florence Seibert
(1897-1991) scientist who made it
possible to test for tuberculosis and who pioneered
safe intravenous therapy.
Elizabeth Bayley
Seton (1774-1821) the first
native-born American woman to be canonized a
saint by the Roman Catholic Church.
Eunice Mary Kennedy
Shriver (1921 - ) founder in
1968 of the Special Olympics for the mentally retarded.
Muriel Siebert
(1932- ) first woman to own a seat on
the New York Stock Exchange (1967).
Beverly Sills
- (1929 - ) Acclaimed Soprano who
became the first woman General Director
and then President of the New York City Opera, and
later first woman chair of the Lincoln Center for
the Performing Arts.
Bessie Smith
(1894?-1937) one the nation's great
blues singers, Smith earned stardom from her first
record 1923's "down Hearted Blues," which
sold two
million records.
Margaret Chase Smith
(1897-1994) beginning her
political career by assuming her deceased husband's
seat in the U.S. House of Representatives upon his
death. She was later elected U.S. Senator from
Maine.
Hannah Greenbaum
Solomon (1858-1942) club
woman and welfare worker on matters relating to
child welfare, she organized a nationwide Jewish
Women's congress as part of the 1890's World's
Fair.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
(1815-1902) suffragist and
reformer, convened the first women's Rights
Convention in Seneca Falls, NY in 1848.
Gloria Steinem
(1934- ) feminist leader, writer and
social activist, she founded Ms. Magazine.
Helen Stephens
(1918-1994) athlete who set a world
record and won two track and field gold medals at
the 1936 Olympics.
Nettie Stevens
(1861-1912) research biologist who
determined that the "X" and "Y"
chromosomes
determined the sex of humans, ending scientific debate
as to whether sex was determined by heredity or
other factors.
Lucy Stone
(1818-1893) early suffrage leader who
began as an anti-slavery public advocate, followed
by a lifetime of work for women's right to vote.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
(1811-1896) author and
daughter of a minister, Stowe became one of the first
women to earn a living by writing, publishing the
best-seller Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852.
Helen Brooke Taussig
(1896-1986) chief of the heart
clinic at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, she
developed a pioneering operation in 1944 which
solved the often fatal "blue baby" (children
born
with an anatomical heart defect) problem, saving
countless infants.
Maria Tallchief
(1925- ) prima ballerina with the
New York City Ballet and artistic director the Lyric
Opera Ballet in Chicago.
Sojourner Truth
(c.1797-1883) abolitionist born a
slave who became a Quaker missionary.
Harriet Tubman
(c.1820-1913) abolitionist born a
slave who eventually became a "conductor"
on the
Underground Railroad.
Florence Wald
(1916 - ) former dean of the Yale
School of Nursing and founder of the Hospice
movement in America.
Lillian Wald
(1867-1940) nurse who organized the
public health nursing service and the Henry Street
Settlement in New York City to meet the needs of the
urban poor.
Madam C. J. Walker
(1867-1919) Sara Breedlove, a
Black entrepreneur considered the first Black woman
to become a millionaire.
Faye Wattleton
(1943- ) nurse who was the first
woman since founder Margaret Sanger, and first
black to become president of the Planned
Parenthood Foundation.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett
(1862-1931) Black leader,
anti-lynching crusader, journalist, lecturer and
community; organizer who fought social injustice all
her life.
Edith Wharton
(1862-1937) American novelist and
short story writer of the 20th century, she was the
first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Oprah Winfrey
(1954- ) the first Black woman to
own her own television production company, is
host of the nation's most successful talk show.
Sarah Winnemucca
(c.1842-1891) Native American
Leader who dedicated her life to returning land taken
by the government back to the tribes, especially the
land of her own Paiute Tribe.
Fanny Wright
(1795-1852) first American woman to
speak out against slavery and for the equality of
woman.
Chien-Shiung Wu
(1912 - 1997) nuclear scientist
whose pioneering work altered modern physical
theory and changed the accepted view of the
structure of the universe.
Rosalyn Yalow
(1921- ) first American woman
trained in the U.S. to win the Nobel Prize for
Medicine.
Gloria Yerkovich
(1942- ) founder of CHILDFIND, a
nationwide organization which helps locate missing
children.
Mildred "Babe
Didrikson Zaharias (1914-1966)
one of the century's premier athletes, she won track
and field gold medals at the 1932 Olympics.
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