These women have changed history forever by being strong, brave, and human, regardless of society’s expectations for them.
A Muslim woman covers the yellow star of her Jewish neighbour with her veil to protect her from prosecution. Sarajevo, former Yugoslavia. [1941]
Maud Wagner, the first well know female tattooist in the United States. [1907]
18 year old French Résistance fighter, Simone Segouin, during the liberation of Paris. [19 August 1944]
Afghan women at a public library before the Taliban seized power. [c. 1950s]
Annette Kellerman posing in a swimsuit that got her arrested for indecency. [c. 1907]
Sarla Thakral, 21 years old, the first Indian woman to earn a pilot license. [1936]
The first women’s basketball team from Smith College [1902]
Photograph of a samurai warrior. [c. late 1800s]
106-year old Armenian woman protecting her home with an AK-47. [1990]
A Swedish woman hitting a neo-Nazi protester with her handbag. The woman was reportedly a concentration camp survivor. [1985]
Voting activist Annie Lumpkins at the Little Rock city jail. [1961]
Members of the Hell’s Angels gang. [1973]
Girls deliver heavy blocks of ice after male workers were conscripted [1918]
Komako Kimura, a prominent Japanese suffragist at a march in New York. [October 23, 1917]
Marina Ginesta, a 17-year-old communist militant, overlooking Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War. [1936]
Anna Fisher, “the first mother in space” [1980s]
A woman suffrage activist protesting after “The Night of Terror.” [1917]
Two women show uncovered legs in public for the first time in Toronto. [1937]
Margaret Bourke-White, a photographer, climbing the Chrysler Building. [1934]
Elspeth Beard, during her attempt to become the first Englishwoman to circumnavigate the world by motorcycle. [1980s]
Winnie the Welder. [1943]
Jeanne Manford marches with her gay son during a Pride Parade. [1972]
Sabiha Gökçen of Turkey poses with her plane, in 1937 she became the first female fighter pilot.
A captured Soviet soldier is given water by a Ukrainian woman after being captured. [1941]
A mason high above Berlin. [c. 1900]
Railroad workers at lunch. Many were the wives and even mothers of the men who left for war. [1943]
Some of the first women sworn into US Marine Corps. [August, 1918]
Ellen O’Neal, one of the first professional female skaters. [1976]
Parisian mothers shield their children from German sniper fire. [1944]
Filipino guerilla, Captain Nieves Fernandez, shows a US soldier how she killed Japanese soldiers during the occupation. [1944]
A Dutch woman refuses to leave her husband, a German soldier, after Allied soldiers capture him. She followed him into captivity. [1944]
Gertrude Ederle becomes the first woman to swim across the English Channel. [1926]
Aviator Amelia Earhart after becoming the first woman to fly an aircraft across the Atlantic Ocean. [1928]
Afghan women studying medicine. [1962]
The iconic photo of a concerned pea-picker and mother of seven children during the Dust Bowl. [1936]
Women’s Liberation Coalition March, Detroit, Michigan. [1970]
A Los Angeles Police Officer looks after an abandoned baby in the drawer of her desk. [1971]
Leola N. King, America’s first female traffic cop, Washington D.C. [1918]
Erika, a 15-year-old Hungarian fighter who fought for freedom against the Soviet Union. [October 1956]
American nurses land in Normandy. [1944]
Kathrine Switzer becomes the first woman to run the Boston Marathon, despite attempts by the marathon organizer to stop her. [1967]