In history, there were numerous women who achieved success despite male oppression, making an impact in the lives of women today. As we grow to make gains in the modern era, let’s take a trip down memory lane and honor the women who made the power of women visible to the entire world. These are the most important female figures in history:
Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette and her husband, King Louis XVI were the last monarchs of France, and instead of being remembered as a fair and just ruler with her husband, she was synonymous with luxury and was indifferent to the hardships of the poor. Her hunger for luxury and affluence resulted to her death, where she acme the first female monarch to ever be executed at the end of the guillotine.
Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc’s story has to be the best story ever told. At the young age of 17, Joan led the French army to defeat the well-trained British Army to make herself a member of the royal court in just one year, and dressed in a white armor and surviving multiple injuries. A superb strategist and imposing leader, the people thought of her as a heretic, and she was burned at the stake. In 1920, she was canonized and made of of the five patron saints of France.
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks is a name synonymous in African American history. She made the push in the civil rights movement when she refused to give up her seat to a white person on a crowded bus. She also set in motion the Montgomery Bus Boycott with Lillian Smith, a European American who aimed to expose the vicious ways that racism destroys the human spirit. Parks has since been a strong figure for human rights issues.
Sacajawea
An important figure in Native American history, Sacajawea led Meriweather Lewis and William Clark on their expedition to find the Pacific Ocean. As a child, she was kidnapped by a tribe and was sold to a French Canadian man, Toussaint Charbonneau, and eventually became his wife. She soon died after giving birth to a daughter, of which Clark had adopted.
Mary Wollstonecraft
Wollstonecraft is regarded as of of the founding feminist philosophers. A writer, and philosopher, she was best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792. She argues that women are not naturally inferior to men but only appear so because they lack education. She died giving birth to her second daughter, Mary, who eventually became Mary Shelly, the author of Frankenstein.
Elizabeth I
Queen Elizabeth is to be remembered as the first crowned queen to successfully rule with absolute power. The second daughter of King Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth was also the last monarch of the Tudor Dynasty. In her rule, she defeated the Spanish Armada, and also establish Protestanism in England to replace Roman Catholicism. She also brought the Renaissance to England. Elizabeth was never married and was often referred to as the “Virgin Queen”.
Hatshepsut
In the ancient world, Hatshepsut was one of the most powerful women in history. She was the fifth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Ancient Egypt, ruling longer than any other woman in Egyptian history. She is believed to be the Ancient Egypts most successful monarchs, reestablishing trade works and leading a successful military campaign in Nubia, Levant and Syria.
