Making HERstory

By Phoebe Pineda

Women’s contributions to history too often go unacknowledged, forgotten, or unknown. From medicine and math to law and architecture, we’ve gathered a list of pioneering women with powerful stories and legacies.

Pioneers in STEM

Medicine

Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States, graduating first in her class from Geneva Medical College in 1849. Originally a teacher, Blackwell was inspired to pursue medicine by a dying friend who believed she would have lived longer if she’d been treated by a female physician. A lifelong champion of women’s rights, Blackwell (along with her sister Emily) opened the New York Infirmary for Women and Children in 1857 and later co-founded the Women’s Medical College in 1868.

Mathematics

You might recognize Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson from the 2016 film Hidden Figures, chronicling their work at NASA during the Space Race. All three women began their careers in the all-Black West Computing division of the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, where Vaughan served as supervisor for nearly a decade. Jackson went on to become NASA’s first Black woman engineer, while Johnson provided instrumental calculations for the Apollo missions, becoming a key figure in sending the first man to the moon.

Chemistry

Ellen Swallow Richards was the first woman admitted to MIT, later joining the faculty as a chemistry instructor and helping establish a campus Women’s Laboratory in 1876. Richards contributed important research to public health and ecology, leading the first survey of drinking water in the United States and investigating the relationship between environmental pollution and human illness. She recognized the importance of chemistry in the household and helped establish the discipline of home economics.

Pioneers in the Arts

Film

Hattie McDaniel holds the distinction of being the first Black performer to win an Academy Award, which she received in 1940 for her role as Mammy in Gone With the Wind. A fiercely spirited performer, McDaniel spent the early years of her career in the Black vaudeville scene. Though she was largely relegated to playing domestic workers, she remained headstrong, organizing her neighbors to fight residential segregation and push back against White homeowners’ attempts to force them out.

Architecture

The United States’ first professional female architect, Louise Blanchard Bethune firmly believed that “complete emancipation” for women “[lay] in ‘equal pay for equal service’” and encouraged her fellow women architects not to restrict themselves to lower-paid residential projects. She famously refused to enter a design for the Women’s Building at the Chicago World’s Fair, which was offering male architects $10,000 while women architects would only receive $1,000. Of the numerous buildings Bethune designed in her native Buffalo, NY, her most renowned work is the historic Hotel Lafayette.

Art

Italy’s Lavinia Fontana is widely considered the first female professional artist. Raised among a group of educated Italians who valued women’s education, Fontana married her husband without a dowry, instead earning income through her painting. Her gender and her talent made her a popular portrait artist among Renaissance noblewomen, but she also painted historical and religious subjects, which were traditionally considered men’s work.

Journalism

Journalist Ida B. Wells traveled to the Jim Crow South to investigate the widespread lynchings of Black Americans and did so largely alone, with little protection from racial violence. She dispelled the narrative painting victims of lynching as criminals, exposing how lynching and terrorizing Black Americans enforced White supremacy. Ahead of her time in many respects, Wells pioneered the use of economic boycotts in the civil rights movement and championed federal anti-lynching legislation, racial equality, and women’s suffrage.

Pioneers in Law, Government, and Politics

Law

Despite not attending law school, Arabella Mansfield became the first woman admitted to the bar in 1869. Mansfield, who briefly taught political science at Simpson College, gained her experience through apprenticing at her brother’s law firm. She took on many different roles over the course of her life, including advocating for women’s suffrage in her home state of Iowa.

Supreme Court

Sandra Day O’Connor was the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court, sworn in as an Associate Justice in 1981. She was often the deciding vote in many difficult rulings, and her insight proved critical in upholding abortion rights in the decades after Roe v. Wade. After retiring from the Court in 2006, O’Connor founded the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute for American Democracy, an organization dedicated to promoting civic engagement and education among young people.

Politics

Suffragist Jeannette Rankin was the first woman elected to U.S. Congress, taking office as a House representative of Montana in 1916—a full four years before women nationwide gained the right to vote. Rankin prioritized social welfare throughout her Congressional career, advocating for federally funded maternal healthcare and education as well as a constitutional ban on child labor. She was also a staunch pacifist, voting against U.S. participation in both World War I and II and later leading a 5,000-person march on Washington, D.C., to protest the Vietnam War.

Stephanie Byers is the first openly trans woman of color to be elected to and serve in a state legislature and the first Indigenous trans person to hold elected office in the U.S. Byers, a member of the Chickasaw Nation, served in the Kansas House of Representatives from 2021 to 2023. She was a key presence in a state government where trans rights were up for debate, fighting to protect trans athletes from discrimination.

Which pioneering women inspire you? Whose stories do you want to tell? Let us know in the comments!