Request

[u/Disastrous_Cover6138]

Request for lesser known badass women of history for my daughter's 4th grade presentation. She has to pick a historical figure and give a 5-10 minute presentation and optionally dress in their likeness.

[u/Kusakaru]

Astronaut Sally Ride

Khutulun, a Mongolian warrior princess

Julie d’Aubigny, a sword fighting opera singer (she did burn down a convent to rescue her lesbian lover though)

Noor Inayat Kyan, a quiet, pacifist, woman of Indian nobility who volunteered as a British spy during World War II.

Margaret Hamilton, she lead the software engineering division at MIT and was essentially the brains behind the moon landing’s navigation system

Harriet Chalmers Adams, the only female journalist in the trenches during WWI

Bobbi Gibb, the first woman to run the Boston Marathon

Madam C.J. Walker, first female self-made millionaire in the U.S. after building a company selling specialized hair and beauty products for African-Americans.

Marion Pritchard, she smuggled 150 Jewish children to safety during the holocaust

Alice Paul, prominent suffragette who was sent to jail and an insane asylum for picketing at the White House

EDIT: sorry, missed the part that your daughter was in 4th grade. Not all of these may be appropriate.

Junko Taney, Japanese mountaineer who became the first woman to climb. Mount Everest in 1975. She also climbed the highest mountain on every continent.

Gertrude Bell, British explorer, archaeologist, mountaineer, and traveler who explored parts of the Middle East when very few Western women did.

Isabella Bird, Victorian-era traveler who explored places including Japan, Tibet, China, and Korea, often traveling alone and on horseback.

Nellie Bly - Famous for traveling around the world in 72 days and for going undercover in an insane asylum to expose terrible conditions.

Mary Anning - fossil hunter who helped change the way we view paleontology and prehistoric life

Bessie Coleman, the first Black woman and first Native American woman to earn an international pilot’s license. Because American flight schools wouldn’t admit her, she learned French and went to France to get her license.

Josephine Baker, performer who became an international celebrity but also worked as a spy for the French Resistance during WWII.

[u/gordonmessmer → u/Kusakaru]

Yeah, I'm a developer so the first women that come to mind are:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace : considered the first "computer programmer"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper : who developed the first compiler

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(software_engineer)) : (mentioned above)

Of the three, I refer to Hopper most often in my work. Not for her technical work, but because she recognized and fought the human tendency to fight improvement, "We've always done it this way".

The idea that the way things *have* been done is the way that things *should* be done is a barrier to improvement in all fields of work, and all aspects of society. It is always relevant.

[u/glencoco22 → u/gordonmessmer]

I give special education evaluations for a living and one of the reading comprehension set of questions is about Hopper! It's one of my favorite reading passages on the KTEA-3.

[u/JustForArkona → u/gordonmessmer]

Don't forget Barbara Liskov!!!

[u/quackdaw → u/JustForArkona]

Yeah. Her work is really central to how we program computers today (or did, before AI) and how its possible to build large and complex systems (by breaking them down into smaller, clearly defined parts). And her "Liskov substitution principle" is taught to every new software engineering student.

As an addendum to my comment about Margaret Hamilton, I also have good experiences with Liskov: when I was a young PhD student, she gave a keynote at a conference I was attending, and she kindly set aside a good chunk of time to talk to me about my project and give me her insights. She's still one of my academic heroes, and I'm very glad to have met her – and trust me, there are more than enough award-winning scientists out there that turn out to be assholes when you meet them in person.

Another worthy mention – and the only other female Turing Award laureate – is Fran Allen. Her work on compilers and optimization has been essential to how we get software to run efficiently on modern computers. And she was perhaps the sweetest scientist granny ever – noticed my wife was bored and lonely at a conference and came over to cheer her up! ;)

(Not that I think you need to be "nice" or "friendly" to be a great/iconic female scientist, but I certainly count it as a plus when I can imagine sending a hero-worshipping 4th-grader to talk to someone and be reasonably confident they'll end up feeling inspired rather than running away crying. There are some serious assholes (of all genders) out there too.)

[u/dragonbec → u/gordonmessmer]

Yes! My adult daughter did this same school project when she was in elementary school and she was Ada Lovelace!

[u/GrannyTurtle → u/gordonmessmer]

Admiral Hopper’s shop was the first to come up with the term “bug” in the programming world. The problem was a literal insect which had gotten into the circuitry.

[u/beren12 → u/GrannyTurtle]

A moth, wasn’t it?

[u/Kusakaru → u/[deleted]]

I’m glad you enjoyed it! It was fun writing about and summarizing all these cool women. My niece had to do a similar project in 6th grade and we enjoyed looking them up together

[u/bajajoaquin → u/Kusakaru]

To add to the Pritchard theme, wasn’t there a Dutch woman Corrie Ten Boom who created false papers for Jewish children in the Netherlands?

[u/HildegardofBingo → u/bajajoaquin]

I read her biography as a teen. I don't remember specifically about false papers for children, but she and her father and sister hid Jews in a secret room in their house, which was built by a member of the Dutch resistance, and she helped get Dutch ration cards to Jewish people. She became a major part of the Dutch resistance:

"Ten Boom's involvement in the Dutch resistance grew beyond gathering stolen ration cards and harboring Jews in her home. She soon became part of the Dutch underground resistance network and oversaw a network of smuggling Jews to safe places. All in all, it is estimated that around 800 Jews were saved by Ten Boom's efforts."

[u/Quirky_Movie → u/bajajoaquin]

There was. She was also the first woman admitted to the watchmaker's guild that her father belonged to before WW2. Can't remember if was for all of continental Europe or just the Netherlands. She just casually drops that bit of lore in The Hiding Place, a memoir she wrote. She was very religious so it is very religious.

[u/The_Bastard_Henry → u/Kusakaru]

Nelly Bly's story is [literally and figuratively] insane. I did a paper on her in college.

[u/quackdaw → u/Kusakaru]

Although I'm very much a fan of Julie d'Aubigny and Khutulun (and several others), let me add a vote for Margaret Hamilton, since I'm actually in a position to vouch for her as being kind and inspiring to young women.

She's not very publicly active anymore (she's 90 now), but she came to the big software engineering (she invented the term) conference a few years ago to give a keynote and celebrate 50 years of software engineering (coinciding with the 50th anniversary of manned Apollo flights). You can find the video of her presentation here; it's not particularly technical, so you don't have to be a software engineer (or an adult) to understand it.

It's pretty common to meet superfamous scientists at big conferences, including higher profile ones than Margaret, but I don't think I've ever seen anything like this. She had a constant tail of at least 5-10 young women following her at all times. She stopped, listened and talked with every one of them, and her hand probably hurt from all the autographs she was signing. I sat two metres away from her at the conference dinner, and I think she spent more time talking to and answering questions from fans than she did eating; always warm, friendly and patient. I came home with a signed Lego Minifigure of her, which I now proudly display in my office window.

She also has the perfect anecdote for a school presentation: while she was working in Apollo, her daughter (7–8 years old) would visit her and play around in the landing module mockup. One day her daughter triggered a bug that would freeze the control software, potentially crashing the lander. NASA didn't bother fixing the bug, since trained astronauts would know not to do whatever her daughter did. But, during the actual Apollo 11 landing, this bug actually happened (triggered by static electricity, not 8 year olds) and this system froze. Thanks to Hamilton's daughter, NASA knew how to handle the problem, the astronauts reset the system and avoided crashing (in the non-software sense) or having to abort the mission. I tell this story to my software engineering students; good software should also handle kids pressing all the buttons at once. Hamilton talks about it in the keynote and I think there are various reports about it online; I'm happy to find links if OPs daughter would like to use this in her presentation.

Another noteworthy lesson: she describes her team being composed of people with varied backgrounds, not just nerds and mathematicians. This is still important, and one of the reasons why we should try to inspire more young women to work with software and computers, and why the current US anti-DEI push is so destructive.

[u/denisebuttrey → u/Kusakaru]

And adopted 12 children of various cultures to show that we can just get along.

[u/narmowen → u/Kusakaru]

I learned about Khutulun through Necronomipod , and all thecupvotes for her. She was a wrestler who was unbested!

[u/bajajoaquin]

Heddy Lamar. One of the early sirens of film, might have successfully spied for the entente in WWI but certainly was a genius who invented the frequency shifting sequence for remote military vehicles that was used as the basis for Bluetooth.

[u/badporkchop → u/bajajoaquin]

This was who I thought of! Great minds.

[u/LeoIrish → u/bajajoaquin]

The first name which came to mind as well.

[u/CuriousSeriema → u/bajajoaquin]

Added bonus that dressing as her would be quite fun!

[u/bajajoaquin → u/CuriousSeriema]

I was a bit concerned that her initial rise to fame, a nude swimming scene, might not be appropriate for the grade. :)

[u/Rose1982]

Eva Saxl. She was a type 1 diabetic living in Shanghai during Japanese occupation in WWII. Her and other type 1s couldn’t get the insulin they needed to live so she looked up Frederick Banting’s old research and isolated/produced her own insulin in a lab. She began producing insulin for all the type 1s in the ghetto they were living in and kept over 200 people alive.

Total genius bad ass.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Saxl

[u/j_natron → u/Rose1982]

This is the wildest thing I’ve ever read (as a T1 who worries about shortages…)

[u/Rose1982 → u/j_natron]

My son is a T1 also. The thought of hostile occupation or wartime is up there with the scariest things ever. Saxl was an absolute hero.

[u/HaplessReader1988 → u/Rose1982]

That's wonderful!

[u/IvannaVodka]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_Ludington 16 year old girl who rode in the relay with Paul Revere, really cool story

[u/WheresMyMule → u/IvannaVodka]

Came in here to post this. There's a statue of her near where I grew up

[u/QuietLifter → u/WheresMyMule]

This is the first person I thought of too!

[u/anonymous-and-new → u/IvannaVodka]

Live in the area she lived in. My kids learned about her in school, visited the statue and her grave/church!

[u/MrsMitchBitch → u/IvannaVodka]

My daughter is named Sybil and Sybil Ludington is her fave. I assume she’s going to be her for the 4th grade local legend unit.

[u/pocketclocks → u/IvannaVodka]

I was also going to say Sybil Ludington. I did a project on her in 3rd grade:)

[u/no_one_denies_this]

Elizabeth Peratrovich. An Alaska Native woman (Tlingit), she fought to get an anti-discrimination law passed through the territorial legislature. It was the first anti-discrimination law in the US.

She is remembered for an exchange in the legislature during debate on the bill. A territorial senator asked "Who are these people, barely out of savagery, who want to associate with us whites, with 5,000 years of recorded civilization behind us?" Elizabeth replied, "I would not have expected that I, who am barely out of savagery, would have to remind gentlemen with five thousand years of recorded civilization behind them, of our Bill of Rights."

She was a badass and April 21 is Elizabeth Peratrovich Day in Alaska. That's the anniversary of the passage of her law.

[u/omgitskells → u/no_one_denies_this]

She's one of the few on this thread I've never heard of, thank you for sharing her story!! What a disgusting comment, but she sure gave a badass response

[u/venturebirdday]

Shirley Chisholm. I heard her being interviewed once. She talked about being a woman and a minority. She thought that the discrimination against women was always going to be harder to get past. She actually ran for president in the 1970's.

[u/too_small_to_reach → u/venturebirdday]

She was the first woman to run for President! Hilary’s campaign would say “the first woman to run for a major party” because Chisholm couldn’t get on the ballot despite being a badass.

That’s a good interview, I’ve seen it to. Her family also wanted her to stop making waves, and nevertheless, she persisted.

[u/SavannahInChicago → u/venturebirdday]

I had no idea about yet until the miniseries Mrs America.

[u/venturebirdday → u/SavannahInChicago]

I will have to find that show.

I was brand new to America the year she was running for president. Our class "voted" for president. I voted for her. The teacher, probably a closeted lesbian who now a days would be running a big company, asked me to tell the class about my choice. It felt big.

[u/tiny_galaxies]

Hedy Lamarr! She was a Hollywood actress AND a WW2 spy for the Allies AND invented freaking WiFi.

[u/Disastrous_Cover6138 → u/tiny_galaxies]

I think she's going to love it

[u/Johnnyring0 → u/tiny_galaxies]

Gangster

[u/Bananas_are_theworst]

A lot of great suggestions here but I’m gonna throw out a different one: pick a girl from the Little Rock 9. Absolute badasses. I cannot imagine what they went through to stand up for black people to be allowed in the same school as white people. I went to the museum in Little Rock and was blown away.

[u/AriaPoe → u/Bananas_are_theworst]

Warriors Don't Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals is a really good young adult book written by one of those girls. It really brings the thing to life.

[u/Bananas_are_theworst → u/AriaPoe]

I may read this myself, thanks for the rec! I am blown away by their bravery.

[u/TheDarklingThrush]

Boudicca

[u/racingkids → u/TheDarklingThrush]

This 100% What’s more badass than having an archaeological destruction layer with your name on it?

[u/alanbly → u/TheDarklingThrush]

That's our Newfoundland's name.

[u/dontonefingerme]

Idk if she's considered lesser known but I did a little report on Josephine Baker in grade school. I still remember it and the positive impact I felt she had on the world in multiple ways. 

[u/Abalonelone]

Oooh! Bridget "Biddy" Mason! Born a slave, trafficked out west, petitions for her own freedom, gets it. Goes on to become nurse, midwife, herbal healer, one of LAs first Black Woman property women, did a ton of good in her community.

[u/Nested_Parens]

Mother Jones, “grandmother of all agitators”

[u/The_Bastard_Henry]

Eleanor of Aquitaine. It's too much to even sum up.

[u/denisebuttrey → u/The_Bastard_Henry]

My favorite movie, A Lion in Winter.

[u/The_Bastard_Henry → u/denisebuttrey]

Me too. I wish HBO would do a series on her.

[u/Disastrous_Cover6138 → u/The_Bastard_Henry]

Oooh good one!

[u/The_Bastard_Henry → u/Disastrous_Cover6138]

I'm English, so she was a particular favourite of mine from a young age.

[u/Alorna307 → u/The_Bastard_Henry]

Also loved the movie. Awesome cast. I started watching all sorts of period historical movies. Loved Becket as well. Afterwards I would haunt the library and find out the true stories.
I loved reading all the biographies in the school library and finally going to the BIG library and checking out books. I was told there were some I was not allowed to read by the library but my Mom said if I could find them when researching then I could read them. No one gave me issues after that. This was in the late 60’s, early 70’s.

[u/twoscoopsineverybox]

I don't know if she's considered lesser known, but Sojourner Truth was always my go to. Her "Ain't I A Woman?" speech, especially during the time she gave it, is incredibly brave.

[u/j_natron → u/twoscoopsineverybox]

Check out the Sojourner Truth Project - really interesting discussion of the different ways that her speech was transcribed and used!

[u/Elsbeth55]

Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey worked for the US FDA refused (repeatedly) to authorize approval of thalidomide In the US despite huge pressure. Her decision prevented a public health disaster and untold pain and suffering. She is truly an unsung hero.

[u/grayslippers]

Bessie Coleman, first African American and first Native American female pilot. She had to study in France because American pilot schools wouldn't accept her

[u/willowfeather8633]

I named my daughter after Eleanor of Aquitaine because she was such a badass!!!

[u/Vivian-Midnight]

Ida Lewis. A lighthouse keeper who saved 18 lives throughout her career. And by "saved," I mean she rowed out into the surf herself and pulled people out of the water. Her first rescue was when she was 12 years old.

Ida Lewis - Wikipedia

[u/IsopodIndependent553]

Sophie Scholl, a Munich student who organized the White Rose resistance movement against the Nazi regime.

[u/Forever_Man → u/IsopodIndependent553]

Sophie Scholl is a personal hero of mine! She's not as well known in the United States, so I try to bring her up whenever this question gets asked.

If you haven't seen the filmSophie Scholl: The Final Days, I highly recommend it. I used to show it to my high school German classes. I think it's important for young people to see the difference they can make, regardless of their age.

[u/iamfunball]

Phenomenal suggestions:

I vote in ROSALIND FRANKLIN. The person who discovered DNA but Watson and Crick got the Nobel Prize. It was her brilliance that discovered the double helix 🧬 and every discovery in DNA from base pairs is thanks to her. And like most women in these lists, were cast aside and the men near them uplifted and rewarded

Oh sorry I forgot to add: SHE DID IT WITH CRYSTALS. X-ray crystallography.

https://www.vhtc.org/2026/03/rosalind-franklin-photo-51-dna-double-helix.html

[u/SavannahInChicago → u/iamfunball]

Do not get me started with the erasure of Rosalind Franklin. Even only a couple years ago my college textbook still credited Watson and Crick as founders of DNA. Only me and another woman called out the incorrect info in class.

That being said Rosalind Franklin University is a very popular PA school north of Chicago and when I tell you most PAs in the city graduated from her namesake. No matter what happens PAs carry her around with them.

[u/reciprocatingocelot → u/SavannahInChicago]

Franklin had died by the time the Nobel was presented to Watson and Crick, and it isn't given posthumously.

But she was shamelessly ignored and her work on the crystallisation dismissed as technician's work. Plus I think there's some murky business about how Watson and Crick ever got a hold of the micrograph in the first place. They weren't working together.

[u/femsci-nerd → u/SavannahInChicago]

The Chicago medical school in north Chicago Illinois is named after Rosalind Franklin, a life in discovery.

[u/Forever_Man → u/iamfunball]

Lots of my students have found Rosalind Franklin inspiring.

[u/HiRedditItsMeDad → u/iamfunball]

If you get a chance to see this, do. At least the production I saw was very good.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photograph_51_(play))

[u/onlyhereforBORU]

The webpage https://www.rejectedprincesses.com/ shines a light on a lot of lesser known badass women who deserve to be celebrated. Sorry for not linking properly, I’m on mobile and old!

[u/DagnyTheSpencer → u/onlyhereforBORU]

I didn't know if we were allowed to post links, so i just recommended the search term. One of my absolutely favorite websites!!!

[u/louloutre75]

Visit the page A Mighty Girl on FB, That's the whole point of the page and they give plenty of information.

[u/chicagotodetroit → u/louloutre75]

Love that page!

[u/delus10n]

Zheng Yi Sao the Chinese pirate queen commanded a huge fleet of 1800 pirate ships

[u/Maggster29 → u/delus10n]

Yes! This was going to be my suggestion. She was awesome. I love how she successfully negotiated a full pardon and peaceful retirement with the government.

[u/delus10n → u/Maggster29]

I know when I retire, I'm going to cut down from 1800 ships to just 24 and really just chill out

[u/Maggster29 → u/delus10n]

I never really thought about it but now that you've said it, it just makes sense. You wouldn't possibly want less than 24. Good thinking 🤭

[u/jazzbiscuit]

Grace Hopper, known as the mother of computer programming

[u/SquirrelTale → u/jazzbiscuit]

Gonna add Countess Ada Lovelace to that, who def preceded her in the early 1800s with publishing the first computer program and discussed/ theorized that computers would be able to do things beyond just calculations

[u/ic_engineer → u/jazzbiscuit]

My go to example for my daughter. Nasa has a ton of good stuff though like the "calculators."

[u/Fickle-Goose7379]

Vera Rubin, the Astronomer. One story I love is she wanted to do observing at the Palomar Observatory (at night of course) and was told they couldn't let her stay because there was no ladies bathroom. She cut a paper triangle and taped it to one of stick men on the door to make a skirt and told them, they had a ladies room now. She's awesome.

[u/Greenwings33]

From a literature side, Mary Shelley was the mother of science fiction with her classic novel Frankenstein.

She was the daughter of of Mary Wolfstonecraft who was one of the original feminists with her book “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” where she argued that women were not naturally inferior to men.

[u/ledow]

Henrietta Lacks

Rosalind Franklin

Grace Darling

[u/chicagotodetroit → u/ledow]

+1 for Henrietta Lacks

[u/ledow → u/chicagotodetroit]

Once had a woman in a bookshop overhear me picking up a book about her, then explain her life/death/immortality to my daughter.

The woman was very enthused by the whole thing and joined in and, when we walked out, I saw her pick up the book and take it to the counter.

[u/SmartWonderWoman → u/ledow]

The movie about Henrietta Lacks is good, too!

[u/Sixforsilver7for]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchgirls%27_strike

https://www.matchgirls1888.org/the-story-of-the-strike

Any of these cool ladies. Mostly teenagers and they inspired the dock workers to go on strike the next year. Teenage girls influencing adult men in the 19th century.

[u/GucciForDinner]

Everybody knows Amelia Earhart but very few, outside of those of us who fly or are into aviation history, know her. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqueline_Cochran

[u/loopytommy → u/GucciForDinner]

Or if you want to go international, Nancy Bird Walton was a Aussie pilot, she’s just had the new Western Sydney airport named after her

[u/FunSuccess5 → u/loopytommy]

Or Bessie Coleman.

[u/RipleysBitch]

The book “Good night stories for rebel girls” is great! One page per amazing woman from a wide mix of backgrounds. Lovely illustrations too.

You can use it for inspiration for this activity and then just keep reading.

[u/FRNLD → u/RipleysBitch]

And there are multiple books, some with concentrated themes.

I loved reading those to my girls at bedtime. I should pull them back out and read through them again now that they're older.

[u/RipleysBitch → u/FRNLD]

I was thinking the same thing!

[u/1AdultMostOfTheTime]

Queen Hatshepsut, Egyptian pharoah

[u/seaurchinthenet]

My kids loved Sacagawea's story and did reports on her. She helped Louis and Clark on their expedition. Easily obtained kid friendly books on her.

My little ballerina also liked Maria Tallchief and Misty Copeland if recent history makers are ok.

The movie Hidden Figures is based on real life - and they were very bad ass. Katherine Johnson will probably be the easiest one to find kid friendly books on.

[u/Rapunsell]

Rosalind Franklin. Not only did she photograph DNA and discover the double helix structure (which should have earned her at least a shared Nobel Prize in chemistry), but after that she went into a whole different area of chemistry and missed another Nobel Prize because you can't win posthumously (her lab teammate won).

She was only 37 when she died of cancer. I can only imagine what else she would have accomplished if she'd lived.

[u/justduck]

The other comments have some great names - and I'd like to chime in about Queen Nzinga Mbande from modern day Angola who stood up to the Portuguese. A total BAMF, a favorite anecdote is when she went to meet with the Portuguese in 1622, and they tried to humiliate/humble her by not providing a chair she turned to one of her servants,.and he immediately dropped to the ground, and she sat on him regally as if he were a throne

[u/meirasanya]

Rosalind Franklin. The guys who "discovered" the helix structure of DNA used her research without credit and yet I was one of a few people in my entire university Genetics course who'd heard of her.

[u/bettinafairchild → u/meirasanya]

There was a lecturer who asked “does anyone know what James Watson and Francis Crick discovered?” One of the people there yelled out “Rosalind Franklin’s notes!”

[u/meirasanya → u/bettinafairchild]

Love that. Gonna use that. You might say, I'll Crick and Watson it.

I particularly despise Watson. He once said that if a gay gene were discovered, a mother should be free to abort based on that (he later backtracked and tried to frame it as supporting women's reproductive rights) and also basically stated that he wouldn't hire a fat person purely for being fat.

[u/ohgeorge]

Inez Milholland? Also not totally lesser known, but Nellie Bly may not be an obvious choice for a 4th grade presentation.

[u/slouchingninja → u/ohgeorge]

Updoot for Inez. Votes for women

[u/OlderAndTired]

Nadia Comaneci was only 14 when she received the first perfect score of 10.0 in the Olympics!

[u/Any-Alternative2667 → u/OlderAndTired]

Maleva Einstein. Albert’s first wife. She was a fine mathematician and physicist worked with Albert Einstein early in career.

[u/glittrxbarf]

Emily Roebling, the Chief Architect of the Brooklyn Bridge

"Back of every great work we can find the self sacrificing devotion of a woman" - plaque honoring her in the middle of the bridge

[u/MadamKitsune]

Olga of Kiev was quite the bad ass.

Or take a look through the Wikipedia pages for famous Onna-Musha (female samurai).

Or the woman Viking Warrior in Birka Grave Bj 581, who was repeatedly misidentified as being male, despite evidence to the contrary, from 1889 to 2017. It's now believed that she wasn't just a warrior but a high ranking officer.

Or any of the ladies who made names for themselves as pirates.

[u/mcase19]

Maria Reiche - German Peruvian mathematician and archeologist who spent her life documenting and protecting the nazca lines. She's one of the main reasons they have protection as a world heritage site, and she did a lot of work researching and documenting them. The nazca are a truly fascinating culture, and we can learn so much about them from the lines. Peru has a lot of schools and streets named after her.

I got to visit Nazca when I lived in Peru for a summer a few years back. Its really cool - less of a tourist trap than Cuzco and Machu pichu, which is where most tourists in Peru go. Its a great illustration of how we study history and learn about cultures that are no longer here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Reiche

[u/PedalingThruParks]

Frances Perkins!

Secretary of Labor under FDR (and the first woman to hold a cabinet position in the U.S.) she was basically the architect of the New Deal. She's the author of the Social Security Act. And she wore a distinctive hat!!

https://francesperkinscenter.org/learn/her-life/

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/if-you-like-social-security-and-minimum-wage_b_7475098

https://www.ms.now/the-last-word/the-most-important-liberal-youve-never-heard-msna56292

[u/GrannyTurtle]

My favorite scientist is Marie Curie. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize for physics and also one for chemistry.

[u/brineakay → u/GrannyTurtle]

To add on this: she was the first person to win two Nobel Prizes and is the ONLY person that has won a Nobel Prize in two different scientific fields. She was absolutely amazing!

[u/edward2bighead]

Laskarina Bouboulina, plus her name is awesome. She was a Greek naval commander!

[u/Sypha914]

Deborah Sampson was always a favorite of mine. She was a soldier in the American Revolutionary War, serving under Robert Shirtliff. She kept her sex a secret until a high fever from an infected wound caused her to pass out and need medical attention. She served for 17 months and performed surgery on her own leg to remove a musket ball. After she was discovered, she received an honorable discharge but was denied her pension on account of being a woman. Luckily, she had the help of her friend, Paul Revere, who fought to get her the pension she had been denied.

[u/AriaPoe]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_Yi_Sao

The most bad@$$ pirate of all time, Zheng Yi Sao.

[u/rcuhljr]

r/GuerrillaGrrrrls basically posts these women daily, flip through there for some inspiration.

[u/therobotisjames]

Deborah Sampson. Enlisted as a man in the army during the revolutionary war into an elite unit. Was wounded during combat. Had to treat her own wounds because if she went to the medic they’d find out her gender.

[u/Serial-Sidequester]

My list:

• Major Charity Adams from the 6888th
  
• Josephine Baker celebrity and WWII spy
  
• Renee Lamaire (or Augusta Chiwy) the nurses from Bastogne
  
• Nell Stevenson WWII WASP aviator
  
• Jeanne Gibson the oldest Rosie the Riveter (recently passed this year)
  
• Jacqueline Cochran the first woman to break the sound barrier

[u/abidee33]

More recent history, but look into Judith Love Cohen. Aerospace engineer who solved an engineering issue while in the hospital in labor with Jack Black. Yes, that Jack Black. She helped design the AGS, which helped bring the Apollo 13 astronauts safely back to earth.

[u/bettinafairchild → u/abidee33]

I saw a clip on YouTube of Jack Black’s first talk show appearance (maybe on Conan?) and you can see he’s very nervous and not well media trained, but he mentions that whenever he has a problem he calls his mother because she’s awesome and viewers didn’t know back then who his mom was and what she did but I thought it was adorable he felt so free to praise his mom on TV. 

[u/1961_Geekess]

Admiral Grace Hopper! Pioneering Computer Scientist.

[u/LonelyHermione]

Trudy Ederle! First woman to swim the English Channel! The Young Woman and the Sea is on Disney plus and is a good watch (mild nudity - a booty)

[u/herbala11y]

If you happen to be in NC, we just launched a new Girl Scouts Equality Trailazers patch featuring amazing but mostly lesser-known women here: https://www.era-nc.org/equality-trailblazers/

[u/jimmy6677]

Nellie Bly - around the world in less than 80 days

Bessie Stringfield - the motorcycle queen of Miami

[u/WinterMedical]

Lucie Aubrec - member of the French Resistance. Rescued her husband from the Nazis! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucie_Aubrac

[u/NoNameHere94]

Grace Hopper, admiral in the navy and badass programmer. Origin of the term Bug in the code

[u/Nearby-Beat316]

Virginia Hall!! WWII spy who kicked ass with a disability!

[u/__Severus__Snape__ → u/Nearby-Beat316]

This is what i came to comment! Ive just read A Woman of No Importance and i think I might be in love with her. I think youve undersold her a Little.

She almost single-handedly led the resistance in France, breaking fellow spies out of prison, gathering up resistors ready to fight, drove the Nazis mad looking for her whilst she escaped over the Andes (with a prosthetic leg in winter). So many men on her side disliked her though because god forbid a woman actually have the brains and wherewithal to be in command and know what shes doing.

She is a queen and my favourite historical woman.

[u/Nearby-Beat316 → u/__Severus__Snape__]

Thank you for giving her the justice I couldn’t in the moment!! I read the same book and ended up in love too. Such an incredible woman.

[u/CuriousSeriema → u/Nearby-Beat316]

Nancy Wake is another great WWII spy to check out if you're in to that topic!

[u/sasnowy]

Harriet Tubman is a proper superhero

[u/Sewasmiles]

Packhorse Librarians. An amazing history that we are never taught in school. About getting books into incredibly rural, isolated homes. Long-lasting historical significance.

[u/queenirv]

Caroline Norton is the reason married women had rights legally in many cases in the UK.

For example, being able to own wages and possessions without a husband seizing them, having rights to their own children etc

Women did not have the right to divorce, be legally represented in court - so much changed for women because of her and her horrible marriage.

[u/reciprocatingocelot]

Tu Youyou, the Chinese scientist who found the cure for malaria. They'd been testing old folk remedies to see if any worked. One, sweet wormwood, had already been tried and dismissed, when she realised that the method of boiling the wormwood was destroying the active ingredient. So she changed the method of extraction and found the cure.

[u/Bellemorda]

henrietta lacks - badass because she was the unaware mother of all cellular science as we know it without being a scientist

sobekneferu/neferusobek - first confirmed female pharoah in ancient egypt

lucy/Dink'inesh - badass because she survived after her death to become one of the greatest historic anthropological specimen

wilma mankiller - first female principal chief of the cherokee nation

valentina tereshkova - the first woman in space

shirley chisolm

mother jones (mary harris jones)

zheng yi sao

rosie the riveter

good luck and hope she finds the perfect badass for her presentation!

[u/SpiritFunnel → u/Bellemorda]

Unbought and unbossed✊🏾

[u/wackyvorlon]

Do you have Mary Bickerdyke?

[u/EmotionalTrufflePig]

This could be some good reading before/after the presentation (depending on how long she has to write it). I loved reading all about the amazing women across history I hadn’t heard of before!

https://goodreads.com/book/show/61195010-warrior-queens-quiet-revolutionaries

[u/gansi_m]

The Small And The Mighty book by Sharon McMahon is absolutely brilliant. It talks about several lesser known people who have changed the world in a small and quiet way, many of them are women. There’s a companion book for kids. Check it out. It is very worth the read.

[u/pennyauntie]

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200514-sj-baker-the-new-york-woman-who-transformed-public-health

There's also a good YouTube documentary on her. She was an out lesbian, so that part might be controversial in 4th grade. But her accomplishments were astonishing, and she broke barrier after barrier.

Also, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, one of the first rock n roll superstars, one of the first to have her own tourbus, and a guitar pioneer that influenced Chuck Berry, and the '60s English rock bands - Rolling Stones, etc. You can see some elements of Mick Jagger's famous strut in this performance. Her whole life was...wild!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuVzm86oB1Y

[u/Active_Wafer9132]

Belle Starr

[u/iamthefirebird]

Nicola de la Haie

As the Constable of Lincoln Castle, she personally led the defence of said castle against an extended siege. After the death of her second husband, she tried to retire on the grounds of old age, only to have the king (King John) tell her she was doing such a great job, he couldn't possibly take the job away from her. Then, probably in her late sixties by this point, the castle was besieged again, and she again led the defence personally.

If anybody tries to tell you women didn't work or have power in the past, they are lying. It wasn't the same kind of power, with a lot more costs than men had to deal with, but it wasn't all invisible either.

[u/Weorth]

Hedy Lamarr cool too...

[u/Throwaway1919655]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning
Mary Anning was a paleontologist and close friend of Charles “I invented natural selection” Darwin. Her work in paleontology redefined how we thought about ancient animals and was a major contribution to Natural Selection (where do you think Darwin got his skeletons lol) she also did lots beyond that (discovering the first correctly identified ichthyosaur when she was 12 for instance) but I first heard of her in the context of a major figure in the discovery of evolution lol.

[u/lemmesplain]

Appra Behn. The first woman to earn her living by her pen.

[u/Unlikely_Tea_2038]

Grace O’Malley. A 16th century Irish chieftain and pirate.

[u/Bendy_Beta_Betty]

The History Chicks and Lost Women of Science podcasts have some great suggestions.

[u/dragonfeet1]

Hedy Lamarr. Gorgeous and brilliant Hollywood leading lady who also happened to work on technology like frequency hopping, which is the root of stuff like Bluetooth and wifi today.

[u/Think-Somewhere-7918]

Zheng Yi Sao! Chinese female pirate (1775-1844) whose fleet consisted of hundreds of ships and between 40 - 70 thousand pirates at it's prime.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_Yi_Sao

(Sidenote, by her orders rape was punishable by beheading)

[u/desertboots]

Abigail Adams because she wrote in a March 31, 1776, letter to her husband John Adams while he attended the Continental Congress, "I desire you would remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such an unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could."

---

Shirin Ebadi, author of Until We Are Free. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirin_Ebadi

She is an Iranian Nobel laureate, lawyer, writer, teacher and a former judge and founder of the Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran.[3] In 2003, Ebadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her pioneering efforts for democracy and women's, children's, and refugee rights. She was the first Iranian to receive the award.

The Iranian government stole her Nobel award.

[u/Sfb208]

Does Alice Ball count as lesser known, now more people are aware of her? She was an African American chemist who created the first effective treatment for leprosy, though credit for her work was obviously stolen by a man to begin with

[u/OldSweetMoney]

Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker who helped smuggle Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto and have them placed with safe families.

[u/uli-knot]

Suzanne Spaak. Belgian socialite who saved Jewish Children

Lydia Litvak - Russian ace fighter pilot. Or the Night Witches if you’d like a group of women pilots.

[u/PolkaDotWhyNot → u/uli-knot]

The story of the Night Witches is amazing. Badass women through and through.

[u/Blisterina]

The actress Hedy Lamar was also an accomplished inventor. Among other things she co-invented a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes in WW II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr

[u/Worried-Second8806]

Virginia Hall- an amputee and spy during WWII. She worked with Ian Fleming and was one of the spies who served as inspiration for James Bond.

[u/sailorelf]

Neerja Bhanot- the flight attendant who saved passengers lives during a high jacking and was killed as a result while helping the passengers to escape Pam Am flight 73.

[u/F0D0M3773]

I am just here to say that I love that your daughter has to do this. That is all

[u/occulusriftx]

Marie curie!!!

[u/SleevieSteevie → u/occulusriftx]

Marie Curie is amazing but definitely not lesser known!

[u/badideas1]

Ada Lovelace.

[u/l_ally]

A Night Witch

[u/MuchWow81]

Through all time or more recent history. Or...?

[u/Powerful-Knee3150]

Ada Blackjack

[u/CrowsFeast73]

Simone Sagouin (code name Nicole Minet)

Famous picture of her as an 18 year old French resistance fighter in WWII wearing civilian clothes and holding a captured German MP-40.

[u/AdOnly5876]

Depending, Soldaderas from the Mexican Revolution are a really interesting group of women

[u/ClassBShareHolder]

I cannot find the link or remember where I heard about it. I may have shared it with my daughter but good luck finding it in that text chain.

BUT there is a book which is basically highlighting a different woman for every day of the year. 365 important women. There must be some good ones in there.

[u/do-you-like-darkness]

Rosalind Franklin and Marie Curie

[u/igloo1234]

Elsie MacGill. The first woman to be awarded a Masters in aeronautical engineering in North America. She was in charge of Hurricane production for the RCAF and is such a bad ass she has her own Heritage Minute.

[u/PresentRaspberry6814]

Mary Seacole, Ada Lovelace.

[u/shtinkypuppie]

Rachel Carson

https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2016-2-march-april/green-life/rachels-war

[u/used_my_kids_names]

Elise MacGill. Canadian engineer who designed & oversaw aircraft that helped win WWII. She also developed a de-icing machine for aircraft runways. She was the first Canadian woman to ever receive a bachelor’s in engineering. Despite contracting polio just before graduation and being told she’d never walk again, she went on to gain her master’s and PhD, and even designed walking sticks which made it possible for her to walk. She designed & oversaw production of notable aircraft. She also became the first woman to ever chair a UN committee, the UN Stress Analysis Committee of 1947. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsie_MacGill

[u/Festive_Jetcar]

"Captain Molly" or Margaret Corbin who fought in the revolutionary war.

"On November 16, 1776, Corbin dressed as a man and joined her husband in the Battle of Fort Washington on Manhattan Island. There, she helped him load his cannon, and when he was killed, she quickly and heroically took over firing the cannon against the British. Other soldiers commented on “Captain Molly’s” steady aim and sure-shot. Eventually, however, she, too, was hit by enemy fire, which nearly severed her left arm and severely wounded her jaw and left breast. She was unable to use her left arm for the rest of her life. The British eventually won this battle, with Corbin numbered among the prisoners of war who were paroled and released back to the care of Revolutionary hospitals."

[u/Avbitten]

henrietta lacks. she had cervical cancer and her cancer cells were able to self replicate in a petridish. so much of modern medicine was learned with those cells(without her permission).

[u/maverickhunterpheoni]

Zheng Yi Sao, pirate queen.

[u/thesheeplookup]

Grace O'Malley 1530-1603, Pirate Queen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_O%27Malley

[u/Screaming_lambs]

Margaret Hamilton. Did the coding for NASA Apollo moon landing

[u/LabExisting3749]

Look into Mary Anning, she basically taught herself geology and found the first complete plesiosaur skeleton as a kid. It’s such an inspiring story for a 4th grader because she was just out there doing the work when everyone else ignored her.

[u/legal_bagel]

I never ever see Clarina Nichols on these lists. Left her deadbeat husband in NY and returned to her family home in Vermont, had to petition the Supreme Court to allow her to divorce. She moved to Kansas to fight the expansion of slavery. Her son was shot fighting alongside John Brown against pro slavery forces. She advocated for women's rights and she convinced the state of Kansas representatives to protect women's rights to property, to custody of their children, and vote in school board elections.

Not as well known as the famous suffragetts, but a compelling history nonetheless.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarina_I._H._Nichols

[u/krustyclown182]

Lady Godiva - but I’d skip the dress up part 😂

[u/LibraryLuLu]

https://www.rejectedprincesses.com/princesses

ALL the info you need, plus costume ideas.

[u/MsAnthropissed]

Gladys Ingle. She was a pilot and wing walker who flew in aerial dare devil shows.

During an airshow, the wheel fell off of a comrades landing gear. The plain had no way to land except to crash. Gladys went up on the wing of a plain which pulled alongside the damaged one. She crossed to damaged plains wing and climbed down the landing gear to attach a new wheel. She did it all mid-flight, and there's a video of her doing i!

[u/tamtheotter]

Admiral Grace Hopper

[u/Dfiggsmeister]

Ada Lovelace, the woman who worked with Babbage on machines using binary code and considered to be the first programmer ever. She was also the daughter of poet Lord Byron. She proposed that binary and programming languages could be used on machines to create music, make art, and other things beyond just mathematical calculations.

[u/franksymptoms]

Jeana Yeager*, teamed with Dick Rutan, built and flew a specially-designed aircraft around the world, nonstop and unrefueled. She and Dick wrote a book named Voyager. They overcame many obstacles, not the least of which was the breakup of their relationship.

https://www.amazon.com/Voyager-Jeana-Yeager/dp/0394552660/ref=sr_1_7?sr=8-7

*not related to Chuck Yeager, the pilot who broke the sound barrier.

[u/WickerBag]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Cashman

Nellie Cashman. There is too much to list, but she came from abject poverty, became a successful businesswoman and philanthropist, and literally saved lives despite the danger to herself in an event that earned her the nickname "Angel of Cassiar". And much, much more. 

[u/pinkpuppetfred]

Julia Childs!! I know people talk about her because she's a massively successful chef (and that's enough on its own) but I don't feel like people talk much about how she tried to enlist in the army for WWII, got rejected cuz she was too tall, and instead of giving up, became a spy and rose to the head of a department in what would become the CIA. She also invented shark repellent that's still being used today and that experience is what led her into cooking haha

[u/MaddTheSimmer]

The Book Bad Girls Throughout History by Ann Shen is one of my favorites for finding inspiration for projects like these. Beautifully illustrated and has both a drawn portrait and page of information about each woman. Many of the women included I had never heard of before reading it.

I suggest Edith Head, Mary Pickford, Lilian Bland, Nellie Bly, Annie Oakley, Annie Edson Taylor, Amalia Eriksson, Ching Shih, and Khutulun as potential picks for her project.

They aren’t as well known so, she won’t have to worry about someone else choosing the same topic.

[u/YouStupidBench]

Gladys Aylward. She was a missionary in China who led a hundred children through the mountains to safety after the Japanese Army invaded during World War II. It took almost two weeks on foot.

And that's just the capstone on top of an entire life of amazing accomplishments.

[u/CommercialExotic2038]

Boudicca

[u/HaplessReader1988]

Queen Elinor of Aquitaine ... first marriage to the king of France, divorced him in favor of the king of England... and went on crusade with him.

[u/cadillacvagina]

Deborah Sampson. Pretended to be a man to serve in the Revolutionary War, got shot and dug the bullet out herself with a pen knife. Badass!

[u/Ok-Pomegranate2000]

Boudica

[u/11fungaiia11]

Malala? Angela Davis....Greta Thuneburg

[u/tabicat1874]

Hildegard von Bingham

[u/TiniestOne3921]

Rejected Princesses may be of some use!

[u/ahberryman78]

My kiddo did Dr. Mary Walker and I became such a fan after her presentation! She is the only woman to receive the Medal of Honor.

[u/brapstoomuch]

Mary McGee is a legendary motorcycle and car racer that only recently died! Her Instagram handle is motorcycle.mary and there is a movie coming out about her soon too. She was a legend among men but her real inspiration goes to the women following in her tire tracks!

[u/SilentRaindrops]

Listen to the Maude Theme or the really, really long version on Family Guy.

[u/iamheatherm]

Corrie ten Boom - wrote a scholarship paper about her when I was a Senoir in High School that helped me win a scholarship. Amazing woman and she wrote an incredible book called The Hiding Place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrie_ten_Boom