When we think of women such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Tina Fey, the first word that comes to mind is trailblazing. Roosevelt changed our ideas of what a First Lady could be all while drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Fey was the first female head writer on Saturday Night Live and has continued to be a pioneer in television sitcoms.
While we can often name more famous men in history than women, women’s accomplishments have influenced generations and continue to impact us today (fun fact: Hedy Lamarr, an actress famous in the 1940s and 50s, invented the technology that would go on to enable Bluetooth). To celebrate Women’s History Month, here are five women whose accomplishments you should know.
1. Wally Funk
Astronaut Wally Funk currently holds the record for being the oldest woman to fly to space at age 82. However, her career began decades earlier when she became a part of the “Mercury 13” program in the 1960s. The goal of this project was to send a group of 13 women to space just as NASA had sent men that decade.
Yet, due to their gender, the privately funded program was denied access to NASA’s testing facilities, and by the mid-1960s these women’s stories were overshadowed by the Apollo missions. However, in July of 2021, nearly 60 years after the Mercury 13, Wally Funk finally flew to space on Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin spacecraft. Wally Funk didn’t just shoot for the stars—she aimed for the moon.
2. Florence Price
Recognized as the first female African American symphonic composer, Florence Price’s music has gone through a resurgence in the classical music world. With her piano concertos being played at the Milwaukee and Philidelphia Orchestra, Price’s music is finally being recognized on a national level.
She composed during the Great Depression at a time when music itself was undergoing a transformation. Price worked in the Chicago area until her death in 1953. Despite facing racism and sexism from colleagues, Price became the first African American woman to have an original composition played by a major US orchestra.
3. Amelia Bloomer
August 18, 2020 was the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment which finally gave women the right to vote (can you believe that prohibition, the 18th amendment, came before this?) Some of the biggest names from the Suffrage movement include Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who both advocated for women’s rights. Although, another name that belongs on this list is Amelia Bloomer, the first woman to own and operate her own newspaper.
Bloomer founded The Lily, which was the first magazine run by women, for women. Focusing on issues such as temperance and women’s suffrage, The Lily was created in 1848, over 50 years before the 19th Amendment. Bloomer also introduced Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony to each other, which resulted in a friendship that forged new ground for the feminist movement. This is memorialized in a statue at the site of the women’s rights meeting known as the Seneca Falls Convention in Seneca Falls, NY. Furthermore, Bloomer popularized a more informal style for women, including the pants that now bear her name: bloomers. Today, The Lily is owned by the Washington Post where it continues to emphasize women’s rights.
4. Claudette Colvin
Before Rosa Parks became a defining figure of the Civil Rights movement for her bravery, there was Claudette Colvin. Like Parks, Colvin was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus. However, Colvin was much younger—15, the age many of us are as freshmen in high school. She was also a plaintiff in the Supreme Court Case Browder v Gayle which deemed the segregation of buses in Alabama unconstitutional. Though not a household name like Rosa Parks, Colvin should be remembered for her courage to stand up—or rather, for refusing to get up.
5. Ruth Wakefield
Nowadays, chocolate chip cookies are a dessert staple, and we all have Ruth Wakefield to thank. Wakefield was a chef that owned the Toll House Inn located in Whitman, Massachusetts. Popular lore has it that chocolate chip cookies were invented by accident. Although, Caroline Wyman explains in The Great American Chocolate Chip Cookie Book that Wakefield, being a trained chef, knew that the cut-up chocolate bar wouldn’t melt. As Wyman puts it, Wakefield’s creation was a combination of “training, talent, hard work, and mind-expanding world travel.” Let’s bake up some cookies in honor of not just Wakefield, but all of these remarkable women.