Top 100 Women of the 20th Century
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| 1 | Mother Teresa
After witnessing a violent eruption of Hindu-Muslim rioting, which left 5,000 people dead, Teresa became convinced that God had sent her a message to go out and minister to the city's poor. In 1948, wearing a sari and carrying five rupees in her pocket, Teresa left the convent to live "as an Indian among Indians." To the sick, for whom she found food and medicine, Mother Teresa was a blessing; to others, she was a threat. Hindus, enraged at her plan to open a home for the dying in the former temple, hurled stones at her and her co-workers. Mother Teresa pacified them by sprinkling water from the Ganges River on a dying man's lips - an ancient Hindu rite. As Mother Teresa's organization, the Missionaries of Charity grew throughout India and the world, she would find herself more adversaries. Her sometimes controversial beliefs did not always sit well with everybody. |
| 2 | Susan B. Anthony
An early leader in the women's rights and women's sufferage movements. Advocated equal pay for equal work, encouraged women to form unions. Ridiculed and attacked, she persevered and eventually was instrumental in winning popular support for women gaining the right to vote. |
| 3 | Maya Angelou
Poet, historian, author, actress, playwright, civil-rights activist, producer and director. She is Reynolds professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. She has published ten best-selling books and countless magazine articles. At the request of President Clinton, she wrote and delivered a poem at the 1993 presidential inauguration. |
| 4 | Helen Keller
Although she lost her sight and hearing due to a childhood illness, this remarkable woman graduated from Radcliffe, published three books, and fought for women's rights and pacifism. She worked to create one form of standard communication for the blind ... Braille. |
| 5 | Rosa Parks
"Mother of the civil rights movement" and one of the most important citizens of the 20th century. Mrs. Parks was a seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama when, in December of 1955, she refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white passenger. Thus began decades of leadership she provided to end segregation in the United States. |
| 6 | The "Ordinary" Woman
The mother in Somalia giving her child what little food she has; the women in Afganistan speaking out against the Taliban; the women who labor in sweatshops so they put food on the table at home; the woman who walks away from abuse and says, 'no more'. The women who say "I can" and "I will". |
| 7 | Margaret Sanger
Early advocate of birth control and a woman's right to choose. Sanger published The Women Rebel, a newspaper advocating birth control, and, when indicted for sending "obscene" materials through the mails, she fled to Europe and gathered information there. In 1916 she opened a clinic in Brooklyn, was arrested and served thirty days for distributing information about contraceptives. From then on Sanger assumed leadership of the struggle for free access to birth control. She was persuasive, tireless, singleminded and unafraid of a fight. Her arguments might vary -- at first she saw birth control as part of a socialist reordering of society, later as a means to prevent the multiplication of the inflicted or to assure happy marriages. But always Margaret Sanger saw it as a woman's issue and she was prepared to take on the medical establishment, the churches, the legislatures and the courts. |
| 8 | Eleanor Roosevelt
Married to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, she transformed the role of First Lady to one of a force to be reckoned with by expressing her opinions in a daily syndicated newspaper column. After her husband's death, she continued her career as an American spokesman in the United Nations. |
| 9 | Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Jungian analyst and storyteller, she wrote Women Who Run With the Wolves. She has promoted the re-emergence and growth of the Wild Woman in all of us! |
| 10 | Princess Diana
Though many may disagree with her being on this list, I admire her for many reasons. She most definitely had obstacles to overcome (bulimia, suicide attempts) and seemed so vulnerable. Yet she brought the monarchy to its knees and became her own woman. She worked for the rights of AIDS patients and the abolition of land mines. |
| 11 | Marian Wright Edelman
Civil rights activist and founder of the Children's Defense Fund, she became the first African-American woman to be admitted to that state's bar. As a leader with the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund, Edelman helped coordinate the Poor People's Campaign after Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination. She founded the Children's Defense Fund in the 1970s, to apply pressure on the federal government to help poor children, and to coordinate nationwide activities to help children. Considered the nation's most powerful children's lobby, the CDF secured the 1990 Act for Better Child Care, bringing more than $3 billion into daycare facilities and other programs. |
| 12 | Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Stanton was the founding genius of the women's rights movement, brilliant, insightful and eloquent. While Susan B. Anthony focused more and more on suffrage, Stanton continued to range widely. She took a daring stand in favor of more liberal divorce laws, for example. When her seven children were no longer small, she toured the country repeatedly, calling for voting rights, coeducation, dress reform and other advances. She never slackened nor grew cautious with age. |
| 13 | Clara Barton
A shy farm girl from Massachusetts, Clara Barton harnessed her iron will and devotion to human welfare to accomplish the good works which earned her world fame. Despite life-threatening conditions, she provided supplies and care to troops in the American Civil War and became known as "The Angel of the Battlefield." Almost single-handedly, she founded the American Red Cross, which has provided comfort in times of crisis since 1882. |
| 14 | Mary Crow Dog
Lakota Woman was her autobiography from her childhood of poverty on the reservations of South Dakota, through to the birth of her child during the siege of Wounded Knee. The path that Mary follows in search of her culture, reveals a woman of great courage and dignity. |
| 15 | Amelia Earhart
Famous aviatrix, first women to fly solo across the Atlantic, and the only person to fly this twice. In 1937, she disappeared in a flight over the Pacific and was never found. Some theories contend that she was on a spy mission for the U.S. at the time of her disappearance. |
| 16 | Oprah Winfrey
Winfrey is the first African-American woman to own her own production company; a talented actress nominated for an Academy Award in her first movie; television's highest-paid entertainer; producer and actress in her own television specials; and the successful host of a syndicated television talk show that reaches 15 million people a day. She does all that she can to eradicate child abuse. As a victim herself, Winfrey knows the damage abuse does to young lives, and she was a major force in the drafting, lobbying and passage of the National Child Protection Act, signed into law by President Clinton in 1994. |
| 17 | Marion Zimmer Bradley
Author of The Mists of Avalon, which had a positive impact on many looking for a more Goddess-centered path. She also wrote the science fiction Darkover series, which incorporated fantasy and Goddess worship. She edited her own Fantasy magazine, which she used as a vehicle to promote new writers and was mentor to many. |
| 18 | Rachel Carson
She came to national prominence when her book, The Sea Around Us, topped the best seller list for 86 weeks. Her graceful prose opened up scientific knowledge about the oceans to the layperson. She was not by nature a crusader, but when aerial spraying of DDT killed the birds in a friend's bird sanctuary, she began to investigate the effects of pesticides on the chain of life. "The environment" and "ecology" have since become household words for Americans, but it all began with her Silent Spring in 1962. Driven by the knowledge that the book was desperately needed, she pored over and combined the work of many individual researchers. She wrote of the heedless pesticide poisoning of our rivers and soils, warning that we might soon face a spring when no bird songs could be heard. Rachel Carson had to weather a storm of controversy and abuse, and she did not live to see the evidentially banning of DDT. But the environmentalist movement carries on the work she began, preserving our natural heritage for the future. |
| 19 | Marie Curie
The first woman to win the Nobel Prize and the only person for whom two elements are named. |
| 20 | Sally Ride
In 1983, twenty-two years after the first United States manned space mission, Sally K. Ride became the first American woman in space. She was a mission specialist on the Challenger, the seventh space shuttle flight. As a mission specialist on the six-day Challenger mission, her responsibilities included testing a robot arm which deployed and retrieved satellites, assisting the commander and shuttle pilot during ascent, re-entry, and landing, and acting as flight engineer. She said of that flight, "The thing that I'll remember most about the flight is that it was fun. In fact, I'm sure it was the most fun I'll ever have in my life." |
| 21 | Bella Abzug
Congresswoman, lawyer, one of the founding feminists who fought hard to improve the status of women, founded the women's peace movement in the 60's. |
| 22 | Madeleine Albright
Mom, Diplomat, UN Ambassador, Full Member of National Security Council, U.S. Secretary of State and dominant in the world of foreign policy. Sworn in as the 64th United States Secretary of State in 1997 after unanimous confirmation by the U.S. Senate, she became the first female Secretary of State and the highest ranking woman in the United States government. As Secretary of State and as U.S. representative to the United Nations before that, she has created policies and institutions to help guide the world into a new century of peace and prosperity. Concentrating on a bipartisan approach to U.S. foreign policy, she has attempted to create a consensus on the need for U.S. leadership and engagement in the world. Among her achievements are ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention and progress toward stability in Eastern and Central Europe. |
| 23 | Jane Goodall
Primatologist who has studied chimpanzees in the wild for 40 years, she was not formally educated for this. Nevertheless, she is probably the foremost primatologist in the world. She loves all living things and hopes that the entire race can learn to do so. She is also a deeply spiritual woman who brings hope wherever she goes. |
| 24 | Golda Meir
Prime Minister of Israel. |
| 25 | Starhawk
Witch, activist, and feminist who has written Dancing the Spiral, Dreaming the Dark, and Truth or Dare - books that talk about bringing in a more Earth-centered, egalitarian, spiritual way of life. Her novel, The Fifth Sacred Thing, is set in the near future and is about the struggle between industrial, warrior centered, patriarchal forces and a community of peace loving, egalitarian, gentle people. |