Women have come a long way in U.S. History, and here we are making even more progress! The government has made an official announcement that the image on the U.S.A.’s ten dollar bill will now feature a woman in addition to Alexander Hamilton.
Perhaps the most exciting part of this ground-breaking decision is that the U.S. government is looking for YOUR suggestions! They want to know what woman in history you think is most deserving of this honor. The Women’s Information Network will be submitting your suggestions for The New 10 at the end of the Summer 2015, and we want you to take part and vote for the woman you want to see. Below is a list of 75 of the U.S.A’s most influential women in history. Learn about them, and then cast your vote! We’ll keep track of the votes and keep you updated on our Facebook and Twitter accounts along the way. Happy voting!
(PS – don’t see someone who you feel should be on this list? Leave a comment for us!)
75 Most Influential Women in U.S. History
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- Anna Eleanor Roosevelt: An American politician, diplomat, and activist.[1] She was the longest-serving First Lady of the United States, holding the post from March 1933 to April 1945 during her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s four terms in office.[1] President Harry S. Truman later called her the “First Lady of the World” in tribute to her human rights achievements.
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- Ursula Burns: Current CEO of Xerox. She is the first African-American woman to be CEO of an S&P 100 company.
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- Wilma Pearl Mankiller: The first female Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation in modern times.
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- Ruth Bader Ginsburg: The second woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court. She has spent her career advocating for equal citizenship status of women and men.
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- Bell Hooks: One of the most influential contemporary feminists, her writing focuses on the intersection of race, class and gender.
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- Annie Oakley: Possibly the best sharpshooter who ever lived. Annie Oakley became a star in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.
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- Nelly Bly: The pen name of Elizabeth Jane Cochran. She pioneered investigative journalism. Her exploits included going undercover as a sweat shop employee, getting herself commited to an insane asylum so she could report on it from the inside, and traveling around the world (à la Phileas Fogg) in 73 days.
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- Abigail Adams: Wife of John Adams and the mother of John Quincy Adams. She is now designated the first Second Lady and second First Lady of the United States.
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- Jane Addams: The founder of Hull House. She became the second woman to win the Nobel Prize for Peace.
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- Marin Alsop: The first female conductor of a major American symphony (the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra) and a regular guest conductor with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and Los Angeles Philharmonic.
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- Marian Anderson: The celebrated contralto whose open-air concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial galvanized the conscience of the country.
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- Maya Angelou: The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and author who became the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost in 1961.
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- Susan B. Anthony: Called “the Napoleon” of the women’s movement, she spent 60 years leading the fight for suffrage.
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- Sheila Bair: The current chairperson of the FDIC, she was one of the first government officials to recognize the problem of subprime loans.
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- Clara Barton: called “The angel of the battlefield” for her ministrations during the Civil War, she went on to found the American Red Cross.
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- Regina Benjamin: the current Surgeon General of the United States, and only the fourth woman to serve in that position.
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- Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider (counted as one): biological researchers who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Jack Szostak for the discovery of the telemoraze enzyme.
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- Elizabeth Blackwell: the first woman in the western world to earn a medical degree and practice as a licensed physician.
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- Brooksley Born: as the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the 1990s, she saw the financial crisis coming and tried to warn against it–but the men in charge refused to listen.
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- Margaret Bourke-White: possibly the greatest photojournalist of the 20th century, she photographed everything from Depression-era breadlines to combat in Europe.
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- Pearl S. Buck: the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
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- Rachel Carson: a marine biologist and the author of Silent Spring, Carson was the founding mother of the modern environmental movement.
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- Carrie Chapman Catt: when the Nineteenth Amendment finally become reality, suffragist Catt founded the League of Women Voters to help American women exercise their newly-won right to vote.
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- Lydia Maria Child: an abolitionist, suffragist, and advocate for the rights of Native Americans.
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- Shirley Chisholm: the first African-American woman elected to Congress, the first major-party black candidate for president of the United States, and the first woman to run for the Democratic presidential nomination.
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- Bessie Coleman: the barnstorming stunt pilot who was the first black woman in the world to earn a pilot’s license.
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- Eileen Collins: the first female commander of the space shuttle.
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- Florence Denmark: a pioneer in the psychology of women, she published the first widely used textbook about women’s psychology, entitled Women’s Choices, Women’s Realities.
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- Emily Dickinson: the reclusive author of some 1800 poems, Dickinson has been called the greatest female poet in the Enlish language.
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- Babe Didrikson: not only was she the greatest female athlete of the 20th century, but she was quite possibly the greatest athlete period.
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- Dorothea Lynde Dix: a lifelong activist for mental healthcare reform, Dix was also the head of the Union Army nurses in the Civil War.
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- Isadora Duncan: she revolutionized dance, rescuing it from stodgy formality and re-imagining it as a high art form based on natural body movements.
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- Amelia Earhart: the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, Earhart inspired a generation of female pilots.
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- Marian Wright Edelman: the president and founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, Edelman is a lifelong advocate for the rights of children.
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- Gertrude Ederle: the first woman to swim the English Channel, she also beat the world record by nearly two hours.
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- Gertrude Belle Elion: a biochemist and pharmacologist, she won the Nobel Prize for her development of effective drug treatments for cancer, and was the first woman to be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
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- Geraldine Ferraro: the first female vice-presidential candidate on a major-party ticket, she helped pave the way for future female politicians.
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- Dian Fossey: a dedicated primatologist and conservationist, Fossey did for gorillas what Jane Goodall did for chimpanzees.
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- Matilda Joslyn Gage: the third member of the National Woman Suffrage Association leadership triumvirate with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Gage was an abolitionist and freethinker who was adopted into the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk nation and inspired The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
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- The Grimke sisters, Angelina and Sarah (counted as one): among the first women to speak publicly for abolition, the Grimke sisters also became early activists in the women’s rights movement.
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- Dorothy Height: the president of the National Council of Negro Women for forty years, Height was one of the top seven leaders of the modern civil rights movement.
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- Grace Hopper: the inventor of the compiler, which made modern computer programming possible.
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- Dolores Huerta: the co-founder with Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers, Huerta has spent her life advocating for workers’ rights, Chicano/a rights, and women’s rights.
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- Mae Jemison: a physician and astronaut, she was the first African-American woman in space.
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- Barbara Jordan: the congresswoman from Texas was the first African-American woman to deliver the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention.
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- Maxine Hong Kingston: a novelist and feminist scholar, she writes about cultural heritage, ethnicity, and feminism.
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- Dorothy Lange: the groundbreaking photographer whose stunning Migrant Mother photograph captured the face of the Depression.
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- Ursula LeGuin: a science fiction author whose works often explore feminist and racial themes.
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- Maya Ying Lin: the architect who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
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- Belva Ann Lockwood: one of the first female lawyers in the United States, she became the first woman attorney permitted to argue in front of the Supreme Court.
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- Sybil Ludington: a heroine of the Revolutionary War who, at the age of 16, rode twice the distance of Paul Revere’s famed ride to warn American colonial forces of approaching British troops.
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- Catharine Mackinnon: an outspoken legal feminist on behalf of women’s rights, specifically in areas of sexual harassment and rape, pornography, and international law.
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- Edna St. Vincent Millay: the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
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- Lucretia Mott: often called “the first feminist” in America, Mott was an abolitionist and suffragist who helped found the women’s rights movement.
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- Sandra Day O’Connor: the first female justice on the Supreme Court of the United States, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama in 2009.
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- Georgia O’Keeffe: one of the most celebrated American painters of the 20th century.
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- Elinor Ostrom: the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics.
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- Rosa Parks: called the “mother of the modern-day civil rights movement,” her refusal to give up her seat sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955.
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- Alice Paul: a suffragist whose radical tactics helped push through passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, Paul also authored the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution.
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- Frances Perkins: the first woman appointed to the U.S. Cabinet, Perkins was Secretary of Labor under Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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- Condoleeza Rice: the first African-American woman to become Secretary of State.
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- Sacagawea: the Shoshone woman who served as guide and interpreter for the Lewis and Clark expedition.
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- Margaret Sanger: she provided information on contraception to women at a time when it was scandalous and even illegal.
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- Elizabeth Cady Stanton: an abolitionist, suffragist, and co-organizer (with Lucretia Mott) of the first women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls, she wrote the Declaration of Sentiments, which outlined women’s rights as human rights.
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- Harriet Beecher Stowe: the abolitionist author whose Uncle Tom’s Cabin changed forever the public perception of slavery.
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- Sojourner Truth: a former slave who became an itinerant preacher, abolitionist, and suffragist.
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- Harriet Tubman: born into slavery in Maryland, Tubman became the most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad, personally leading dozens of slaves to freedom.
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- Dianne Feinstein: the senator from California was the first female president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the first female mayor of San Francisco, the first woman chair of the Senate Rules Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee, and the first woman to preside over a presidential inauguration.
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- Toni Morrison: the first black woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, her novels include The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Beloved.
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- Barbara Mikulski: the senator from Maryland is currently the most senior woman in the U.S. Senate.
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- Jackie Cochran: the founder and director of the WASPs (Women Airforce Service Pilots), she was also the first woman to break the sound barrier, the first woman to fly a jet across the ocean, and the first woman to fly a bomber across the Atlantic. Cochran still holds more international speed, distance, and altitude records than any other pilot, male or female.
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- Annie Liebowitz: One of the greatest photographers in the world to date.
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- Juliette Gordon Low: the founder of the Girl Scouts.