Sorry, FAD. I failed to cut and paste my first paragraph with my first post, which was to say I’m not well versed in early history but that I did find an interesting website.
Elizabeth Blackwell–She was the first woman to become a doctor; she was also an abloitionist and a woman’s rights activist.
Speaking as a reasonably successful professional woman who is now middle aged and single… I wish with all my heart that my “wish and destiny” had been to get married. When I was younger and more attractive, I dated plenty of guys who were fun to party with, but for various reasons weren’t the marrying type.
If there was one thing I would change about my life, it would be that that I should have been looking for a husband rather than wasting my life dating guys who were fun for the moment, but who I should have known weren’t going to settle down with me.
Jeanne Sauvé: first woman to become Speaker of the House of Commons. First woman to become Governor General of Canada.
Adrienne Clarkson: an immigrant from Hong Kong becomes Governor General of Canada.
Michaëlle Jean: an immigrant from Haiti becomes Governor General of Canada.
For what it’s worth, I think it’s great that we’ve gotten some names from many different countries in this thread. I think* I* found a few new role models today!
When her husband the captain of Neptun’s Car took ill on a voyage from New York to San Francisco it was up to his wife Mary Ann Patten to get the job done. She was the only other person on board who knew how to navigate, she had to convince the crew not to follow the 1st mate into mutiny, and she was only 19 years of age and quick with child.
Odesio
I’ll second that. A very underrated person because of her ( probable ) participation in the St. Bartholmew’s Day Massacre. However in an age where religious divisions were tearing apart Europe she was remarkably free of religious bigotry and seemed to have tried her honest best to find a workable compromise between the feuding parties.
A very strong-willed, actual ruling monarch was Margaret I of Denmark, founder of the Union of Kalmar, uniting all of Scandinavia under her ( or her proxies’ ) hand.
Anna Comnena was perhaps the first great female historian in Europe and an invaluable source to this day ( despite some real biases and a very period tendency towards hagiography ) on the early Crusades.
In a very different area, Saint Isabel of France was obviously a strong-willed and determined women, utterly devoted to her faith. She’s not someone I’d ever think to emulate, but one has to admire her dedication to her beliefs. Besides she is interesting if in only being half of the only brother-sister Saint duo I can think of 
( her brother was the crusading Saint Louis of France ).
Well, if you want to make a figurehead out of someone who in a fit of pique led her tribe on the warpath, massacred a lot of non-combatants and then suffered a horrendous defeat despite outnumbering the enemy somewhere near twenty to one, go for it.
In the same vein as Boadicea, there was the Berber leader Dihyā al-Kāhinat who failed to stop the conquest of North Africa by the Arabs. Hey, cautionary tales are good. And at least she’s a counter-example to those who say women can’t lead.
Maybe the Candaces are a better example.
…
No one’s mentioned Sojourner Truth?
If you/she is interested in the Middle Ages, I don’t have any specific names, but there were a lot of powerful, effective women in charge of the various Abbeys & Nunneries that were common at the time. That was one of the few places of those times where a women could rise to a leadership position due to her own merit. (I note that many of those mentioned have been royalty or nobility, who basically were born into their positions, rather than achieving them by their own efforts. That’s not necessarily a role model that I would want to promote.)
Hildegard of Bingen is an excellent example, except…
…she was from a noble family. I expect you’ll find that most prominent abbesses and the like were. The fact of the matter is that abbeys and monasteries were closely linked to local noble and royal families and were generally used as just another form of patronage. Non-noble women rarely had much opportunity to rise very high in medieval society. Social convention and a dearth of educational opportunities dictated against it.
Of course non-noble men didn’t usually go anywhere, either. The military was one out not available to women, but even then the most success one could hope for was entry into the gentry or lower echelons of nobility oneself. Rare was it that merit trumped birth in terms of high command.
I would like to make one observation to the OP - you are never really going to find a ‘perfect’ woman - one without some kind of ‘problem’ or factor in her life you may find unsavory - as a role model. After all, we’re talking about real people who faced down real situations.
If you look too hard for the perfect, you’ll miss teaching your daughters one of the best things about role models - how, despite their failings, they succeeded and did things that STILL make them good to know about and emulate. Your kids can learn from failings as well as from successes.
Don’t look so hard for perfect women for your daughters to emulate…everyone is good at some things and not good at others, including potential role models.
BTW, can you guess who this is? Some might think she would be a good role model based on these things in her life…
Was born in extreme poverty and became successful and a strong political force in her country.
Gave money generously to the poor and to charity.
Married a famous military man and was a wife so devoted even her enemies commented on it.
Championed the vote for women in a very sexist society and got it.
Founded hospitals, nursing homes, and children’s orphanages.
Died relatively young of cancer.
The people of her country seriously suggested that she be canonized as a saint after her death.
People are complicated. It’s true some are better role models than others. The person described above, would (if you’ve guessed who she is) probably NOT be a good role model for young girls…but when they’re old enough, she’s still someone they should learn about, because there are lessons, both pro and con, to learn from her life.
(For those who didn’t guess, it’s Eva Peron.)
Alas, the only role model my 12 year old daughter is interested in at the moment is Hannah Montana. Elizabeth I may have been one tough cookie but I’m afraid in a contest for my daughter’s respect Hannah would wipe the floor with her at present!
Getting rid of all of the Barbies in our house, plus the Barbie horse and the Barbie castle, would be something akin to the French Revolution - the destruction of a sizeable class of useless and vapid aristocrats swanning around in my daughters’ bedroom. I think we have around 15 of them, plus 3 or so Kens. Occasionally I stand them all on their heads and arms and we have a handstand competition to determine which one can stay upright the longest.
My oldest watches Disney and Barbie DVD movies happily. That’s fine, to a degree: I just want her to know from an early-ish age that there are other avenues your life can take which don’t involve hanging around and waiting for Prince Charming (or Prince Eric, Prince Philip or some other Disney prince).
My youngest loves Dora the Explorer. Bilingual, self-assured and charitable - an excellent role model.
Pirate queens and even warrior princesses (although there is nothing wrong with a bit of measured female biffo) are of less interest to me than women who were (or are) clever and have helped people. Thanks to the suggestions to everyone: I now have a lot of links to sift through!
WhyNot:
Indeed, I personally have: I did not know the remarkable story of Harriet Tubman, for example.
I’d say that the Aquitaine, considering its size, strategic importance to both England and France, and the revenues it generated comes close enough to qualifying as a country as to make no never mind. She seems to have kept a pretty tight hold on the area regardless of who controlled it nominally and it’s possible that if she’d wanted to make a point of it that her people were loyal enough to have allowed her a fighting chance of mounting a resistance and becoming fairly autonomous. Plus, she was one hell of a kingmaker and a very accomplished woman on many fronts. She was a badass broad!
Runon sentence alert–must sleep!
Said revenues probably did not come to very much. While Aquitaine as a region was reasonably properous, very little of that flowed into ducal coffers, as there was little in the way of efficient central administration, unlike Normandy or even Greater Anjou ( Anjou, Maine, Touraine ).
What folks often to fail to realize is that while on a map Eleanor’s Aquitaine looks like a huge territory, in fact the Poitevin family ( Eleanor was countess of Poitou ) held not much in the way of personal estates within it. Eleanor’s patrimony was mostly a very weak and diffuse feudal overlordship. Even in her home county of Poitou political power was heavily sub-divided, with powerful viscomital and baronial houses like those of Parthenay, Chatellerault, Thouars, Talmond, Rancon and Lusignan controlling much of the land and most of the castles. In Richard’s day he controlled 14 castellanies in Poitou ( down to 5 by John’s reign ), while his most powerful vassal, the viscount of Thouars, controlled a good dozen himself. Add in the rest of the great houses and even in Poitou comital authority was somewhat circumscribed. In Gascony, an untidy melange of 13 counties, Poitevin control was even more limited and in more remote areas essentially theoretical at best.
Henry II struggled for decades to establish order, ultimately to little lasting succes. Richard I was fatally wounded while in the midst of subduing the rebellious viscount of Limoges ( de facto count of the Limousin ). John was undone by his slighting of his Poitevin vassals the Lusignans ( not once, but multiple times, they helped sabotage his phase of the Bouvines campaign as well ).
And after writing all the above, I’ll just quote, like I should have to start with 
:
To many in the south the overlordship of the duke of Aquitaine was acceptable only so long as it was ineffective. For as long as anyone could remember it had been inffective, for the dukes lacked the revenues commensurate with the task of government, and their military strength rested largely on the uncertain service of vassals. Outside Poitou and the district of Bourdeaux there were vast regions where the dukes had neither estates nor strongholds. The allegiance of counts and viscounts could be counted on only when a common interest was involved, and the declarations of independence were averted only because of the difficulty such men had in controlling their own vassals. All too often, and even in parts of Poitou, effective authority rested in the hands of castle-holders, whose word was law to men in the neighborhood…Even in the heart of Aquitaine there was little sense of belonging to a political entity. To the men of Gascony the Poitevins were foreigners. To the men of the ancient city of Limoges, Poitiers itself was an upstart capital…And when Louis had journeyed through the duchy for his installation as duke he went as if on campaign, with an escort that was virtually an army. Even so the castellan of Talmot attempted to hold him for ransom…The attempt was foiled; but the trick had been successfully practiced on the entourage of a previous duke. It was, then, inevitable that Eleanor would seek a strong protector when Louis divorced her…
From Henry II by W. L. Warren ( 1977, University of California Press ).
Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba - Wikipedia Another one is Nzinga of Ndongo, a powerful African ruler of the sixteenth century.