What, no Hypatia of Alexandria? How about Emile du Chatelet?
See also the book “The Warrior Queens” by Lady Antonia Frasier.
Be careful though - if you dig into and nitpick the history you can find all sorts of problems with anyone. In The Warrior Queens, for example, Frasier presents that some stories have Nzinga as a slaver herself, who, when done sitting on her servant, said words to the effect of “what do I care about the furniture?” and gave the servant away as a slave. Not a good role model.
Even if you accept the possibility that Anne’s father got her out of gaol without leaving a record of it - neither one of them were very successful pirates. A successful pirate goes on her raids, works out a modus vivendi with the government, and then lives out a long and happy life with her ill-gotten gains.
Julia Morgan, architect of Hearst Castle and about 700 other buildings. Also the first woman to graduate with a degree in architecture from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
I disagree politically with Margaret Thatcher. But she is worth a second look for her ability to use her will power to see that something is accomplished. She just didn’t and doesn’t take no for an answer. I am in awe of that character trait.
Elizabeth I seemed to do right well for a procrastinator and whatever the other minor flaw was.
I wouldn’t discount those whose lives ended sadly either. Did that make Abe Lincoln any less a hero? Or Gandhi? Did Martin Luther King’s sexual indiscretions wipe his name from a list of heroes? And what about suicide and mental illness? They can’t be heroes if later they become ill?
Bolding mine - It was controlled by her menfolk but was she ? She accompanied her husband on the Second Crusade, pushed for the marriage to be anulled, kept her lands, was proactive in finding a new husband, supported her sons in revolt against said (unfaithful) husband, was under house-arrest for years, acted as Queen Regent while her son was off fighting in teh Holy Land / languishing as a hostage, carried out diplomatic duties into her seventies … living into your eighties in those days was pretty miraculous in itself !
“in your own right” came down to lucky birth, how you handled what that birth provided is what counts. That Eleanor was so influential is the more remarkable given she was not born to be a Queen.
Do you know what though ? She gets my vote for the simple fact that her cultural influence (bringing her trouvères and their “courtly love” to the British Isles) has given us the Arthurian Romances as we most easily recognise them - adapting and absorbing (rather than rejecting) rough, magic-laden Celtic legends and allowing them to become more layered, psychologically complex and contributing to their continued presence as a cultural reference.
This blog hasn’t been updated in a long time, but it is all about powerful women. The criteria was power, not goodness, so some of them might not be great role models.
Eleanor Roosevelt.
Not just another pretty face. This woman’s achievements and leadership used to be the stuff of legend. But how soon we forget. While being married to the President might get you to skip over her quickly, this fascinating woman deserves serious consideration. Eleanor Roosevelt - Wikipedia
I’d just like to point out that, to a little girl, it can be a lot more important to be able to prove that girls can be pirates and bandits too, than to have a lot of saint-like (read:boring) “role-models”.
I didn’t look for historical role models for my daughter, I exposed her to strong independent women that I know.
For example I crewed for a lady race car driver, and made sure to take my daughter along with me to the races.
My daughter grew up to strong, self reliant, and independent
This is a great list of women, and I am bookmarking it for my own daughter. On the otherhand, constantly giving your daughters the idea that women are always benevolent superwomen is probably not good either. Women are every bit as capable of evil as men, and they need to be made aware of this the same way boys are made aware of Hitler and Stalin.
Flora MacDonald is most famous for helping Bonnie Prince Charlie escape to Skye, but afterward she married for love, moved to North Carolina with him, helped repel off a pirate attack on the voyage over, raised a large family, and fought in the American Revolution. There are lots of things both “traditionally masculine” and “traditionally feminine” to admire about her!
