40 Powerful Photos of Incredible Women Who Changed History

Below is a collection of 40 portraits of incredible women who changed history by being strong, brave, and human, regardless of society’s expectations for them.

Jeanne Manford marches with her gay son during a Pride Parade, 1972. Jeanne went on to found the rights group "Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays".

Margaret Hamilton, lead software engineer of the Apollo Project, stands next to the code she wrote by hand and that was used to take humanity to the moon, 1969.

A Dutch woman refuses to leave her husband, a German soldier, after Allied soldiers capture him. She followed him into captivity, 1944.

Anna Fisher, an American astronaut and "the first mother in space," 1984.

Some of the first women sworn into the US Marine Corps, August 1918.

Female pilots leaving their B-17, "Pistol Packin' Mama," ca. 1940s.

Two women show uncovered legs in public for the first time in Toronto, 1937.

A Swedish woman hitting a neo-Nazi protester with her handbag. The woman was reportedly a concentration camp survivor, 1985.

A woman suffrage activist protesting after 'The Night of Terror,' 1917. 33 suffrage activists had been arrested for ‘obstructing traffic’ and were badly beaten by prison guards.

A Muslim woman covers the yellow star of her Jewish neighbor with her veil to protect her from prosecution. Sarajevo, former Yugoslavia, 1941.

Maud Wagner, the first well know female tattooist in the United States, 1907.

Simone Segouin, an 18 year old French Résistance fighter, during the liberation of Paris, 19 August, 1944.

Sarla Thakral became the first Indian woman to earn a pilot license at 21 years old, 1936.

Kathrine Switzer becomes the first woman to run the Boston Marathon, despite attempts by the marathon organizer to stop her, 1967.

Afghan women at a public library before the Taliban seized power, ca. 1950s.

Annette Kellerman posing in a swimsuit that got her arrested for indecency, ca. 1907.

The first women’s basketball team from Smith College, 1902.

An 106-year old Armenian woman protecting her home with an AK-47, 1990.

Girls deliver heavy blocks of ice after male workers were conscripted, 1918.

Komako Kimura, a prominent Japanese suffragist at a march in New York, October 23, 1917.

Margaret Bourke-White, a photographer, climbing the Chrysler Building, 1934.

Elspeth Beard, during her attempt to become the first Englishwoman to circumnavigate the world by motorcycle, ca. early 1980s. The journey took 3 years and covered 48,000 miles.

A woman drinking tea in the aftermath of a German bombing raid during the London Blitz, 1940.

Sabiha Gökçen of Turkey poses with her plane, in 1937 she became the first female fighter pilot.

Volunteers learn how to fight fires at Pearl Harbor, ca. 1940s.

A mason high above Berlin, ca. 1900.

Ellen O’Neal, one of the first professional female skaters, 1976.

Parisian mothers shield their children from German sniper fire, 1944.

Filipino guerilla, Captain Nieves Fernandez, shows a US soldier how she killed Japanese soldiers during the occupation, 1944.

Gertrude Ederle becomes the first woman to swim across the English Channel, 1926.

Aviator Amelia Earhart after becoming the first woman to fly an aircraft across the Atlantic Ocean, 1928.

Afghan women studying medicine, 1962.

A British sergeant training members of the ‘mum’s army’ Women's Home Defence Corps during the Battle of Britain, 1940.

The iconic photo of a concerned pea-picker and mother of seven children during the Dust Bowl, 1936.

A Los Angeles Police Officer looks after an abandoned baby in the drawer of her desk, 1971.

A mother shows a picture of her son to returning prisoners of war in an attempt to find him, Vienna, 1947.

Leola N. King, America's first female traffic cop, Washington D.C., 1918.

Erika, a 15-year-old Hungarian fighter who fought for freedom against the Soviet Union, October 1956.

American nurses land in Normandy, 1944.

A Red Cross nurse takes down the last words of a British soldier, 1917.

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Topics: Us 1950s Us 1940s