52 Photos Of Women Who Changed History Forever

These women changed history forever thanks to their power, their courage and their humanism, even if society had different expectations for them. The 52 women are just some among many examples that can show us how women can be something more than what stereotypes say.

Muslim covering her Jewish neighbour's yellow star with her veil to protect her from arrest. Sarajevo, former Yugoslavia (1941).

Maud Wagner, the first known woman who had tattoos in USA (1907).

The 18 year old fighter in French Resistance, Simone Segouin, during the liberation of Paris (August 9th, 1944).

Sarla Thakral, 21 years old, the first Indian woman who acquired a pilot's license (1936).

Kathrine Switzer was the first woman who ran the Boston Marathon, despite the organizers' efforts to stop her (1967).

Afghan women in a public library before Taliban seize power (50s).

After Annette Kellerman was photographed wearing a bathing suit, she was arrested due to public indecency (1907).

The first women basketball team in Smith College (1902).

Photograph of a samurai warrior. (c. late 1800s)

106-year old Armenian woman protecting her home with an AK-47. (1990)

Women boxing on a roof in LA. (1933)

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

Women's league roller derby skaters in New York. [March 10, 1950]


Voting activist Annie Lumpkins at the Little Rock city jail. [1961]


Members of the Hell's Angels gang. [1973]


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]


Marina Ginesta, a 17-year-old communist militant, overlooking Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War. [1936]


Anna Fisher, "the first mother in space" [1980s]


A woman suffrage activist protesting after "The Night of Terror." [1917]


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


A mother plays with her child on the beach. [c. 1950s]


Elspeth Beard, during her attempt to become the first Englishwoman to circumnavigate the world by motorcycle. [1980s]

The journey took 3 years and covered 48,000 miles.

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


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


Winnie the Welder. [1943]

Winnie was one of 2,000 women who worked in US shipyards during World War II.

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".

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 [c. 1941 - 1945]


A captured Soviet soldier is given water by a Ukrainian woman after being captured. [1941]


A mason high above Berlin. [c. 1900]


Railroad workers at lunch. Many were the wives and even mothers of the men who left for war. [1943]


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


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]


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


Women's Liberation Coalition March, Detroit, Michigan. [1970]


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


Female snipers of the Soviet 3rd Shock Army. [May 4, 1945]


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 Lockheed employee working on a P-38 Lightning [Burbank, California, 1944]


A Red Cross nurse takes down the last words of a British soldier. [c. 1917]


Female pilots leaving their B-17, "Pistol Packin' Mama" [c. 1941 - 1945]

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