Educator Mary McLeod Bethune regularly wrote of her travels abroad.
Robert Abbott Sengstacke via Getty Images
A former archivist at Mary McLeod Bethune’s last residence in Washington, DC, recounts how the experience led her to see Bethune as a global figure.
The island of Molokai, where the Ball Method successfully treated leprosy sufferers.
Albert Pierce Taylor
Historians are working to shine a light on Alice Ball’s legacy and contributions to an early treatment of a dangerous and stigmatizing disease.
A group of witches offering wax effigies to the Devil in a 17th-century woodcut.
Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy
Only five witches were executed in Wales, while thousands were sentenced to death in Scotland and England.
An illustration from Christine de Pizan’s ‘The Book of the City of Ladies.’
Fine Art Images/Heritage Images via Getty Images
By compiling stories about the accomplishments of women, Christine set out to build an allegorical city where women and their achievements would be safe from sexist insults and slander.
Betty Smith’s novel sold millions of copies in the 1940s.
Weegee/International Center of Photography via Getty Images
No other 20th-century American novel did quite so much to burnish Brooklyn’s reputation. But Smith rarely saw her hometown through rose-colored glasses − and even grew to resent it.
Women’s wills and last testaments provide a more nuanced picture of life in the Middle Ages than medieval stereotypes allow, such as that depicted in “Death and the Prostitute” by Master of Philippe of Guelders.
Gallica/Bibliothèque nationale de France/Feminae
European women’s rights expanded in early medieval cities, though they were still limited. Last wills and testaments were some of the few documents women could dictate themselves.
Butsaya/Shutterstock
Nollaig na mBan marks the end of the Christmas season on January 6, but is also a day to celebrate Mná na hÉireann (women of Ireland).
A British mantua c. 1708.
The Met/Purchase, Rogers Fund, Isabel Shults Fund and Irene Lewisohn Bequest, 1991
If you’ve watched many period dramas, you’ve probably seen a mantua. It was worn over a pair of stays (corset) and an often contrasting petticoat. The draping fabric created a front-opening gown.
Baden H Mullaney, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
By 1933, women were increasingly wearing pants but, as one letter to the editor complained, ‘women look far from attractive in them’.
ABC
The history of the goldfields too often focuses on men – but, as new Aussie TV series Gold Diggers gets right, the settlements were filled with women.
Sarah Jane Rees was also known as Cranogwen.
National Library of Wales
Cranogwen was a trailblazer who challenged expectations of women during the Victorian era.
Women listen during the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963.
Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
From family to grassroots activists, these are some of the women who shaped MLK’s vision and campaigns.
Women protested to ‘end the sausage party’ at the AACTA awards in 2016.
AAP Image/Dean Lewins
There is an adage that feminists and women aren’t funny. However, the history of activism reveals humour as a successful strategy for change.
A scale model of a statue dedicated to Lady Rhondda has been revealed by the sculptor, Jane Robbins.
AV Morgan/Wikimedia
Lady Rhondda was a suffragette, a business leader and an editor. A statue of her is expected to be revealed in Newport, south Wales, next year.
She traveled far and wide to support children and families around the world.
Cornell University
Kittrell’s legacy shows that home economics was always about more than cooking and sewing. It’s also a reminder that issues that affect families are simultaneously local and global.
Image credits: State Library of Western Australia.
Historically, women’s contributions to the agricultural sector often occurred outside of professional roles. ‘Lady’ Maud Williams, who discovered the Lady Williams apple, is one of those women.
Interviewee Eileen Clark
For mature-age students of the Study Centre in the 1970s, education offered them a new life.
English theatrical productions had all-male casts in the olden days.
The Print Collector/Getty Images
It may have had something to do with protecting female purity. No official statute clearly required men to do all the acting back then.
Tu Youyou shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2015.
Claudio Bresciani/AFP via Getty Images
Discover the stories of five trailblazing women – Tharp, Nice, Tu, Noether and Wu – who worked in STEM during the 20th century.
Ruth Hollick collection. State Library of Victoria
From the author of The Yellow Wallpaper, Herland is a feminist classic: darkly comic and rich with irony.