Bygone Badass Broads: 52 Forgotten Women Who Changed the World

Not a man is going to protect me, because this is a woman's fight, and we are going to protect ourselves!

Es una felicidad mucho más grande no tener que obedecer a nadie que gobernar todo el mundo”.

The colours of the universe are there because of the existence of womankind.

So, when diplomacy failed, Lakshmibai chose a different tactic: aggressive negotiations. Twenty-something Lakshmibai declared open revolt, attacked the British fort at Jhansi, recaptured her city, and massacred the British invaders. Sources aren't totally clear on her direct involvement in the massacre, but it's universally agreed that this is where she transitions from queen mother into full-on Boss Bitch Rebel Queen hellbent on kicking the British out of India by their colonialist asses.

el trabalenguas “she sells seashells by the seashore” (

So, everything seemed to be going great in Christina's court, where "Single Ladies" played on repeat and there were free JSTOR credentials for all.

Lakshmibai was forced to abandon Jhansi, but she left it the same way she fought for it– on horseback, with her song strapped to her back.

Imagine a world where chefs on the Food Network gave convoluted measurements for recipes like "then you add a lump of butter," and already impossible Pinterest tutorials were made even more maddening by instructions like "add enough yeast to make the bread rise." If it weren't for Fannie Farmer, we might still be suffering in the dystopian horror show of nonstandardized cooking measurements.

You'd be hard-pressed to find a human who can't hum the opening lines of Darth Vader's theme, "The Imperial March," or describe one of the iconic scenes it underscores in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. It would be far more difficult to find someone who knows that John Williams's longtime collaborator on that film and many others was Angela Morley, a transgender woman who is responsible for some of the most memorable scores in film and television.

What's a girl like Edith to do when she sees women beaten in the street by men twice their size just for asking for the right to vote? Open a Jujitsu school to teach suffragettes to unleash their feminine fury on the men standing in their way.

When Einstein calls you the most significant and creative woman in the history of mathematics, you can probably call it a day and go home. Unless you're Emmy Noether, whose pursuit of game-changing innovation in the field of numbers was, in a word, tenacious.

Tucked away in the English countryside, amid rigid social structures, landed nobility with their stiff upper lips and equally stiff rules about decorum, at a time when the Bennett sisters were worrying about balls, emerged Anne Lister, often called the first modern lesbian. Though "emerged" seems like a rather tame word. Burst. Exploded. Smashed her way double-fisted into a world of men, ran their businesses, and stole their wives. Whatever. Anne Lister arrived.

Roses are red, gender's performative, your ideas about women are so hella normative.

Before her official rule began, Arawelo was already used to doing work traditionally meant for men. When she was younger, and drought and famine roundhouse-kicked her kingdom, she organized a group of women to fetch water and hunt, the sort of physical labor usually done exclusively by men. When she officially took power, Arawelo was ready to shake things up. Citing the past decades of war that had stricken Somalia as evidence that men break everything they touch, she packed her government with women. "NEVER HAVE CONFIDENCE IN ANY MAN." Under Arawelo, girls ran the world, and their men stayed home, took care of the children, and cleaned.

When Ursula was offered a “promotion” from the children’s to the adult’s department, she turned it down with the eloquent but mic-dropping statement, “I couldn’t possibly be interested in books for dead dull finished adults, and thank you very much but I have to get back to my desk to publish some more good books for bad children.

Ursula demanded a high caliber of work from her authors—her most notorious note left scribbled in the margins of manuscripts was N.G.E.F.Y., which stood for “Not Good Enough for You.

Mariya sold everything she owned and used the money to buy a big-ass brand-new 26-ton T-34 Main Battle Tank. A tank that she learned to drive herself. A tank that she named Fighting Girlfriend.

Mary was a concentrated ball of equal parts “don’t mess with me” and “I’ll mess you up,” compacted so tightly that no fear could get in.

Which led her sweeping declaration that she would marry any man who could defeat her in a wrestling match, but anyone who tried and failed owed her one hundred horses. Shortly thereafter, Khutulun had 10,000 horses and no husband. Giddyup.

The prospect grows gloomier for misogynists.