Women are …
- CEOs:
Susan Wojcicki, Lisa Su, Marillyn Hewson, Whitney Wolfe Herd, Mary Barra, Ginni Rometty, Maggie Timoney, Safra Catz, Shemara Wikramanayake. In male dominated industries.
- Entrepreneurs:
Melanie Perkins, Sofia Vergara, Arianna Huffington, Debbie Fields, Beyonce, Kayla Itsines, Catriona Wallace, Leslie Gillespie, Naomi Milgrom, Gina Rinehart, Elle Macpherson. Yet, just 22.3 per cent of Australia’s founders are women.
- Sports people:
Ash Barty, Sam Kerr, Beth Mooney, Ariarne Titmus, Erin Phillips, Tayla Harris, Serena and Venus Williams, Steffi Graf, Janja Garnbret, Lynn Hill, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Martina Navratilova, Nadia Comneci, Florence Griffith Joyner, Dawn Fraser, Katarina Witt. With some world’s firsts amongst all genders and having a family.
- Politicians:
Angela Merkel, Jacinda Arden, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Aung San Suu Kyi, Michelle Bachelet, Janet Yellen, Helle Thorning-Smith, Margaret Thatcher, Elizabeth I, Park Geun-hye, Sonia Gandhi, Christine Lagarde, Eleanore Roosevelt, Joan of Arc. Not only in peaceful times and countries.
- Doctors:/ Scientists:
Fiona Wood, Dagmar Berne, Elizabeth Blackwell, Mary Edwards Walker, Rebecca Lee Crumpler, Susan La Flesche Picotte, Margaret Chung, Emma Constance Stone, Rosalind Franklin, Marie Curie, Lise Meitner, Barbara McClintock, Chien-Shiung Wu, Rachel Carson, Gertrude Elion, Ada Lovelace, Mother Teresa. When women weren’t even allowed to vote in some countries.
- Adventurers:
Jessica Watson, Jane Franklin, Nancy Bird Walton, Alyssa Azar, Jeanne Baret, Ida Pfeiffer, Isabella Bird, Annie Smith Peck, Amelia Earhart, Freya Stark, Elizabeth Jane Cochran (aka Nellie Bly), Amalie Dietrich. In skirts and dresses, where trousers would have been much more useful.
- And much more.
The list is not meant to be exhaustive, nor in any particular order.
These women, and many more, have made their mark in history. You, too, can.
We can be anything we want, but we don’t have to be everything.