By: Helen Velazquez
In honor of Women’s History Month this March, we have created a compilation of some women who you may have not heard of before. They have impacted the world we live in today and made milestones in their respective fields, including science, politics, civil rights and sports. Here are seven astonishing women that have made history and created milestones for women around the world:
- Juno Tabei
Juno Tabei is the first woman to scale Mount Everest and climbed the tallest mountain of every single continent. Tabei was born and raised in Japan and pursued the skill of climbing starting as a little girl. She went on to climb every major mountain in Japan and founded a women’s only mountaineering club. In 1975, after a lot of pushback and adversity, Tabei led a fifteen-all-women team to scale Mount Everest.
- Clara Barton
Clara Barton founded the Red Cross in the United States on May 21, 1881, to create a society that responds to natural disasters based on the Red Cross in Europe. Before the creation of the Red Cross, Barton served in the Civil War as a nurse to soldiers. In addition to the Red Cross, Barton created the Office of Missing Soldiers under the Lincoln-Johnson administration.
- Ellen Ochoa
Ellen Ochoa is the first Hispanic woman to go into space where she completed a nine-day mission on the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1993. She was a first-generation graduate from San Diego University and earned her Ph.D. at Stanford University. Ochoa is of Mexican descent and was raised in La Mesa, California. Additionally, she was inducted into the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2017.
- Elizabeth Peratrovich
Elizabeth Peratrovich was born on July 4, 1911, in Alaska to the Lukaax̱.ádi clan, and was then adopted by a family in southern Alaska. Peratrovich fearlessly fought against discrimination toward Native Americans in the Alaskan capital, Juneau. Through Petratovich’s tireless efforts of increasing Native Alaskan representation in the state legislature, she was able to push for the Alaskan Senate to approve the Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945, a bill that outlaws public discrimination.
- Henrietta Lacks
Henrietta Lacks was born on August 1st, 1920 in Virginia where she worked as a tobacco farmer alongside her family members. In 1951, Lacks was admitted to John Hopkins where she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Unethically, Lacks cells have been used for 11,000 scientific patents for research due to their incredibly fast division rate and because they were able to be kept alive for long periods. Her cancer cells have been named HeLa cells and have been used to develop the polio vaccine and research AIDS and cancer.
- Tammy Ducksworth
Tammy Ducksworth has accomplished a lot and has made history in the U.S government by being the first Thai-American woman elected to congress, the first woman with a disability to be elected to Congress, the first female senator to give birth to not one but two children while serving, and the first female double amputee to serve on the Senate. She served in the Iraq war as a U.S. army helicopter pilot and went on to serve in various positions as a government official starting in 2006. Ducksworth has eternally changed her field, and to call her a trailblazer would be an understatement.
- Toni Stone
Toni Stone was born in West Virginia in 1921 and was the first woman to play on a professional baseball team. Her legacy lives on through her induction into the Women’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1993, and the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1990. Stone faced misogyny and constant criticism but she persevered and made history for female athletes worldwide.