Who are some real female heroes?
There are many real female heroes throughout history who have made significant contributions to their societies and the world at large. Here are just a few examples:
Harriet Tubman (1822-1913) - An American abolitionist, humanitarian, and armed scout and spy for the Union Army during the American Civil War. Born into slavery, Tubman escaped and subsequently made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. She also served as a nurse, cook, and laundress for the Union Army, and after the war, she continued to fight for civil rights and women's suffrage.
Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) - An English social reformer and statistician who is considered the founder of modern nursing. During the Crimean War, Nightingale and a team of nurses she trained improved the unsanitary conditions at a British base hospital, reducing the death rate from 42% to 2%. She also worked to improve the education and training of nurses and contributed to the development of public health policy.
Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) - An American women's rights activist, abolitionist, and suffragist who played a pivotal role in the women's suffrage movement. She helped found the National Woman Suffrage Association and worked tirelessly to secure voting rights for women. Anthony was arrested for voting in the 1872 presidential election and used her trial as a platform to advocate for women's suffrage.
Sojourner Truth (1797-1883) - An African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist who was born into slavery but escaped to freedom. Truth delivered her famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech at a women's rights convention in Ohio in 1851, calling attention to the intersection of race and gender in the fight for women's rights. She also traveled and spoke widely on behalf of abolition and women's suffrage.
Marie Curie (1867-1934) - A Polish-born physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and she remains the only woman to have won two Nobel Prizes in different fields (physics and chemistry). She also founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and Warsaw, which continue to conduct research in the fields of medicine and nuclear physics.
Rosa Parks (1913-2005) - An American civil rights activist who became known as the "mother of the modern civil rights movement" for her role in sparking the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus to a white person, leading to her arrest and a boycott of the city's buses by African Americans for over a year. The boycott, which was organized by Martin Luther King Jr. and others, helped to bring national attention to the issue of segregation and discrimination.
Malala Yousafzai (1997-present) - A Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest Nobel Prize laureate. She was shot in the head by the Taliban in 2012 for her activism, but she survived and has continued to speak out on behalf of girls' education around the world. In 2013, she founded the Malala Fund to support girls' education initiatives in developing countries.
Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) - An English mathematician and writer who is considered to be the first computer programmer. Lovelace wrote the first algorithm intended to be processed by a machine, and she worked with Charles Babbage on his analytical engine, a mechanical computer that was never completed. Lovelace