TRACY EDWARDS After being one of only 4 female crew (out of 230) in the 1985/’86 Whitbread Round the World Race, Tracy Edwards became the first female Skipper in the nine-month, 33,000 mile competition when she put together an all-female crew for the 1989/’90 Race. Overcoming a persistent struggle to find any sponsors willing to support them, her boat Maidenshocked the world by finishing in second place, the best result by any British boat since 1977. Edwards is a straight shooter who doesn’t tend to romanticize the experience. She said, “Women have great stamina, so we just got used to it. I think also taking care of each other was something I had never seen on a big racing boat with men,” and, “The sea is very honest, and there’s no gossiping behind your back. It’s telling tales right in front of you, and what you see is what you get.” A wonderful documentary, called Maiden, was released in 2018 about the Whitbread experience. Definitely worth a watch.

SAROJINI NAIDU In 1925, Sarojini Naidu followed Mahatma Ghandi as the President of the Indian National Congress, the first woman to hold that post. An active advocate of Ghandi’s Non-Cooperation Movement, she served three separate prison sentences for her anti-British activities. She was also a poet, publishing three volumes of poetry in her lifetime (one posthumously), and held influencial literary salons in Bombay. In 1947 she became the first woman to hold the post of state governor, a post she held for two years, until her death in 1949. She said, “A country’s greatness lies in its undying ideals of love and sacrifice that inspire the mothers of the race.” To read more about Sarojini, visit her biography in Britannica.

JANE ADDAMS While her pacifist activities led to her selection as the first American woman Nobel Peace Prize recipient (1931), her true passion was working with inner city women and children in Chicago where she established daycare systems and training programs for working women, advocated for better urban sanitation, more kindergartens and playgrounds, and later lobbied for passage of the 1916 Federal Child Labor Law. Her work fighting for clean air and water in the poorest neighborhoods makes her one of the earliest environmental justice advocates in the country. She said, “The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.” Learn more about her at PBS.org.

MARIA MITCHELL Born into a Quaker family on Nantucket in 1818, Maria Mitchell was the first American astronomer to discover a comet. She was only 29. A life-long advocate of women in science, Mitchell would go on to be the first woman elected to the Academy of Arts and Sciences, and instrumental in the formation of the American Association for the Advancement of Women. She was recruited to reach at Vassar which had the third largest telescope in the world, allowing her to extensively study the surfaces of Jupiter and Saturn. A crater on the moon was eventually named in her honor. She said, “We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry.” A wonderful novel based on her life, The Movement of Stars, by Amy Brill, was published in 2014. Her house in Nantucket is now a historical tourist site. 

MARIJANI SAVIC After living through the Yugoslav Wars, Marijani Savic founded the first safehouse in Serbia for victims of gender-based violence and human trafficking. She founded Atina, an organization dedicated to helping survivors by expanding basic services to include long-term psychological and legal assistance. A tireless champion of women, in 2018 Savic was named to the Forbes list of eight awe-inspiring women around the globe focused on this issue. She said, “There are still women among us who are segregated entirely and are being blamed by the society for the violence they are suffering.” Here is an interview with Savic, and an article about what inspires her.