Photos of Iconic and Influential Women in History (51 pics)

Jeanne Manford marches with her gay son during a Pride Parade. [1972] 

Jeanne went on to found the rights group "Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays".

Women railroad workers at lunch. Many were the wives and even mothers of the men who left for war. [1943]

Ellen O’Neal, one of the first professional female skaters. [1976]

A Swedish woman hitting a neo-Nazi protester with her handbag. The woman was reportedly a concentration camp survivor. [1985]

Parisian mothers shield their children from German sniper fire. [1944]

Some of the first women sworn into US Marine Corps. [August, 1918]

Female members of the Hell's Angels gang. [1973]

Margaret Bourke-White, a photographer, climbing the Chrysler Building. [1934]

Winnie the Welder. [1943]

Winnie was one of 2,000 women who worked in US shipyards during World War II.

A Muslim woman covers the yellow star of her Jewish neighbour with her veil to protect her from prosecution. Sarajevo, former Yugoslavia. [1941]

Marina Ginesta, a 17-year-old communist militant, overlooking Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War. [1936]

Female volunteers learn how to fight fires at Pearl Harbor [c. 1941 - 1945]

106-year old Armenian woman protecting her home with an AK-47. [1990]

Anna Fisher, "the first mother in space" [1980s]

Two women show uncovered legs in public for the first time in Toronto. [1937]

Filipino guerilla, Captain Nieves Fernandez, shows a US soldier how she killed Japanese soldiers during the occupation. [1944]

Sabiha Gökçen of Turkey poses with her plane, in 1937 she became the first female fighter pilot.

Kathrine Switzer becomes the first woman to run the Boston Marathon, despite attempts by the marathon organizer to stop her. [1967]

Girls deliver heavy blocks of ice after male workers were conscripted [1918]

A Dutch woman refuses to leave her husband, a German soldier, after Allied soldiers capture him. She followed him into captivity. [1944]

Women boxing on a roof in LA. [1933]

Komako Kimura, a prominent Japanese suffragist at a march in New York. [October 23, 1917] 

A woman drinking tea in the aftermath of a German bombing raid during the London Blitz. [1940]

A female mason high above Berlin. [c. 1900]

Elspeth Beard, during her attempt to become the first Englishwoman to circumnavigate the world by motorcycle. [1980s]

The journey took 3 years and covered 48,000 miles.

Gertrude Ederle becomes the first woman to swim across the English Channel. [1926]

A woman suffrage activist protesting after "The Night of Terror." [1917]

33 suffrage activists had been arrested for ‘obstructing traffic’ and were badly beaten by prison guards.

A captured Soviet soldier is given water by a Ukrainian woman after being captured. [1941]

Afghan women at a public library before the Taliban seized power. [c. 1950s]

A mother plays with her child on the beach. [c. 1950s]

Aviator Amelia Earhart after becoming the first woman to fly an aircraft across the Atlantic Ocean. [1928]

Afghan women studying medicine. [1962]

A British sergeant training members of the ‘mum’s army’ Women's Home Defence Corps during the Battle of Britain. [1940]

The iconic photo of a concerned pea-picker and mother of seven children during the Dust Bowl. [1936]

Women's Liberation Coalition March, Detroit, Michigan. [1970]

Women's league roller derby skaters in New York. [March 10, 1950]

The first women’s basketball team from Smith College [1902]

18 year old French Résistance fighter, Simone Segouin, during the liberation of Paris. [19 August 1944]

A Los Angeles Police Officer looks after an abandoned baby in the drawer of her desk. [1971]

Female snipers of the Soviet 3rd Shock Army. [May 4, 1945]

A tattooist's wife. [1907]

Voting activist Annie Lumpkins at the Little Rock city jail. [1961]

Annette Kellerman posing in a swimsuit that got her arrested for indecency. [c. 1907]

A mother shows a picture of her son to returning prisoners of war in an attempt to find him. [Vienna, 1947]

Leola N. King, America's first female traffic cop, Washington D.C. [1918]

Erika, a 15-year-old Hungarian fighter who fought for freedom against the Soviet Union. [October 1956]

American nurses land in Normandy. [1944]

Photograph of a female samurai warrior. [c. late 1800s]

A female Lockheed employee working on a P-38 Lightning [Burbank, California, 1944]

Female pilots leaving their B-17, "Pistol Packin' Mama" [c. 1941 - 1945]

Sarla Thakral, 21 years old, the first Indian woman to earn a pilot license. [1936]