12 Women Who Changed the World

“I am convinced that the women of the world, united without any regard for national or racial dimensions, can become a most powerful force for international peace and brotherhood.” – Coretta Scott King.

In celebration of International Women’s Day, TopLine invites you to learn about 12 women, who forever changed the world we live in today. 

Marie Curie
Marie Curie changed the world not once but twice. She founded the new science of radioactivity – even the word was invented by her – and her discoveries launched effective cures for cancer.
Born in Warsaw, Curie studied physics at university in Paris where she met her future research collaborator and husband, Pierre. Together they identified two new elements: radium and polonium, named after her native Poland. After he died, she raised a small fortune in the US and Europe to fund laboratories and to develop cancer treatments.

Rosa Parks
In 1955, Rosa Parks, an African American living in Montgomery, Alabama, challenged the race segregation that existed in parts of the US by refusing to give up her seat on a bus so that a white person could sit down.
Her protest was supported by many other African Americans and sparked the civil rights movement which, in the 1960s, eventually won equal rights. Four years after her death in 2005, Barack Obama became the first African-American US president.

Diana, Princess of Wales
In 1981, Diana Spencer became the first wife of the heir apparent to the British throne, Charles, Prince of Wales. Their wedding reached a global television audience of more than 700m people and she continued to attract much media attention, even after her divorce in 1996. Princess Diana became well known internationally for her charity work for sick children, the banning of landmines and for raising awareness about those affected by cancer, HIV/AIDS and mental illness. She famously shook hands with a HIV patient, helping to minimize the stigma surrounding the disease. 

Senator Tammy Duckworth
Tammy Duckworth, born in Bangkok, Thailand, is an American politician and retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel. She was the first disabled woman elected to Congress, the first Asian American woman to represent Illinois, and the first female double amputee in the Senate. In 2004, during her service as a helicopter pilot in Iraq, she lost both her legs when her helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. As a senator, she fights for policies that support veterans, health care, and education. Duckworth’s relentless pursuit of justice and her unwavering commitment to public service make her an inspiring role model for young girls everywhere.

Rosalie Fish
Rosalie Fish is a member of the Cowlitz tribe in Washington State. Rosalie garnered media attention in 2019 when, at a track meet, she competed with a red handprint painted over her mouth. The handprint was to honor and bring attention to the missing and murdered Indigenous women crisis. 
Inspired by fellow runner, Jordan Marie Daniel of the Kul Wicasa Oyate Nation in South Dakota, who painted a handprint over her face when she ran the Boston Marathon in 2019, Rosalie declared that she would not stay silent or let the women’s stories be forgotten or overlooked. She continues to run with the red handprint on her mouth and speaks out about issues facing Indigenous women.

Wangari Maathai 
Wangari Maathai was a Kenyan environmental activist who founded the Green Belt Movement which campaigned for the planting of trees, environmental conversation and women’s rights.
The first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree, Maathai was elected to parliament and appointed assistant minister for Environment and Natural Resources from 2003– 2005. Her work was internationally recognized when, in 2004, she became the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for her contribution to sustainable development, peace and democracy.

Sonia Sotomayor
Sonia was born in New York City to Puerto Rican immigrants. Her father did not speak English and worked as a tool maker. Her mom was a telephone operator and then a nurse. They worked long hours, so Sonia mostly spent time with her grandmother. At age 7, she was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes and began insulin injections.
But Diabetes didn’t stop Sonia from having big career dreams. She initially wanted to be a detective since she loved the Nancy Drew books, but after watching Perry Mason at age ten, she knew she wanted to be an attorney. She attended Princeton University and then went on to Yale for Law School.
She began her career as an assistant district attorney under New York County District Attorney Robert Morgenthau in 1979. At a time when New York crime rates were rising, Sonia had to manage an intense workload. She became a judge and worked her way up the courts. In 1997, President Bill Clinton nominated her to a federal court. In 2009, President Barack Obama nominated her to the Supreme Court where she became the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice. She still serves today.

Coretta Scott King
an American author, activist, and civil rights leader and the wife of Martin Luther King Jr. King played a prominent role in the years after her husband's assassination in 1968, when she took on the leadership of the struggle for racial equality herself and became active in the Women's Movement. King founded the King Center, and sought to make his birthday a national holiday. She finally succeeded when Ronald Reagan signed legislation which established Martin Luther King, Jr., Day on November 2, 1983. She later broadened her scope to include both advocacy for LGBTQ rights and opposition to apartheid. King became friends with many politicians before and after Martin's death, including John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Robert F. Kennedy. Her telephone conversation with John F. Kennedy during the 1960 presidential election has been credited by historians for mobilizing African-American voters.

Malala Yousafzai
a Pakistani female education activist and the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize laureate at the age of 17. She is the world's youngest Nobel Prize laureate, the second Pakistani and the first Pashtun to receive a Nobel Prize.
Yousafzai is a human rights advocate for the education of women and children in her native homeland, Swat, where the Pakistani Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school. Her advocacy has grown into an international movement, and according to former Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, she has become Pakistan's "most prominent citizen”. On 9 October 2012, while on a bus in Swat District after taking an exam, Yousafzai and two other girls were shot by a Taliban gunman in an assassination attempt targeting her for her activism; the gunman fled the scene. She was struck in the head by a bullet and remained unconscious and in critical condition at the Rawalpindi Institute of Cardiology, but her condition later improved enough for her to be transferred to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, UK. The attempt on her life sparked an international outpouring of support. Deutsche Welle reported in January 2013 that she may have become "the most famous teenager in the world".

Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Ginsburg was born and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. Her older sister, Marilyn, died of meningitis at the age of six, when Joan was a baby, and her mother died shortly before she graduated from high school. She earned her bachelor's degree at Cornell University and married Martin D. Ginsburg, becoming a mother before starting law school at Harvard, where she was one of the few women in her class. Ginsburg transferred to Columbia Law School, where she graduated joint first in her class.
Ginsburg made history as the first Jewish woman to be appointed to the Supreme Court. Her entire career was highlighted with pivotal moments in American history. Consistently standing up for gender equality and civil rights, she helped pass historic rulings on topics ranging from the Affordable Care Act to the legalization of same-sex marriage before her 2020 death at age 87.

Kalpana Chawla
In 1997, after being named a mission specialist on the Space Shuttle Columbia by NASA, Chawla became the first woman of Indian descent to fly in space. The shuttle orbited around Earth 252 times in a little over two weeks. Her second—and last—trip to space came in 2003 when she and six other astronauts completed more than 80 experiments over the course of 16 days. She and the entire crew died when the ship disintegrated upon reentering the Earth’s atmosphere. In 2020, Northrop Grumman, an aerospace, defense, and security company, named a spacecraft after Chawla in her memory.

Ibtihaj Muhammad 
In 2016, fencing champion Ibtihaj Muhammad became the first Muslim woman to represent the U.S. at the Olympics, where she won a bronze medal and was the first Olympian to wear a hijab. That same year, Time included Muhammad on the 100 Most Influential People list, and two years later, Mattel created a hijab-wearing doll in her honor. Read more about Muhammad in her memoir Proud: My Fight for an Unlikely American Dream.