Real
My Mother
By a country mile my biggest idol, my mother has had arthritis since she was 2 years old. Dealing with the difficulty of arthritis and the prejudice of others at a time when arthritis was thought to only occur in older people, she went on to become a maths teacher. After that she has contracted a cocktail of other disabilities including diabetes, depression, kidney disease, anaemia, basically pretty much everything under the sun. She lives in severe pain every day, her feet hurt her when she walks but she refuses to use a wheelchair. On top of this she's had to fight for help for me because of my Asperger's and other conditions for 21 years and continues to do so. The world keeps knocking her down but she keeps getting back up every time. She is by far the most resilient human being I've ever known or heard of. She's the closest thing that exists to a superhero.
Jane Goodall
Jane Goodall is a primatologist and anthropologist best known as one of the world's foremost experts on chimpanzees having studied them for over 50 years. She's also a passionate environmental activist and was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace in 2002.
Sylvia Earle is a marine biologist and was the female chief scientist of the United States' National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She's also an environmental activist, dedicated to saving the ocean with the group Ocean Elders.
Saba Douglas Hamilton
Saba Douglas Hamilton is a wildlife conservationist who has worked for various conservation charities. She is also well-known as a wildlife presenter and is the current manager of Elephant Watch Camp in Kenya and the Special Projects Director for the charity Save The Elephants.
Susie Wolff
Susie Wolff is a former racing driver who was signed by Williams F1 team in 2012 as a development driver. In 2014 she was the first woman racing driver to take part in an F1 race weekend in 22 years.
Sabine Schmitz
Sabine Schmitz is a professional racing driver. She has won the VLN Endurance Racing Championship and the 24 Hours Nürburgring. She has driven the BMW Ring Taxi around the track and is so experienced with the track that she is known as Queen of the Nürburgring.
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks was a civil rights activist, most well-known for refusing to give up her "coloured" bus seat for a white woman when the "whites" section was full, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott in defiance of segregation on buses.
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou was a writer, poet and civil rights activist, well-known for her poetry works and steadfast convictions.
Beatrice Fihn
Beatrice Fihn is the Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear weapons, who were awarded a Nobel Peace Prize last year for being instrumental in co-ordinating the United Nations Nuclear Ban Treaty which was also ratified last year.
Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono is an artist and peace activist. Well-known for being the spouse of John Lennon she continues to be a prominent peace activist in the present day.
Mary Seacole
Mary Seacole was a businesswoman and nurse who decided to set up her own hotel to help soldiers during the Crimean War after the War Office told her she couldn't serve as a nurse.
Emmeline Pankhurst
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Emmeline Pankhurst was the leader of the British suffragette movement which eventually helped women win the right to vote in the country.
Emily Davison
Emily Davison was part of the British suffragette movement, being arrested and force-fed several times. She eventually made the ultimate sacrifice for the cause by throwing herself in front of the King's horse during a horse race, bringing attention to the movement.
Taylor Richardson
Taylor Richardson is high-school student aspiring to be an astronaut. She's an activist and advocate for the black community in STEM subjects, raising money to pay for children to see A Wrinkle In Time and Hidden Figures.
Mae Jemison
Mae Jemison is a NASA astronaut as well as an engineer and physician. She is most well-known as being the first African-American woman to go to space. She also appeared in Star Trek: The Next Generation afterwards (which is pretty damn cool having gone to space and then gone to fake space I just wanted to include that).
Katherine Johnson
Katherine Johnson is a mathematician, most well-known for calculating for NASA from the earliest missions to the Space Shuttle era.
Margaret Hamilton
Margaret Hamilton is a computer scientist and space engineer who worked for NASA developing the on-board flight software for the Apollo Moon missions.
Anne Frank
Anne Frank was a Jewish girl who had to hide from the Nazis in order to not be sent to a concentration camp and killed. She was unfortunately found and killed but while hiding she wrote a diary for she is now famous. Her optimism and courage in spite of such a bleak existence is inspiring beyond words.
Temple Grandin
Temple Grandin is a professor of animal science, an animal behaviour consultant to the livestock industry and an autism spokesperson. She was one of the first people with autism to publicly share her personal experiences and even invented a device to help people with autism.
Carrie Fisher
Carrie Fisher is most well-known for playing Princess Leia in the Star Wars franchise but what I most admire about her the nonchalant attitude she had towards the opinions of others and the work she did to help people better understand mental health conditions.
Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc was a French soldier known for her swift victories against the English. When she was captured and trialled to be burnt at the stake, where her resolve and expert responses to the questions of her accusers own her idol status for me. She was steadfast to the end.
Ann Druyan
Ann Druyan is the widow of the late Carl Sagan, who she co-wrote the first Cosmos series with. She created, produced and wrote the second Cosmos series in 2014. She was also the Creative Director of NASA's Voyager Interstellar Message Project, which overlooked the creation of the Golden Records that were fixed to the probes Voyager 1 and 2.
This list is by no means exhaustive. I have an awful memory and the best part about writing this article was that I kept coming up with more and more idols during the process. Women are phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal and it's about time we treat them as equal to men in every regard.
Information from Wikipedia, images various.
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