This post means well, but still erases women’s contributions in the same way men have. The truth is that women have made so many contributions to history and science despite men denying them access, but that men have either taken credit for those accomplishments or, when they couldn’t, completely divorced that accomplishment from the woman so that no one remembers them.
In fact, this happens so often that there’s even a name for it. It’s called the Matilda Effect which is defined as “the systematic repression and denial of the contribution of woman scientists in research, whose work is often attributed to their male colleagues” but which applies to other fields as well and goes doubly for women of color. How about just a few (certainly nowhere near all) women who contributed to science? And this is just science, not even history in the larger sense.
Margaret Hamilton - Lead programmer on the Apollo project, wrote the code to take us to the moon
Hedy Lamarr - actress and inventor of wifi
June Mathas, Frances Marion, Anita Loos, Lorna Moon - all silent film directors, in fact about 50% of films from 1911-1925 were directed by women
Annie Jump Cannon - developed first stellar classification system and classified nearly 400,000 stars, more than any other person ever
Lise Meitner - research paved the way for the discovery of nuclear fission, colleagues refused to credit her help, she received no credit while they were given a Nobel prize
Grace Hopper - computer scientist who created the first compiler
Rita Levi-Montalcini - Italian neuroscientist who won a Nobel Prize for her discovery of nerve growth factor
Melba Roy Moutan - mathematician who led a team of mathematicians at NASA, nicknamed ‘Computers’ for their number processing prowess
Kay McNulty, Betty Jennings, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Fran Bilas and Ruth Lichterman - the primary programers of ENIAC, the first general purpose computer
Joyce Jacobson Kaufman - chemist who developed the concept of conformational topology
Vera Rubin - co-authored 114 peer reviewed papers. She specializes in the study of dark matter and galaxy rotation rates.
Mary Sherman Morgan - rocket scientist who invented hydyne, a liquid fuel that powered the USA’s Jupiter C-rocket.
Chien-Siung Wu - physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project, as well as experimental radioactive studies. She was the first woman to become president of the American Physical Society.
Mildred Catherine Rebstock - first person to synthesize the antibiotic chloromycetin.
Ruby Hirose - chemist who conducted vital research about an infant paralysis vaccine.
Hattie Elizabeth Alexander - pediatrician and microbiologist who developed a remedy for Haemophilus influenzae, and conducted vital research on antibiotic resistance.
Marie Tharp - mapped the floor of the Atlantic Ocean and provided proof of continental drift.
Mae Jamison - astronaut who holds a degree in chemical engineering from Stanford University and was the first black woman in space.
Ada Lovelace - mathematician and considered to be the world’s first computer programmer.
Patricia E Bath - ophthalmologist and the inventor of the Laserphaco Probe, which is used to treat cataracts.
Barbara McClintock - won a Nobel prize for her discovery that genes could move in and between chromosomes.
Cecilia Payne - discovered what the universe is made of, she also discovered what the sun is made of (Henry Norris Russell is usually given credit for discovering that the sun’s composition is different from the Earth’s, but he came to his conclusions four years later than Payne—after telling her not to publish).
Yanping Guo - mission design leader and one of the women who made up 25% of the New Horizons team. She configured the entire mission trajectory, including Jupiter and Pluto flybys.
Agnodice - went to study medicine in Alexandria to help keep women from dying in childbirth, pretended to be a man when she came back because it was illegal for a woman to be a doctor in Athens, was so much better than her male colleagues they brought her to court and accused her of seducing her patients as an explanation for her popularity but since she was the reason so many of the court had living wives and kids they were shamed into changing the law instead of executing her.
Queen Seondeok of Silla - set up first astronomy tower in Asia
Jocelyn Bell Bernell - discovered first pulsar, Anthony Hewish took credit listiner her as an assistant despite having nothing to do with the discovery, he received a Nobel Prize
Nettie Stevens - discovered that chromosomes determined sex, sent her findings to a colleague for peer review, he published it as his own and named her his technician
Marie Curie - won 2 Nobel prizes and was constantly attacked by her male colleagues and barred from academic organizations because she was a woman, still managed to be better than them
Marie Van Brittan Brown - black woman who co-invented home security surveillance
Vera Rubin - discovered dark matter at Cornell after being rejected from Princeton because she was a woman
I’m too tired to keep going but how about Jane Goodall, Sally Ride, Rosalind Franklin, Rachel Carson, Elizabeth Blackwell, Dorothy Hodgkin, Shirley Ann Jackson, Kalpana Chawla, Maryam Mirzakhani, Flossie Wong-Staal, Alice Ball, Ida Tacke, Ester Lederberg, Mileva Maric?
The absence of women in history is man made.
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