52 Historical Photos of Women Who Changed History

These historical photographs show women who changed what society expected of them, in war and peace, sport and science, protest and everyday work. A few are famous firsts: Gertrude Ederle swimming the English Channel, Kathrine Switzer running the Boston Marathon with an official number, Anna Fisher flying in space as a mother. Many more show women whose names were never recorded, doing jobs that were supposed to belong to men or simply getting on with life in difficult times.

Old photographs often travel online with captions that are dramatic but inaccurate. Here each picture comes with a short explanation of who and what it shows, when it was taken and why it matters. Where a popular claim does not hold up, such as Amelia Earhart's 1928 flight being solo or Maud Wagner being the first tattooed woman in America, the caption says so and gives the more precise story. Where a name or place cannot be confirmed, the caption treats it with care.

The pictures are grouped by theme rather than date, starting with courage under occupation and war, then wartime work, the fight for votes and civil rights, sporting and aviation firsts, careers and learning, and finally the everyday moments that show how expectations of women slowly shifted.

Courage in war, occupation and resistance

Sarajevo, 1941

In occupied Sarajevo, a Muslim woman walks beside her Jewish neighbour, and the photograph is widely described as showing her using her veil to hide the yellow star the occupiers forced Jews to wear. The scene is usually linked to the Hardaga family, who sheltered the Jewish Kabiljo family and were later honoured by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. Decades later, during the 1990s siege of Sarajevo, Jewish organisations helped the Hardagas escape to Israel.

Simone Segouin, 1944

Simone Segouin was an 18-year-old member of the French Resistance, known by the code name Nicole Minet, when photographers caught her with a German submachine gun in August 1944. The best-known pictures were taken during the liberation of Chartres, south-west of Paris, rather than in Paris itself. She later worked as a paediatric nurse and died in 2023 at the age of 97.

Marina Ginestà, Barcelona, 1936

Juan Guzmán photographed 17-year-old Marina Ginestà on the roof of the Hotel Colón in Barcelona on 21 July 1936, days into the Spanish Civil War. She was a member of the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia and worked as a reporter and translator. After the war she lived in exile in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and France, and died in Paris in 2014, aged 94.

Nieves Fernandez, Leyte, 1944

Nieves Fernandez was a schoolteacher in Tacloban on the Philippine island of Leyte who organised a guerrilla unit of about 110 fighters against the Japanese occupation. Here she shows US Army Private Andrew Lupiba how she fought with a bolo knife, in a photograph by Stanley Troutman. US intelligence reported that the Japanese had placed a 10,000-peso bounty on her.

Water for a prisoner, 1941

A Ukrainian woman holds out water for a Soviet soldier taken prisoner during the German invasion in 1941. Millions of Soviet prisoners of war died in German captivity, so a small act of mercy like this carried real meaning. The photograph is believed to come from a German wartime photographer, which is a reminder to ask who took a picture and why.

Paris, August 1944

Parisian women crouch and pull their children close as shots ring out in a street during the liberation of the city. Snipers fired on crowds on 26 August 1944, the day of the victory parade, causing panic around some of the city's landmarks. The photograph captures the fear behind a day usually remembered for celebration.

Into captivity together, 1944

A young Dutch woman links arms with her husband, a German soldier, after Allied troops captured him, and the caption that accompanies the photograph says she insisted on going with him. Her name is not recorded. It is a complicated image that shows how war tangled personal loyalties.

Soviet snipers, May 1945

Women snipers of the Soviet 3rd Shock Army pose for a group portrait on 4 May 1945, days before Germany's surrender. The Soviet Union trained women as snipers on a large scale during the war, and many wear the medals visible on their uniforms. Unlike most armies of the time, the Red Army placed women in frontline combat roles.

Vienna, 1947

Ernst Haas photographed a mother holding up a picture of her son as prisoners of war returned to Vienna in 1947, hoping someone had seen him. The image comes from his series on returning soldiers that launched his international career. Hundreds of thousands of families across Europe waited years for news like this.

Budapest, 1956

A 15-year-old girl with a submachine gun became one of the defining images of the Hungarian uprising against Soviet rule in October 1956. The photograph is usually credited to Danish photographer Vagn Hansen, and the girl is often named as Erika Szeles, though that identification has been questioned. The uprising was crushed within weeks, and some 200,000 Hungarians fled the country.

Armed at 106, 1990

An elderly Armenian woman sits with an assault rifle across her lap, a photograph widely circulated with the caption that she was 106 and defending her home in 1990. That was the period of the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. Her name and the exact place are rarely given, so the details of the caption are best treated as unconfirmed.

Women at work and in uniform in wartime

Delivering ice, 1918

Two young women haul heavy blocks of ice from a cart in 1918, a job men usually did before the draft took them to the First World War. Ice was delivered to homes every few days for iceboxes, the forerunners of refrigerators. War work like this helped change ideas about what women could do.

A soldier's last words, c. 1917

A Red Cross nurse kneels in the grass to write down the final words of a wounded British soldier during the First World War. Nurses often wrote letters home for men who were too badly hurt to write themselves. The photograph shows a side of war rarely seen in official pictures.

Marine Corps, 1918

Some of the first women to join the US Marine Corps take the oath in August 1918. Opha May Johnson became the first woman to enlist on 13 August that year, and about 300 women served as Marine reservists during the First World War, mostly in clerical posts so that men could go to France.

Tea after the raid, London, 1940

A woman sips from a cup while sitting among the rubble left by a German bombing raid during the Blitz. Between September 1940 and May 1941 bombing killed more than 40,000 civilians across Britain. Images like this were used to show British resilience, and some were staged for the camera, but the destruction was real.

Home defence training, 1940

A British army sergeant demonstrates bayonet drill to members of a women's home defence group during the Battle of Britain. Women were not officially allowed to bear arms in the Home Guard at first, so volunteer groups trained themselves. The photograph appeared in LIFE magazine.

A welder at work, 1943

This colour photograph of a young welder, circulated as 'Winnie the Welder', shows one of the many women who took skilled industrial jobs during the Second World War. A figure of 2,000 women in US shipyards often accompanies it, but that number is far too low; tens of thousands of women worked in American shipyards during the war.

Railroad workers at lunch, 1943

Women railroad workers share lunch in a roundhouse, photographed in colour by Jack Delano for the US Office of War Information in 1943 in Clinton, Iowa. Many had taken the place of husbands, sons and brothers who had gone to war. The colour pictures from this project remain some of the most vivid records of wartime work.

Lockheed, Burbank, 1944

A Lockheed employee works on the engine cowling of a P-38 Lightning fighter at the company's plant in Burbank, California. By the middle of the war women made up a large share of the aircraft industry's workforce. Colour photographs like this were made to recruit more women to factory jobs.

Firefighting drills, Hawaii

Women volunteers train with a high-pressure fire hose at Pearl Harbor during the Second World War. After the 1941 attack, civilians in Hawaii, including many women, joined defence and emergency units. Handling a hose like this took several people bracing together.

Army nurses in Normandy, 1944

US Army nurses in helmets and field gear walk inland from the Normandy beaches in 1944, weeks after D-Day. Field and evacuation hospitals followed the troops closely, and nurses often worked within range of artillery fire. More than 59,000 American nurses served in the Army Nurse Corps during the war.

WASP pilots and a B-17

Four pilots of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) walk away from the B-17 bomber nicknamed 'Pistol Packin' Mama' during a training course in Ohio. More than 1,000 women completed WASP training, flying military aircraft in the United States so that male pilots could serve overseas. They received veteran status only in 1977 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2009.

Votes, civil rights and the right to protest

Komako Kimura, New York, 1917

Komako Kimura, a Japanese actress and suffragist, marches with a Woman Suffrage Party sash at a parade in New York on 23 October 1917. Two weeks later, New York men voted to give women the vote in the state. Kimura campaigned for women's rights in Japan as well.

After the Night of Terror, 1917

A suffragist holds a banner reading 'To ask freedom for women is not a crime', protesting the treatment of jailed campaigners. On the night of 14 November 1917, guards at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia beat and abused women imprisoned for picketing the White House, an event remembered as the Night of Terror. Public outrage helped build support for the vote.

Little Rock, 1961

Annie Lumpkins, a young civil rights activist, stands at the Little Rock city jail in 1961 with her suitcase, during a year when Freedom Riders and student activists were arrested across the South for challenging segregation. Her calm pose contrasts with the risk activists faced.

Jeanne Manford, New York, 1972

Jeanne Manford marches with her son Morty in New York's Pride march in 1972, carrying a sign asking parents of gay people to support their children. The following year she helped start a parents' support group that grew into PFLAG. It remains one of the largest family organisations supporting LGBTQ people.

Detroit, 1970

Women march in Detroit carrying signs for equal pay and equal job opportunities in 1970, the year of a nationwide Women's Strike for Equality marking 50 years of women's suffrage in the US. Equal-pay laws already existed, but women's earnings remained far below men's.

Växjö, Sweden, 1985

Danuta Danielsson, a Polish-born woman living in Sweden, swings her handbag at a member of a neo-Nazi march in Växjö on 13 April 1985. Hans Runesson's photograph ran on the front page of Dagens Nyheter the next day. Reports say her mother survived the Majdanek concentration camp; her son has said Danuta herself was not a camp survivor.

Firsts in sport, flight and adventure

Smith College basketball, 1902

Members of a Smith College class team pose with peach baskets, the original 'hoops', with '1902' on their uniforms. Smith's Senda Berenson adapted basketball for women in 1892, only a year after the game was invented, so this was not the first team but one of the earliest generations of women players.

Annette Kellerman, c. 1907

Australian swimmer Annette Kellerman promoted a fitted one-piece swimsuit at a time when women were expected to swim in heavy dresses. She often told the story that she was arrested on a Boston-area beach in 1907 for indecent exposure, though records of that arrest are thin. She later became a film star and a pioneer of synchronised swimming.

Gertrude Ederle, 1926

Gertrude Ederle came ashore in England on 6 August 1926 as the first woman to swim the English Channel. She crossed in about 14 and a half hours, faster than any of the men who had made the swim before her. New York gave her a ticker-tape parade on her return.

Amelia Earhart, 1928

Amelia Earhart stands by an aircraft after becoming the first woman to cross the Atlantic by air in June 1928. On that flight she was a passenger while Wilmer Stultz flew the plane. She made her own solo transatlantic flight in 1932 and disappeared over the Pacific in 1937.

Sarla Thakral, 1936

Sarla Thakral posed in a sari beside a Gypsy Moth biplane in 1936, the year she became the first Indian woman to fly an aircraft, at the age of 21. She went on to earn further flying qualifications before turning to art and design. She died in 2008.

Sabiha Gökçen, 1930s

Sabiha Gökçen, Atatürk's adopted daughter, was trained as a military pilot in Turkey and is often described as the first female combat pilot. Earlier women such as France's Marie Marvingt had flown military missions in the First World War, so the claim depends on the definition. Her 1937 sorties took part in the military operations in Dersim, which historians describe as a massacre of the region's mainly Kurdish Alevi population.

Rooftop boxing, Los Angeles, 1933

Women spar on a rooftop in Los Angeles in 1933 while others watch from the sidelines. Women's boxing was rarely allowed in official competition, and it did not join the Olympics until 2012. Exercise and boxing for fitness were fashionable in 1930s California.

Roller derby, New York, 1950

Skaters leap over fallen rivals during a women's roller derby bout in New York on 10 March 1950. Roller derby was one of the first professional sports to feature women prominently, and televised games drew large audiences.

Kathrine Switzer, Boston, 1967

Kathrine Switzer, registered as 'K. V. Switzer', became the first woman to run the Boston Marathon with an official bib number in 1967, despite a race official trying to pull her off the course. Roberta Gibb had already finished the race unofficially in 1966. Women were officially admitted in 1972, and Switzer's number 261 was retired in 2017.

Ellen O'Neal, 1976

Ellen O'Neal was one of the first professional women skateboarders in the 1970s, known for freestyle tricks and appearances in films and television. Here she clears a high-jump bar while her board rolls beneath. Skateboarding became an Olympic sport for women and men in 2021.

Elspeth Beard, 1982–84

Elspeth Beard, then an architecture student, rode a BMW R60/6 motorcycle around the world between 1982 and 1984, covering about 35,000 miles. She is widely described as the first British woman to do so. She later ran her own architecture practice in Surrey.

Anna Fisher

Astronaut Anna Fisher, photographed in a spacesuit helmet, flew on the space shuttle Discovery in November 1984. She is often called the first mother in space because her daughter was just over a year old at the time. Fisher, a physician and chemist, helped retrieve two stranded satellites on the mission.

Careers, learning and public life

Maud Wagner, c. 1907

Maud Wagner was a circus aerialist and is considered the first known woman tattoo artist in the United States. She learned the craft from Gus Wagner, a tattooist she met around 1904 and later married. She was not the first tattooed woman; tattooed women were already a popular attraction in American circuses.

Margaret Bourke-White, 1934

Photographer Margaret Bourke-White kneels on one of the steel eagle heads high on the Chrysler Building in New York, with her camera, in a picture by her assistant Oscar Graubner. She had a studio in the building and became one of LIFE magazine's first staff photographers.

Leola N. King, Washington, 1918

Leola N. King directs traffic in Washington, D.C., in 1918, wearing a uniform with a long coat and boots. She is often described as the first woman traffic officer in the United States. Women police officers were still rare, and most were assigned to work with women and children.

Migrant Mother, 1936

Dorothea Lange photographed Florence Owens Thompson in a camp of migrant pea pickers in Nipomo, California, in March 1936. Lange was working for the Resettlement Administration, later the Farm Security Administration. Thompson had several children and the photograph became the defining image of the Great Depression; her identity became public in 1978.

A library in Kabul

Afghan women browse records and books in a public library, usually dated to the 1950s or 1960s. In those decades many women in Kabul studied, worked and dressed in Western styles, especially in the cities. The photograph is often shared to contrast that period with later restrictions.

Medical students, 1962

Three Afghan women studying medicine compare notes in 1962. Kabul University admitted women in the 1950s and 1960s, and women trained as doctors and teachers. After the Taliban returned to power in 2021, women were barred from university study.

Working high above Berlin, c. 1900

A woman sits on a narrow perch high above the rooftops of Berlin, with factory chimneys behind her. Captions describe her as a mason or construction worker. Women did work on building sites in Germany at the time, though this image's details are hard to confirm.

Los Angeles police, 1971

A Los Angeles police officer smiles at her desk where an abandoned baby sleeps in an open drawer, an improvised cot. Women officers were often assigned to work with children and families at the time. The photograph shows how the job included care as well as enforcement.

Everyday life and changing expectations

Woman in samurai armour

This portrait shows a young woman in full samurai armour with a helmet beside her, usually dated to the late 1800s. Women of samurai families were trained to defend their homes, but many such studio portraits were made for sale to visitors and used costumes. The sitter's identity is not known.

Toronto, 1937

Two women in shorts walk past a group of men on a Toronto street in 1937. The photograph is often captioned as the first time women showed bare legs in public in the city, which is unlikely to be literally true, but it captures a moment when shorts for women still drew stares.

At the beach, 1950s

A mother swings her small child by the arms on a wet, sandy beach. Nothing about the photograph is historic in the usual sense, which is exactly its value: ordinary moments are part of history too.

Women bikers, 1973

Four women pose with their motorcycles in a yard, a photograph circulated as showing women connected to the Hells Angels in 1973. Motorcycle clubs of the era rarely admitted women as full members. The image challenges the idea that biking was a male-only culture.

Reading historical photos with care

A photograph freezes one moment, but the caption decides what it means. Many of these images have circulated for years with labels that turned a participant into a "first", moved an event to a more famous city, or added a backstory nobody can verify. Precise captions do not make the women less impressive. Roberta Gibb's unofficial 1966 run and Kathrine Switzer's 1967 bib-number entry are both remarkable, and each is stronger for being described accurately.

When you come across a historical photo online, look for the photographer, the archive that holds the original and a dated source. Those details protect the real people in the picture and the history they lived through, from a farmworker in a California camp to a guerrilla leader in the Philippines.

Sources: Boston Athletic Association: Boston Marathon history; Danuta Danielsson; Marina Ginestà; Nieves Fernandez; Elspeth Beard; Sabiha Gökçen; Women Airforce Service Pilots; Migrant Mother (Dorothea Lange).

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