Celebrating inspiring women throughout history

Women's History Month is an annual international celebration, started in 1987, of the often-unrecognised contributions of women throughout history. This dedicated month, centred around remarkable women, came out of the attention surrounding International Women’s Day (IWD) held on 8 March, and the desire to have more than just one day a year to celebrate women.

At Cundall, we celebrated this month by introducing 23 women, one for each weekday in March, who have inspired us. Our staff led affinity networks provided the names of women throughout history who have inspired them. We shared the names of the women from each respective affinity network and why they have inspired us.

Below are some of the lesser-known women from our list. I hope you learn something new and are inspired by them.

Suggested by GAIN International, the international arm of our gender affinity network:

Edith Cowan (1861-1932)

Edith Cowan was the first woman to serve as a member of the Australian parliament. She focused on the welfare of disadvantaged groups (women, children, and prostitutes). She supported the introduction of children's courts, which prevented children from being tried as adults, and while an MP, she successfully pushed through legislation which allowed women to be involved in the legal profession.

Elizabeth Choy (1910 - 2006)

Elizabeth Choy was a Singaporean war hero, politician, and teacher. She was captured during the Japanese Occupation and endured repeated torture but never revealed the names of anyone she had assisted. After the war, Choy studied and taught in Britain, before returning to Singapore in 1949, where she became active in bringing about political changes which led to the nation’s independence.

Nawal El Saadawi (1931-2021)

Dubbed a 'feminist firebrand who dared to write dangerously', Nawal El Saadawi was an Egyptian author, activist and physician who became an emblem of the struggle for women’s rights in the patriarchal Arab world. She spent decades campaigning against female genital mutilation and became Director of Public Health for the Egyptian Government.

Suggested by Kaleidoscope, our LGBTQ+ network:

Anne Lister (1791 – 1840)

Anne Lister was a 19th Century diarist, whose records give a great insight into her life as a landowner, businesswoman, intrepid traveller, mountaineer, and lesbian. She made it clear that she did not want to conform to society’s expectations of women; refusing to marry, wearing only black, studying, and managing her own estates and business opportunities.

Dusty Springfield (1939 – 1999)

Dusty Springfield was one of the most iconic singers to come out of the 60s, and her haunting, soulful sound has inspired a generation of music. She loved Black American music and was one of the key artists to introduce Motown to Britain. She performed with many Motown stars in New York, once thrown out of Apartheid South Africa for refusing to play to segregated audiences.

Maureen Colquhoun (1928 – 2021)

Maureen Colquhoun was the first openly lesbian MP in Britain. She was criticised as having an "obsession with trivialities such as women's rights", which included campaigning for creche facilities for female delegates at the 1977 Labour conference, and introducing the Balance of Sexes Bill, which would require equal numbers of men and women on public bodies.

Suggested by our Diversity and Inclusion Leadership Advocates; partners from around the business who advocate for the affinity networks:

Kathleen "Kay" McNulty (1921-2006)

Kay McNulty Mauchly Antonelli was one of six women selected in the 1940s by the US Army to work on the ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer. Their task was to calculate trajectories for artillery guns – they essentially taught themselves to code. Several films and documentaries have been made about the team, featuring interviews and original footage.

Constance Markievicz (1868-1927)

Constance Markievicz became the first female MP elected to the House of Commons and became a senior minister in the Dáil after Ireland's independence. Despite her privileged background, she held a deep concern for the poor. Her activism involved speeches and leafleting (which she was first arrested for) and developed into more violent forms of protest. She died a pauper's death after giving up the last of her wealth.

Suggested by Mosaic, our ethnicity and culture network:

Cicely Tyson (1924 – 2021)

Cicely Tyson was an iconic American actress, whose career spanned seven decades. Since the 1960s, she has inspired Black American women to embrace their own standards of beauty and was known to turn down stereotypical roles for Black women. She agreed only to play strong, positive, and realistic characters, and wrote, “I was determined to do all I could to alter the narrative about Black people – to change the way Black women in particular were perceived, by reflecting our dignity”.

Chief Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti (1900 – 1978)

Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti is considered a founding mother of Nigerian independence. She co-founded the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) and the Nigerian Women’s Union, whose protests against colonial taxation led to the abdication of the traditional ruler of Abeokuta. She arranged literacy classes for lower-income women and established many schools around Southern Nigeria.

Sojourner Truth (1797 - 1883)

Sojourner Truth was an American abolitionist and women's rights activist. Born into slavery, she escaped to freedom with her infant daughter before successfully going to court to recover her son, who was illegally sold into slavery in Alabama. Truth later became involved in women’s rights activism and gave lectures which challenged the prevailing notions of race and sex inferiority and inequality.

Kate Sheppard (1848 - 1934)

Kate Sheppard was the most prominent member of the women's suffrage movement in New Zealand and played a key role in securing this right. Sheppard’s work culminated in a petition with 30,000 signatures calling for women's suffrage that was presented to parliament, and the successful extension of the franchise to women in 1893.

Suggested by GAIN UK and Ireland, the UK and Ireland arm of our gender affinity network:

Eunice Newton Foote (1819 – 1888)

Eunice Newton Foote was an American scientist, inventor, and women’s right activist, who became the first person to document climate change, back in 1856. She was an amateur scientist whose experiments foreshadowed the discovery of Earth's greenhouse effect.

Hypatia (approx. 350-370AD – 415 AD)

Hypatia was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician, who lived in Alexandria, Egypt. She was well-known in her own lifetime as a great teacher and wise counsellor. She was murdered by a mob in 415AD on the basis of rumour, and subsequently became known as a “martyr for philosophy”, and became in the 20th century, an icon for women’s rights and later the feminist movement.

Mary Read (1685 – 1721) and Anne Bonny (1697 – 1721)

Mary Read and Anne Bonny were British pirates, known for masquerading as men during their adventures. One story suggests that they would bare their breasts in duels, so the men knew they’d been beaten by a “weak woman” before they were killed. Both women were found guilty and sentenced to be hanged for piracy, but their executions were stayed—because, as lady luck would have it, they were both “quick with child.”

We have shared 23 inspiring women, but there are many more who are unrecognised, uncredited, or unknown. Who would you have put on this list that we didn’t include? Who are the women you work with and what can you do to acknowledge their contributions and successes?