It was International Women’s Day recently, and it got me thinking that there aren’t many people who have a list of people they can go to of fantastic women who did/are doing fantastic things. So I made one.

Emma Watson

Well known for her role as Hermione Granger in the acclaimed Harry Potter Series, Emma Watson tops a lot of lists of influential women, including TIME 100’s list of world’s most influential people. She’s the UN Women Goodwill Ambassador and helped launch the HeForShe campaign calling for men to advocate for women’s right. Most recently she’s launched a feminist Goodreads book club called Our Shared Shelf.

Important Links

http://www.heforshe.org/en

http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/179584-our-sha...

http://www.unwomen.org/en/partnerships/goodwill-am...

Malala Yousafzai

A list about fantastic women would be nothing without Malala. She rose into the public eye when her story was released and touched the hearts of many. She was just a child when she was shot for believing girls should be educated by the Taliban. She is the youngest ever Nobel Prize laureate. She still advocates and speaks on education of females worldwide.

Important Links

https://www.malala.org/malalas-story

https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laur...

Ruth Bader Ginsberg

Ruth Bader Ginsberg is a Supreme Court Justice who was appointed under President Clinton. She was the second female ever elected to the court, and has played a big role since. Her fiery dissents in the court have claimed the hearts of pop culture, earning her the nickname of Notorious R.B.G.

Important Links

http://www.makers.com/ruth-bader-ginsburg

http://www.supremecourthistory.org/history-of-the-...

Lilly Singh

Lilly Singh (yes with two L’s) is a Canadian born YouTuber known as IISuperwomanII. She has over 11 million subscribers on the platform, and uses it to promote what she calls #GirlLove which is all about women supporting women to make the world a better place. She went on a world tour called A Trip to Unicorn Island about taking her “happy place” to her fans everywhere and she’s releasing her first book How to Be a Bawse later this year.

Important Links

https://www.youtube.com/user/IISuperwomanII

https://shop.metowe.com/girllove

Katherine Johnson

You might have known her by the movie Hidden Figures based on the book of her story, a movie that has since won not one, but three Academy Awards. She is a physicist and mathematician for NASA and played a critical role in the success of the Apollo 11 flight to the moon. In 2015 she was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Important Links

https://www.nasa.gov/content/katherine-johnson-bio...

http://www.makers.com/katherine-g-johnson

Leonore Goldschmidt

Leonore Goldschmidt is the only deceased woman on my list, but she’s a woman I’ve felt has been very overlooked. Upset about her release from a teaching job for being Jewish in Nazi-ruled Germany she decided to do something. That something was open the Goldschmidt school for Jewish children in the middle of Berlin.

In order to save her students from an increasingly hostile Germany, she taught English to all of them, and instructed most of their classes in English. She then, after a lot of fighting, opened a second Goldschmidt School in England to send any remaining students to, to help them escape from persecution. A documentary of her story is on Netflix titled, The Teacher Who Defied Hitler

Important Links

http://www.leonoregoldschmidt.com/

Aung San Suu Kyi

Aung San Suu Kyi is the State Counsellor of Myanmar. She is one of the most prominent political prisoners for being put under house arrest by the Myanmar military for almost 15 years. She has a Noble Peace Prize, US Congressional Gold Medal, and Presidential Medal of Freedom. U2’s Bono even wrote a song about her, called “Walk On”.

Important Links

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laure...

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-1168597...

Laverne Cox

Laverne Cox and is most well known for her role in the Netflix original series Orange Is the New Black and her LGBT activism. Not only did she appear on the cover of TIME magazine, but she was the first openly transgender person to do so. She is known as a trailblazer for the community and has led to more conversations regarding the transgender community.

Important Links

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1209545/

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian novelist and self-proclaimed feminist. She has done two different TED talks, “Why We Should All Be Feminists” and “The Danger of a Single Story” (both linked below). Her first book was Purple Hibiscus in 2003, and Americanah was published in 2013.

Important Links

Who's missing from this list? Leave a comment below!