Tell me about an amazing woman in history that I may not have heard about?

I take your point, bunnymother, but there was a surprising number of working-class women in the North West (and probably elsewhere, but this is the area I know best) in factories, mines etc who were very active in general working class activism and trade unionism as well as specific womens rights. The suffragist organisations also ran services to provide meals for these women and their families to allow the women to attend public meetings after work without having to go straight home and cook the tea. Will try to dig out some references, but there are very few web links, unfortunately.

Eleanor Roosevelt

I've just discovered Vivian Maier too!

Loving this thread - some amazing women to research here.

Thanks all.

Rita Levi Montalcini, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for her discovery of nerve growth factor, was an Italian Senator, and died recently at the age of 103.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_Levi-Montalcini

She might be the exception that proves the rule. Most working class women would have been so busy working / attending to their families that they had no time or energy to do anything else.

Vivan Maier

She worked as a nanny in 1950s and 60s New York and Chicago. When she died alone and in poverty it was found she'd left behind in a lock up 100,000 negatives of the most incredible street photography, that no one had ever seen.

Thankfully she is now being recognised and there is a touring exhibition and a couple of books published.

In that case, duchesse, I offer Hannah Mitchell, who was a genuine working class role model, and whose husband paid for her to be released from jail following imprisonment for her suffragette activities, basically because he wanted her back to cook his tea.

Very many of them did not have children.

There is however one thing that many/most of these women have in common, and that is that they were largely free from domestic chores, either through wealth or because they elected not to marry and had to the means to survive unmarried (whether through work or thanks to a private income).

Mary Wollstonecraft, most definitely an early feminist. Ditto the wonderful Aphra Benn, even earlier.

Ernestine Potowski Rose - C19 atheist, abolitionist and women's rights activist deserves to be better known. It's her 204th birthday tomorrow en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernestine_Rose

Diana Barnato Walker

She flew with the ATA during the war and afterwards gained her commercial pilots licence. She was the first British woman to break the sound barrier.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_Barnato_Walker

Die Weisse Rose

The Sophie Scholl film is excellent.

www.imdb.com/title/tt0084897/

I was going to go fro Grace Hopper, but she's already been mentioned, so I'll go for Stephanie "Steve" Shirley instead, whose autobiography I'm in the middle of just now. Arrived on Kindertransport, set up a women-only computer programming company till it was made illegal by the passing of the Sex Discrimination Act, and has also done a lot of work to support autism.

Sophie Scholl, member of the German Resistance, executed with her brother in 1943 by the Nazis.
There is a biography of her, but it's not terribly well written IMO. She deserves better.

YY to some of my favourites already mentioned: Katherine Swynford, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Harriet Ann Jacobs and Mary Seacole.
Can't help feeling I'm forgetting someone!

Noramum, have just spent last hour reading about Lise Meitner - wow! Not only did she co-discover nuclear fission but she refused to use it to develop a bomb. So interesting, will have to discover more.....

Hilary Heilbron, first woman judge.

Another vote for the mighty Eleanor of Aquitaine. Extraordinary woman. She was wonderfully portrayed by Katharine Hepburn in The Lion In Winter (incidentally, the President's favourite movie, in West Wing). Also stars Peter O'Toole, Anthony Hopkins and Timothy Dalton.

Has anyone mentioned St Ursula?

Early feminist and revolutionary leader?

Basically she had been promised to some rich bloke - the time for the marriage came, and she said that instead she needed to travel round Europe to find herself. Did a Gap Yah round Europe, after which she was executed on the banks of the Rhone with apparently, 11 thousand virgins who were her followers, because of her Christian beliefs.

Great leadership qualities, committed to her ideals, and not prepared to become a chattel.

I'd like to throw an Australian one into the mix. Deborah Lawrie (nee Wardley) was the first female commercial pilot in Australia. She won a big constitutional law case based on sex discrimination after the airline (who had been forced to hire her) tried to skirt ant-discrimination laws and dismiss her purely based on her gender.
No one here ever seems to know her! She's still a pilot too.

Beat Sirota Gordon is another hero of mine. An American, she was only 22 when she managed to enshrine women's rights into the new post-war Japanese constitution in 1946.

She's a feminist hero among many Japanese women.

That's such a brilliant book, dyslexic, I love it.

I read a brilliant biography of JR a few years ago called The Blue Hour - it's definitely worth a read if you're a fan.

Oh yes, Jean Rhys- she is one of my favourite authors. Wide sargasso sea is incredible especially if you love or like Jane Eyre.

www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/book-of-a-lifetime-wide-sargasso-sea-by-jean-rhys-876227.html

My grandmother was at a church meeting that Gladys Alyward spoke at. The book about her is really interesting.