To ask, who is your female role model?

[Ethelfleda]

Preferably a famous personality so we can gain some context but doesn’t have to be.

So if you could be like another person, who would you choose? And why?
And if there is nobody you’d like to emulate, why?

Mary Beard is sticking out to me at the moment - I have no major knowledge of her but I watched her beautifully wipe the floor with Boris Johnson in an Intelligence squared debate about Ancient Greece vs Ancient Rome. Intellect won over the orator.

Any thoughts?

Margaret atwood
Margaret thatcher

Both have/had phenomenal intellects

Emma Thompson

JKR

My mum.
An unsung, quiet, inspiration to so many.

Currently on a fitness kick so Jillian Micheals. We are the same age, height and body shape...just the weight, fitness, strength and general awesomeness to sort out

JKR.

Morticia
Elvira
My Mum
My Nana

Dolly Parton

I really don't have a role model. However, there are sometimes women I've personally met and interacted with, and I've left thinking, wow! that's impressive, and it has impacted my behavior afterwards. I don't mean by copying, by taking something and applying it to my own situation. These are people I've met and spoken with (but the certainly won't remember me!) that come to mind:

Kim Gordon (bass player Sonic Youth) - make an effort to dress, attitude, experimentation, open your eyes to art

Amali de Alwis (Microsoft UK senior exec) - be open, be inquisitive, be inclusive, especially in work

Winnie Li (author, activist) - be prepared to speak about what you believe, don't be silent, share my assault story with partner and close friends, it can help other and let them know you are available for support

Liz Nicholl (UK sport): organization, drive, keep exercising

Obviously, I was hugely influenced by parents too.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg
Rosa Parks

I am my own role model.

I have battled my many demons and overcome every challenge that life has thrown at me.

I’m fucking fabulous me

I think mine are my favourite authors as they have such imagination and wit
Margaret Atwood , Fay Weldon and kate Atkinson
Oh and Marian Keayes

I so admire that they can write something that absorbs me and transports me so much

Ruth Bader Ginsberg

Amazing strong principled woman

@SecretSpAD- your grandmother sounds wonderful

I don’t have any role models, but celebrities I admire:

• JKR
• Serena Williams- her determination is admirable
• Dolly Parton- she makes me smile and I her reading initiative is inspirational
• Michelle Obama- what’s there not to admire. Her passion for educating girls is great
• Jacinda Ardern- proves that you can be have empathy and get things done.

Ngozi Okonjo Iweala.- Nigerian economist. Has just been given the position as President of the WTO

I second Ardern and Obama! 🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽

Michelle Obama's podcast is really good by the way

Katniss from The Hunger Games

Helen Sharman - she's so intelligent, humble, grounded. I don't really have role models, but I suppose she is the closest I have because I esteem her greatly.

I don't have a role model, but very much admire JKR.

I don’t need to look up to a famous female.

My grandma had more balls than any famous female. She was 99 when she died. Been through so much sorrow in losing 6 adult children out of 7. Battled illness after illness. She was grandma to 19, great grandma to 14 and a great-great grandma to 4.
Now that’s my role model,

My grandmothers who both were born into poverty and reared families single handedly when their husbands died young.
One of them was widowed before her only child was born, supported elderly grandparents and reared chickens and pigs on a one acre plot to enable her to eventually purchase their rented home.
Unfortunately she died in her early fifties but we still live in her home.

If we’re talking fictional characters, Nancy Drew.

@Nackajory

JKR. So articulate and so much integrity.

Baroness Helena Kennedy and (not RM exactly but often has a different/interesting perspective) Julie Burchill

Applause for the post by Weird Cat Lady. We often undersing/undersell ourselves, and it's great to see a woman take a look at her life and give herself a pat on the back for having overcome every adversity. We all deserve to love ourselves. So I'm adding myself to that, and thank you, Weird Cat Lady, for the inspiration!

Women who for various reasons I wholeheartedly admire (I'm also uneasy with the term 'role model'):

Jane Tomlinson
Kadijah Ibrahim
Allison Bailey
Diana Rigg
Katherine Mansfield
Sarah Phillimore
Stevie Nicks
Doris Day

Family Women

Great Granny (munitions worker and suffragist with fire in her belly)
My mother

Literary Ones

Jean Padgett (protagonist of A Town Like Alice who survives war in S.E. Asia. Otherwise, she lives a fairly ordinary, humdrum, unremarkable life in which she performs two really extraordinary acts)
Mary Bennet
Rebecca de Winter

Women I once admired who have become real letdowns/disappointments

Alice Roberts
Jilly Cooper

Both of them in their own way apologists for selling out women to MRA

who is your female role model? Preferably a famous personality so we can gain some context but doesn’t have to be.
I don't actually know anyone famous to be able to judge their personal qualities and I'm not into all the celebrity culture bollocks.

The best person to aspire to be like is the best version of yourself.