To ask for your inspirational historical women or

[Furbulousnous]

men at a push that a 9 year old girl might like to learn about/ be inspired by??
DD loves non/ fiction biogs and we’ve done the obvious ones like Marie Curie, Amelia Earhart, Frida Kahlo, Anne Frank etc and ALL the female pirates!
So looking for ideas for either books your child has read or a great role model type that we can Google and read about! She likes reading about women more than men, and the more adventurous the better!

Barbara Castle and the women strikers of Ford Dagenham.
www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/jun/06/dagenham-sewing-machinists-strike

Sorry, Little People, Big Dreams

Alice Kober, her decades of meticulously recorded work on deciphering Linear B, a Bronze Age Cretan script, provided the bridge for it to be finally decoded by Michael Ventris, only two years after Alice's sudden death in 1950.

Pauline Gower- created the women's section of the Air Transport Auxiliary. They delivered planes, unarmed, to the frontline to free up military pilots for the front line.

@LaChanticleer - yes indeed! Though good shout re ‘In Our Time’ - so to add there is an episode on Frankenstein itself plus ‘1816 The Year without summer’ also mentions Mary Shelley. Ada also features in her own episode too!

Not Nancy Astor - she was a big Nazi supporter. If you want to go for an early female MP Margaret Bondfield had an amazing story and was the first woman in the cabinet, but was working class and worked as a student teacher and then in a shop.

Similarly with Suffragettes, if you want to look at the Pankhursts go for Sylvia , who had a really interesting life, not Emmeline. Emmeline was interested in votes for her kind of women only (wealthy/middle class ones), and cut Syvia off completely when she had a child out of wedlock. Sylvia was a pacifist and a socialist who supported very unpopular things like family planning clinics for poor women as well as votes for women, then got more into international politics and ending colonialism and moved to Ethiopia.

Eleanor Rathbone is another suffragette and early MP, campaigned for what is now child benefit to help poor womena and children and was prepared to vote against it when it was suggested it should always be paid to the men.

My favourite is Margaret Haig Thomas, was a suffragette, survived the Lusitania, was a business woman who continued to campaign for votes for women post 1918 and also for women's work to be more valued, then for women to be allowed to take seats in the House of Lords. Her autobiography is funny, but not easy to get hold of.

Rita Levi-Montalcini

My screensaver.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_Levi-Montalcini

Eleanor of Acquitane or Bess of Hardwick

Haven't RTFT although I will.

My particular favourites to talk to DD about are the Night Witches (Russian pilots), Noor Inayat Khan apy and Stephanie Kwolek in vendor of Kevlar.

Awesome women everywhere! I like to have one for every 'women can't do x' category. So that DD can stem the tide of bullshit at school from the boys.

Typos!!!!

Bertha benz. We wouldn’t have cars without her essentially fucking off out with her husbands invention one day, she had to work out the petrol situation and the brake pad situation.

Not sure if there’s a book. But utterly fascinating and the tale of an obviously courageous woman

Not Nancy Astor - she was a big Nazi supporter. If you want to go for an early female MP Margaret Bondfield had an amazing story and was the first woman in the cabinet, but was working class and worked as a student teacher and then in a shop.

Coco Chanel was also a fan of the Nazis and an anti-semite.

I don't think anyone has mentioned Countess Markievicz. Irish socialist and revolutionary and the first woman elected to parliament. (a lot of people mistakenly claim that was Nancy Astor)

If you've done pirates, have you done Zheng Yi Sao, check out You're Dead to Me for some ideas (not age appropriate listening for a 9 year old though generally)

Second Matilda, Eleanor of Aquitaine and would add Margaret of Anjou. And the Bletchley women.

Bertha Benz - stole her husband's car to make the first long distance journey by automobile

Caroline Herschal

Lily Parr, footballer.

Nellie Bly - investigative journalist who broke boundaries in this area

Around this age I was FASCINATED with Lady Jane Grey who remained dignified throughout her trials

So so many I'd have suggested already have been women have an amazing history

Audrey Hepburn also has a much more heroic and interesting life story than many realise, ditto Shirley temple in her adult years

Also Helena Normanton one of the first women lawyers in England and who recognised how disadvantaged women were when it came to the legal system.

The brilliant palaeontologist Marry Anning from Lyme Regis.

Beryl Markham - first solo flight across the Atlantic. She had an amazing life growing up in Kenya in the early 20th century. She bred racehorses she hunted with Masai tribes people. Incredible life!

Bertha Benz, Mary Anning, Lady Allen of Hurtwood.

check out You're Dead to Me for some ideas (not age appropriate listening for a 9 year old though generally)

There are now radio edits that have all the rude stuff cut out. Also Homeschool History which has the same presentor and a similar format and has lots of programmes about famous women.

I love Zaha Hadid. She's an Iraqi architect who designed the London Aquatics centre for London 2012 olympics, amongst other amazing buildings. Look her up, she's pretty incredible.

Catherine the Great

Championed the arts.
Revolutionised Russia.
Adapted the law and codified it.
Expanded Russia through diplomatic and military means
Reformed education in Russia
Started the education of women in Russia

The recent series on Catherine the Great brilliant! Not suitable for a 9 year old though.

Ada Lovelace would be ideal. Once she's learned about her, your DD might like to try some programming herself - have a look at Scratch.

projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/poetry-generator/4

@JaninaDuszejko

check out You're Dead to Me for some ideas (not age appropriate listening for a 9 year old though generally)

There are now radio edits that have all the rude stuff cut out. Also Homeschool History which has the same presentor and a similar format and has lots of programmes about famous women.

I was going to mention the radio edits but I don't think they have done them for all the episodes but I seem to think Boudicca may have been one.

Bessie Coleman