In honor of Women’s Month, Her Agenda will post a daily salute to women who have paved the way. These are women who have made history, broken barriers and are the reasons we as women today have the right to pursue whatever we decide to put on our agendas. We hope these daily salutes serve as a reminder of how far we have come and how many women have fought and worked to get us there.
This post will be updated daily with a new iconic woman. Click their names to read their stories.
Susan B. Anthony
“I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and there I take my stand.” –Susan B. Anthony
Betty Friedan
“Men weren’t really the enemy – they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill.” –Betty Friedan
Wilma Rudolph
*click her name or photo to read about how she made her mark.*
“Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose. Nobody goes undefeated all the time. If you can pick up after a crushing defeat, and go on to win again, you are going to be a champion someday.” –Wilma Rudolph
Madame CJ Walker
I had to make my own living and my own opportunity. But I made it! Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them.”–Madam CJ Walker
Grace Hopper
“If it’s a good idea, go ahead and do it. It’s much easier to apologize than it is to get permission.” –Grace Hopper
Maya Angelou
“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.” –Maya Angelou
Phylicia Rashad
“The stubbornness I had as a child has been transmitted into perseverance. I can let go but I don’t give up. I don’t beat myself up about negative things.” –Phylicia Rashad
Amelia Earhart
“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure , the process is its own reward.” –Amelia Earhart
Mary McLeod Bethune
“Without faith, nothing is possible. With it, nothing is impossible.” –Mary McLeod Bethune
Victoria Woodhull
“I come before you to declare that my sex are entitled to the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” — Victoria Woodhull
Antonia Novello
“I believe that fortitude is key. More than anything, be consistent. Go at it. Go at it. Go at it. When you succeed, don’t forget the responsibility of making somebody else succeed with you.” –Antonia Novello
Coco Chanel
“Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.” –Coco Chanel
Frances Hesselbein
“Leadership is much less about what you do, and much more about who you are. If you view leadership as a bag of manipulative tricks or charismatic behaviors to advance your own personal interest, then people have every right to be cynical. But if your leadership flows first and foremost from inner character and integrity of ambition, then you can justly ask people to lend themselves to your organization and its mission.”– Frances Hesselbein
Rita Dove
“You have to imagine it possible before you can see something.” –Rita Dove
Oprah Winfrey
“I was raised to believe that excellence is the best deterrent to racism or sexism. And that’s how I operate my life.” –Oprah Winfrey
Barbara Walters
“Success can make you go one of two ways. It can make you a prima donna – or it can smooth the edges, take away the insecurities, let the nice things come out.”–Barbara Walters
Nancy Hicks Maynard
*click her name or photo to read about how she made her mark.*
“She was a fearless, astute champion of diversity in news media, and an early advocate of new business models incorporating digital media, always pushing us to be proactive.” – words about Maynard by Steve Montiel, CEO of Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.
Katharine Graham
*click her name or photo to read about how she made her mark.*
The thing women must do to rise to power is to redefine their femininity. Once, power was considered a masculine attribute. In fact, power has no sex.” –Katharine Graham
Gloria Steinem
“Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.”–Gloria Steinem
Mary Jane Patterson
How she made her mark: Mary Jane Patterson is known as the first African-American woman to receive a B.A. degree.
Mary “Stagecoach Mary” Fields
How she made her mark: Mary Fields is known as the first African-American woman employed as a mail carrier in the United States.
bell hooks
“If any female feels she needs anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency.” – bell hooks
Zora Neale Hurston
*click her name or photo to read about how she made her mark.*
“Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.” –Zora Neale Hurston
Toni Morrison
*click her name or photo to read about how she made her mark.*
“I merged those two words, black and feminist, because I was surrounded by black women who were very tough and and who always assumed they had to work and rear children and manage homes.”-Toni Morrison
Ruth Simmons
*click her name or photo to read about how she made her mark.*
“I was intent on doing something productive and on being everything my parents taught me to be. Their values were clear: do good work; don’t ever get too big for your breeches; always be an authentic person; don’t worry too much about being famous and rich because that doesn’t amount to too much.”- Ruth Simmons
Susan L. Taylor
“Thoughts are energy, and you can make your world or break your world by your thinking.” –Susan L. Taylor
Patricia Roberts Harris
*click her name or photo to read about how she made her mark.*
“I am one of them [poor]. You do not seem to understand who I am. I am a Black woman, daughter of a dining-car worker. I am a Black woman who could not buy a house eight years ago in parts of the District of Columbia. I didn’t start out as a member of a prestigious law firm, but as a woman who needed a scholarship to go to school. If you think that I have forgotten that, you are wrong.” –Patricia Roberts Harris
Dorothy Fuldheim
“It takes a disciplined person to listen to convictions different from their own.” –D.F
Angela Davis
*click her name or photo to read about how she made her mark.*
“I think the importance of doing activist work is precisely because it allows you to give back and to consider yourself not as a single individual who may have achieved whatever but to be a part of an ongoing historical movement.” – Angela Davis
