Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory was an Irish dramatist, folklorist and theatre manager who co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, and wrote several short works for both companies. Lady Gregory produced several books retelling stories from Irish mythology.
Rapelang Rabana is a computer scientist, entrepreneur, and speaker who founded the learning technology company Rekindle Learning in 2013.
Wided Bouchamaoui is a Tunisian businesswoman who has been the leader of the employers union Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts (UTICA) since 2011. UTICA was one of the four organisations to form the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, whose aim was to secure a transition to democracy. The Quartet won the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize.
Visonary architect Zaha Hadid challenged notions of what could be achieved in building. Described by The Guardian as the “Queen of the Curve,” her inventive designs freed architecture from its traditional focus on concrete and steel, introducing radical new ways to create spaces in harmony with their surroundings. With a foundation in painting and the utilizing progressive digital technologies, Hadid’s innovative approach helped shift the geometry of buildings toward a new aesthetic. As a woman and a Muslim, she also helped break barriers in the male-dominated world of high-profile architecture.
Before her designs were realised in actual buildings, Hadid’s architectural drawings and paintings were gaining international acclaim as she challenged the idea that a building was merely a solid mass. Her company would later coin the term Parametricism to define this signature look and feel.
Hadid’s major works include the London Aquatics Centre for the 2012 Olympics, the Broad Art Museum, Rome’s MAXXI Museum, and the Guangzhou Opera House.
Hadid was the first woman to be awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize, in 2004, and she received the Stirling Prize, the UK’s most prestigious architectural award, in 2010 and 2011. In 2012, she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II for services to architecture, and in February 2016, she became the first woman to individually receive the Royal Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects (Ray Eames and Sheila O’Donnell had previously won jointly with Charles Eames and John Tuomey respectively).
Narcisa Buencamino-De León was a Filipino businesswoman and film producer who navigated her family-owned LVN Pictures (which she co-founded in the 1930s) into a major force in post-World War II Philippine cinema, operating until 2005.
Maria Gertrudis “Tules” Barceló was a saloon owner and master gambler in Santa Fe in the Territory of New Mexico in the 1830s-1850s. She reolcated sometime after Mexican authorities fined her for operating a gambling salon for miners in the Ortiz Mountains. Barceló amassed a small fortune by capitalizing on the flow of American and Mexican traders involved with the commercial highway of the Santa Fe Trail. She became infamous in the U.S. as the Mexican “Queen of Sin” through a series of American travel writings and newspaper serials before, during, and after the Mexican-American War. These depictions, often intended to explain or justify the U.S. invasion of Mexico, presented La Tules as a madame and prostitute who symbolized the supposedly immoral nature of the local Mexican population. In addition to false assertions that she was a prostitute, many also claimed that she was having an illicit affair with New Mexico Governor Manuel Armijo. The sensational accounts were typicallyembellished, if not completely fabricated. Most of the American descriptions of Tules Barceló contradicted each other wildly in terms of her appearance and background. The only common agreement among them was that Barceló excelled at the card game monte, often winning vast piles of gold from the male customers in her saloon. Barceló died on January 17, 1852 in Santa Fe with a remarkable fortune of $10,000 and several houses.
In 1884 needleworker Thérèse de Dillmont left the embroidery school that she had started with her sister Franziska and moved to France, where she wrote her Encyclopedia of Needlework (1886) The book, which has since been translated into 17 languages, pulled together thousands of textile designs from many countries including Egypt, Bulgaria, Turkey and China. She later owned several shops in European capitals and was considered “one of the most important pioneers in the international and multicultural enterprise of hobby needlework in the late nineteenth century”.
Helene Hathaway Robison Britton was the first woman to own a Major League Baseball franchise. She owned the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team of the National League from 1911 through 1916, having inherited the franchise upon the death of her father, Frank, and uncle, Stanley Robison.
Britton attended National League owner meetings where other owners spent time trying to persuade her to sell the team because she was a woman. She sold the team in 1917.
Alice Greenough Orr went from being Montana rancher’s daughter to an internationally renowned rodeo performer and organizer. She was inducted into the Rodeo Hall of Fame in the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas, and the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame in Wolf Point, Montana. She is considered “hands down the first rodeo queen.”
Sarah Prideaux was a bookbinder, teacher, historian and author of books about binding and illustration. Along with Katharine Adams (one of her students, and a close friend) and Sybil Pye, she was one of the noted women bookbinders of the period.
In 1888, at age 35 she started learning bookbinding, later studying in Paris. For several years she experimented, wrote articles and produced bound books inspired by Art Nouveau designs, with her work shown in various exhibits. By 1894, bindings bearing her signature were of professional quality. It has since been discovered that although she designed the bindings, selected the leather and marbled endpapers to a very detailed specification, the actual bookbinding was carried out by a French tradesman, Lucien Broca, and possibly others under her name. More than 276 books were bound and published under her signature.
As an expert on the history of bookbinding, Prideaux taught, lectured, and wrote reviews and articles for journals and magazines throughout the 1890s. These articles were collected and published as Bookbinders and their Craft. Her other books included Modern Bookbindings Their Design and Decoration and Aquatint Engraving A Chapter in the History of Book Illustration. She served as one of the directors of the Women’s Printing Society.