Throughout history, plucky, indomitable, daring, fearless women and girls have done what they felt they had to and, intentionally or otherwise, upended the social order and common values. Some have paid a high price for making their voices heard, while others have been handsomely rewarded.
Male domination and crushing conformity still thwart women. In 2020, the UK Press Awards shortlist was almost wholly male; headhunters searching for the next Bank of England governor found over twenty men and just three women; the Supreme Court is predominantly male; a book on fifty thinkers who shaped the modern world, published in 2012, included just three women. And so it goes on. Gutsy female challengers will be needed for a long time.
This collection remembers ladies who punched their way through life in the past, including Gertrude Bell, the 'mother of Iraq'; Mary Lee, a mathematician, engineer and campaigner for equal pay and the mother of Tim Berners-Lee; Princess Diana; Deborah Orr; the unrecognised suffragette Sophia Singh; and Anne Lister, the lesbian landowner.
It also highlights today's amazing rebels: the mum who raised Phoebe Waller-Bridge and her other creative siblings; Helena Kennedy; Caroline Criado-Perez; Carole Cadwalladr; Kathy Lette; Reni Eddo-Lodge; Anita Anand; the conductor Jane Glover; artist and poet Frieda Hughes, daughter of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes; and Brenda Hale
