Women’s History Month: 12 Modern Women Making The World More Inclusive
Shonda Rhimes photo courtesy Instagram
People often celebrate Women’s History Month by reflecting on the most historic moments women achieved since the beginning of time. While it’s important to remember women who changed the world, it’s also crucial to celebrate the women setting records today. These are a few of the women making the world more inclusive by redefining their industries.
- Women are setting new records to carve their own names into athletic history. Sarah Fuller became the first woman to score in a conference football game after Vanderbilt gave her the chance to kick the historic extra point against Tennessee in 2020. Afterward, the college team hung her uniform up in the Chick-fil-A College Football Hall of Fame.
- The TV world wouldn’t look the same without Shonda Rhimes. She launched “Grey’s Anatomy” in 2005 and went on to win the Emmy’s Hall of Fame award in 2017 while making inclusive storylines a central part of modern drama series. Rhimes inspired women of all races not to take a lack of representation as a sign that they couldn’t fulfill their dreams.
- When Katie Juran took the lead on inclusion and diversity initiatives at Intuitive in August 2021, she became the company’s first leader to publish employee diversity data to push for greater inclusivity in the med-tech world. Since then, additional inclusivity-focused groups began to thrive in the company, fostering more conversations about how to open the medical industry to people of all races, genders and nationalities.
- In 1967, Jocelyn Bell Burnell found and named radio pulsars while working at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory. While the work won a Nobel Prize, she didn’t receive the award because astronomy didn’t have a Nobel Prize category. The scientist from Northern Ireland is still active in her field, leading scholarship funds to help young women find their own place in scientific fields.
- Christine Sinclair worked for the last decade to become one of the best goal-scorers in Canadian and international soccer history. Her legacy includes 109 games and 331 caps. She retired in 2023 after playing professionally since age 16, competing for the first time with the Vancouver Angels in 2000.
- Rust College named Dr. Ivy Taylor its first female leader in 2020 after her tenure as mayor of San Antonio, Texas, from 2014 to 2017. She showed the university how to prepare its students for modern workforces while increasing scholarship opportunities until her 2023 retirement. Dr. Taylor’s focus on the ever-growing gap between underserved college applicants and affordable tuition rates helped more Texas students achieve a college education.
- “The Eras Tour” became the highest-grossing music tour in history surpassing $1 billion in revenue, and earning Taylor Swift another record in the entertainment industry in 2023. The tour began in March 2023 and is set to end in December 2024. It demonstrates that female-focused music and audience bases can drive an industry just as much as male-focused content.
- Canadian Kaillie Humphries didn’t give up when the sports world limited her from competing against men in Olympic bobsled competitions. In 2014, she earned the right to join their races and continue her medal-winning Olympic career. She originally sued to add a four-woman race, but since the Olympic committee ruled that there weren’t enough women in professional bobsledding, she aimed higher and opened new doors for women entering the sport after her.
- Mary Anderson proved that women could become inventors too when she created windshield wipers in 1903 for streetcars. Car manufacturers wouldn’t partner with her due to concerns about wipers distracting drivers on the road, so her patent expired in 1920. Afterward, Cadillac quickly used it to start making the first cars with built-in wipers in 1922. The “window cleaning devices” are now on everything with a windshield to keep people safe.
- Shanna Parry is changing global international education as the Co-Founder of Global Serves in Education. Since starting the organization in America in 2011, she’s been teaching communities how to build and run schools so no child grows up without learning science, math and reading comprehension skills. Her teaching experience comes from being a teacher in numerous countries, resulting in her multicultural approach to curriculum design and teaching styles that help kids in global classrooms.
- When you’re in the mood to watch something incredible, you may come across one of Kathryn Bigelow’s movies. She was the first woman to win Best Director at the Academy Awards in 2010 for “The Hurt Locker” due to her outstanding directorial skills. The film also won Best Picture that year. Her win encouraged women directors following in her footsteps to dream big, even when history makes it seem like those dreams can’t exist.
- The NBA recognized Becky Hammon as the first female head coach during an official game after officials ejected coach Gregg Popovich during a December 2020 game. Hired in 2014 by the San Antonio Spurs as the NBA’s first female assistant coach, Hammon shattered a glass ceiling for women in the male-dominated NBA by taking charge.
Mia Barnes is a freelance writer and researcher with a passion for holistic healing and healthy living. She is also the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the online publication Body+Mind magazine.
