We live in a time when women are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, a woman is running for the highest office in the land, and young women know they can accomplish the same things professionally as their male classmates. Certainly, there are still more men than women in executive suites and certainly there is still a discrepancy in earning power—women do 67 percent of the work in the world, yet earn only 10 percent of the income—but working women have made incredible progress in the last century. Here’s a look at ten inspirational career women from history.
1. Sarah E. Goode
Sarah E. Goode became the first African-American woman to receive a patent. The patent was for a bed that folded into a cabinet. Born into slavery, Goode, an owner of a furniture store in Chicago, wanted her cabinet bed to become a staple in apartments. It later became known as the “hideaway bed.”
2. Alice Ramsey
The first woman to drive across the continental United States, which makes her one of my personal heroes.
3. Sarah Breedlove Walker
An impoverished daughter from freed slaves who became the first African-American woman millionaire, Sarah Breedlove Walker built the largest black-owned business in America after creating pomades and shampoos for African-American women. She also became one of the largest employers of African-American women, where she trained a 3,000 strong sales staff to work on commission.
4. Beatrice Fox Auerbach
As president of G. Fox and Company, Hartford, Connecticut’s leading department store, Beatrice Fox Auerbach was instrumental in instituting labor reforms for her staff. She created a five-day week, medical and non-profit lunch facilities, interest-free loans for employees in a crisis, and retirement plans. Hers was one of the first stores to hire and advance black employees and in 1965, she sold her publicly held shares, worth forty million dollars, and moved into civic leadership and philanthropy.
5. Esther Peterson
She became the first lobbyist for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union (ACWU).
6. Josephine Patterson Albright
A wild game hunter in Africa, newspaper reporter in Chicago, and after four children and a divorce, she received her bachelor’s degree at fifty.
