Politics
Became the Philippines' first female president in 1986. Before she took on her role as the 11th president of the country, a massive revolution—now remembered as The People Power Revolution—was held along EDSA as an effort to overthrow the dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
Maria Corazon (Cory) Aquino
Author of Harry Potter book series. She was named to the Order of the British Empire and was appointed a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to literature and philanthropy.
JK Rowling
The first Asian female to play Éponine and Fantine in the Broadway musical Les Misérables. She is also the first Asian female to win Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical for Miss Saigon and Best Direction of a Musical at the Tony Awards. She was also the first Asian woman to win a Laurence Olivier award.
Lea Salonga
She founded the science of radioactivity. Her discoveries also launched effective cures for cancer. During WWI, she helped to equip ambulances with x-ray equipment. She also won TWO noble prizes - one in Physics and one in Chemistry. To date, she's the first person and only woman to win two noble prizes in different sciences.
Marie Curie
She was well known internationally for her charity work for sick children, the banning of landmines, and for raising awareness about those affected by cancer, HIV/AIDS, and mental illness. She was known for being the “people’s princess.”
Princess Diana
American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and philanthropist. She has also done a huge amount of charity work, including setting up two of her own foundations and donating millions of her own money.
Oprah Winfrey
The first Filipino and Asian judge of the International Criminal Court. She was also the first female editor-in-chief of the University of the Philippines' student newspaper, Philippine Collegian.
Miriam Defensor Santiago
Her invention of the algorithm behind the Spanning Tree Protocol solved a challenging information routing problem and earned her the moniker “Mother of the Internet.”
Radia Perlman
In 1955, she refused to give up her seat on a bus so that a white person could sit down. Her protest sparked the civil rights movement.
Rosa Parks
She was an American singer, songwriter and pianist. Referred to as the "Queen of Soul", she has twice been placed ninth in Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Artists of All Time". With global sales of over 75 million records, Franklin is one of the world’s best-selling music artists.
Aretha Franklin
The first Filipina that brought home the crown for winning the Miss Universe pageant in 1969.
Gloria Diaz
She was an Austrian-American actress and inventor who pioneered the technology that would one day form the basis for today's WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth communication systems.
Hedy Lamarr
The United Kingdom’s first female prime minister. A Soviet journalist dubbed her the "Iron Lady", a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style. She opposed Soviet communism and fought a war to maintain control of the Falkland Islands.
Margaret Thatcher
She is an American professional wrestler, actress, former judoka and mixed martial artist. She is the only woman to win a championship in both the UFC and WWE, as well as the only woman to headline a pay-per-view event in both companies.
Ronda Rousey
In September 1928, she was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.
Amelia Earhart
A Filipina space scientist and physicist. She was the first-ever female mission operations manager of NASA. Before becoming a mission operations manager, she was also a project manager and helped develop the successful Shuttle or Spacelab Data Processing Facility.
Angelita Castro-Kelly
She was given the title “Ina ng Biak-na-Bato” or Mother of the Biak-na-Bato Republic after putting up a facility to care for those wounded from fighting. She was known as the “Mother of the Philippine Red Cross” as she nursed many injured Filipino soldiers along with a group she organized.
Trinidad Tecson
She defeated Bobby Riggs on Mother's Day in the first of two 1973 matches dubbed "Battle of the Sexes", landmark moments where a female athlete bested a male head-to-head on a nationwide broadcast. She became the oldest Grand Slam semifinalist at 39 years, 7 months and 9 days old.
Billie Jean King
On June 16, 1963 this first woman in space flew aboard the Vostok 6.
Valentina Tereshkova
Century before the invention of the computer, she had written the first computer program in the world in 1883. She was the person who suggested Charles Babbage to use binary number system in his Analytical engine and operated it for the first time.
Ada Lovelace
(Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace)