Women have played a significant role in fighting for and securing equity in education, the workforce and society. They have been responsible for a number of innovations that have improved living and working conditions for all Americans. In this section we highlight just a few of these leaders and innovators.

• Sacagawea
• Sojourner Truth
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton
• Susan B. Anthony
• Harriet Tubman
• Clara Barton
• Nellie Bly
• Marie Curie
• Eleanor Roosevelt
• Amelia Earhart
• Rosa Parks

Sacagawea (1787? - 1812)
A Shoshone Indian woman born in Idaho, Sacagawea proved to be an invaluable resource to the explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and the rest of the Corps of Discovery. Originally hired as an interpreter and guide, she also helped to keep the peace between the explorers and other Indian tribes throughout their journey. She had an innate ability to identify which plants and foods were edible and had medicinal purposes and was able to lead the explorers on safe and familiar trails. In 1805, when a boat she was on capsized, she played an important role in saving some of the cargo, including vital documents and supplies. Sacagawea died at about the age of 25 at Fort Manuel in what is now known as South Dakota. Her two children were then adopted by William Clark.

Sojourner Truth (1797 - 1883)
Born into slavery in 1797 in Ulster County, N.Y., Sojourner Truth, originally named Isabella, became one of the most well-known American abolitionists and advocates for women's rights. Believing that she was a mystic and could hear the words of God, she took the name Sojourner Truth and began preaching throughout the Eastern seaboard. During this time she also became involved in the abolitionist movement and began touring the country; she later became an advocate for the women's rights movement. Truth delivered her famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in 1851.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815 - 1902)
Author of the Declaration of Sentiments, which was presented at the Seneca Falls, N.Y., convention for women's rights in 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a distinguished suffragist. She married Henry Brewster Stanton in 1840 and developed an interest in the temperance and antislavery movements. In 1851, Elizabeth Stanton met Susan B. Anthony, and the two began a 50-year collaboration for women's causes. Together they published the journal Revolution and founded the National Woman Suffrage Association. She died in New York City on Oct. 26, 1902.

Susan B. Anthony (1820 - 1906)
Susan B. Anthony was one of the most influential women in the fight for women's suffrage. Born to Quaker parents in 1820, Susan B. Anthony was raised in an environment that supported equality between men and women. In 1869, Anthony, along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, started the National Woman Suffrage Association and fought for an amendment to the Constitution granting women the right to vote. She was arrested in November 1872 for voting, which for women was against the law. Anthony's fight for women's suffrage continued to gain support from both men and women even after her death. When she died in 1906, only four states allowed women to vote. It was not until 1919, with the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, that women won the right to vote.

Harriet Tubman (1820 - 1913)
Between 1850 and 1860, Harriet Tubman led more than 300 slaves to freedom through a system known as the Underground Railroad. "Lines," or escape routes, stretched from Kentucky and Maryland to New England and Canada. People who helped in aiding slaves reach freedom, including Harriet Tubman were known as "conductors."

Harriet Tubman herself was a slave who escaped to freedom using the Underground Railroad. After her successful escape she returned to her home state of Maryland to help free her family members. While freeing her family—all of whom escaped by 1857—Tubman also helped other slaves escape. Tubman quickly earned the nickname "Moses."

At the onset of the Civil War, Harriet Tubman became a nurse and aided sick and injured Union soldiers. She also worked as a spy and would, on occasion, lead scouting assignments. Harriet Tubman saved many people in her lifetime. Her tombstone reads "Servant of God, Well Done."

Clara Barton (1821 - 1912)
Clara Barton was born in North Oxford, Mass., on Dec. 25, 1821, and would become one of the most well-known women of the Civil War era. As the number of wounded soldiers began to rise, Barton, distressed by the Army Medical Department's lack of preparedness, worked to provide aid to those injured in battle and lobbied to bring her own supplies onto the battlefield. In 1865, with an endorsement from President Lincoln, Barton set up the Bureau of Records in Washington, D.C., to trace and locate missing soldiers. She and her assistants identified more than 22,000 missing men.

Prior to her work with Union troops as a nurse, Barton was a school teacher who established the first free school in New Jersey. She then became a copyist and the first woman to work for the U.S. Patent Office in Washington, D.C. In 1881, Barton founded the United States branch of the International Red Cross and became president of the American Red Cross.

Nellie Bly (1867 - 1922)
In 1889, Nellie Bly made a trip around the world in 70 days, 6 hours and 11 minutes—less time than the fictional character Phileas Fogg in Jules Verne's novel Around the World in Eighty Days. In addition to her record-breaking journey, achieved by traveling in  trains and ships, Nellie Bly was also an accomplished journalist and novelist. At various times throughout her life she worked for the Pittsburgh Dispatch, the New York World and the New York Journal. Among her other accomplishments was an exposé in 1887 on the treatment of women in an mental asylum, published as a book, Ten Days in a Mad-House.

Marie Curie (1867 - 1934)
After receiving a licentiateship (a license to practice) in physics and mathematical sciences at the University of Paris (commonly known as La Sorbonne), Marie Curie pursued a doctorate in science there and began a career in the physics laboratory, where she met her husband Pierre. Together they worked to isolate polonium and to separate radium from radioactive residues. By separating the radium she could then study its properties, more specifically its possible therapeutic properties. After her husband's death, Curie became professor of general physics in the Faculty of Sciences and was appointed director of the Curie Laboratory in the Radium Institute at the university.

Curie was awarded two Nobel prizes for her work in radiation, the first for physics (1903), which she shared with her husband, and later for chemistry (1911). Marie Curie was also a member of France's Conseil du Physique Solvay and the Committee of Intellectual Co-operation of the League of Nations. Curie received the Davy Medal from Great Britain's Royal Society in 1903 and 1921 and authored a number of scientific articles and journals.

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)
Eleanor Roosevelt, the nation's first lady during the presidency of her husband Franklin D. Roosevelt, became a symbol of humanitarian concerns and social justice. Born in 1884 in New York City to a wealthy and privileged family, Roosevelt was sent to finishing school at the age of 15 after the death of her parents.  Despite her immersion in high society, she refused to be consumed with the lifestyle and worked to help the poor in New York City. On March 17, 1905, she married Franklin D. Roosevelt. As her husband became active in the political sphere, first as governor of New York and then as President of the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt continued to pursue her humanitarian agenda. She spoke out for women's rights and also helped influence her husband's policy decisions by bringing to light the conditions of the poor. Roosevelt also played a key role in the creation and acceptance of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Amelia Earhart (1897 - 1937)
Born in 1897, aviator Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic (1932) and the first woman to fly solo across the Pacific, between Honolulu and Oakland, Calif. She also set a speed record in her nonstop flight from Mexico City to New York City. Earhart disappeared after taking off from Lae, New Guinea, with navigator Fred Noonan during her attempt to fly around the world. Despite an extensive search by the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard, neither the plan nor their bodies were ever found.

Rosa (Lee McCauley) Parks (1913 - 2005)
Rosa Parks made civil rights history in 1955 when she refused give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Ala., bus.  Her subsequent arrest by the police led to a city-wide bus boycott by the black community and eventually spurred the movement to end segregation throughout the nation.