Suffragist cookbooks wielded domesticity as a political tool. It might seem odd for women who were fighting to be seen as more than wives and mothers to reinforce such traditional roles. But the cookbooks were part of a calculated strategy: By leaning on gendered norms, suffragists countered claims that they would abandon their homes and families if they entered the political sphere.

Sally Snowman belongs to a tradition of freedom, loneliness, and pride. Of the 70 keepers who have tended to Boston Light since 1716, Snowman is the first and only woman.

The city of Bankok employs more than 100 specially trained motorcycle midwives, or officers who carry full medical kits on their backs. They ride motorbikes to make it easy for them to weave in and out of the city's legendarily impassable traffic. Since the system was set up by the Royal Thai Police in 1993, they’ve successfully delivered 184 babies.

Duchess “Charity” Quamino was known as the “Pastry Queen of Rhode Island.” Legend has it that with money she made from her catering business, she was able to purchase her freedom, and later the freedom of her children. Multiple accounts mention this in the same breath as her title as the local ‘pastry queen’ and various details of her life.

In England, from about the 12th to the 16th century, an estimated 780 people chose to live permanently shut up in a room attached to a church. They were called anchorites and most of them were women.

“People have the notion that women can’t play Mariachi music. But in reality, it’s good musicians and bad musicians that is the real distinction.”

In traditional tango, men lead and women follow. Queer tango is creating a new paradigm.

Chocolate was an everyday drink, as common then as a morning cup of coffee is today. But it often emerged in the records as a vehicle for women’s magic spells, and, in turn, for European anxieties about ruling a majority non-white population, filled with women who wouldn’t do what they were told.

She began the first integrated school, her home was a stop on the Underground Railroad, and there was a bounty on her head due to her tireless work against slavery.

The world’s most famous mermaid was famous long before the 16th century–and long before Starbucks. The particular split-tailed and long-locked mermaid first appears on the mosaic floor of a cathedral in Pesaro, Italy.

Miho Fujita was a high-powered executive working at a Tokyo toy company. Miho Imada worked in traditional Noh theater. Chizuko Niikawa-Helton was in the fashion industry. But at some point in their careers, all three women had a realization: Their true passion was sake.

In an era when most women were expected to look for a husband, Ida Zorada Lewis was the highest-paid lighthouse keeper in the United States, and saved scores of lives in daring rescues.