Photo of Mabel Capper and Patricia Woodlock advertising a meeting, Manchester, Lancashire, July 1908

Women's history

Historians Joanne Paul, Olivette Otele and June Purvis dissect the results of our recent poll: 100 women who changed the world.

Video: 100 women who changed the world.

A fourth to fifth-century AD Roman mosaic shows a woman spinning. The household was considered a woman's natural environment; the political arena certainly was not. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)

6 women who changed the course of Roman history

Top ( l-r) Agrippina the Elder, Julia, and Livia. Bottom (l-r) Messalina and Agrippina the Younger

The women who built the Roman Empire.

100 women who changed the world

100 women who changed the world.

Female spies of the Civil War era.

"Queen Victoria was more than just a token ruler of India. Passionately interested in its people and culture, she intervened frequently in Indian politics," says Miles Taylor. (Photo by Time Life Pictures/Mansell/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

The LibraryQueen Victoria’s Indians.

Composite image of famous women: Cleopatra, Marie Curie, Mary Wollstonecraft, Madame CJ Walker, Jane Austen, Emmeline Pankhurst, Ethel Smyth, the Virgin Mary, Rosa Parks, Frida Kahlo, Diana, Princess of Wales, Amelia Earhart.

100 women who changed the world

100 Women Who Changed the World results: what the experts say.

Portrait of Jane Seymour, third wife of Henry VIII, 1536. (Photo by Imagno/Getty Images)

Henry VIII's six wives in a different light.

While young ladies may have been daydreaming of handsome film stars such as Cary Grant, pictured here kissing the cheek of Ingrid Bergman in a publicity still for the 1946 film ‘Notorious’, agony aunts were keen to bring them back down to earth. (Photo by John Springer Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

How to be a man: tips from 1930s agony aunts.

Restoring women’s voices.

In this painting from c1650, a witch wields a broomstick as demons and 'familiars' (helpers of witches) congregate before her. (Photo by Rischgitz/Getty Images)

History quiz – witchcraft and superstition.

English philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts. (Photo by Hulton-Deutsch/Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis via Getty Images)

My history hero: Angela Burdett-Coutts.

Vera Brittain, who worked as a nurse during the First World War and went on to become one of the leading writers of the interwar years. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Love, loss and distorted memories.

A female computer programmer demonstrates a new computer in the 1960s.

The changing role of women in British computing.

Jane Seymour: Henry VIII’s favourite queen.

A portrait of actress Nell Gwynn, longtime mistress to King Charles II.

From Nell to Meghan: 10 romances between actors and royals.

A Georgian painting depicting children leaving for school

The Georgian guide to perfect parenting.

Where history happened: Georgian fossil hunting.

The women behind Lord Byron.

Were the suffragettes terrorists?.

Crowds of women from ancient Greece gather round a man holding a vase

Q&AWhat was life like for Spartan women?

A portrait of Elizabeth I, who, says Susan Doran, “confounded her Catholic enemies, imposed her will on the political scene, turned England into a strong Protestant state and presided over a glittering court culture”. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Elizabeth I: the great unifier.

A statue of Æthelflæd which stands in the grounds of Tamworth Castle in Staffordshire. (Photo by Chris Gibson/Alamy Stock Photo)

Æthelflæd: iron lady of Mercia.

Medieval mystics.

The history of today.

A portrait of Catherine of Siena, who in the 1360s experienced a vision from God during which – according to her biographer, Raymond of Capua – she drank the water from the wound in Christ’s side. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)

The medieval mystics with a hotline to God.

Austrian physicist Lise Meitner

6 women in science history you (probably) didn’t know about

Science and suffrage.

Actresses in historical drama Jamestown

Transported to 17th-century Virginia: an interview with the women of 'Jamestown'