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

Women's history

A composite image of Elizabeth I, Mary I and Elizabeth of York

How Elizabeth of York paved the way for her granddaughters to rule

Rosalind Franklin as seen in a 1956 photo

Why we should remember…Rosalind Franklin’s pioneering scientific career

Head of the Ancient Egyptian Queen Tiye

15 minutes of fameJoyce Tyldesley chooses Queen Tiye

Kavita Puri"There are other medieval women who we can bring to the foreground"

Elizabeth I’s greatest rival?

A late 18th-century portrait of proto-feminist and first lady Abigail Adams

Women in the American Revolution: what were their lives like?

A brief history of US abortion law, before and after Roe v Wade

Hildegard of Bingen

15 minutes of fameJanina Ramirez chooses Hildegard of Bingen

Marguerite de Navarre

15 minutes of fameSuzannah Lipscomb chooses Marguerite de Navarre

Queen TiyeOvershadowed ancient Egyptian royal

Marie TharpGround-breaking cartographer

Alice KinlochPan-African activist

Hildegard of BingenMedieval polymath

Marguerite de NavarreRoyal influencer

Pioneering women pilots: from ballooning spectacles to flying escapades

Diane de Poitiers. As the mistress of Henry II of France, she had incredible and indescribable influence over the French king.

The French royal mistresses who made it about more than sex

A portrait of young Queen Victoria wearing a tiara

The young Queen Victoria’s struggle to gain the throne

Victoria Drummond, Britain's first female marine engineer. Also seen is her ancestral home, Megginch Castle; a Second World War Allied convoy; Mount Etna, which she encountered on one voyage; and a Lloyd’s War Medal for Bravery at Sea, similar to the one that Drummond received in 1941

Victoria Drummond: trailblazing ship's engineer and war hero

Lucy Worsley on three extraordinary livesThe survivor, the 'incurable' and the scapegoat

Elizabeth Gaskell: a voice of the Victorians

A painting of Lisbon depicts conspicuous displays of Portuguese imperial wealth and power – including enslaved African people

How slavery thrived in Renaissance Europe

Christine de Pizan: from medieval writer to feminist icon

Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, better known to history as the Ladies of Llangollen

Q&AWho were the Ladies of Llangollen?

Illustration of Queen Matilda of Boulogne, by Eleanor Shakespeare

Matilda of Boulogne: Norman England’s warrior queen

Women from the Auxiliary Territorial Service take a break

Second World War

An army of women: adventures in the Auxiliary Territorial Service

Annie Oakley: the most famous sharpshooter in America

From running marathons to working the nightshift: 8 surprising things women were banned from doing through history

A portrait of Anne Lister

The real Gentleman Jack: the secret life of Anne Lister, Britain's ‘first modern lesbian’

The history of beauty: everything you wanted to know

Four flapper women line up along a wall and chug bottles of liquor in the 1920s.

Flappers, sanitary pads and public drinking: was the 1920s a time of increased liberation for women?