Modern Women

Modern Women is a celebration of influential and inspiring women who have changed the world through their lives, work and actions. From suffragettes to scientists, activists to artists, politicians to pilots and writers to riot grrrls, the women included have all paved the way for gender equality in their own indomitable way. Find out about extraordinary women including writer and teacher Maya Angelou, computer scientist Ada Lovelace, abolitionist Harriet Tubman, film star Katharine Hepburn and pioneering musician Björk. Their lives also enable bigger stories to be told: the suffrage movement with Sophia Duleep Singh; the civil rights struggle and Audre Lorde; advances in science made by Rosalind Franklin; the push for artistic freedom in the work of Frida Kahlo and Louise Bourgeois; and the importance of equality in all sections of society advocated by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.  

Kira Cochrane is Executive Editor, Features at the Guardian, and was previously a features writer for the paper, and women’s editor from 2006-2010. She is author of the novels The Naked Season and Escape Routes for Beginners, edited the anthology Women of the Revolution, and co-edited Cupcakes and Kalashnikovs, as well as writing the short book All the Rebel Women, an account of the fourth wave of feminism. She lives in London.