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Eminent Women

The very title of this entry demands selection and judgment: Who is eminent? How does one qualify to be eminent? In what does eminence consist? Eminence can be defined as a position of superiority, distinction, or excellence. Dean Keith Simonton defines eminence as having “made a name” for oneself. Some speak of true eminence as being defined as the person having made an original contribution to the domain, rather than high achievement. Eminent people have biographies written about their lives; they are in the journals, magazines, newspapers, and other media.

Simonton noted that predicting eminence from mere prominence depends on certain criteria. Regarding individual differences, the productivity, intelligence level, personality attributes, and degree of psychopathology are somewhat distinctive in eminent people. In terms of development, the family pedigree, childhood precocity, birth order, presence of early trauma, the presence of role models and mentors, and formal education and training are important. In the sociocultural context, the political, economic, cultural, and ideological are vital. Simonton proposed a methodology that he said is problematic because of the reliability and validity of current instruments and methods used to define eminence. His work on eminent women stated that fewer than 3 percent of eminent people throughout history were women, Marie Curie notwithstanding. The U.S. Inventors Hall of Fame includes few women, as do most other Halls of Fame. This has led researchers and feminists to propose their own lists.

This entry describes how eminence is determined, barriers to eminence, and profiles, themes, and implications of eminence.

Determining Eminence

One could speak of eminent women in their absence. For example, Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets in the 18th century contained no women among the 50 who were profiled. This example is not unusual. The problems arise from a historical disregard for women's lives, except for those of royal lineage. History knows Catherine the Great, Elizabeth I, and Marie Antoinette, and their eminence is not disputed. This has led to special studies of eminent women, separate from eminence in general. Mary Queen of Scots, Jeanne d'Arc, Victoria, Elizabeth I, George Sand, Madame de Staehl, Catherine the Great, Maria Theresa, Marie Antoinette, Mary I, Anne of England, Madame de Sevigné, Christina of Sweden, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Mme. De Maintenon, Josephine of France, Catherine de Medici, Cleopatra, Charlotte Brontë, and Harriet Beecher Stowe were the 20 most eminent women found by statistical study in 1913 by Cora Castle, who distilled the list from a master list of 868 women.

Catherine Cox also conducted a study of eminence, using items from the Stanford-Binet test in 1916, extrapolating the IQs of eminent people through a technique called historiometry. This study demonstrated that a certain intelligence level is necessarily present in eminence in the domains of the arts, government leadership, literature, philosophy, and science. Military leaders did not have the high intelligence scores that the others did. As stated, most of the people studied were men.

Table 1 Women in Cradles of Eminence and in the U.S. National Women's Hall of Fame
Field of AchievementName
Arts and HumanitiesMaude Adams, Louisa May Alcott, Marian Anderson, Maya Angelou, Lucille Ball, Ann Bancroft, Ethel Barrymore, Simone de Beauvoir, Phyllis Bentley, Ingrid Bergman, Sarah Bernhardt, Nellie Bly, Margaret Bourke-White, the Brontë sisters, Gwendolyn Brooks, Pearl Buck, Maria Callas, Mary Cassatt, Willa Cather, Ilka Chase, Jennie Jerome Churchill, Colette, Catherine Cookson, Nancy Cunard, Marian DeForest, Marlene Dietrich, Mary Louise De La Ramee (Ouida), Agnes De Mille, Emily Dickinson, Isak Dinesen, Marjorie Douglas, Isadora Duncan, Kathrine Dunham, Eleonora Duse, George Eliot, Edna Ferber, Kathleen Ferrier, Ella Fitzgerald, Kirsten Flagstad, Jane Fonda, Margot Fonteyn, Anne Frank, Margaret Fuller, Wanda Gag, Greta Garbo, Judy Garland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ellen Glasgow, Martha Graham, Helen Hayes, Lillian Hellman, Katharine Hepburn, Wilhelmina Holliday, Julia Ward Howe, Zora Neale Hurston, Janis Joplin, Frida Kahlo, Kathe Kollwitz, Sheila Kaye-Smith, Helen Keller, Dorothea Lange, Lillie Langtry, Gertrude Lawrence, Lotte Lehmann, Doris Lessing, Beatrice Lillie, Maya Lin, Amy Lowell, Shirley Maclaine, Katherine Mansfield, Carson McCullers, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Nancy Mitford, Marilyn Monroe, Anna Moses, Flannery O'Connor, Georgia O'Keeffe, Edith Piaf, Sylvia Plath, Ayn Rand, Vita Sackville-West, Olive Schreiner, Beverly Sills, Edith Sitwell, Bessie Smith, Gertrude Stein, Gloria Steinem, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Barbara Streisand, Maria Tallchief, Ida Tarbell, Elizabeth Taylor, Dorothy Thompson, Sigrid Undset, Ethel Waters, Jessamyn West, Eudora Welty, Edith Wharton, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Oprah Winfrey, Virginia Woolf
AthleticsDonna De Varona, Babe Didrikson, Gertrude Ederle, Althea Gibson, Billie Jean King, Wilma Rudolph, Helen Stephens
AviationAmerlia Earhart, Bessie Coleman, Blanche Scott, Emily Warner
BusinessLinda Alvarado, Elizabeth Arden, Coco Chanel, Katharine Graham, Martha Harper, Barbara Holdridge, Estée Lauder, Helena Rubenstein, Muriel Siebert, Madame Walker
Civil Rights—race, poverty, age, gender, labor, etc.Bella Abzug, Susan B. Anthony, Ella Baker, Daisy Bates, Antoinette Blackwell, Amelia Bloomer, Charlotte Bunch, Lydia Child, Angela Davis, Paulina Davis, Dorothy Day, Bernadette Devlin, Emma De Voe, Catherine East, Marian Wright Edelman, Betty Friedan, Matilda Gage, Emma Goldman, Germaine Greer, Angelina Grimke, Sarah Grimke, Fannie Hamer, Dorothy Height, Dolores Huerta, Mother Jones, Maggie Kuhn, Susette LaFlesche, Kate Millett, Lucretia Mott, Kate Mullany, Rosa Parks, Alice Paul, Esther Peterson, Phyllis Schlafly, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Gloria Steinem, Lucy Stone, Mary Talbert, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Mercy Warren, Ida Wells-Barnett, Sarah Winnemucca, Fanny Wright
EducationEthel Andrus, Mary McLeod Bethune, Lydia Bradley, Rachel Carson, Rosalynn Carter, Mary Cary, Cary Catt, Ruth Colvin, Joan Cooney, Nannerl Keotane, Patricia Locke, Mary Lyon, Louise McManus, Maria Montessori, Katherine Saubel, Sophia Smith, Anne Sullivan, Frances Willard
GovernmentAbigail Adams, Madeleine Albright, Gertrude Bell, Shirley Chisholm, Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Dole, Anne Dudley, Geraldine Ferraro, Indira Gandhi, Ella Grasso, Martha Griffiths, Oveta Culp Hobby, Barbara Jordan, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Wilma Mankiller, Golda Meier, Patsy Takemoto Mink, Constance Motley, Antonia Novella, Sandra Day O'Connor, Frances Perkins, Eva Peron, Jeanette Rankin, Janet Reno, Rozanne Ridgeway, Edith Rogers, Patricia Schroeder, Margaret Chase Smith, Margaret Thatcher
InventionHarriet Strong
LawFlorence Allen, Myra Bradwell, Crystal Eastman, Patricia Harris, Belva Lockwood, Josephine Ruffin
MathematicsGrace Hopper
MedicineFaye Abdullah
MilitaryMary Hallaren, Jeanne Holm, Wilma Vaught
OtherBetty Bumpers (children's immunization), Jane Croli (women's clubs), Eileen Garrett (parapsychology), Mata Hari (spy), Beatrice Hicks (engineer), Julia Gordon Lowe (Girl Scouts), Annie Oakley (marksman), Eleanor Roosevelt (humanitarian), Sacagawea (interpreter), Victoria Woodhull (orator, spiritualist)
ScienceDorothy Andersen, Virginia Apgar, Ruth Benedict, Annie Cannon, Jacqueline Cochran, Eileen Collins, Rita Colwell, Gerty Corey, Helene Deutsch, Sylvia Earle, Gertrude Elion, Alice Evans, Lillian Gilbreth, Jane Goodall, Alice Hamilton, Shirley Jackson, May Jemison, Elizabeth Kenny, Stephanie Kwolek, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Shannon Lucid, Maria Mayer, Barbara McClintock, Katherine McCormick, Margaret Mead, Maria Mitchell, Mary Pennington, Ellen Swallow Richards, Sally Ride, Florence Sabin, Felice Schwartz, Florence Siebert, Nettie Stevens, Harriet Tassig, Florence Wald, Annie Wauneka, Sheila Widnall, Chien-Shiung Wu, Rosalyn Yalow
ReligionAnnie Besant, Evangeline Booth, Mother Cabrini, Mary Dyer, Mary Baker Eddy, Anne Hutchinson, Leontine Kelly, Mother Marianne, Betty Schiess, Anna Shaw, Mother Theresa
Social WorkJane Addams, Dorothea Dix, Bertha Holt, Margaret Sanger, Hannah Solomon, Faye Wattleton

Another useful way of determining eminence might be the number of scholarly biographies undertaken and published about a certain woman. This way has its merits, but may be disproportionately skewed toward the literary and the artistic, as writing a biography is an accepted scholarly venue for these fields, whereas it is not so in science, mathematics, business, or invention. The Goertzels listed people who had at least two biographies written about them, reasoning that one biography may represent a special scholarly interest, but two represented possible eminence. Scrutinizing the list, however, reveals that they also listed women who had written autobiographically. When one writes about oneself in a memoir, one thus increases one's chances of being regarded as worthy of study by the Goertzels. Table 1 has omitted women who did not have at least two scholarly biographies written about them.

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