History's greatest women often anonymous

The great women of the 1900s tend to be trailblazers rather than larger-than-life heroes. The first woman general, first woman mayor of a major U.S. city, first woman to head an American university, first woman astronaut, first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, first woman American president (Whoops! Still working on that.) -- that sort of thing.

Lists compiled of the most important individuals of the last 100 years are populated almost exclusively by men. Typically, these are world leaders, inventors, discoverers and explorers.

That women are not more fully represented on such lists is a function of the limited role 20th century women were permitted to perform in politics, government, the military, industry, business, academia, sports and just about every other aspect of life outside the home.

That is why the study of women's history is conducted to such a large extent in private letters, diaries and memoirs, rather than in public documents. In doing so, we find that many women were powerful influences on men who had the power to make social change.

A close look at personal records shows that many women deserve more credit than they are given for working alongside men, often their husbands, on the scientific research, literary achievement or philosophical theories for which those men earned fame and glory.

Women's presence in the historical record of the last century is so hazy that it's easy to believe that women kept the children, tended the house, worked in factories, on farms and in hospitals, participated in sewing circles, made social calls, taught school and formed charitable societies, but otherwise were peripheral characters in life's drama.

Not so. Social movements of the 1900s -- for women's suffrage, against abysmal child labor conditions, for civil rights for black Americans, against domestic violence, for better lives for migrant farm workers, against abuses of the mentally ill -- often were bastions of women activists.

The fact that women have not traditionally held positions of official power has little hindered their relentless work at the bottom to force change at the top.

Not every great American woman of the past 100 years worked in anonymity, however. Some are household names:

Susan B. Anthony, who died in 1906, helped pave the way for women to gain the right to vote. Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. Oveta Culp Hobby was the first secretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Delores Huerta co-founded the United Farm Workers Union. Barbara Jordan was the first black woman elected to Congress from a Southern state.

Billie Jean King inspired untold numbers of girls to recognize their ability to excel in sports on a par with men. Susette La Flesche campaigned ardently for Native American rights. Shannon Lucid holds the record for longest space flight by an American. Margaret Mead is a trailblazing anthropologist. Rosa Parks courageously kept her seat at the front of a Montgomery, Ala., public bus, touching off the American civil rights movement.

Eleanor Roosevelt skillfully wielded power as first lady to advance women's rights and help the poor. Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan all helped usher in a new universe of freedoms for women. Helen Brooke Taussig's pioneering operative technique saved innumerable "blue babies" born with heart defects. Harriet Tubman, who was born a slave and died early in the last century, became an abolitionist who helped slaves escape via the Underground Railroad.

I nominate Margaret Sanger as the 20th-century American most influential in expanding women's ability to determine their own destiny and meet their full potential. In working to make birth control available to women, Sanger heard the cries of women powerless to stop having babies, one after the other, regardless of their health, their ability to care for the children they already had or even their reasonable desire simply to limit the size of their family.

Sanger's crusade was not about promoting women's promiscuity or undermining the institution of marriage or contributing to the destruction of the American family. After all, even when few babies were born outside of marriage, it did not stop men from leaving women and their broods destitute through untimely death or a whim to be off.

Now, a woman on her own and in partnership with her husband can determine when and whether to have children. She can finish her education, have a career and become financially self-sufficient.

Sanger and the thousands of women who continue to work to ensure women's continued access to birth control and safe, legal abortion are a big reason that women in the next century will not be found on the sidelines of history.

In the meantime, here is to every woman throughout the ages who achieved great feats of scholarship, leadership and athleticism, often without recognition, despite every conceivable obstacle in her path.