120 biographical sketches of such women as Artemisia Gentileschi, Fanny Farmer, the Trung sisters, and Rigoberta Menchú, presented in "one book that describes the world 'as if women mattered.'"

Queen Hatshepsut -- Sappho -- Aspasia -- Cleopatra -- The Trung sisters -- Boudica -- Hypatia -- Empress Theodora -- Wu Chao -- Murasaki Shikibu -- Sultana Razia -- Christine de Pizan -- Joan of Arc -- Queen Isabella I -- La Malinche -- Catherine de Médicis -- Queen Elizabeth I -- Mary Queen of Scots -- Artemisia Gentileschi -- Judith Leyster -- Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz -- Catherine the Great -- Mary Wollstonecraft -- Deborah Sampson -- Jane Austen -- Emma Willard -- Sacajawea -- Sarah Grimké and Angelina Grimké -- La Pola -- Sojourner Truth -- Catharine Beecher -- Dorothea Dix -- Margaret Fuller Harriet Beecher Stowe -- Harriet Tubman -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton -- Charlotte Brontë and Emily Brontë -- Maria Mitchell -- Clara Schumann -- Queen Victoria -- Susan B. Anthony -- Florence Nightingale -- Elizabeth Blackwell -- Clara Barton -- Antoinette Brown Blackwell -- Mary Harris "Mother" Jones -- Lakshmi Bai -- Emily Dickinson -- Louisa May Alcott -- Tz'u-hsi -- Queen Liliuokalani -- Sarah Bernhardt -- Mary Cassatt -- Sarah Winnemucca -- Carry Nation -- Louisa Lawson -- Olive Schreiner -- Fannie Farmer -- Charlotte Perkins Gilman -- Jane Addams -- Ida B. Wells -- Beatrix Potter -- Marie Curie -- Sophia Hayden -- Alexandra David-Neel -- Emma Goldman -- Rosa Luxemburg -- Maria Montessori -- Alexandra Kollontai -- Qiu Jin -- Mary McLeod Bethune -- Huda Shaarawi -- Margaret Sanger -- Helen Keller -- Anna Pavlova -- Virginia Woolf -- Rose Schneiderman -- Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel -- Eleanor Roosevelt -- Georgia O'Keeffe -- Gabriela Mistral -- Ichikawa Fusae -- Bessie Smith -- Martha Graham -- Marian Anderson -- Amelia Earhart -- Golda Meir -- Zora Neale Hurston -- Margaret Mead -- Margaret Bourke-White -- Greta Garbo -- Frida Kahlo -- Rachel Carson -- Simone de Beauvoir --Mother Teresa -- Mildred "Babe" Didrikson -- Mary Leakey -- Indira Gandhi -- Jessie Lopez De La Cruz -- Eva Perón -- Betty Friedan -- Diane Arbus -- Shirley Chisholm -- Margaret Thatcher -- Nguyen Thi Binh -- Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis -- Violeta Chamorro -- Toni Morrison -- Corazon Aquino -- Barbara Jordan -- Valentina Tereshkova -- Marian Wright Edelman -- Wilma Rudolph -- Billie Jean King -- Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams -- Antonia Novello -- Aung San Suu Kyi -- Wilma Mankiller -- Eka Esu-Williams -- Rigoberta Menchú.