Women’s History Month is officially underway but to truly understand the import of the moment, we’ve got to look back at the pioneers that got us here.
That’s why the latest episode of Wom/n Worldwide — hosted by the incomparable Drew Dorsey, of course — is paying homage to the femme legends of the past before passing the torch to the icons of the now. Get ready to learn about Janet Guthrie, the first woman to compete in both the Indy and Daytona 500, who once worked with an all-female pit crew. Her success is part of the reason why today’s athletes like Alex Morgan, Sue Bird, Chloe Kim, and Simone Manuel have banded together to create a platform to increase media coverage of women’s sports.
But women continue to make progress off the field as well. Rear Admiral Grace M. Hopper is practically the mother of modern coding, creating a computing language that made it easier for the rest of us to log on. Her work helped inspire Reshma Saujani to create the Girls Who Code nonprofit aimed at getting school-aged girls into STEM.
And in the early 1900s, French filmmaker Alice Guy-Blaché wrote, directed, and produced over 1,000 films during a time when women’s contributions to art were severely undervalued. Now, a century and some change later, current Hollywood heavyweights like Regina King are spearheading entire production companies and scoring big partnerships with massively popular streaming platforms like Netflix.
For even more stories of women getting things done (then and now) check out the video above.