Who is the greatest woman that ever lived in your opinion?

Mother Theressa?
Florence Nigtengale?
Mary Seacole?
Oakly?

Who do you think should be on this list?

There is another woman I'd rather nominate, an 18th century engineer, but her name escapes me right now. So for now I would nominate Emily Dickinson.

Can I say my mom?

Lindsay Lohan   

Mother teresa was not a good woman, let alone the greatest.

As for the greatest I think the appointment of any one person is a discredit to the legions of lesser knowns

in my opinion, it's my mom

thenumberone : I agree with  both statements.  You can't pick just one and say, "She did more for humanity than any other female out there."  That's unfair because women did things at different times and were able to accomplish different things.  Culture plays a huge role in who could do what and history skews our views of who really had an impact on history, humankind, and society.

There are female leaders of nations, tribes, and dynasties we may not know about.  Women have had impacts and we don't know what they did.  If you're really curious, look at Crick and the other guy who discovered the double helix of the DNA strand in humans.  They may or may not have stolen it from a female researcher and her partners.

We can't ever know who's the best.  Or the most important.  Or who had the largest impact on us.  We can appreciate all women did to advance society and culture.

Well, first off, Mother Theressa wasn't exactly a good person all her life...

But I feel that nominating only one woman is a bit bad, it degrades all other women. Everyone is great in their own way, there doesn't need to be a single "greatest" woman.

tornadocam :
"Margaret Thatcher former Britain Prime Minister-Should stood up to enemy countries at that time and supported America and she also supported Israel. They called her the Iron Lady"
I didn't realise this was a nomination for worst female to ever have lived. I suppose shes up there with mother teressa.

As for mary magdalene, I dont see how a woman who influenced women in chrsitianity elevates her above those who saved millions of lives through vacinations, gave their lives for others, etc.

Princess Peach.

Seriously? If this was a thread about the greatest man to ever live, there would not be such jokes being made. "My mom"... "Princess Peach"? Really? Unless your mother cured cancer, she's just another person, not one of the greatest women to have ever lived. I am not even going to get started on naming a video game character.

warmaker : Watson & Crick, in case you were still wonder what the other guy's name was. And the woman was named Rosalind Franklin, who had actually done the x-ray crystallography of DNA that made their findings possible. She actually died of ovarian cancer by the time Watson, Crick and Wilkins (the guy that took Franklin's work and showed it to Watson in the first place) won the Nobel Prize.

In addition to Rosalind Franklin, here are several more women that can actually compete for the title of Greatest Woman.

Maria Montessori: Educator. Aside from Montessori schools which center on self-directed learning, she had profound effects on early education. Those tiny desks in kindergarten? Yeah, that was her idea.

Margaret Mead: Anthropologist. Greatly advanced the field and brought us much of what we know of Polynesian culture today.

Marie Curie: First woman with a PhD in France. Amazing work with physics and chemistry (not only was she the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, she was the first person to ever win 2 prizes in different categories), she also developed the X-ray machine.

Irene Curie-Joliot: Chemist. Daughter of Marie and Pierre Curie, also won a Nobel Prize in chemistry for her discovery of artificial radioactivity.

Grace Hopper: Computer Scientist. Joined the US Navy in WWII and worked as a programmer for Mark I. In the private sector she created the first compiler program and helped develop COBOL, all with the goal of making computers accessible to everyone. Invited back by the Navy to help with a payroll program and other systems, and eventually was granted the rank of Rear Admiral in recognition of her accomplishments.

Caroline Herschel: Astronomer. First woman to have her work published by the Royal Society, first British woman to be paid for her scientific work, and first woman to discover a comet (total of 6) along with several new star clusters and nebulae. Worked with her brother William, who is known for discovering the planet Uranus.

Mary Anning: Archeologist. Discovered the first Ichthyosaurus fossil at age 11, taught herself all about science, and eventually discovered much of the marine dinosaurs we know today.

Simone de Beauvoir: Feminist Philosopher. Wrote "The Second Sex" which is perhaps the defining book of the feminist movement.

Lisa Meitner: Physicist. Actually the person to discover and name "nuclear fission", but her male partner got all the credit and the Nobel Prize.

Maria Mitchell: Astronomer. Started her own girl's school for science at age 17, first American woman to discover a comet and first female astronomy professor in the US.

Susan B. Anthony: Political Activist. An abolitionist, member of the temperance movement, and advocate for women's suffrage. Perhaps the most iconic female activist of her time, she was arrested repeatedly for trying to vote when we did not have the right to do so.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Political Activist. A contemporary of Anthony, Stanton was the principal author of the 'Declaration of Sentiments' that created the women's suffrage movement which gave us American women the right to vote.

Emmeline Pankhurst: British Sufferagette. One of the leaders of Britain's suffrage movement, she actually died in a hunger strike 3 weeks before the law passed.

Mary Wollenstonecraft: Feminist Writer. Perhaps one of THE most important women in the history of feminism, she wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Women, in the 1700s which inspired generations of women activists to come.

Harriet Beecher Stowe: Abolitionist. She wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, which strengthened the anti-slavery movement before the American Civil War.

Dorothy Hodgkin: Nobel Prize-winner Chemist. We understand the structure of penicillin, vitamin B12 and insulin because of her development of x-ray crystallography to study biological molecules (which is what Rosalind Franklin used to get her images of DNA that Watson and Crick used to publish their paper on the double helix.

Gertrude Elion: Medical Researcher. She created the first two effective treatments for leukemia.

Florence Nightingale: Nurse, Reformer of British Military Healthcare

Queen Noor of Jordan: International Humanitarian fighting to improve lives of the poor, disarming nuclear weapons, and fostering Arab-Western relations towards peace.

Helen Keller: Activist. Beyond overcoming being blind and deaf, in her adult life Keller was a tenacious activist for the rights of blind and deaf people, and of working conditions that lead to such conditions. Much of this is ignored in our history books because she became a member of the Communist party of America.

And there are many, many others....

Elara :
Im pretty sure it was a joke, there is a greatest man thread too and most people are reluctant to name a real one either, for the simple fact no one person deserves to have the title.
You do make some good suggestions, but frankly I dont agree with Emmeline Pankhurst since she was keen on tanning peopls windows and burning private property to the ground.

thenumberone : Yeah, I hesitated to put her on the list for that reason... but I think that she is still a figure that people should learn about. We hold up Malcolm X as a major figure in the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s even though he embraced violent means to achieve his goals, after all. It provides for interesting discussion at any rate.

Totts : I am hands down! No contest.
Lolz

Elara : I'm fairly certain those who said "My mom" were being serious. I actually find it quite commendable when someone can feel that way about their mother. I know I do. And in my opinion, she's at least deserving of the consideration. See, the problem with this question is that you can't measure whether someone was great because they did some big thing. Your crowning achievements aren't what make you great, rather it's your everyday life.

Let's see, a woman who gave me life, dropped her life for eighteen years so she could take care of mine, and wiped my butt and fed me until I could do both for myself? I think that woman deserves a lot of credit in my "Greatest Woman ever" vote.



In the end though, there is no "greatest woman ever" and I agree that the question is fruitless in that it discredits I would dare say Billions of woman throughout the ages.

Glaceonwhisper : You're in my top 10 million women of all time   

Elara :  Don't take everything so serious and have fun, It was just a joke.  

I don't think the original post was a joke, nor was it asking for jokes... so while it may have been intended as one, it was disrespectful.

Eirinn : Admiring your mother is all well and good, but again it wasn't the point of the thread. And the actions that you are describing are the same that every mother on the planet does... so why is *your* mother better than the others? Just because they took care of you and not some other person? That is why it is not a real answer to the original request. At least give something special or unique that sets them apart from all the other moms out there.

Elara : I didn't mean to imply my mother was better than other mothers, and my apologies if it seemed so. Rather what I meant was that she deserved my personal vote for greatest woman ever. Why? Because what she did is what caused me to be alive and able to vote on this in the first place. Does that alone actually make her better than other moms? Not at all. Does it make her more important to me personally and thus a relevant woman for my vote? Yes, of course.


And while I don't wish to sound as though I took offense to your reply, I would like to state why she is so amazing as you said.

Where do I even start? My mother did do far more than the average mom does. First, she nearly died in birth with me (Wonder why birthing a 10 pound, 21 inch baby would nearly kill a 5' small framed woman. lol), and though she survived, she sustained permanent damage that I can't list here as it's too graphic. Suffice to say, she should have been in a wheelchair and there was some stitching that needed to be done inside and out, but the damage was too severe to repair, but she still cared for me and refused to stop even though she could barely walk at times. She's in so much pain 24/7 from having me to this day that doctors have told her on multiple occasions that they marvel that she can still get around at all, let alone without someone helping her walk, yet for my entire childhood this woman pushed the unbearable pain aside and still cooked for me, kept our house cleaned, washed all of our laundry (five people in our house) by hand even though her hands would dry out, crack open, and bleed from doing it so much, she taught me in homeschool along with my two siblings, and she somehow managed a smile through all of this, and gave us all the time we needed and made sure we knew she loved us.

Simply put, she's constantly in pain that's severe enough to confine most people to a bed, yet I never once saw her fail to go above and beyond what the average 100% healthy mother does for her kids on a daily basis, nor did I ever see her so much as neglect to fix a meal or even clean our house. I'm not saying those are "a wife's work" or anything sexist, simply that my mother did those things herself. And to this day, I live with her, trying to return the kindness she showed us all of our lives, in helping her get around. Yet somehow, despite now having Diabetes, cirrhosis of the liver, and cancer in her kidneys and being in even more pain than before due to those new health issues, along with the birth issue getting worse all the time, she ignores that the doctor's tell her she'll die any day (literally) and refuses the morphine because she insists that she still cook and clean for her husband (my dad) and I. Finding a person --man or woman-- like that is a one in a million shot. I thank God daily that this one out of a million was my mother.



Let me finish by simply saying, I think any good mother deserves far more appreciation than they get, and I by no means intend to make it sound like they do not. My hat is off to every good mother out there.