We’ve Come a Long Way, Baby! Happy International Women’s Day!
We’ve come a long way, baby. And nobody puts Baby in the corner! It’s easy to rhyme off dozens of women who are true momentum makers, fearless earth-shakers, animal advocates, selfless journalists, resilient activists, determined pilots, top chefs, community backbones, tireless volunteers, STEM leaders, AI innovators, microlenders, teachers and mentors. In step, they/we are mothers, daughters, wives, sisters, Big Sisters, girlfriends, Girl Scout leaders, aunts, nieces, best friends, grandmothers, WILD WOMEN…legends, we say!
In the spirit of International Women’s Day, let’s celebrate the accomplishments of our incredible trailblazers (especially those who pull us along the Camino or cheerlead us up the slog of the Inca Trail!). At Wild Women Expeditions, our connective tissue is strengthened by uplifting and empowering women, whether we are extending a hand or grabbing hold of one. Let’s walk this world together, in a stronger direction! And sometimes that walk may involve a Lusitano horse or camel in Morocco!
Five women we LOVE–and you should too!
Audrey is the blazing founder of the The Female Farmer Project, a multi-platform documentary project that champions women working in agriculture around the world. The Project’s powerful stories introduce resilient women who are Icelandic goat farmers, fourth generation wheat farmers and growing organic food on rooftops in New York. The portraits of these women are mesmerizing and if you’re on the move, there’s a podcast too!
Since the precocious age of 8, Autumn has advocated for clean drinking water not just in First Nations communities, but across the entire country. In 2019, Peltier was appointed Chief Water Commissioner by the Anishinabek Nation. She is from the Wiikwemkoong First Nation on Manitoulin Island, Ontario (Canada). We need more Autumn, all year-long.
Dr. Anne Innis Dagg, “The Giraffe Lady”
In 1956, Anne Dagg made the ‘unladylike’ decision to travel solo to South Africa to study giraffes in the wild. Despite her 20 published research papers as assistant professor of zoology at University of Guelph (Ontario), the Dean of the university denied her tenure. Because she was a married woman, she couldn’t apply to the University of Waterloo (Ontario). This was the catalyst that transformed Anne into a firecracker feminist activist. Be forever changed by watching the heartrending documentary of her pursuit, The Woman Who Loves Giraffes.
Quinn
A crackerjack pro soccer player, Quinn helped Team Canada win their first-ever gold medal in soccer at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and in doing so, they made history as the first openly transgender, nonbinary athlete to compete at an Olympic Games, win a medal and to win a gold medal.
Dolly Parton
Yes. Dolly. That Dolly! I will always looooove you, Dolly. Triggered by her father’s inability to read and write, Dolly founded the “Imagination Library” in 1995 for the children within her home county of East Tennessee. The program has since swelled to five countries and over 1 million free books are gifted each month to children around the world. Books are where we first fall in love with far away places and faces, right?
Gals with bragging rights then + now (and always)
From Jane Fonda to Jane Goodall to Gloria Steinem to Gloria Gaynor. From RBG to J-Lo to Shonda Rhimes to Ramona Quimby to Peekaboo Street to Harriet Tubman to Buffy St. Marie to the first woman to conquer Everest: Japanese mountaineer, Junko Taibei in 1975! We are HOT and unstoppable. From the young girls at XDubai skatepark with skinned knees from skateboarding to the Bangladesh Women’s Driving School to Kenya’s Box Girls all-girls boxing club…history is being made, re-written, remembered and celebrated around the globe. Let’s take a look at where we’ve been and where we’re going. Apparently to the moon, Alice!
It’s about time…
In 1928, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to cross the Atlantic in an airplane.
In 2006, Julie Angus (with her fiancé Colin), rowed 10,000 kilometers (6,213 miles) across the Atlantic Ocean, becoming the first woman in the world to travel from mainland to mainland in a rowboat. She didn’t stop there. Angus is the CEO and Co-Founder of Open Ocean Robotics, a company that develops autonomous energy-harvesting boats to collect information from our oceans and instantly relay it. Julie has been named a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year and is a fellow of the Canadian Geographic Society.
In 1963, cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova made history as the first woman in space aboard the then-Soviet Union’s Vostok 6 spacecraft on a 70-hour solo mission.
In 2024, as part of a program dubbed Artemis, Nasa plans to send a man and a woman to the lunar surface in the first landing with humans since 1972.
On September 20, 1973, tennis champ Billie Jean King (then 29 years old) defeated self-proclaimed male chauvinist Bobby “No-Broad-Can-Beat-Me” Riggs in the landmark “Battle Of The Sexes” tennis match. Fifty million viewers tuned in to watch, making it the most viewed U.S. tennis match of all time. Dare we say, she won with BROAD STROKES??
In February 2022, footie hotshot Megan Rapinoe and the U.S. women’s soccer team and U.S. Soccer Federation (USSF) reached a historic agreement to end their equal pay lawsuit after a six-year battle with a $22 million payout (a third of what they sought in damages).The USSF has placed an additional $2 million into an account that will fund charitable efforts that will target growing the sport for women and to benefit the players in their post-soccer careers. Each woman may receive up to $50,000 from the latter fund.
Want more?
Want to mingle with more incredible women? Here are 21 women explorers who changed the world and 11 women who made wilderness history. Meet the top 25 women of influence in Canada and make note of these 8 indigenous women’s voices you need to hear.
Of course, we encourage real-life mingling too–you won’t believe the inspiring women that you will cross paths with (and walk paths with!) on a Wild Women trip. Celebrate International Women’s Day by joining us somewhere soon!
