10 Unbelievably Badass Women from History

Women. They are much tougher than many give them credit for. History has known some incredibly tough and unbelievably valiant women. Just think of the names that come to mind: Joan of Arc, Amelia Earhart, Rosa Parks, and Florence Nightingale. The list goes on, too, with modern-day tough women, including the likes of athletic heroes like Diana Nyad and activists like Malala Yousafzai. The list keeps growing, too. And each woman on it shows toughness and resilience in her own impressive way.

But what about the women who don’t get all the credit? In this list, we’ll take a look at ten unbelievably badass women from history who don’t always get the accolades they deserve. Frankly, they have earned far more respect and notoriety than history has granted them. And when you read their stories below, we have no doubt that you’ll agree!

Related: Top 10 Amazing Women of the Crusades

10 Mary Read

There weren’t many women sailing the high seas during the Golden Age of Piracy ((1690-1730). So it was all the more notable that Mary Read did it so well. The tomboy push started early for her, too. After her half-brother died young, her mother passed her off as a boy in order to continue to receive child support from her late husband’s relatives.

Soon enough, Read had joined the British Navy and fought in battle. Eventually, she moved on to find work as a sailor. And one day in the early 18th century, her ship was raided by a group of pirates. Whether voluntarily or by force, she joined them. But very quickly, she had raised the stakes as a successful pirate queen.

She got on with the buccaneer crew of pirate John “Calico Jack” Rackham. To do so, she dressed and acted like a man—even though she was a woman. And with fellow pirate queen Anne Bonny on the ship, too, Read became a legend. For one, she got into a romantic relationship with the ship’s carpenter at one point. He got into an unrelated quarrel with another sailor, and legend has it that Read shot down the troublemaker herself. Badass!

Things ended badly for Read, but she didn’t go down without a fight. In 1720, she and Bonny both earned their spots on the list of enemies of the crown of Britain thanks to their prolific and violent piracy. One day that year, the British Navy managed to overtake their pirate ship. Calico Jack surrendered pretty quickly. Read fought tenaciously, on the other hand, but was eventually captured.

The male pirates were all sentenced to hang, and that would have been Read’s fate, too, but she was pregnant. So her hanging was postponed, and she was instead shipped off to prison. She died there in 1721 after falling ill. But her legend lives on, along with Bonny, as one of the two vicious pirate women who tried to take Britain down from the high seas.^[1]

9 Frances Clayton

When the Civil War broke out, Frances Clayton joined the Union Army so that she could fight alongside her husband. Interestingly, she was far from the only woman to fight in the Civil War. With lax record keeping, a desperate need for warm bodies to go to the front lines, and baggy uniforms that made it possible to hide one’s true identity, a decent number of women enlisted secretly and joined the battle.

However, she was one of the most vicious of them all. And she lasted the longest in battle before being outed for who she was. She fought under the name “Jack Williams” with the 4th Missouri Artillery division alongside her husband. According to later claims, Clayton fought in as many as 18 battles and was wounded in three different incidents. Unfortunately for her, Clayton’s husband died in the Battle of Stones River. Not long after that, she was outed as a woman fighting secretly and discharged from the army.

Her story bubbled up in newspapers across the country at that point. She became a minor celebrity as Union supporters and sympathizers rallied around her cause as a woman fighting for freedom. She gave a handful of newspaper interviews that helped fan those flames as well. But interestingly, after 1863, the tale of what happened to her life goes strangely cold.

One man, an Officer Rand, later told the Fort Wayne Daily Gazette that Clayton had told him about how she was thinking of doing a lecture tour about her war experiences. Those tours were incredibly lucrative in the late 19th century and would have netted her a pretty payday. But nobody ever heard from her again—at least, not under the name Frances Clayton—and it’s unclear what became of her.^[2]

8 The Night Witches

The so-called “Night Witches” were some of the toughest women who ever lived. That was the name the Germans gave to a group of Russian women who served in the secret, all-female military division of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment during World War II. Women were officially banned from combat during the war, but that didn’t stop a woman named Marina Raskova from rising to the rank of major in Russia’s powerful army.

Raskova then turned around and convinced her superiors to allow other women to fight on behalf of the Soviet cause against the Nazis. In the end, Russian leader Joseph Stalin decided to form female combat units. And the first one created was the bomber women, who would become known as the “Night Witches.” The women were called that because they used their airplanes in a very ingenious way.

They would wait to attack German strongholds until night fell. Then, once in the sky, they’d idle their engines as they soared over their target. Thus, there was only wind noise to indicate their presence, rather than engines. And the Germans couldn’t hear them coming to defend themselves. The Nazis grew so frustrated by the swishing sound of the wind against the planes that they took to calling the women “Night Witches.” They flew in low, bombed quietly, and got the hell out of there. The swishing made it sound like they were flying around on broomsticks!^[3]

7 Lyudmila Pavlichenko

The Night Witches weren’t the only badass Russian women involved in World War II. Take the story of Lyudmila Pavlichenko, who came to be known as “Lady Death” during her day, as proof of that. Pavlichenko wasn’t content with working as a nurse or a factory drone to support the war effort. Instead, she wanted to kill Nazis. So, the Soviets found a place for her as a member of the Red Army’s 25th Rifle Division.

In her role as a sniper for that crew, Pavlichenko is credited with 309 confirmed kills of Nazi soldiers and their allies during World War II. More than 300 Nazis dead at the hand of a single Russian woman! By the end of the war, she’d been promoted twice and ended her career as a lieutenant. In turn, she became the most feared female sniper in the history of battle. Yikes!

Near the end of the war, Pavlichenko traveled to the United States as a hero and even visited the White House. In doing so, she became the first-ever Soviet citizen honored by the Americans. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt welcomed her with open arms. She then went with Eleanor on a goodwill trip across the country. But not everybody was so enthralled with her!

Some people complained, crazily enough, that she didn’t wear enough makeup to their liking. But at a rally in Chicago, Pavlichenko shut down all that talk with one of the most badass quotes ever: “I am 25 years old, and I have killed 309 fascist occupants by now. Don’t you think, gentlemen, that you have been hiding behind my back for too long?” Can’t argue with that!^[4]

6 Manuela Sáenz

Manuela Sáenz de Vergara y Aizpuru was an Ecuadorian woman who became the unlikely face of revolution in South America after getting involved with the legendary Simón Bolivar in the middle of the 19th century. She came to be known as one of the toughest women on the continent during her life. It all started in the most unlikely of ways, too.

She married an English doctor in 1817 and set out to become a socialite in Lima, Peru. But as revolution came knocking on her door, she was quick to give up the good life and fight for independence as South American colonies and territories moved to throw Spain off their backs. By 1822, she had left her husband. Over the next eight years, she took on a romantic relationship and a revolutionary allyship with Bolivar himself.

Manuela was a complete madwoman for revolution, to put it mildly. She fought viciously—and literally—for Latin American independence. She wore a colonel’s uniform in public, which was a completely unheard-of and scandalous act at the time. She had a pet bear with whom she spent a lot of time, apparently fearlessly. She fomented revolt and led violent revolutionary clashes in her free time. And she once legendarily saved Bolivar from a sure assassination.

Bolivar was so thankful that Manuela had personally snuffed out the plot on his life that he began to publicly call her the “Libertadora del libertador,” which translates to the “liberator of the liberator.” Unfortunately for her, Bolivar ended up dying in 1830, and her role in the revolution was lessened from there. But modern-day historians have finally come to realize just how important (and tough!) she was during that period of South American history.^[5]

5 Ina Ramirez Perez

Let’s go off the beaten path a bit for our next badass woman. Her name was Ina Ramirez Perez, and she wasn’t famous or remarkable in really any way. Except that she performed a cesarean section on herself, then both she and the baby lived to tell about it. Wait, WHAT?!

It was March 2000, and Perez was in a rural place in Mexico when she went into labor. She didn’t have access to a phone to contact her husband to get her to a doctor, so she did the next best thing: She decided to deliver the baby on her own. But then, the s**t really hit the fan when she realized that the baby wasn’t going to come out the natural way, and she needed to instead cut open her belly to remove her child.

After 12 hours of excruciating labor and horrific pain, she managed to cut into her own abdomen to remove the baby. Amazingly, before she lost consciousness, she somehow got the baby out of her womb. She passed out for a time from the unimaginable pain, but the baby was alive and healthy. And when Perez woke up, she was, too.

One of her young children had run a long distance into town to get help, and healthcare workers finally sprung into action. They sewed up a seven-inch incision in Perez’s stomach and then took her to the nearest hospital, which was eight hours away. At the hospital, doctors further operated on Perez to ensure that she would recover from the self-surgery.

Incredibly, both she and the baby survived with no ill effects. They were each released from the hospital ten days later to go on to live otherwise normal lives. Months after that, Perez’s story reached the news wires, and people all over the world marveled at her incredible tenacity and grit. And now it’s our turn to marvel at it, too. Like we said at the beginning of this post… women are so much tougher than many believe, and Ina Ramirez Perez proved it once and for all!^[6]

4 Boudica

Boudica was the original British queen—centuries before there was such a thing! She was married to a man named Prasutagus in the first century AD when he died around 60 AD. That was just a few years after the Romans first invaded Britain. And after his death, the Romans immediately jumped on the chance to seize and annex his kingdom. But Boudica wasn’t down for that.

Her daughters had been violated during Rome’s initial invasion, and she herself had been abused. So she decided to start a rebellion against the Romans. She led a fighting force of indigenous British people against the powerful invaders. She was remarkably successful, too. At one point, her insurgency made it all the way to the Roman colony of Camulodunum, where they wiped out the city and its defenders.

Unfortunately, Boudica wouldn’t be long for the world. Governor Gaius Suetonius Paulinus eventually scrapped together a backup band of Roman fighters and confronted Boudica and her rag-tag team of British defenders on the battlefield. The Romans had superior weapons, better training, and more intelligent tactics on that day.

Thousands of Britons were slaughtered in the battle while trying to defend their homeland. According to the Roman historian Tacitus, Boudica and her daughters all consumed poison so as not to be captured alive. But you can’t say they didn’t go down without a wild, wild fight. Today, they are remembered as English heroes for standing up against colonial onslaught.^[7]

3 Buffalo Calf Road Woman

There isn’t a whole lot that historians know about Buffalo Calf Road Woman, but what they have uncovered is remarkable. Also known simply as “Brave Woman,” that moniker might be the understatement of the century. She was a 19th-century Northern Cheyenne female warrior who fought against General George Armstrong Custer and the Americans at the Battle of the Rosebud and then again at the Battle of Little Bighorn.

In 1876, after gold was discovered on the Northern Cheyenne’s land, the U.S. Army took to pushing them out of the area. They resisted, though. One day, Buffalo Calf Road Woman and her band of fellow Cheyenne were camping near Rosebud Creek. American soldiers attacked them, and one shot her brother’s horse right out from under him. He was about to be killed, but Buffalo Calf Road Woman swooped in and saved him on horseback.

A week later, at the Battle of Little Bighorn, Buffalo Calf Road Woman stepped in to fight. She battled right alongside her husband, firing a six-shooter at American military members. Of course, the allied tribal peoples won that vicious battle against General Custer and his men. Legend even has it that Buffalo Calf Road Woman and other Northern Cheyenne women were the last people to reach Custer right before his brutal death.

The Cheyenne fled following the battle, but they were eventually rounded up. Buffalo Calf Road Woman was taken to a prison, where she died three years later from diphtheria. Still, her role in fighting against the Americans’ unjust occupation of her people’s land is an incredible and harrowing tale.^[8]

2 Victoria Woodhull

With all due respect to the likes of Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton, women like that have nothing on Victoria Woodhull. You may not recognize her name, but Woodhull was the first woman to ever run for the office of American president. Born in 1838, she was a firecracker all her life. In 1872, she made history by running to become the president of the United States of America.

This was the first time a woman had ever dared to step out of her place in society and try to govern. Of course, her push to become president was greatly frowned upon. And she obviously didn’t win. But she made massive inroads in the nascent suffragette movement that would blow up in popularity in the early 20th century. It all came back to her!

Woodhull was an incredible woman in a lot of ways. For one, she was the first-ever female stockbroker on Wall Street. So, after pushing her way into that old boys’ club, trying to broach the political world in Washington, D.C., probably didn’t seem so hard. She was also a noted journalist and a great writer. But her most memorable activism came in the form of her push toward sexual freedom.

She was a major iconoclast for her time and advocated for free love and a woman’s right to engage in sex as she chose. After all, if the men could do it, why couldn’t the women, too? Political cartoons, newspaper editors, and the public alike tried their best to lampoon her, but they simply couldn’t dissuade Woodhull. The world needs more tough women like that who fight for what they believe in and don’t give a damn what the public thinks!^[9]

1 Queen Tomyris

We all know (or we SHOULD know) about Cyrus the Great, the famed founder of the Achaemenid Dynasty in Persia in the 6th century BC. But do you know anything about Queen Tomyris—the woman who took his head? Well, now you will!

Tomyris was a queen of the Massagetae, a nomadic Central Asian group of people remarkably skilled in horsemanship. She married into their royal family as a young woman. However, unfortunately for Tomyris, her husband died just a couple years later, and she was forced to rule the warring Massagetae people all alone. So she decided to do what her husband would have done and join them in battle.

See, news got to Cyrus that there was a widowed warrior queen available to be married. He offered Tomyris a marriage proposal with the express hopes of conquering her land. Tomyris wasn’t down for that, though. She didn’t want her people absorbed into the Achaemenid Empire, though, so she refused him.

Cyrus didn’t like that, so he laid a trap to lure the Massagetae army into his camp and take them by force. Unfortunately, the trap worked, and Cyrus ended up slaughtering and taking prisoner a very large sub-section of the Massagetae army. Worse still, one of the men Cyrus took captive was Queen Tomyris’s own son!

Enraged, the warrior queen penned a vicious letter to Cyrus, which read: “Give me back my son and depart unpunished from this country; it is enough that you have done despite to a third part of the host of the Massagetae. But if you will not do this, then I swear by the sun, the lord of the Massagetae, that for all you are so insatiate of blood, I will give you your fill thereof.” The letter alone was pretty badass, but it didn’t move Cyrus… for a while. Eventually, though, he did release Tomyris’s son. But then a new tragedy occurred: the son died by suicide.

Overcome with grief, Tomyris dedicated the rest of her life to avenging his death. She attacked Cyrus with such ferocity and anger that the Greek historian Herodotus was shocked enough to call her war-like ways “the stubbornest of all fights that were fought by men that were not Greek.” That, at the time, was a massive compliment. In the end, Tomyris was completely victorious against Cyrus. She even managed to find his dead body strewn across the battlefield. Still angry with him for causing the death of her son, she cut off Cyrus’s head, stuffed it in a sack, and took it back home with her as a war trophy. Badass, indeed!^[10]

fact checked by
Darci Heikkinen