Their full stories

Married at nine and unable to read, Savitribai was taught at home by her husband Jyotirao. In 1848 the couple opened one of the first schools for girls in Pune.

People threw mud and stones at her on the way to class, so she carried a spare saree to change into. She went on to open many more schools, a shelter for widows, and wrote poetry against caste and gender injustice. She died in 1897 while caring for plague patients.

Trained in horse riding, sword fighting and archery as a girl, Lakshmibai refused to hand Jhansi to the British after her husband's death.

In the uprising of 1857 she led her troops into battle herself, reportedly with her young son tied to her back. She fell fighting near Gwalior in 1858 and became a lasting symbol of resistance.

After losing her newborn son because there was no proper medical care, Anandibai decided to become a doctor herself.

She sailed alone to America and graduated from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1886. She returned home to serve, but tuberculosis took her life at only 21. Her courage opened the door for every Indian woman in medicine.

Born in Bhagalpur in 1861, Kadambini Ganguly became, with Chandramukhi Basu, one of the first two women graduates of the British Empire when she earned her degree from Bethune College in 1883.

She studied medicine in Calcutta and later trained further in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Back home she practised as a doctor, worked for women in coal mines, and was among the first women to speak at the Indian National Congress. She died in 1923.

Born in London in 1847, Annie Besant was a writer, speaker and campaigner for workers and women before she made India her home in 1893.

She founded schools, including the Central Hindu College that grew into Banaras Hindu University, launched the Home Rule League in 1916, and in 1917 became the first woman president of the Indian National Congress. She died in Adyar, Chennai, in 1933.

A celebrated poet by her teens, Sarojini joined the freedom movement and marched alongside Gandhi in the Salt Satyagraha.

In 1925 she became the first Indian woman president of the Indian National Congress, and after independence she became the first woman Governor of an Indian state, Uttar Pradesh.

Born in Surat in 1897, Hansa Mehta studied philosophy and journalism and joined the freedom movement, going to jail for picketing foreign cloth.

She was one of the fifteen women in the Constituent Assembly that wrote India's Constitution. At the United Nations she pushed to change the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from "all men" to "all human beings". She later led the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda as Vice Chancellor and died in 1995.

Born in Lucknow in 1887 into the royal family of Kapurthala, Amrit Kaur left a life of comfort to work as Mahatma Gandhi's secretary for sixteen years.

A member of the Constituent Assembly, she became independent India's first Health Minister in 1947 and served for ten years. She led the founding of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and campaigned against child marriage and purdah. She died in 1964.

Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister in 1966 and led the country for more than fifteen years across two terms.

Her time in office included the Green Revolution, the 1971 war and the birth of Bangladesh. She remains the only woman to have held the office in India.

Kiran Bedi joined the Indian Police Service in 1972, the first woman to do so.

As Inspector General of Tihar Jail she brought education, yoga and meditation to prisoners. She later served at the United Nations as police adviser and became Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry.

Born in a village in Uttarakhand, Bachendri climbed her first peak at twelve during a school picnic.

On 23 May 1984, she reached the summit of Mount Everest, surviving an avalanche on the way. She has since trained hundreds of young climbers.

Born in Pathanamthitta, Kerala, in 1927, Fathima Beevi studied law at a time when very few women did, and enrolled as an advocate in 1950.

She rose through the courts of Kerala and in 1989 became the first woman judge of the Supreme Court of India, and the first Muslim woman in any country's highest court. She later served as Governor of Tamil Nadu and died in 2023.

Growing up in Karnal, Haryana, Kalpana loved drawing aeroplanes. She studied aeronautical engineering in Chandigarh, then earned a PhD in the United States.

She flew on the Space Shuttle Columbia in 1997 and again in 2003. She died when Columbia broke apart on return, but her journey still inspires millions of girls to look up.

Born in 1975 in Andhra Pradesh, Karnam Malleswari began weightlifting as a girl alongside her sisters.

She became a world champion in the 1990s and at the Sydney 2000 Olympics won bronze, making her the first Indian woman to win an Olympic medal. She later went on to head the Delhi Sports University.

Born in Maharashtra in 1934, Pratibha Patil trained as a lawyer and entered politics at 27, winning her first state assembly election in 1962.

She served as a minister in Maharashtra, a member of Parliament and Governor of Rajasthan. In 2007 she became India's first woman President, serving until 2012.

The daughter of farm workers in Manipur, Mary began boxing secretly because her father feared she would get hurt.

She won six World Championship titles and an Olympic bronze in London 2012, much of it after becoming a mother. She is one of the greatest amateur boxers in history.

Avani was one of the first three women commissioned as fighter pilots in the Indian Air Force in 2016, along with Bhawana Kanth and Mohana Singh.

In 2018 she flew a MiG 21 solo, a first for an Indian woman, proving the skies have no gender.

Sindhu travelled more than 50 km each day as a child to train in Hyderabad.

She won silver at the Rio 2016 Olympics and bronze at Tokyo 2020, becoming the first Indian woman to win two individual Olympic medals, and was world champion in 2019.

Born in Lucknow in 1975, Ritu Karidhal grew up fascinated by the Moon and the stars and studied physics and aerospace engineering.

She joined ISRO in 1997, served as deputy operations director of the Mars Orbiter Mission, and was mission director of Chandrayaan 2 in 2019. She is often called one of India's "Rocket Women".

As a girl in Manipur, Mirabai carried heavy loads of firewood that her older brother struggled with.

At the Tokyo 2020 Olympics she won silver, India's first medal of those Games, lifting a total of 202 kg.

Born in 1958 into a Santhal family in Odisha, Droupadi Murmu became the first woman in her village to go to college and worked as a teacher before entering politics.

She served as a minister in Odisha and as the first woman Governor of Jharkhand. In 2022 she became India's first tribal woman President, and the youngest person to hold the office.

Born in Haryana in 2002, Manu Bhaker tried boxing, skating and martial arts before picking up a pistol at 14.

She won World Cup and Commonwealth Games gold as a teenager. At the Paris 2024 Olympics she won two bronze medals, becoming the first Indian to win two medals at a single Games since independence.

Born in Moga, Punjab, in 1989, Harmanpreet Kaur grew up playing cricket with boys and made her India debut in 2009.

Her 171 not out against Australia at the 2017 World Cup is one of the great innings in the game. As captain she led India to its first Women's Cricket World Cup title in 2025.

Kumkum Mohod is an Indian recurve archer.

In 2026 she became the first Indian woman to win recurve individual gold at the Asian Games, a breakthrough moment for Indian archery.

Shakti Sharma is an officer of the Indian Air Force.

In 2026 she became the first woman officer outside the medical branch to be promoted to Air Vice Marshal, opening the top ranks of the Air Force to women in every branch.

Shabana Azmi made her film debut in Shyam Benegal's Ankur in 1974. The performance established her in India's parallel cinema movement, where everyday lives and social questions took centre stage. She went on to work across art-house and mainstream films with directors including Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Deepa Mehta.

Her performances in Ankur, Arth, Khandhar, Paar and Godmother earned five National Film Awards for Best Actress. Beyond acting, she has supported slum dwellers' welfare and served as a nominated Rajya Sabha member. In 2024, MAMI celebrated her fifty years in cinema, recognising a career that connects artistic craft with public engagement.

Zohra Sehgal joined Uday Shankar's dance troupe in 1935 and toured internationally before building a remarkable career in theatre and film. She worked with the Indian People's Theatre Association and Prithviraj Kapoor's Prithvi Theatre, bringing movement, wit and presence to the stage. She also choreographed for films including Baazi and Awaara.

Her later career included British television and Indian films such as Dil Se and Cheeni Kum. Audiences discovered her across generations, rather than in just one era. She received the Padma Shri in 1998, the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship in 2004 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2010. She died in 2014 at the age of 102.

Lawyer and organiser Ela Bhatt founded the Self-Employed Women's Association, SEWA, in 1972. It organised women whose work often fell outside formal labour protections, including street vendors, home-based workers and other self-employed earners. Her approach treated these women as workers with skills and rights, not simply as recipients of charity.

SEWA combined union organising with cooperative initiatives. Its cooperative bank, founded in 1974, helped women gain access to financial services. Bhatt also helped build wider networks of informal workers. She received the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1977 and the Right Livelihood Award in 1984. Her legacy is a practical vision of empowerment through organisation, financial independence and recognition.

Born in Kerala, P. T. Usha became one of India's leading track-and-field athletes in the 1980s. She competed at the Moscow Olympics in 1980 at sixteen and won two silver medals at the 1982 Asian Games. At Los Angeles in 1984, she finished fourth in the 400-metre hurdles, missing an Olympic medal by one hundredth of a second.

At the 1986 Asian Games in Seoul, Usha won four gold medals and a silver. Her performances gave Indian girls a visible place in international athletics. She later worked to nurture young athletes and, in 2022, became the first woman president of the Indian Olympic Association, extending her contribution from competition to sports leadership.

E. K. Janaki Ammal studied botany at Presidency College in Madras and earned a doctorate from the University of Michigan in 1931. Her research explored plant cells, genetics and sugarcane breeding. She worked at the Sugarcane Breeding Institute in Coimbatore and later at scientific institutions in Britain, building an international career in a field with few women.

Returning to India in 1951, she helped reorganise the Botanical Survey of India and later led its Central Botanical Laboratory in Allahabad. Her work connected laboratory research with the study of India's flora. The Indian National Science Academy elected her a Fellow in 1957. Her story honours the patient, detailed research behind lasting scientific progress.

Amrita Sher-Gil trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, developing her skills as a figurative painter. After returning to India in 1934, she increasingly made Indian people and everyday life central to her work. Her paintings brought European training into conversation with Indian artistic traditions, creating a distinctive visual language.

Her career was cut short when she died in 1941 at twenty-eight, but her influence on modern Indian painting endured. The National Gallery of Modern Art holds a significant collection of her work. Through her depictions of women and ordinary lives, Sher-Gil made subjects often overlooked by society impossible to overlook on canvas.

Rukmini Devi Arundale was a dancer and cultural organiser who helped bring Bharatanatyam to wider public audiences. In January 1936 she established an arts centre in Adyar, Chennai, initially called the International Centre for Arts. It became Kalakshetra, an institution devoted to dance, music and arts education.

She guided its growth and helped establish its lasting home in Thiruvanmiyur. Training, performance and artistic discipline were central to her vision. Her legacy lives not only in performances but also in the teachers, students and artistic communities the institution nurtured. Her story shows how building an institution can allow an individual passion to serve future generations.

Born into a musical family in Madurai, M. S. Subbulakshmi began performing publicly as a child. She became one of the best-known Carnatic vocalists of the twentieth century, bringing classical and devotional music to wide audiences through concerts and recordings. Her film appearances included the title role in Meera.

In 1968 she became the first woman to receive the Music Academy Madras's Sangita Kalanidhi title. The Ramon Magsaysay Award followed in 1974, recognising her music and support for public causes. In 1998 she received the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award. Her career joins artistic excellence with the power of music to reach and support a wider community.