The Most Influential Women of Our Time

12 Emmeline Pankhurst (third from the left) leading the huge protest march along the Victoria Embankment to ask the British government to be able to replace the munitions factories workers who had been sent to the front. The protesters included mothers and workwomen, as well as exponents of London’s upper middle class and aristocracy, who made a decisive contribution to the suffragette cause by financing the movement and putting great pressure on the most influential politicians.

13 A newspaper photograph of the police arresting Pankhurst and other suffragettes in 1908. Press coverage was indispensable for them, as they aimed at having their sensational protests on the front pages in order to influence public opinion. In fact, it was a journalist, Charles Hands, who coined the term ‘suffragette’, in the Daily Mail of 10 January 1906, when referring to the militant women.

The government responded to the first demonstrations by letting mice loose in the protest marches and using tubes to force feed the demonstrators on a hunger strike. But it grossly underestimated the overwhelming sympathy elicited by those charming ladies, who surprisingly proved quite capable of tossing stones against government buildings and smashing shop windows. “These are methods such as have been adopted by men in every revolution,” declared Emmeline, who was jailed and released time and again and who replied to the judges without lowering her gaze: “We cannot make any orderly protest because we lack the means whereby citizens may do such a thing: we have not a vote...” The English suffragette cause enjoyed its first victory in 1918, when married women over 30 were given the right to vote, but the struggle for universal women’s suffrage ended in victory only in 1928. Emmeline was not able to see her dream come true; she died a few days before the Equal Franchise Act was passed, leaving behind three daughters, all activists, and millions of new women voters.

Gertrude Stein

She was an art collector, avant-garde author, and the hostess of one of the most vivacious artistic salons in Paris, as well as the muse of Picasso, whose portrait of her was destined to change the history of painting.

In the early 20th century Paris was the capital of the world and the Stein home in Rue de Fleurus was its vital focal point, a picturesque and disorderly salon frequented by avant-garde artists, poets, composers and writers such as Pound, Apollinaire, Picabia, Satie, Cocteau, Hemingway. The hostess was an American, Gertrude Stein, a stout woman with short-cropped hair who welcomed her guests garbed in a loose-fitting men’s overshirt and flowery vests, with an air of self-assurance that verged on arrogance. She was also an art collector with an extraordinary nose for talent who covered every inch of the walls with works by still relatively unknown artists – Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse and Braque. Struck by her non-conformism, the famous art dealer Ambroise Vollard claimed she was the only customer who collected paintings “not because she’s rich, but despite the fact that she isn’t.” With her mannish figure she was certainly not beautiful, yet she posed for many of the great artists of her time, from Picabia to Cecil Beaton and Man Ray, and even including Picasso, who in 1906 painted a portrait of Gertrude that marked the end of the artist’s Rose period and arguably heralded Cubism. She said of the portrait: “[…] it is the only reproduction of me which is always I, for me.” Gertrude wrote at night, after her friends had left, but her innovative style made it difficult for her to find a publisher. Yet she was a celebrity in Paris, thanks to the atmosphere of her salon, where anything could be said without hypocrisy, including expressing one’s homosexuality. In fact, Gertrude never concealed her sexual orientation, and when she met Alice Toklas in 1907 she immediately knew she had found the companion she had been looking for.

Gertrude Stein was born in Pennsylvania to an upper middle class Jewish family and was supported by an annuity guaranteed by her brother Michael’s company. At Radcliffe College she was a student of William James, with whom she studied the relationship between writing and consciousness, which later played a crucial role in her avant-garde stream of consciousness writings.

Leni Riefenstahl

The light and shadows of an extremely long life suspended between genius and opportunism. Her black-and-white films celebrated the glory of the Third Reich; then she left her past behind her and immersed herself in the colors of Africa and the underwater world.

One warm spring evening in 1932, a couple was walking on a beach along the Baltic Sea talking about cinema and great ideals. The woman was the thirty year-old Leni Riefenstahl, who was having a difficult time making a name for herself in the entertainment world. The man was Adolf Hitler, who was about to become the Führer and was bewitched by the fascination of this young film director, so much so that he promised: “Once we come to power, you must make my films.” A year later he kept his word and had her direct the films of the Nazi party’s huge rallies, which Leni’s masterful work transformed into powerful propaganda tools. International fame arrived with Olympia, which documented the 1936 Olympic Games held in Berlin, a grandiose film shot by a staff of 40 cameramen that took Riefenstahl two years to edit and was acclaimed by critics and public alike. She could count on all the best technology of the time to realize brilliant, pioneering techniques that produced memorable sequences. These included tracking shots, low-angle views of races, and mounting small cameras onto balloons and offering a reward to those who found and returned the filmed material. When World War Two broke out Germany seemed to be an irresistible force and Leni followed the victorious troops with her cameras, at least up to the time the tide began to turn against Hitler. She was accused of being a collaborator of the Nazi regime, was imprisoned and then acquitted by the war war-crimes tribunal, which evidently believed her testimony and claims of innocence when she insisted she was merely a chronicler of the collective seduction the Führer had wrought on his people: “I only explained why millions of Germans believed in him.”

Riefenstahl in 1940 on the set of the film Tiefland. This work was interrupted by the war and was finished only in 1954, taking its place in the history of cinema as the feature film with the longest production time in history.

Estée Lauder

With a French mother, a Czechoslovakian father and American inventiveness, Estée Lauder is the personification and the myth of the self-made American. Starting off from nothing, this woman introduced samples, founded a cosmetics empire and made philanthropy a moral obligation.

“I never dreamed about success. I worked for it.” This statement reveals the essence of the personality of Estée Lauder, the founder of one of the leading cosmetics empires, the only woman on the Time magazine list of the twenty most influential business persons in the 20th century. Her story – marked by talent, a great nose for business, and innovation – had humble beginnings in 1930, when she opened her first shop, earning the trust of her customers with an innovative sales technique called ‘talk and touch’. This simple yet ingenious idea consisted in promoting her products by applying them on her customers’ face to demonstrate how effective they were and thus enourage them to make a purchase. A short time later came another stroke of genius: she skilfully obtained counter space at Saks Fifth Avenue, the luxury department store in New York City, which ordered 800 dollars of her product. And thanks to another brilliant idea it sold out in less than two days, because the volcanic Estée offered a free sample of her products with every purchase. In 1992 Estée Lauder Companies initiated one of the most important campaigns to combat breast cancer, known as the Pink Ribbon. This initiative was begun by Estée’s daughterin-law Evelyn Lauder, who had entered the firm, demonstrating a talent for business worthy of her famous mother-in-law.

After eliciting the pride and vanity of a new generation of women, convinced that beauty is a moral obligation, a way of gratifying oneself first of all, Estée died at the age of 95 in her Manhattan home, leaving a company that now has almost 30,000 employees, hope for a cure for cancer, and one of her most famous quotations, which women should repeat every time they look in the mirror: “The most beautiful face in the world? It’s yours.”

Estée Lauder with a customer in 1966. Her relationship with her husband Joseph Lauder, who was also her business partner, was passionate but rather unstable. After the birth of their son Leonard they divorced in 1939, only to remarry three years later (their second son Ronald was born in 1944) and remained together until his death in 1982.

Evita Perón

The First Lady with a Cinderella-like past changed the technique of communicating with the masses. She had a short and controversial life, consisting of surges of generosity and overwhelming sentiment fit for a Broadway musical.

In February 1946 Argentina had just elected its new president, but when Juan Domingo Perón appeared on the presidential balcony of the Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires, all eyes were on the beautiful blond woman, as elegant as a queen, standing next to him and greeting the crowd.

Eva Maria Duarte, better known as Evita, enchanted the crowd with her Hollywood star smile, her elaborate hairstyle and her Christian Dior attire. But she had not forgotten her miserable childhood, marked by poverty and humiliation, when she was only the illegitimate daughter of a rancher in a dismal village in Las Pampas. With her charisma she transformed those early years of suffering into powerful support for her husband’s colorful populism: “I confess that I have an ambition, one single, great ambition: I would like the name of Evita to figure somewhere in the history of my country, and that people would say, ‘There was a woman alongside General Perón who took to him the hopes and needs of the people to satisfy them, and her name was Evita’.”

And she added: “May the nation let him save them as he saved me.” When they first met he was only an undersecretary at the Ministry of Labor and was 24 years older than Evita. But his charm immediately captivated her. They soon married, and in two years the young girl who had been an outcast became a revolutionary First Lady who played a role in her husband’s policies as the spokeswoman of the poor and of women. It was thanks to her efforts that the law granting women the right to vote was approved by the Argentine Parliament in September 1947. She is also to be credited with opening new schools and the first summer camps for the poverty-stricken young, as well as with the construction of Ciudad Evita (Evita City), a new town with thousands of homes for the most needy, and of the Republica de los Niños (Children’s Republic) which, it seems, inspired Walt Disney to create Disney World.

Evita Perón was an icon of style. In order to resemble her, all the women wanted to dye their hair blond, copy her hairdo with elaborate chignons, and wear the suits she wore. Evita was painstaking about her image and watched the films of her public speeches at a private screening hall in order to correct gestures and words and be more prepared the next time around.

Audrey Hepburn

She was an incomparable icon of style, grace, elegance and human sensitivity. After conquering Hollywood with her doe eyes and the little black dress created for her by Givenchy, she put her fame at the service of children by becoming ambassador for UNICEF.

In a period dominated by such sex bombs as Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn achieved stardom with her minute physique and ballerina-like posture, rejecting the clichés and concentrating on her being so different. Tall, thin, elegant, and always smiling, she conquered her fellow actors and film directors with her absolutely personal style. “You looked around and suddenly there was this dazzling creature looking like a wild-eyed doe prancing in the forest. Everybody on the set was in love within five minutes,” director Billy Wilder commented. Having been deprived of a happy childhood because of the war and the Nazi occupation of Holland, she dreamed of becoming a ballerina. Then she turned to acting and eventually began her career in Hollywood, being awarded two Oscars, three Golden Globes, one Emmy, one Grammy Award and four BAFTAs for roles that became legendary, such as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Sabrina, Princess Ann in Roman Holiday, and Eliza in My Fair Lady. Far removed from the self-indulgence and vices of Hollywood stars, she got up at four in the morning to go over her lines and chose her wardrobe for her films by herself, opting for the creations of stylist Hubert de Givenchy, with whom she established one of the most solid and extraordinary working relationships and friendships in the history of cinema, which began with an amusing and incredible misunderstanding. As Givenchy said, “I was expecting Katherine Hepburn at my studio […] She was still unknown but she conquered me immediately and since then I have never stopped dressing her.” Her thin silhouette turned the little black dress – the sleeveless dress with a simple and clean line, and delicately tightened at the bottom – into a myth; it soon became the object of desire for millions of women.

Audrey Hepburn was the daughter of a Dutch baroness and an English gentleman. She was born in Belgium and was registered at the British consulate under the name Audrey Kathleen Ruston, obtaining a British passport that she kept all her life. At the end of World War Two she changed her family name to Hepburn-Ruston, and then decided to call herself simply Audrey Hepburn.

Wangari Maathai

In Africa the women are responsible for farming and thus are the first to become aware of environmental damage that jeopardizes agricultural production, dries the wells and pollutes their children’s food. As a true African, Wangari Maathai was quick to realize that it had to be women who could guarantee the success of the project of sustainable development she had in mind, which derived from a simple but ingenious idea, like so many great inventions that have changed our world. First of all she distributed young plants among the women who worked in the fields; then she made sure they were rewarded for every plant that grew, thus stimulating them to take special care of the plants, which with time became immense green belts of trees that not only prevented the erosion of the soil, but also afforded shade and were a source of timber.

With her Green Belt Movement she planted more than 30 million trees in Africa, supported by thousands of women who believed in her idea, which was simple but revolutionary and led to her winning the Nobel Peace Prize. 1 April 1940, Nyeri, Kenya • 25 September 2011, Nairobi, Kenya

A biologist, environmentalist, and human rights activist, Wangari Maathai was the pioneer in forest conservation with her Green Belt Movement. Besides winning the Nobel Peace Prize, over the years the ‘Mistress of the Forests’ received numerous international honors and awards, including the Global 500 Roll of Honor as part of the UN Environment Program, the Goldman Environmental Award, the Africa Prize for Leadership, and the Better World Society award.

202 and 202-203 Diana in Angola in January 1997. The country was destroyed by twenty years of civil war and millions of landmines were scattered a bit everywhere. Diana strongly supported the eradication of minefields, just as she had done in Bosnia. She did not limit her contribution to merely posing for photographs, but actually risked being hurt by walking in single file together with deminers in fields that had been only partially cleared and by meeting the victims of the explosions. While speaking about her commitment to humanitarian projects, she said: “I don't consider myself the queen of this nation. I’d like to be a queen in people's hearts.”

Laura Dekker

Dolls? No way. Armed with courage, determination and passion, this teenager with the sea in her veins is the youngest person to sail around the world alone.

She was born in a boat, and this is no metaphor. Laura Dekker came into this world in the harbor of Whangarei, in New Zealand, while her parents, who are expert sailors, were sailing between the Indian and Pacific oceans. Laura spent the first four years of her life in the sea, landing only occasionally before settling down on dry land in Holland. But the call of the waves did not wait long to tempt her again. When she was six she asked for her first boat as a birthday present, an Optimist, which she learned to pilot by herself, coping with waves, knots and a few capsizes. Then she received a new and larger ‘toy’, a two-mast, 38-foot (11.5 m) ketch that she called Guppy. With that sailing boat, Laura realized her dream and set an astounding record for her age (she was only 16 years old), circumnavigating the globe by herself. To accomplish this amazing feat she had to battle against waves ten times her height and strong contrary winds, and above all against the bureaucratic complications imposed on her. Despite the total support of her parents, the Dutch social services declared their opposition to the project; at that age, they stated, one goes to school and not all alone on a sailing boat. But Laura, besides being brave, is also stubborn, and after a nerve-racking legal battle she finally succeeded in setting sail from Gibraltar on 21 August 2010 and sailing 27,000 miles (more than 43,000 km) in 518 days – all by herself, in all sorts of conditions and at all latitudes. One concession was made to ensure her safety: her navigation was not to be continuous but divided into various stages. Laura documented her feat with a video camera, filming herself during her stops in the Galapagos Islands, Australia and South Africa while preparing a meal (“Ravioli are not fit for the sea in a gale,” she said with a wink), repairing the sailboat and observing the dolphins that accompanied her on her journey, making her feel a bit less lonely.

Laura on board her sailboat Guppy. After completing her round-the-world voyage, she continued to sail, establishing her base in New Zealand. In 2017 she donated her famous boat to a non-profit Los Angeles organization, LifeSail.

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Translation: Richard Pierce

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