16 of History's Most Rebellious Women
Susan B. Anthony, the U.S.
A male schoolteacher once told young Susan B. Anthony that she didn't need to learn long division because "a girl needs to know how to read the Bible and count her egg money, nothing more." She never forgot the slight. In 1846 Anthony, then a 26-year-old school headmistress, began campaigning for equal pay for female teachers. Five years later, she met fellow women's-rights advocate Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the outspoken duo began touring the country arguing the case for women's suffrage. In 1868 Anthony first published The Revolution, a women's-rights newspaper, and a year later she founded the National Woman's Suffrage Association. Plenty of men tried to stop her along the way. U.S. marshals arrested Anthony for voting illegally in the 1872 presidential election, and a judge later fined her $100. "I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty," she said at the time. Anthony died in 1906 — 14 years before the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote. —William Lee Adams