On International Women’s Day, science journalist Angela Saini profiles six tenacious women through history whose advocacy and research rocked the scientific establishment and transformed existing preconceptions about gender and ability

The image of Florence Nightingale floating angelically along hospital corridors bearing a beacon of light has gone down in history. But does this simplistic image obscure a much more impressively complex life and career? Mark Bostridge reveals more about her achievements

For more than 100 years from the late 15th century, women came to hold positions of power in Europe. Sarah Gristwood traces the intricate network of interrelated queens and regents

The daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth I (1533–1603) was England’s ‘Gloriana’ – a virgin queen who saw herself as wedded to her country and who brought almost half a century of stability after the turmoil of her siblings’ short reigns. Here, historian Tracy Borman reveals seven surprising facts about her life

Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. It’s a mnemonic device many of us learned as children to remember the fates of the six women – Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and Katherine Parr – who became Henry VIII’s queens between 1509 and 1547. But who were these women and just what did it take to catch the eye of a king?

Sara Cockerill explodes five of the myths that have grown up around one of medieval Europe's most remarkable women…

Your guide to English aviator Amy Johnson, who was the first woman to make a solo flight from England to Australia...

HistoryExtra's digital section editor Rachel Dinning rounds up 20 inspirational and motivational quotes from some of the most world-changing women in history – from pioneering women like Marie Curie and Amelia Earhart, to literary greats Charlotte Brontë and Virginia Woolf...

Ada Lovelace (1815–52) is today regarded as one of the most important figures in the early history of the computer. Here, biographer James Essinger explores her life and legacy...

The first female editor of a black American newspaper was also a major civil rights activist. Kira Cochrane introduces a courageous woman who fought to end lynchings