The Nazis had a 5 million-franc bounty on the head of the spy known as the "White Mouse."

In 1943, Nazi authorities were on the hunt for a spy they had nicknamed the "White Mouse" because of her ability to evade their capture, no matter what trap they set. The Gestapo had declared her their most wanted person, and placed a 5 million-franc bounty on her head. Their quarry was Nancy Wake, one of Britain's Special Operations Executive's most capable secret agents. Famous for her fearlessness, Wake would continue to evade her pursuers for the rest of the war, at one point even hurling herself from a train window to escape capture, and eventually become one of the Allies' most decorated servicewomen of World War II. Continue reading → Continue reading

Katherine Johnson calculated -- by hand -- the flight trajectories for a number of historic missions, including the Apollo 11 flight to the Moon in 1969.

When President Barack Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Katherine Johnson in 2015, few people had even heard her name — but thanks to the smash success of the book Hidden Figures and its movie adaptation, this groundbreaking mathematician has become an inspiration for girls everywhere! Continue reading → Continue reading

A Mighty Girl's top picks of books about girls and their beloved canine companions!

A loyal companion, a good listener, a helper when needed... a dog can be the most faithful companion that a girl ever has! And whether the dog your Mighty Girl loves is a family pet, a library reading buddy, or a neighborhood friend, she'll love reading stories that show her just how special that relationship is. Continue reading → Continue reading

A Mighty Girl's top picks of books about the love between girls and their grandparents.

Many Mighty Girls know how special a relationship with grandparents can be: from special treats to family traditions, grandparents can offer a unique family connection to girls of all ages. And while these relationships can't always be physically close — and sometimes face obstacles, from different languages to a different perspective on the world — grandparents play an important role in the lives of many Mighty Girls. Continue reading → Continue reading

A Mighty Girl's top picks of picture books about trailblazing girls and women throughout history.

If you flip through a typical history book, you might think, as historian Gerda Lerner once wrote, that "ostensibly one-half the human race is doing everything significant and the other half doesn’t exist." Far too often, women's contributions have been neglected in history books and school curriculums — fortunately, there are growing numbers of wonderful books being published for young readers about girls and women who made their mark on history. And, there's no better time to share these stories and make sure that the next generation — girls and boys alike — appreciates the important and diverse roles that women have played in history! Continue reading → Continue reading

"More often than not, bright girls believe that their abilities are innate and unchangeable."

Parents of bright girls are often shocked to discover that their daughters can be quick to assume that they can't succeed at something new and challenging. "In my experience, smart and talented [girls and women] rarely realize that one of the toughest hurdles they'll have to overcome to be successful lies within. We judge our own abilities not only more harshly, but fundamentally differently, than men do," writes psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson, the author of Nine Things Successful People Do Differently. "At the 5^th grade level, girls routinely outperform boys in every subject, including math and science... [but] bright girls [are] much quicker to doubt their ability, to lose confidence, and to become less effective learners as a result." By understanding why bright girls question their capabilities, parents can find more effective ways to support their daughters, building their resilience and confidence so they can take on the world. Continue reading → Continue reading

The top books and films for children and adults about the 72-year fight for women's suffrage in the United States.

For children today, it's hard to imagine a time when women couldn't vote; realizing that they've had that right for only just over 100 years is astounding. It's equally shocking when they learn that women had to fight for 72 years before the 19th Amendment — which stated that no citizen could be denied the right to vote on account of sex — became law. So it's imperative that we teach today's children about the struggle for women's suffrage, not only to honor the dedication and sacrifices of the women who led the Women's Suffrage Movement, but also to ensure that future generations don't take the right to vote for granted. Continue reading → Continue reading

The Apollo 11 moon landing nearly ended in failure -- until Margaret Hamilton's flight software saved the day.

In this iconic photograph, pioneering computer scientist Margaret Hamilton stands next to the computer code that she and her team wrote to guide the Apollo spacecraft to the moon! Hamilton was the lead software designer for NASA’s Apollo program, and her forward thinking saved the 1969 Apollo 11 mission when the flight software she designed prevented a last-minute abort of the famous landing which brought the first humans to the Moon. Over the course of her career, Hamilton developed the concepts of asynchronous software, priority scheduling, and Human-in-the-loop decision capability, which became the foundation of modern software design. She also fought for programming to be given the respect it deserved, coining the term "software engineering" ; after all, as her work showed, software could make the difference between failure and a groundbreaking success. Continue reading → Continue reading

Dr. Gerty Cori's groundbreaking work cracked the secrets of glucose, paving the way for treatments for diseases like diabetes.

The groundbreaking scientist Dr. Gerty Cori was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in Medicine and the first American woman to win a Nobel Prize in a scientific field. She shared the Nobel with her husband and lifelong research partner, Carl. Although their experience and education was identical, it took thirteen years before she was finally promoted to the same rank as him at the university where they worked. Together, the Coris made numerous breakthroughs in medical research, including discoveries that paved the way for understanding and developing treatments for diabetes and other metabolic diseases. Despite the institutionalized sexism she faced throughout her career, Gerty's tremendous scientific mind could not be denied — and her work would change the field of biochemistry forever. Continue reading → Continue reading

Mary Golda Ross spent over 30 years at Lockheed, much of it as a member of the top-secret Skunk Works program involved in cutting edge research during the early years of the space race.

When Mary Golda Ross, the first Native American aerospace engineer, began her career at the aerospace company Lockheed during World War II, women engineers were rare and most companies expected them to leave after the war was over to make room for returning men. Ross was such a phenomenal talent, however, that she not only stayed at Lockheed for over 30 years years, she became an integral member of the top-secret Skunk Works program involved in cutting edge research during the early years of the space race. As one of 40 engineers in Lockheed's Advanced Development Projects division, Ross was the only female engineer on the team and the only Native American. Her research was so secret that, even in 1994, she had to be coy with an interviewer about her work: "I was the pencil pusher, doing a lot of research," she said. "My state of the art tools were a slide rule and a Friden computer." Continue reading → Continue reading