Ditch the princesses: read these stories to your daughters instead
Seven women who changed their industries and how they challenge our assumptions.
“We cannot be what we do not see.”
These words are true for all of us — we rely on stories, examples, leaders, and images that tell us about who we are and who we can become. And without these, we are left, perhaps, with incorrect assumptions or worse, unfulfilled potential. Not okay.
But this isn’t an angry piece about gender or racial inequality. This is a joyful piece to celebrate the badass women who need to be seen.
These women changed the face of their industries, and not just by being the first, but by not accepting convention. By having the self-belief, drive and fearlessness to reinvent the status quo. To see a problem in a different way. To create something new of value.
Fluxx helps businesses do this every day. Again and again, we see monumental decisions being made on untested assumptions in the form of unasked questions or, worse, answers we’ve heard so frequently we accept them as truth. Here are seven women who changed history because they challenged their industry’s assumptions.
1. Lillian Gilbreth (1878–1972)
Perhaps one of the earliest design thinkers, Lillian was the first to combine the fields of psychology and mechanical engineering. She used a motion-picture camera to record work processes. This enabled her to redesign the machinery to suit workers’ movements, improving efficiency and reducing fatigue. Her research on fatigue was a forerunner to ergonomics, now a multi-billion dollar industry.
In addition, Lillian applied a human approach to develop innovations in workplace efficiency, such as improved lighting and regular breaks, as well as ideas for workplace psychological well-being, such as suggestion boxes and free books.
Lillian inspires us to discard accepted ideas of what is possible and imagine what is actually possible.
2. Madam C. J. Walker (1867–1919)
Often referred to as America’s first self-made female millionaire —Madam C. J. Walker is considered the founder of the African American hair care and cosmetics industry.
Triggered by her own hair loss, she experimented with various hair care recipes and soon began selling her own hair-growing formula developed specifically for African American women.
Walker later built a factory, hair salon, and beauty school to train her sales agents, and added a laboratory to help with research. At its peak, her company employed several thousand women as sales agents for its products. Three years before women even got the right to vote, her company trained and employed 20,000 women.
But Walker didn’t ‘just’ create a new (now billion-dollar) industry, she was one of the first champions of female entrepreneurs in the country. She showed black women how to budget, build their own businesses, and encouraged them to become financially independent. In 1917, she began organising her sales agents into state and local clubs which resulted in the National Beauty Culturists and Benevolent Association of Madam C. J. Walker Agents, the first national gatherings of women entrepreneurs to discuss business and commerce.
As an early example of female empowerment, Walker reminds us that women in business are stronger together.
3. Billie Jean King (b. 1943)
When the men’s tennis tour refused to address women’s concerns over pay disparity, King broke away to set up a women’s tour, with each of the “Original Nine” players signing a symbolic $1 contract. Shortly afterwards, she founded the Women’s Tennis Association. On August 12, 2009, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the United States’ highest civilian honour — by President Barack Obama for her advocacy work on behalf of women and the LGBTQ community. And in 2014, she founded the Billie Jean King Leadership Initiative, a non-profit dedicated to addressing the critical issues required to achieve diverse, inclusive leadership in the workforce.
“Be ahead of your time, that’s what you have to do,” she says.
Without her, there would have been no professional tennis for women. And her tireless advocacy work on behalf of women and the LGBTQ community continues to challenge the gender equality assumptions in sport, business and society.
King reminds us that, if they won’t let you play the game, make your own game and rewrite the rules.
4. Marie Van Brittan Brown (1922–1999)
An invention created from deeply felt fear, Marie devised the first home security system. With crime rates increasing in her New York City neighbourhood and police slow to respond to emergency calls, she took matters into her own hands.
The closed-circuit security system monitored visitors via camera and projected their images onto a television monitor. If the resident was concerned about the person at the door, there was a panic button that could be pushed to contact the police immediately.
Brown’s security system brought “CCTV” use into the home. Over 50 years later, the technology is installed in millions of homes and offices across the world.
5. Alice Waters (b. 1944)
Alice Waters is a chef at the forefront of the popular ‘slow food’ movement that has gained momentum internationally. Her local, organic, sustainably sourced approach to food has inspired a generation of chefs to follow in her footsteps. Waters is VP of Slow Food International, a global nonprofit organisation that promotes local farming initiatives and speaks out about how fast food ruins culture.
She also created The Edible Schoolyard founded on the principle that if we change the criteria for purchasing food in schools and buy directly from the farmers who regenerate the land, we will address climate change and teach the next generation the values of nourishment, stewardship and community.
Her attitude is simply, if you believe in something, try it.
In Alice’s industry, there was an assumption that customers only cared about getting the food they wanted, when they wanted it, at the cheapest price. It’s safe to say she’s disproved this assumption; her supporters in over 150 countries enjoy food with a commitment to the community and the environment.
6. Ayah Bdeir (b. 1982)
“The electronics industry is big and completely embedded in our lives. Let’s disrupt it.”
Ayah is the founder of LittleBits Electronics, a startup that makes LEGO-like plastic modules embedded with electronic circuits that snap together with magnets, a feat of elegant engineering.
But LittleBits is more than a game. It’s serious engineering, providing the building blocks for creating anything electronic, connecting it to the Internet, building software around it, and facilitating the creation of any connected device.
They’re growing three to fourfold annually. Her four-year-old startup has sold hundreds of kits in more than 100 countries. LittleBits is aiding learning in more than 2,200 schools and universities worldwide. Bdeir raised $44.2 million in a series B round, bringing total funding to $60 million since its inception in 2011. And her TED talk “Building blocks that blink, beep and teach” has garnered more than 1 million views, and a stint mentoring “the next generation of science and technology innovators” in design on the Doha-based TV show Stars of Science, Bdeir serves as a role model for girls.
The MoMa features Bdeir’s inventions in two exhibits that explored the relationship between science and design, and made them part of its permanent collection.
An absolute inspiration, Ayah reminds us that design isn’t about making things pretty, it’s about being attuned to human beings.
7. Limor Fried (b. 1980)
She’s known as “Ladyada”, a nickname lovingly paying homage to computer science pioneer Ada Lovelace.
Hailing a culture of sharing and open-sourcing, Limor is an influential force behind the growing “maker movement” made up of DIYers who love to tweak and tamper and recreate everyday technologies.
From her MIT dorm room, she founded Adafruit to make building electronics at home easier. Her goal was to create the best place online for learning electronics and making the best designed products for makers of all ages and skill levels.
Limor has ratcheted up a number of accolades including: the first female engineer on the cover of WIRED magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year, she ranked #11 in the top 20 USA manufacturing companies and #1 in New York City on the Inc. 5000 “fastest growing private companies”.
We can learn so much from ‘Ladyada’ but what leaves a lasting impression is how her culture of input and contribution — thousands of customers feeding off each other’s creativity, has transformed her products into something totally new and exciting.
These women, and so many more who could fill pages, demonstrate how important it is to challenge assumptions. In society when we subscribe to outdated views of what’s possible, and in business when we take the status quo as truth.
If you’d like to learn more about how to challenge assumptions using some of the principles these pioneering women inspire us with, take a look at our site: Fluxx.uk.com, subscribe to our newsletter and read the free download of our new book, The Plan Sucks.
You might also enjoy: Stop Talking and Start Listening: Behaviour Change at Scale
Jenn Torry is a Senior Consultant at Fluxx, a company that uses experiments to understand customers, helping clients to build better products. We work with organisations such as Condé Nast International, Energy Systems Catapult, National Grid, BEIS and Severn Trent Water.
