An important contribution to the contemporary discussion of gender and power, this work presents more than eighty women who, in the face of significant obstacles, acted courageously to change the world. From Cleopatra to Angela Merkel, Harriet Tubman to Eva Peron, and Empress Dowager Cixi to Joan of Arc, this book focuses on powerful women who changed the course of history across the centuries and around the globe. Leaders of military operations, activists for social…