As the saying goes, behind every great man is a great woman. And Time magazine is recognizing that behind every one of its man-of-the-year covers over the last century, there have been great women deserving of recognition but often overshadowed.
So now the publication is more or less retconning that issue with its new 100 “Women of the Year” list, which highlights the women (or, groups of fierce females in business, politics, STEM, equal rights, sports and entertainment) who have deserved to grace its covers from 1920 through 2019.
Granted, Time magazine (owned by Salesforce CRM, -3.46% CEO Marc Benioff) did switch to naming a person of the year in 1999, with teen climate activist Greta Thunberg getting the nod last year. But the new list released in time for Women’s History Month has drawn up 100 covers featuring all of these women — including 89 new covers designed to fit the era they feature, such a charcoal drawings for the 1920s covers, while also re-releasing the 11 original covers that featured a woman as the person of the year.
“The world has changed and Time has too, but there have always been women worthy of Time’s cover,” wrote Time’s executive editor, Kelly Conniff, in the cover story, explaining that the 100 finalists were selected from 600 nominations by the magazine’s staff and experts around the world. “The feminist movement is always about progress, and acknowledging the role of women in history is as much about looking ahead as it is about re-examining the past.”
Many of the honorees are U.S. political figures, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who became the first female presidential nominee of a major U.S. political party in 2016, and Clinton’s fellow first ladies Eleanor Roosevelt (representing the year 1948), Jacqueline Kennedy (1962) and Michelle Obama (2008).
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg (1996) and retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (2000) are also on the list. Nancy Pelosi (2010), the first female speaker of the House who was instrumental in passing the Affordable Care Act and launching the recent impeachment trial against President Trump, is also recognized.
And civil-rights leaders including the Bus Riders (Rosa Parks, Claudette Colvin, Aurelia Browder and Mary Louise Smith in 1955), the Black Lives Matter co-founders (Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi for 2013) and the #MeToo movement’s Silence Breakers (including Ashley Judd and Rose McGowan in 2017) are celebrated, as well. So is Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai (2009), who was shot in the face by a Taliban gunman on a school bus in Pakistan in 2012 yet never ceased speaking out.
Female leaders in business and labor include Coco Chanel, described as a “shrewd businesswoman” who developed one of the world’s most famous perfumes as well as the iconic Chanel suit — not to mention the iconic logo of two linked C’s. She graces the 1924 cover.
Melinda Gates, who appeared on the 2005 cover with her husband and Microsoft MSFT, -2.51% founder Bill Gates and U2 frontman Bono, gets some ink for herself this time around. She recently donated $1 billion to promote gender equality, after all, along with giving away more than $50 billion as part of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And media mogul Oprah Winfrey gets kudos for evolving with time, including investing in Weight Watchers WW, -5.97% and bringing her book club to Apple’s AAPL, -3.24% Apple TV+.
The special issue also celebrates women breaking gender and racial barriers while at the top of their games in sports and entertainment, including tennis star Serena Williams (2003) and track legend Florence Griffith Joyner (1988). It also sings the praises of artists like Madonna (1989), Beyoncé (one of Forbes’ top self-made women worth $400 million, for the year 2014 when she dropped her surprise album) and soul legend Aretha Franklin (1968), as well as “Harry Potter” creator J.K. Rowling (1998), who dreamed up a $25 billion–plus wizarding world empire, and was the highest paid author in 2019 once again while sitting on a reported $92 million fortune.
Here’s the full list of honorees:
1920: the Suffragists
1921: Emmy Noether
1922: Xiang Jingyu
1923: Bessie Smith
1924: Coco Chanel
1925: Margaret Sanger
1926: Aimee Semple McPherson
1927: Queen Soraya Tarzi
1928: Anna May Wong
1929: Virginia Woolf
1930: Martha Graham
1931: Maria Montessori
1932: Babe Didrikson
1933: Frances Perkins
1934: Mary McLeod Bethune
1935: Amelia Earhart
1936: Wallis Simpson
1937: Soong Mei-ling
1938: Frida Kahlo
1939: Billie Holiday
1940: Dorothea Lange
1941: Jane Fawcett and the Codebreakers
1942: the Resisters
1943: Virginia Hall
1944: Recy Taylor
1945: Chien-Shiung Wu
1946: Eva Perón
1947: Amrit Kaur
1948: Eleanor Roosevelt
1949: Simone de Beauvoir
1950: Margaret Chase Smith
1951: Lucille Ball
1952: Queen Elizabeth II
1953: Rosalind Franklin
1954: Marilyn Monroe
1955: the Bus Riders
1956: Golda Meir
1957: Irna Phillips
1958: China Machado
1959: Grace Hopper
1960: the Mirabal Sisters
1961: Rita Moreno
1962: Jacqueline Kennedy
1963: Rachel Carson
1964: Barbara Gittings
1965: Dolores Huerta
1966: Stephanie Kwolek
1967: Zenzile Miriam Makeba
1968: Aretha Franklin
1969: Marsha P. Johnson
1970: Gloria Steinem
1971: Angela Davis
1972: Patsy Takemoto Mink
1973: Jane Roe
1974: Lindy Boggs
1975: American Women
1976: Indira Gandhi
1977: Judith Heumann
1978: Lesley Brown
1979: Tu Youyou
1980: Anna Walentynowicz
1981: Nawal El Saadawi
1982: Margaret Thatcher
1983: Françoise Barré-Sinoussi
1984: bell hooks
1985: Wilma Mankiller
1986: Corazon Aquino
1987: Diana, princess of Wales
1988: Florence Griffith Joyner
1989: Madonna
1990: Aung San Suu Kyi
1991: Anita Hill
1992: Sinéad O’Connor
1993: Toni Morrison
1994: Joycelyn Elders
1995: Sadako Ogata
1996: Ruth Bader Ginsburg
1997: Ellen DeGeneres
1998: J.K. Rowling
1999: Madeleine Albright
2000: Sandra Day O’Connor
2001: Wangari Maathai
2002: the Whistleblowers
2003: Serena Williams
2004: Oprah Winfrey
2005: Melinda Gates
2006: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
2007: Lilly Ledbetter
2008: Michelle Obama
2009: Malala Yousafzai
2010: Nancy Pelosi
2011: Tawakkul Karman
2012: Pussy Riot
2013: Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi
2014: Beyoncé Knowles-Carter
2015: Angela Merkel
2016: Hillary Rodham Clinton
2017: the Silence Breakers
2018: Maria Ressa
2019: Greta Thunberg
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