If well-behaved women seldom make history, it is not only because gender norms have constrained the range of female activity but because history hasn't been very good at capturing the lives of those whose contributions have been local and domestic. For centuries, women have sustained local communities, raising food, caring for the sick, and picking up the pieces after wars.

So what do people see when they read that well-behaved women rarely make history? Do they imagine good-time girls in stiletto heels or do-good girls carrying clipboards and passing petitions? Do they envision an out-of-control hobbyist or a single mother taking down a drunk in a bar? I suspect that it depends on where they stand themselves.

But hey, women who make history do not succumb to societal pressure.

By incorporating history, by remembering, Indian women continue to define themselves. It is through this remembering that we survive. It is through this speaking out that our history is preserved more whole and intact than it was in the past.

Today we know that there are African women writers who can ensure that the history of women is written down for future generations, who can convey the emotions, aspirations, suffering and achievements of African women.

Some history-making is intentional; much of it is accidental. People make history when they scale a mountain, ignite a bomb, or refuse to move to the back of the bus. But they also make history by keeping diaries, writing letters, or embroidering initials on linen sheets. History is a conversation and sometimes a shouting match between present and past, though often the voices we most want to hear are barely audible. People make history by passing on gossip, saving old records, and by naming rivers, mountains, and children. Some people leave only their bones, though bones too make a history when someone notices.

Fortunately women have the miraculous ability to change the meaning of their actions after the event.

It is a sweet victory made even more special by the fact that it's history made by a woman.

Women can be custodians of culture, too

When women thrive, all of society benefits and succeeding generations are given a better start in life.

Women have been kept from contributing to History-making, that is, the ordering and interpretation of the past of humankind. Since this process of meaning-giving is essential to the creation and perpetuation of civilization, we can see at once that women's marginality in this endeavor places us in a unique and segregate posi­tion. Women are the majority, yet we are structured into social in­stitutions as though we were a minority.

The signature of a truly enviable woman is the tenacity and continuity of her women friends.

The women who persevere go on to achieve great successes in their STEM careers.

An empowered woman can change the course of a generation.