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- Female partnerships have sparked some of history’s most important milestones.
- From literature to politics, some of the most legendary female friendships were partnerships that were formed across disability, class, and race.
- These 18 women’s partnerships went down in history.
Though some of the most celebrated dynamic duos through history are romantic couples or fictional friends, female partnerships have sparked legendary progress in literature, politics, and modern-day feminist movements.
Pairs of royals, authors, and even socially inclined sisters have left lasting marks on history, two at a time.
In honor of International Women’s Day, check out these iconic female duos:
Queen Elizabeth I and Mary Dudley
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Mary Dudley was a member of Elizabeth’s court and the sister of Robert Dudley, the queen’s widely rumored long-term lover.
The two became close in the first few years of the Queen’s reign when Mary nursed Elizabeth through a deadly battle with smallpox in 1562, which left Mary permanently disfigured.
Elizabeth fully recovered and though Mary eventually left the court in 1579, their friendship lasted the rest of their lives.
Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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Two of the founding members of the women’s rights movement, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton spent their friendship campaigning for women’s suffrage, with Anthony as the vocal head of the cause and Stanton as her speechwriter.
After being introduced in 1851 by Amelia Bloomer, who popularized pants for women, Stanton and Anthony quickly became the start of a powerful wave that would bring on the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.
"No power in heaven, hell or earth can separate us, for our hearts are eternally wedded together," Stanton once wrote to Anthony.
They were firm friends until Stanton died, some 50 years after they’d first met.
Mary Todd Lincoln and Elizabeth Keckley
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Elizabeth Keckley‘s incredible life story includes her buying her way out of slavery before establishing a high-profile dressmaking business in Washington, D.C., where first lady Mary Todd Lincoln hired her in 1861.
The two bonded beyond a client-designer relationship to become each other’s close confidantes during Lincoln’s time in the White House, which was plagued by negative reports on her suspected mental illness and extravagant spending.
But their friendship hit the rocks in 1868 when Keckley published her tell-all autobiography, "Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House."
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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Source: Business Insider – feedback@businessinsider.com (Ellen Cranley)