For this issue of our quarterly Womenabling E-News, falling as it does during Women's History Month, we thought we'd highlight several entrepreneurial women who are making history right now - women who are living by the credo voiced above by early women's suffrage leader Emmeline Pankhurst, women who are leading their own rebellions against the powers that be, and women who are all sure to be spotlighted in Women's History Months to come.

So take a few minutes out of your busy womenabling work day to learn more about these stellar women:


Debbie Sterling, a Stanford-educated engineer, became bothered by a lack of women in STEM. As she says, she became obsessed with the notion of "disrupting the pink aisle" with a toy that would introduce girls to the joy of engineering at a young age. And so, GoldieBlox was born!

GoldieBlox & Rube Goldberg "Princess Machine" (2:07)

It is estimated that crowdfunding platforms raised $2.7 billion in financing for entrepreneurial ventures in 2012, an 81% increase over the previous year. Many of the largest and most well-known crowdfunding platforms had female co-founders (read an interesting article about them here), including Indiegogo co-founder Danae Ringelmann, who has been quoted as saying "We will never lose sight of our vision to democratize finance."

Crowdfunding with Indiegogo (4:28)

Dr. Sakena Yacoobi, founder of the Afghan Institute of Learning, was recently awarded the  2013 Opus Prize. The prize honors unsung heroes of any faith tradition with a $1 million award for efforts to solve today's most persistent and pressing global issues, including poverty, illiteracy, hunger, disease, and injustice.

Sakena Yacoobi - 2013 Opus Prize winner (3:32)