Annie Peck

Annie Peck could have just kept teaching Greek and Latin at Purdue University and Smith College in the late 1800's, but the mountains called and Peck listened. The next thing she (or anybody else) knew, this in-your-face woman was climbing mountains all over the world and then traveling around to talk about her adventures.

After she climbed the Matterhorn, in particular, Peck really started getting attention and the more she climbed, the more she wanted to. Even turning fifty didn't slow her down. In fact, she kept climbing so long and so vigorously that the northern peak of the Huascaran in Peru was named Cumbre Ana Peck in her honor in 1928.

Peck had more on her mind, though, than just proving over and over that women have always done what they want. In 1910, for example, at the age of sixty -- a decade before women got the vote in the U.S. -- Peck planted a "Votes for Women" pennant on Peru's Mt. Coropuna, a volcano 21,000 feet tall. In-your-face women are always multi-tasking and always just as serious about what they do as any man (see second from left below).