loaded question: what are some great movies about underappreciated women in history?

Headline yesterday at the Guardian:

Giant leap for women: early ‘lady’ astronomers have asteroids named in their honour

19th-century trailblazers Annie Maunder and Alice Everett finally earn due recognition for decades of largely unattributed work

I cheered, but of course the women’s story is enraging:

Maunder and Everett, who became friends while studying mathematics at Girton College in Cambridge in the 1880s, were early members of the British Astronomical Association (BAA), which put their names forward to the Catalina Sky Survey for the honour.

…

Like all female students at Cambridge until 1948, the pair were not awarded degrees despite passing their examinations with honours. After graduating, they both took jobs as “lady computers” at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. “Lady computers would measure the positions of stars and convert them into astronomical tables,” said [Mike] Frost [head of BAA’s historical section].

“The Astronomer Royal realised there was this pool of women coming out of Oxbridge, highly talented in mathematics, who could be hired cheaply.”

…

Refused fellowship of the male-only Royal Astronomical Society until 1916, Maunder could not present scientific papers, relying on her husband to communicate her controversial discoveries about the asymmetrical nature of sunspots.

…

Working with the inventor of the television, John Logie Baird, Everett successfully applied for joint patents relating to television optics, and it is likely she was present at the first demonstration of a television image in 1926.

“She was a pioneer of early television technology and a founding fellow of the Royal Television Society,” said Frost.

Sounds like their stories would make great movies, together or separately.

What are some great movies about underappreciated women in history? And why aren’t there more of them? (Rhetorical question; we know why.) Do you know of a historical woman most of us have never heard of whom you’d love to see a movie about? (I’d never heard of Maunder or Everett.)

Now, I’m not sure that Marie Curie is exactly underappreciated, though she’s certainly less represented in pop culture than male scientists of her stature and importance. So my pick is the 2020 film Radioactive, starring the brilliant Rosamund Pike as the scientist who is still the only person — male or female — to win two Nobel Prizes in two different disciplines.

Your turn…

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