Celebrating great women on international women’s day

On international women’s day we’d like to celebrate some of the women in policing and health and social care throughout history. There are so many great women, here is just a selection:

Edith Smith

Edith Smith was the first female police officer in the United Kingdom with full power of arrest.
At this time the Home Office advised that women could not be sworn in because they did not count as ‘proper persons’ in the eyes of the law. It had long been established that they could not vote in parliamentary elections or serve on juries for the same reason. In Grantham, however, the Chief Constable and Watch Committee continued to give Smith their full support because they thought her work was vital given the very particular problems that the town faced as a result of war conditions.

Cressida Dick

On 22 February 2017, the Home Office and the MPS jointly announced that Cressida Dick would be appointed as the next Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis by Queen Elizabeth II, on the formal recommendation of Home Secretary Amber Rudd. She is the first woman to hold this appointment.

Florence Mildred White

[4th from left – back row]

Florence Mildred White is said to be the first documented woman to join a police force in England and Wales, and to be attested immediately as a Constable. Later she was to become the first attested woman officer holding the rank of Inspector, and the first woman police officer to receive a pension on retirement.

Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale was the founder of modern nursing. She organised care for wounded soldiers at Constantinople. She gave nursing a favourable reputation and became an icon of Victorian culture, especially in the persona of “The Lady with the Lamp” making rounds of wounded soldiers at night.

Marie Curie

Marie Curie was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. Marie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first and the only woman to win the Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win the Nobel Prize in two scientific fields. She was the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris in 1906.

Happy International Womens day 2021!