By Kasun Sapumohotti

When you think of great military leaders, who comes to mind? Alexander the Great? Napoleon? Churchill? We've been telling ourselves an incomplete story.

Picture this: It's 60 AD in Britain. Queen Boudicca watches Roman soldiers destroy her family's honor. Does she retreat? Does she negotiate? No. She raises an army of 100,000 warriors and burns three Roman cities to the ground. London was almost wiped off the map before it really existed.

Fast forward to medieval France. A teenage farm girl named Joan hears voices telling her to save her country. Crazy? Maybe. But she puts on armor, convinces the king to let her lead his army, and changes the entire course of the Hundred Years' War. At nineteen, she was captured and killed. At twenty-five, she was declared a saint.

These weren't exceptions. They were part of a pattern we forgot to remember.

In India, Rani Lakshmibai fought the British Empire with her baby strapped to her back. The British general who defeated her called her "the most dangerous of all rebel leaders." High praise from your enemy. In World War II, Nancy Wake became the most wanted person by the Gestapo in occupied France. They called her "The White Mouse" because she was impossible to catch. She coordinated resistance attacks, fought German soldiers hand-to-hand, and saved thousands of lives. Her story reads like a Hollywood action movie, except it actually happened.

Lyudmila Pavlichenko was a Soviet sniper with 309 confirmed kills. When she visited America to rally support for the war effort, reporters asked about her lipstick. She wanted to talk about defeating fascism. The disconnect tells you everything about how we've viewed women in war.

This isn't ancient history. In Syria, Kurdish women fighters of the YPJ battled ISIS street by street. They weren't just fighting terrorism—they were fighting for the right to exist as equals in their own society. During Vietnam, women in the Viet Cong carried messages, set ambushes, and kept the resistance alive. In every conflict, in every revolution, women have been there. Fighting. Leading. Dying for causes they believed in.

So why don't we know these stories?

History books love their heroes. But they prefer them in a specific package: male, military, and preferably on horseback. Women's contributions get filed under "interesting footnotes" or "support roles." When women's military achievements do get attention, they're often romanticized or sexualized. Mata Hari becomes the "exotic spy," not the complex person caught in wartime politics. Joan of Arc becomes the "mystical saint," not the brilliant military strategist who actually won battles.

After wars end, societies have a habit of pushing women back into "traditional" roles. The memory of their courage gets boxed up and stored away, like old uniforms that no longer fit the story we want to tell about ourselves.

Understanding women's role in warfare isn't just about fairness or historical accuracy—though those matter. It's about understanding leadership itself. These women didn't lead despite being women. They led because they had vision, courage, and the ability to inspire others. They made impossible decisions under pressure. They adapted, innovated, and persevered when everything seemed lost. Those are the exact qualities we need in leaders today, whether they're running companies, nonprofits, or countries.

Harriet Tubman didn't just guide people to freedom—she ran a complex intelligence network during the Civil War. That's strategic thinking and risk management under extreme pressure. Yaa Asantewaa didn't just fight the British in Ghana—she mobilized an entire people around a shared vision of independence. That's change management and inspirational leadership. These weren't just warriors. They were CEOs of revolution, project managers of resistance, and innovators of survival.

Today, historians, filmmakers, and writers are bringing these stories back to light. Every recovered name is a piece of our complete human story. Every rediscovered achievement reminds us that courage and leadership aren't gendered traits. But the bigger change happens when we stop seeing these women as exceptions and start understanding them as part of the rule: humans are capable of extraordinary things when they believe in something larger than themselves.

The most important battle these women fought wasn't on any battlefield. It was the fight to prove that leadership has no gender, that courage comes in all forms, and that the future belongs to anyone brave enough to claim it. That fight continues in boardrooms and classrooms, in startups and social movements, wherever someone decides that the way things have always been done isn't good enough.

The warriors whose history was forgotten are finally getting their due. And their daughters, literal and spiritual, are writing the next chapter of that story right now. What story will you write?