Pandora's daughters

the long version

"The pedigree of the career woman is usually supposed to have begun with those late-Victorian pioneers who stormed the bastions of male professions. Jane Robinson's researches go back over some twenty-five centuries to prove that theory quite wrong. The hundred or so women portrayed in this book were busy behind the scenes of recorded history, in the cause of earning an honest (though in some cases perhaps not entirely honest) living. Their enterprise and flair led them into careers as diverse as they are improbable, ranging from engineers, plumbers and surgeons, to a naval commander in the Persian Wars, a Dark-Age Pope, a successful Orcadian wind-seller, some pirates and a Royal Marine, and a stockbroker who ran for President of the United States of America."--BOOK JACKET.