There are only few I can think of.
Florence Nightingale.
Unnamed nurses who discovered sanitation was good in filthy hospitals (not really an individual discovery but the nurses who cleaned bandages and clothes and had clean hands had patients that didn’t get horrific infections while the doctors with filthy hands got patients infections.
But the biggest contribution. They are MOTHERS. They raise us all (mostly). They have mammary glands to feed us. They have a uterus to bare us.
Hedy Lamarr co-invented frequency hopping technology, which is the basis for modern communication systems like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS. This invention was initially developed during World War II to help guide torpedoes and prevent enemy jamming.
Wikipedia
womensvoicesnow.org
It is more likely that a lot of what we take for granted was either invented or nurtured and developed by women in prehistoric times.
Cooking, sewing, weaving, ceramic and other containers, diapers, herbal medicine, gardening, preserving food
Men were busy hunting, while women were spending much more time at shelter where they could care for helpless young. They were gathering food, remembering where certain things grew at certain times, and some women probably decided to try to grow some of what they gathered closer to home where they could keep and eye on it and care for it.
It is likely that men decided some of what women were doing were good ideas, and expanded on the size and scope of such activities with their greater strength and free time.
I spent most of the first 44 years of my life married to one man, who was a very mixed bag as his Korean War PTSD grew and worsened as the Vietnam war became a more social relevant topic. Eventually I learned enough about alcoholism to try to put together and intervention for him. One of his drinking buddies I invited to participate took him to an AA meeting. A number of his disappeared drinking buddies were at the meeting. He started attending meetings and working his program and never got drunk again. We had 3 or 4 good years and then it became evident he was developing Alzheimers and I cared for him the remaining years of his life and final death at home.
At his memorial service, an old friend of ours came and asked to see me again. A year later we made a life commitment, and the past 20 years have been the best of my life. His capacity for total thereness when we are together is a very rare capacity. Unfortunately, a capacity which far too few couples ever succeed in developing and enjoying.
Mr. GG2 and I are like ham and eggs. I look around and see everything that needs to be fixed and he fixes it. 😉
How many times have I heard, honey I need your help or get the spider.
“if all men died today, how long would they last?”
The women would probably survive—if you could figure out how to make a fire in the cave...
Lol.
The mother of Michael Nesmith from “The Monkees”
invented “Liquid Paper” correction fluid.
Bette Nesmith Graham invented a fast-drying white paint mixture
in her kitchen in 1956 to fix typing errors on her typewriter.