Courage is not the absence of fear, but the decision that something else is more important.
Ambrose Redmoon
History often remembers powerful women with a disclaimer. They are called exceptions, anomalies, or remarkable for their time. What history rarely admits is this: long before feminism had a name, women ruled. Not as symbols, not as footnotes, but as leaders who governed, fought, reformed, and reshaped societies. They did not rule to make a statement. They ruled because they had to, because they could, and because they were capable.
These women did not ask for permission. They stepped into power when the world assumed they wouldn’t and stayed.
Power Without the Vocabulary.
Most of these rulers never spoke about equality, rights, or patriarchy the way we do today. They didn’t need manifestos. Their leadership itself was the argument. In societies that believed authority belonged to men, they simply proved otherwise by doing the work, running kingdoms, defending borders, making laws, and caring for their people.
Calling them “feminists” using a modern lens sometimes feels limiting. Their lives were bigger than labels. What mattered was impact.
Razia Sultana: A Crown Claimed, Not Given.
In 13th-century India, Razia Sultana became the first and only woman to sit on the throne of the Delhi Sultanate. She dressed like a ruler, led armies, and addressed her court directly, actions that unsettled the nobility far more than her policies ever did.
Razia didn’t rule despite being a woman; she ruled as one, refusing to soften herself to be acceptable. Her reign was short, but her defiance of rigid gender roles echoed far beyond it. She didn’t argue that women deserved power. She demonstrated it. Her greatest rebellion was not her clothing or her command. It was her refusal to rule apologetically in a world that expected her to.
Ahilyabai Holkar: Governance as Care.
If strength is often imagined as loud and forceful, Ahilyabai Holkar redefined it as steady and compassionate. Ruling Malwa in the 18th century, she focused on justice, infrastructure, trade, and religious harmony. Temples, roads, and ghats built under her reign still stand today.
Ahilyabai didn’t rule through fear or spectacle. She ruled through trust. In a world that doubted women’s ability to govern, she made administration look almost effortless, not by dominating, but by listening.
Rani Lakshmibai: Resistance as Leadership.
When British forces tried to annex her kingdom, Rani Lakshmibai didn’t negotiate her dignity away. She fought. Carrying her child on her back, she rode into battle, an image that has become immortal in Indian memory.
Her courage wasn’t symbolic. It was tactical, fierce, and unwavering. She didn’t fight to prove women could lead armies; she fought because her land was being taken. The fact that she was a woman only made her resistance more threatening to colonial power.
Women Who Refused to Shrink Beyond India.
Across the world, similar stories unfolded. Cleopatra ruled Egypt with political intelligence and linguistic brilliance, negotiating with Rome as an equal. Catherine the Great reshaped Russia through reform and expansion, rising from a foreign bride to one of Europe’s most powerful monarchs.
These women were often reduced to myths, seductresses, tyrants, or curiosities, because history was uncomfortable with their authority. It still is. What connects these women is not personality or politics. It is necessity. They ruled in moments when survival demanded leadership and stepped into roles the world had not prepared itself to see them in. Their power was not symbolic. It was functional. Kingdoms stood or fell by their decisions. Borders held. People lived.
Why Their Stories Matter Now.
We often search the past for proof that women belong in power, as if permission is required. These rulers remind us that women were always capable; history just chose not to center them.
They didn’t wait for movements to include them. They didn’t soften their ambition to be liked. They ruled, led, protected, and built, quietly dismantling the idea that leadership has a gender.
Perhaps the most radical thing about them is this: they lived full lives of power without needing validation from the future.
They were not “before feminism.”
They were before the world knew how to name them.
And remembering them is not just about honouring the past. It’s about refusing to let power look only one way again.
If these stories reminded you that power has always existed in quiet resolve and decisive action, I’m glad you stayed till the end. And if you ever wish to linger in the spaces where history meets reflection, you’ll find me at Sharanya Shetty at HCMUJ.
For more such pieces, make your way to Her Campus MUJ — where voices grow, and legacies are re-examined.