Women compile list of influential role models

Former prime minister Margaret Thatcher has been named as the most influential female by British women.

More than 2,000 women voted in the survey by AOL UK's MyDaily.co.uk website and YouGov.

It revealed that few young women are seen in the same light as older or historical women.

Indeed, Ms Thatcher was seen as an influential woman by 32 per cent of respondents, Florence Nightingale came second, with Mother Teresa in third place.

Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama were named in the top ten, with female champion Germaine Greer and businesswoman and Body Shop founder Anita Roddick also making the list.

The survey revealed that females saw commitment (62 per cent) as the most important quality of an influential woman, followed by hard work, intelligence, success and independence.

Influential or role model

However, influential women might not always be viewed as role models, as just two per cent of those surveyed said that they would like to walk in Ms Thatcher's footsteps.

JK Rowling, who was joint sixth in the influential list, was voted by more than a quarter (26 per cent) of respondents as having the career they would like to emulate.

Three-fifths (58 per cent) said that they would not trade their lives with anyone.

Education expert and author Sue Palmer told the Scotsman that JK Rowling "has worked hard to get where she is. It is a story of pulling yourself up by the boot-strings."

Although she added that young people should have more realistic role models to aspire to.

"The big problem is that all the role models appear to be people who are rather extreme examples of success," she told the news source.

Real role models hard to come by?

In an article in the Guardian, however, Kira Cochrane noted that inspirational females are rarer to come by than men, particularly in senior business roles, as 95 per cent of FTSE 100 chief executives are men.

"It's these female one-offs who make it clear that the glass ceiling is permeable," she claimed. Ms Cochrane also suggested that female role models should be more realistic than pop stars and heiresses, and highlighted the work of campaign website PinkStinks.co.uk.

Aimed at young girls, the website celebrates women seen to be inspirational, ground-breaking and motivating. It lists female role models in different fields including sport, film, technology, science and business.

Women featured include 19th century computer programmer Ada Lovelace, US astronaut Sally Ride and Rebecca Wilson, a technologist at Europe's largest science and technology organisation QinetiQ.

"Ultimately, if the ideal is to have women and men represented equally in our major institutions, it is exceptional women who might lead us there," the writer noted.