From Hypatia (murdered by a Christian mob in 415 CE) to Ada Lovelace (the enchantress of numbers) and Maryam Mirzakhani (the 2014 Fields medallist) there have been women who have loved mathematics and, often in defiance of the social and intellectual norms of the day, have shown themselves to be extremely good at it. The Open University’s Professor June Barrow-Green will introduce a number of these women, describe some of the difficulties they encountered and indicate what they managed to achieve. She will also look at the situation for women mathematicians today and describe some initiatives currently in place for tackling the gender gap in mathematics.