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New York City residents or visitors might not be aware of Mabel Ping-Hua Lee—an advocate for women’s voting rights, even though she would remain personally excluded for decades to come—but a new walking tour wants to change that.
On May 4, 1912, at the age of 16, Lee rode on horseback in an honor guard leading a massive parade up Fifth Avenue as part of the Women’s Suffrage Movement. However, despite her activism, Lee was impacted by the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred Chinese immigrants from obtaining citizenship .
Lee’s narrative is among many other real-life women’s stories linked to New York City and shared by the She Shapes History tour, “Badass Women of New York.”
This midtown walking tour reflects the U.S. extension of an Australian tour company of the same name. The company offers similar women’s history tours in Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney and Wollongong.
The New York City branch is co-owned by Nikki Padilla Rivera, a tourism professional from NYC, and Beth Santos, a Boston-based author and founder and CEO of Wanderful, an international women’s travel community.
Rivera first met Sita Sargeant, founder and CEO of She Shapes History, through hosting a series on the Tourpreneur podcast. Sargeant was a guest on an episode.
About a year ago, Sargeant visited the U.S. and mentioned to Rivera about expanding She Shapes History outside of Australia.
“I connected her with Beth who I thought would be the perfect person to do it,” explained Rivera. “Beth then reached out to me for my thoughts from a tour-landscape perspective and I basically told her, okay, if you do this, I want to do it with you.”
For them, the rest was, well, “her-story.”
“When I sat down with Sita, I loved what she was working on,” said Santos. “Here’s a way we’re actually working to reframe history, not just through stories or blog posts, but oral history and travel.”
Beginning March 21, the “Badass Women of New York” walking tour will run on weekends from 10am to noon. The two-mile experience starts from Grand Central Terminal and ends at Central Park.
The tour brings to life the stories of women who shaped New York City in many ways. Their influence stretches across many attributes that NYC is often associated with, including publishing, politics, civil rights, the arts and finance.
Santos, who visits New York City often, explained that NYC was the best location for bringing She Shapes History to the States. “In so many ways, it’s America’s city. So many of us who don’t even live there identify with it and have our own stories there.”
In launching She Shapes History in New York City, Rivera noted that these NYC women not only made incredible strides but also lasting marks that are still felt even beyond the city’s five boroughs.
One of them was Frances Perkins, the first woman to serve as a secretary within the U.S. Cabinet. During Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration, Perkins helped to architect the New Deal.
“Most of the women we talk about, even though they did a lot of their work here in the city had huge effects on our entire country,” said Rivera.
When researching NYC women’s stories, both Rivera and Santos found that it was tricky to find and verify valid sources or come across many visual reminders such as public monuments.
For example, Rivera pointed out that the Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument in Central Park is the only monument in the park dedicated to real-life women (preceding installations were limited to angels and storybook characters). It was unveiled in August 2020.
Nonetheless, the “Bad Ass Women of New York” tour focuses on women’s strides as opposed to statues. Along with sharing their achievements, the tour’s guides read out loud quotes attributed to them.
“The tour isn’t really about specific landmarks, anyway,” said Santos. “It’s about the city and our national identity as a whole. Though we might not have a lot of statues to point at, we bring these stories to life. These women walked the streets we’re walking now. In so many ways, they’re still there.”
Rivera and Santos would love to see multiple generations of women, and even men, sign up for the tour. In conducting previews, they’ve been amazed to see the surprised reactions from younger women learning about achievements made over the 1800s and early 1900s.
“The hope is that it empowers them to go out and shape history themselves,” said Rivera.
Tickets for She Shapes History’s “Badass Women of New York” walking tours are priced at $60. Private tours start at $600 for up to 10 people and $40 for each additional person. To purchase tickets, please visit this link.