Highly qualified, irresistible, whip smart, and a force of nature on screen and on paper. James Bond, you ask? Hardly. We think it’s high time to give the women of the Bond films the long overdue credit that they deserve.

One year prior to Betty Friedan publishing The Feminine Mystique and Congress passing the Equal Pay Act, Ursula Andress slunk out of the Caribbean like Botticelli’s Birth Of Venus and into the public consciousness as the archetypal “Bond Girl” Honey Ryder in the inaugural film Dr. No (1962). In the 50 years of movie franchise and women’s rights history that followed, the Bond Girl remained unrivaled in beauty, confidence and charisma, and in later iterations grew increasingly credentialed.