In 1917, at age 16, Mabel Ping-Hua Lee rode on horseback at the head of a 10,000-strong suffrage parade on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. She did so knowing she would never be allowed to vote herself under the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred Chinese immigrants from citizenship. The march made headlines at the time, yet few New Yorkers—or travelers—would recognize her name today.
A new walking tour launching this spring wants to change that.
Beginning March 21, the two-hour She Shapes History tour marks the first U.S. expansion of the Australian company, which runs similar tours in Canberra, Sydney, and Melbourne. The New York operation is led by Boston-based Beth Santos, founder of women’s travel community Wanderful, and NYC-based Nikki Padilla Rivera.
“History is subjective through whoever wrote the book and whoever paid for the statue and whoever put up the plaque,” Santos says. “Our mission is to know the history and to claim the history that has not been given to you.”
The weekend tours run from 10 a.m. to noon, covering about two miles from Grand Central Terminal, New York City’s Beaux-Arts train station that opened in 1913, to Central Park. Along the way, guides unpack the contributions of women activists, architects, preservationists, journalists, and policymakers who helped shape the city’s civic and cultural life. Many of the women’s stories are absent from official historic accounts.
At Grand Central, tourgoers hear about Frances Perkins, the first woman to serve in a U.S. presidential cabinet and a key architect of the New Deal, a set of U.S. government programs and reforms launched in the 1930s in response to the Great Depression. Although widely credited to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, many of the labor protections were shaped by Perkins’s leadership.
“These women, for lots of reasons, have not been recorded,” says Rivera. “Because of that, their stories aren’t being shared. This is a space to get these stories out.”
The tours lean into nuance, rather than hero worship. “Our job on the tour is not to convince you one way or the other,” Santos says. “It’s to present you with the imperfect facts as we have them.” Visitors are encouraged to look at the city differently and learn what traditional retellings of history tend to leave out.
How to book the NYC She Shapes History tour
Beth Santos, left, and Nikki Padilla Rivera are the women behind the NYC tours.
Courtesy of She Shapes
The weekend-only tours cover about two miles. Tickets are $60 per person. Private tours start at $600 for groups of up to eight, with additional guests priced at $40 each.
Three more women’s history walking tours to book across the U.S.
A Tour of Her Own
Women suffragists were the first group to ever picket the White House, a demonstration that helped define public protest in the United States. Founded in 2018 as D.C.’s first tour company dedicated exclusively to women’s history, A Tour of Her Own brings overlooked D.C. stories to light on two-hour walking tours through downtown D.C., the National Mall, and Georgetown. People on the tour will learn about figures such as influential First Lady Dolley Madison, and Ida B. Wells, the pioneering journalist and anti-lynching activist. More than a dozen themed walking tours cover topics from Black feminist history to queer and Gilded Age tales, and the company can also organize full-day driving tours, multi-day itineraries, and virtual tours.
Beyond the Bell Tours
Learn about the women who shaped Philadelphia’s 300-plus years of history on a Beyond the Bell tour.
Courtesy of Beyond the Bells
Founded by Rebecca Fisher and Joey Leroux, Beyond the Bell Tours takes you through the streets of Philly with an eye on the women who shook things up across the city’s 300-plus years. On the “Badass Women” tour, you’ll encounter Hannah Callowhill Penn, who governed Pennsylvania in the early 1700s, and learn about the 19th-century pioneers who traveled from around the world to earn degrees at the city’s first women’s medical school. Other impressive women discussed include Ona Judge, an enslaved maid who seized her freedom from George Washington in 1796, and Barbara Gittings, a trailblazer in Philly’s early LGBTQ+ rights movement. Wheelchair-accessible and private tours are available.
Related: 4 Days in Philadelphia: Cobblestones, Calder Sculptures, and a 24/7 Cheese Vending Machine
Go Roam Tours
Founded by queer, feminist journalist Heather Cassell, Go Roam Tours offers four women’s history walks through San Francisco. Book onto the three-hour “Women of the Gold Rush” tour to uncover lesser-known stories from the Gold Rush and into the Gilded Age—a time of rapid growth, wealth, and social change in the 19th century. You’ll hear tales of the city’s “founding mother,” Mexican American ranchera and healer Juana Briones de Miranda, alongside stories of enterprising madams, businesswomen, and society figures of the era. Or try the “Political Women of San Francisco” tour to trace the city’s progressive political arc, from 19th-century suffragists and labor champions to Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. Both tours reveal how women have built communities, claimed influence, and driven social change across generations. Cassell also offers private tours.
