7. Lucille Ball

Few can hold a candle to Lucille Ball when it comes to pioneers. Ball’s role in ‘I love Lucy’ as a housewife who in every episode resists domestic life or a wife’s dependence on her husband changed the way women were seen on-screen forever. Zany and endlessly hilarious, her talent for slapstick and verbal comedy laid the groundwork for every comedienne we see on our screens today.

Her influence, however, goes beyond her talents as a funny girl as she was the first woman ever to head a production studio when she founded her own company with her then-husband (on and off-screen) Desi Arnaz. After they divorced in 1960, she would buy him out of the company just two years later, making her the sole head of the company.