The other night I saw this new Gillette deodorant commercial. In short, it features the advancements and discoveries males have made from the pyramids to landing on the moon, and tells men, “don’t let odor stop you.” The message is cool, but my Media Literacy gender lens made me think of the numerous historical contributions of women that are less known or downplayed in our universal memory (and history textbooks!). I also realized that inventions are often assumed to be male-made, even in my supposedly more gender-neutral mind. So in remembrance of the great inventor Benjamin Franklin (happy belated birthday!), find out what contraptions and discoveries we can thank women for inventing.

• Who says women don’t know how to use power tools? Tabitha Babbitt lived in a Shaker community in Massachusetts in 1810 and worked as a weaver. One day as she was watching men use a two-man pit saw, she noticed half of their motion was wasted. By 1813 Babbitt’s invention of the circular saw was being used in saw mills.
• What could be considered our country’s favorite cookie is thanks to the inventive mind of Ruth Wakefield. While baking up a batch of Butter Drop Do cookies in 1930, Wakefield replaced the melted chocolate ingredient with a crumbled Nestle chocolate bar. Instead of melting, the chocolate held its shape and the chocolate chip cookie was born. The Wakefield cookie recipe was printed on the back of Nestle Toll House Real Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels packages and in exchange, Ruth Wakefield received free chocolate for life.
• Many police officers and soldiers can thank Stephanie Kwolek for their lives. In 1964, while working at DuPont as a chemist, Kwolek concocted a fiber that was ounce-for-ounce as strong as steel. This material was dubbed Kevlar, and is most notably known for use in bulletproof vests, as well as to manufacture skis, radial tires and brake pads, suspension bridge cables, helmets, and hiking and camping gear.
• On a tram during a winter trip to New York City in the early 1900s, Mary Anderson noticed that the driver had to stop every few minutes to wipe the snow off the front window. As a solution, Anderson developed a squeegee on a spindle that attached to a handle inside the vehicle, which turned into the modern day windshield wiper.
• Executive secretary Bette Nesmith Graham invented Liquid Paper using her blender. Graham mixed up a water-based tempera paint with dye that matched her company's stationary. She first distributed what she called "Mistake Out" but later renamed the product Liquid Paper and received a patent in 1958.
• One of the most well-known female computer geeks, Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, earned this title for her inventions in the 1950s. Hopper developed the first compiler, which translates English commands into computer code, and oversaw the development of the Common Business-Oriented Language (COBOL), one of the first computer programming languages.
• After the passing of her husband in 1859, Martha Coston worked 10 years revising and perfecting a her husband’s design for a colored flare system, or signal flare. The flare system finally worked once Coston applied some pyrotechnic technology, an idea that sparked after watching a fireworks display with her children. The U.S. Navy bought the rights to the invention and the flares were used extensively during the Civil War.
• Next time you set down a bag of groceries, think about the ingenuity of Margaret Knight and one of her 20 patents. In 1870, Knight created a wooden machine that would cut, fold and glue the square bottoms to paper bags. That was hardly Knight's first patent, though. At age 12, Knight had developed a stop-motion device that would automatically bring industrial machines to a halt if something was caught on them, which prevented many injuries.
• Indianapolis icon, Sarah Breedlove Walker invented hair lotions, creams, and an improved hair styling hot comb. But her greatest achievement may be the development of the Walker System, which included a broad offering of cosmetics, licensed Walker Agents, and Walker Schools, offering meaningful employment and personal growth to thousands of Walker Agents, mostly Black women. Madame Walker was the first American woman self-made millionaire.

Read about more female inventors at Famous Women Inventors and How Stuff Works: Top 10 Things Women Invented.