From the Femail section of the Daily Mail for Thursday March 11^th 2004.

THE REAL WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT

The Queen is today hosting the first women-only event at Buckingham Palace to honour 180 ‘women of excellence’. Although some are unknown, many are models, singers and actresses – already feted and well-rewarded for their talents.

But what about all the unsung heroines who do extraordinary things every day of their lives?

Femail asked our experts – Esther Rantzen, Virginia Ironside and Anne Diamond – to pick 100 women they feel deserve recognition as the REAL women of achievement.

We present a selection from all walks of life.

Under the section headed RELIGION, seven ladies were selected. They were:

Valerie Shedden, one of the first women priests (ordained 1994),

Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood, writer of some 40 books on Islam, and for developing a GCSE course on Islam,

Rabbi Jackie Tabick, the country’s first woman rabbi (made rabbi in 1975),

Ros Preston, president of the National Council for Women, and the first female vice-president on the Board of Deputies of British Jews,

Judith Rose, the first female arch-deacon of the Church of England (ordained 1995),

Rev. Canon Sylvia Mutch, the first woman to conduct a Church of England wedding, and

Vera Hunt, the first profoundly deaf woman priest (ordained 1994, and chaplain of the Royal Association in aid of Deaf People).