The issue features 100 different covers that evoke the period represented by its subject, with 49 original portraits commissioned by Time. More than half of the artists commissioned are women, including Mickalene Thomas, Shana Wilson and Bisa Butler.

The list includes innovators, artists, entertainers and athletes, including Virginia Woolf, Amelia Earhart, Martha Graham, bell hooks and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The project includes profiles, a special print edition that features a gatefold of all 100 covers, a landing page on Time’s website and a documentary produced by Time Studios, Jellywolf and P&G. Orian Barki directs the film.

Time editors and former EIC Nancy Gibbs, filmmaker Alma Har’el, who helped conceive the project, and a committee of luminaries, such as Katie Couric, Soledad O’Brien, Lena Waithe, MJ Rodriguez, Elaine Welteroth, Amanda Nguyen and Zazie Beetz, selected the women featured in the issue.

Time executive editor and Women of the Year editorial director Kelly Conniff wrote in a letter for the special issue: “The feminist movement is always about progress, and acknowledging the role of women in history is as much about looking ahead as it is about re-examining the past.

"As Gloria Steinem wrote in these pages 50 years ago: ‘The most radical goal of the movement is egalitarianism.’”