Junko Tabei (22 September 1939 – 20 October 2016). Japanese mountaineer who made history as the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 1975. She was also the first woman to complete the Seven Summits challenge, climbing the highest peak on each continent.
Tabei faced significant obstacles as a woman in the male-dominated sport of mountaineering. She founded a women’s climbing club in 1969 called the Joshi-Tohan Club, and led their first major expedition to Annapurna III in Nepal in 1971.
When Tabei and her all-female team set their sights on Everest, they were met with sexist comments like “You should be raising children instead”. However, Tabei persevered and in 1975, she and her Sherpa guide Ang Tsering reached the summit of Everest, making her the first woman to do so.
After Everest, Tabei continued to climb the highest peaks around the world, completing the Seven Summits challenge in 1992.
She also worked to protect the mountain environments she organized clean-up expeditions on Everest. Tabei wrote seven books and led annual climbs up Mount Fuji for youth affected by the 2011 Fukushima earthquake.
Tabei’s achievements and legacy have been widely recognized. An asteroid and a mountain range on Pluto have been named after her, and in 2019 Google commemorated the 80th anniversary of her birth with a Doodle.
Today, when a woman stands atop a mountain or breaks a record, Junko’s spirit is there. Her legacy lives on in every woman who dares to dream big and climb high. Junko Tabei not only climbed Everest – she opened a path for countless women to soar above their own limits and touch the sky.
