TIME Announces New Women of the Year Honorees
TIME Magazine unveiled its Women of the Year list and Nicole Kidman, Jordan Chiles, and Laufey are all on it.
According to TIME, their Women of the Year list highlights women who are all “in their own way, working toward creating a better, more equitable world.”
The publication explains, “When we sit down to think about the Women of the Year each winter, we ask ourselves the same question: What are the most significant issues facing women and girls around the world right now? Challenges are abundant, from gender-based violence and attacks on women’s rights to the dangers of a volatile climate. But everywhere those threats can be found, so too can leaders pushing for change.”
The full list of outstanding leaders includes Nicole Kidman, A’ja Wilson, Jordan Chiles, Laufey, Olivia Munn, Raquel Willis, Gisèle Pelicot, Anna Sawai, Purnima Barman, Amanda Zurawski, Fatouh Baldeh, Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, and Laura Modi.
TIME's 2025 Women of the Year: Nicole Kidman, A'ja Wilson, Jordan Chiles, and 10 other leaders creating a more equal world https://t.co/DCts5YFm8M pic.twitter.com/jOgwA12YgQ
— TIME (@TIME) February 20, 2025
Renowned actress Nicole Kidman, featured on one of the TIME covers, recognized the gender disparities within Hollywood in 2017. Since then, she has vowed to work with a female director at least once every 18 months. In the past 8 years, the Babygirl actress has worked with 19 female directors across film and TV.
Kidman believes Hollywood’s status quo can change, “but it can only be changed by actually being in the films of women.”
Moreover, Olympic gymnast Jordan Chiles and WNBA star A’ja Wilson are featured for their achievements in women’s sports. They joined TIME for a conversation on “unprecedented audience engagement and surging financial support that women’s sports received in 2024. ‘It opened up doors for all of us,’ Wilson says. ‘What makes it even better is that we win—and we look good while doing it.’”
Joining our actresses and athletes is singer-songwriter Laufey. Transcending both genre and medium, this untraditional artist faces backlash for every piece she releases, however, she has learned to embrace this opposition.
“I used to think that was such a scary thing: that nobody had walked that trail before me,” Laufey expresses. “But I now realize that when you’re the one determining which steps to take next and which branches to pull to the side, that’s when you know you have something good on your hands.”
Speaking of changing Hollywood’s status quo, Shōgun’s Anna Sawai is acknowledged for her efforts to diversify Asian representation on screen. Becoming the first Asian woman to win the Emmy for Lead Actress in a Drama, and later receiving its sister trophy at the Golden Globes, Sawai recognizes the responsibility she and others carry to represent Asian women as they are commonly sexualized.
“We have so much more inside of us,” Sawai explains. “I want to make sure that the roles that I choose are not going to perpetuate those images that I feel are incorrect, and I want to make sure that they’re very human.”
Keeping with this theme of women who have acknowledged a problem and have become part of a solution is actress Olivia Munn. After being diagnosed with breast cancer, she shared her story on social media, urging women to pursue additional testing, despite having a clean mammogram.
Munn shares with TIME, “I look at videos of me laughing with my son, running around in the park, feeling and looking healthy—all the while having this really aggressive, fast-moving cancer spreading through my breasts,” she says. “I thought, ‘Man, there’s so many women out there just like me.’ They might have no idea. And it may be too late by the time they find out.”
Laufey: "That’s where things have gotten convoluted—people saying I’m the ‘savior of jazz.’ I don’t consider my music jazz. I record jazz standards, I can be a jazz singer, but 90% of what I put on my albums is not jazz music" https://t.co/wn5lSBTZCH
— TIME (@TIME) February 20, 2025
TIME highlights several other women who contributed to identifying problems in their communities and have fought to repair them. To learn more about these incredible leaders, click here.
