The intention behind these stories is to tell learners "people like you made great contributions, so can you". If your main example is a woman whose contribution is a patent that didn't inspire any of the things popularly attributed to it, the actual subtext you're communicating is that there are no better examples.
"You'll be minimized too!" isn't exactly a great subtext to encourage interest in the field, compared to other positive examples like the people I've already mentioned.
