On International Women’s Day we salute 15 inspirational journalists nominated by PG readers

To mark International Women's today Press Gazette asked readers via Twitter to name the most inspirational female journalists.

Here are the five most popular choices and 10 other women journalists who also figured strongly in the responses. Many thanks to the hundreds of readers who took part in this exercise.

1 Marie Colvin. Former Sunday Times foreign correspondent Marie Colvin was killed in the besieged Syrian city of Homs during a rocket attack last year. Following her death Sunday Times editor John Witherow described her as the "greatest war correspondent of her generation" whose death had sparked an outpouring of grief throughout the world.

BBC foreign correspondent Lyse Doucet said she was the “bravest of the brave was also the kindest of the kind”.

The impact of her death continues to be felt – last month, on the anniversary of her death, a new campaign was launched in her memory to secure the prosecution of those who commit war crimes against journalists and photographers.

2 Martha Gelhorn. Former Daily Telegraph correspondent Gelhorn is widely considered to be one of the greatest war correspondents of the 20th century, covering almost every major conflict during her 60-year career.

During World War II she stowed away on a hospital ship to report on the D-Day landings, and entered Dachau with American troops in May 1945.

In 1966 she covered the war in Vietnam with a series of six dispatches for The Guardian, and the authorities later refused her accreditation to work in South Vietnam.

In the 1980s she travelled in Central America, writing about the wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua. A few years later she published a report from Panama in the wake of the US invasion.

3 Alex Crawford. Sky News journalist Alex Crawford has won the RTS journalist of the year prize an unprecedented four times. In 2011 she undertook some astonishingly brave reporting from Libya – with colleagues Tim Miller and Martin Smith she was the only western journalist to report from inside Zawiyah as it came under heavy attack from pro-Gaddafi forces.

With a Sky team she was also the first western journalist to drive into Tripoli to report on the fall of the capital to rebel forces.

She started out on the Woking Times and worked for the BBC before joining Sky News in 1989. It was only after the births of her four children that she got her big break as a foreign correspondent, getting posted to Delhi as Asia correspondent in 2006.

She told Press Gazette in 2011: “I never became a reporter to make money and I never thought I would make money. That's a bonus. I wanted to be a journalist because I wanted to do something where I think I could make a difference." She was awarded the OBE in 2012.

4Lindsey Hilsum. Channel 4’s international editor has covered the conflicts in Afghanistan, Kosovo and Israeli-Palestine, and more recently reported on the Arab Spring in Egypt and Bahrain.

Following her reports from Libya she wrote the book Sandstorm Libya in the Time of Revolution, an account of the fall of Colonel Gaddafi. She reported from Belgrade in 1999 when NATO bombed Serbia, from Baghdad during the 2003 US invasion, and covered the Fallujah assault in November 2004.

Her reports from Africa, the Middle East and Russia have won several awards including Journalist of the Year at the One World Media Awards in 2011.

From 2006-8 she was the Channel 4 News China Correspondent, based in Beijing. In 1994, she was the only English-speaking journalist in Rwanda when the genocide started. She has been with Channel 4 News since 1996.

5 Kate Adie. Adie is the BBC’s former chief news correspondent, a role in which she covered the Rwandan Genocide, Tiananmen Square protest, the Gulf War and the conflict in the former Yugoslavia.

She joined the BBC in 1968 as a studio technician before working as a regional journalist in Plymouth, Southampton and Brighton. She joined BBC TV News in London in 1979, where she spent two years as a court correspondent.

Her honours include three RTS awards, the Bafta Richard Dimbleby Award, and the Broadcasting Press Guild's Award for Outstanding Contribution to Broadcasting. She was awarded an OBE in 1993.

Ten more inspiring women journalists:

Veronia Guerin. Guerin was an Irish crime reporter for the Sunday Independent. She was also an early data journalist, using her accountancy skills to trace illegal activity. She was murdered by drug gang members in Dublin in 1996 after receiving the International Press Freedom Award in 1995.

Anna Politkovskaya. A Russian investigative journalist, winner of the Award for Human Rights Journalism, Politkovskaya was assassinated in 2006. She made her reputation reporting from the second Chechen War and for her critical coverage of Russian political and social affairs.

Fleet Street Fox. Blogger Fleet Street Fox recently identified herself as Susie Boniface and writes about the industry of tabloid newspapers on her blog fleetstreetfox.com. More than 50, 000 people follow her on Twitter and she has just published her first book The Diaries of a Fleet Street Fox.

Orla Guerin. BBC correspondent who covered the Basque Country in Northern Spain and reported from Africa and the Middle East.

Hala Jaber. Lebanese-British journalist, who writes for the Sunday Times. Winner of the Amnesty International Journalist of the Year Award.

Nellie Bly. The pen name of Elizabeth Jane Cochran, who wrote for the Pittsburgh Dispatch and then the New York World (at that time published by Joseph Pulitzer). She faked insanity to go undercover and later emulated Jules Verne's character Phileas Fogg by going around the world in 80 days. In fact she did it in 73.

Sue Lloyd Roberts. Globe-trotting BBC special correspondent.

Polly Toynbee. Veteran social affairs journalist who has been a columnist for The Guardian since 1998.

Julie Burchill. After starting her career on NME in the 1980s, she has continued to combine her career as a novelist with national newspaper columns. Her last column for The Observer in January was withdrawn by the editor after it was deemed offensive to trans-gender people.

Heather Brooke. The freelance journalist who laid the groundwork for the Daily Telegraph to break the expenses scandal. It was her dogged efforts which led to the MPs' expenses information being released (The Telegraph famously obtained the unredacted disc in 2009).