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.
Yes, whenever I hear a story about someone I assume they were chosen because there are no better examples. I only listen to stories about the paragons of humanity. My brain has space for knowledge of like 3 people tops. Good point.
Isn't that exactly what these sort of things are about?
No one is inspired (which is usually the point of the factoids) by "this person made marginal contributions to the field for 30 years and then retired".
