The National Women’s History Month theme for 2024 is “Women Who Advocate for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.” The bios in this guide celebrate women past and present who have championed those values and fought to make them a reality.
Angela Davis is an activist, philosopher and professor who has been a long-time champion of prison reform, women’s rights, racial equality, and LGBTQ rights.
Malala Yousafzai is an activist for women and girls including their right to education. She was shot by the Taliban but continued her work and started the Malala Fund. She received the Nobel Peace Prize at age seventeen, the youngest person to do so.
Margaret Sanger founded the birth control movement and became an outspoken and life-long advocate for women’s reproductive rights. Her work led to the availability of the modern birth control pill in 1960.
Reiko Homma True has fought to address racial disparities in mental health care and to advocate for treatment that is culturally sensitive. Her work has helped to improve mental health treatment for the Asian-American community and other minority populations.
Shirley Chisholm was the first African American woman to serve in Congress and to seek the nomination for president of the United States from a major political party. She advocated for women and minorities during seven terms in Congress and wrote the autobiography "Unbought and Unbossed."
Lois Curtis is a visual artist and public speaker whose landmark Supreme Court case Olmstead v. L.C. (1999) determined the rights of the disabled to live outside institutions and receive services. The court ruling enables Curtis and many disabled individuals to be integrated into their communities. .
Anne Hutchinson, in the 1630s, dared to demand that women have equal status in the Massachusetts Bay colony. This demand led to her leading mass meetings, then two court trials, banishment, and, finally her death.
Winona LaDuke is a Native American activist, economist, and author who advocates for indigenous rights over native homelands, natural resources, and cultural practices
Sojourner Truth was a former slave who became an outspoken advocate for abolition, civil and women’s rights. Her 1851 speech at a women’s rights conference, “Ain’t I a Woman?” challenged notions of racial and gender inferiority.
Gloria Steinem is a journalist, feminist, and has been one of the leading spokeswomen of the women’s rights movement in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. In 2013, President Barack Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom..
Tammy Baldwin was the first openly gay person to be elected to both chambers of Congress. Baldwin has advocated for LGBTQ rights, access to healthcare, and student debt relief. She introduced the Ending LGBT Health Disparities Act which sought to fund research and cultural competence for LGBTQ healthcare.
Wilma Mankiller was the first female Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation and first woman elected as chief of a major Native tribe. She devoted her life to fighting for the rights of American Indians.
Alice Wong is the founder and director of the Disability Visibility Project, an online community that fosters and amplifies disability media and culture. A Chinese-American activist and writer, Wong fights for access and representation for people with disabilities from all backgrounds.
Rachel Levine is the first openly transgender official to be confirmed by the Senate as well as the highest-ranking openly transgender official in U.S. history, serving as Assistant Secretary for Health.
Jovita Idar was a Mexican-American journalist, activist, and suffragist. She single-handedly protected her newspaper headquarters when the Texas Rangers came to shut it down, and crossed the border to serve as a nurse during the Mexican Revolution.
Lucretia Coffin Mott was a feminist activist and advocate for ending slavery who dedicated her life to speaking out against racial and gender injustice.
Lucy Stone was a suffragist and abolitionist who fought inequality of all kinds. She wrote marriage vows to reflect her egalitarian beliefs and refused to take her husband’s last name.
Betty Friedan was a journalist, women's rights activist, and co-founder of the National Organization for Women. Her 1963 best-selling book, The Feminine Mystique, helped advance the movement for gender equality.
Carmen Delgado Votaw was an international women's rights activist who worked for equal opportunities for women and Hispanics.
Jeannette Rankin was a suffragist and Congresswoman who introduced legislation that eventually became the 19th Constitutional Amendment, granting unrestricted voting rights to women nationwide.
Gerder Lerner fled Nazis in Austria and established the first graduate programs in women’s history. She fought to empower female scholars and was known as the “godmother of women’s history,”