In 1961, labor activist Esther Peterson, the head of the Women’s Bureau in the Department of Labor, urged President Kennedy to establish the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women in order to develop recommendations for achieving gender equality.
For a quarter century in the House, America knew Mary T. Norton as “Battling Mary,” a reformer who fought for the labor and working-class interests of her urban New Jersey district.
US Senator from California
A prominent labor lawyer, Colleen Hanabusa served in the Hawaii state senate for a dozen years before winning election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010.
Born in the colonial British Empire, Elizabeth Furse became an anti-apartheid activist, an advocate for migrant farm workers and Native Americans, and founder of a peace institute.
British-American journalist
Irish-American labor leader
Early 1900s Irish-American labor leader
Celeste Liddle is an Arrernte woman, freelance writer, social commentator and public speaker.
Silkwood was a chemical technician at the Kerr-McGee’s plutonium fuels production plant in Crescent, Oklahoma, and a member of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers’ Union. She was also an activist who was critical of plant safety and her suspicious death remains unsolved.