Responsible for many “firsts” – the first industrial photographer, LIFE’s first female photographer, the first American female war photojournalist, the first woman to take her camera into combat zones – she proved a role model for future generations of professional female photographers including the likes of Lynsey Addario, Diane Arbus, Mary Ellen Mark, and Susan Meiselas.
Dorothea Lange’s greatest achievements lie in the photographs she took during the Depression. They made an enormous impact on how millions of ordinary Americans understood the plight of the poor in their country, and they have inspired generations of campaigning photographers ever since.
As her biographer Carolyn Burke states, “to this day, her life inspires features in the same glossy magazines for which she posed…this approach turns the real woman in to a screen onto which beholders project their fantasies”, and further perpetuates the legend of Lee Miller as an “American free spirit wrapped in the body of a Greek goddess”.
Throughout her life Alice Woodhouse maintained an active interest in many organisations. She was the first woman member of the Wellington branch of the New Zealand Institute of Public Administration as well as being on the executive of the Wellington branch of the New Zealand Library Association, a member of the national council and a vice president of the New Zealand Founders’ Society, and she served on the Hawke’s Bay regional committee of the New Zealand Historic Places Trust. She was also a frequent broadcaster of radio talks covering a wide variety of historical and literary topics, and her published written works include Very occasional verses (1927), British regiments in Napier, 1858–1867 (1970), The naming of Napier (1970), and articles in the Turnbull Library Record .
Mercedes Laura Aguiar was a writer, teacher and feminist from the Dominican Republic. As a journalist and poet, she wrote works that promoted gender equality and Dominican sovereignty, in opposition to the US occupation. She fought for women’s right to vote, women’s right to education, and employment protections for women and children.
Poet, Sarah Josepha Hale is best known for creating the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” However, her work extends far beyond her writing. Her influence can be seen in historic sites and a famous national holiday still widely celebrated today.
Throughout her 45-year career, Betsy Wade consistently proved that gender should not be a barrier to opportunity. As the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against the New York Times in 1974, Wade transformed the industry and newsrooms across the nation.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas, the “Guardian of the Glades,” led the charge to protect the Everglades and reveal their rich natural heritage to the rest of the world. A talented author and dedicated environmentalist, Douglas shined a spotlight on an American ecological treasure.
Ethel Payne is known as the First Lady of the Black Press, because of her fearlessness as a journalist and a Civil Rights activist.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a prominent journalist, activist, and researcher, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In her lifetime, she battled sexism, racism, and violence. As a skilled writer, Wells-Barnett also used her skills as a journalist to shed light on the conditions of African Americans throughout the South.