Forgotten Feminists - The Persistent

Black and white photograph of Nellie Tayloe Ross, a white woman with her dark hair pulled back, in a field of flowers. She holds one for the camera.

Forgotten Feminists

101 Years Ago: The Making of America’s First Woman Governor

She did not frame her success as a triumph of gender or claim to be breaking barriers. Instead, she spoke of civic duty and circumstance

Forgotten Feminists

Bread Lines on the Upper West Side and America's Missing Moral Conscience

The civil-rights pioneer and feminist visionary Pauli Murray reshaped American law and identity. Her voice matters as inequality deepens.

Watercolor painting shows Lorissa Rinehart with dark, shoulder-length hair, wearing a black jacket.

The Interview

If She Were Here Today, She’d Be President

Written out of the history of suffrage, Jeannette Rankin was a remarkable feminist and congresswoman. The author Lorissa Rinehart finally tells her story.

Marian Croak, wearing a pink jacket, waves one hand in the air and holds a microphone in the other.

Forgotten Feminists

Five Tech Pioneers Who Should Be As Famous as Zuckerberg and Bezos

These five women should be as famous—and well off—as Silicon Valley's finest.

Dressed in a white blazer, white shirt and white pants, Stephanie Shirley poses with boats behind her.

Forgotten Feminists

The Tech Mogul “Steve” Who Looked Out for Women

Her software company would change everything; perhaps most notably how—and where—women could work.

Oil painting of Margaret Fuller, a brunette woman in a cornflour blue gown, with a cream shawl draped over her shoulders.

Forgotten Feminists

The Life and Untimely Death of One of America's First Feminists

There’s no way of knowing what Margaret Fuller might have achieved if she hadn’t died in the summer of 1850.

Gillian Brett, wearing day-glo overalls, sculpts a two-footgreen wax model of Fanny Wilkinson.

Forgotten Feminists

70 Years After Her Death, Britain’s First Female Landscape Designer Finally Gets Her Due

Fanny Wilkinson designed more 75 public gardens in London during her 20-year career. Now she's being commemorated by the sculptor Gillian Brett.

Photo of members of Henrietta Lacks' family, wearing business attire, surrounding a statue of Henrietta Lacks.

Forgotten Feminists

Henrietta Lacks: A Moral Wrong That May Never Be Righted

Her name may not be a household name, but ‘HeLa cells’ from Henrietta Lacks's cervix changed the world.

Forgotten Feminists

Why Can’t We Just Pass the ERA? It’s Complicated.

The Equal Rights Amendment is a simple 24-word piece of legislation. But it’s also a historic movement, more than a century in the making, that began with women’s suffrage and continues to this day.

Forgotten Feminists

‘Women Should Have Children Instead of Poodles’—When Birth Control Came to Washington

The idea of birth control entered the national conversation in 1919, when an artist, activist, and single mother named Mary Ware Dennett brought the (quite shocking!) idea to Congress.

Forgotten Feminists

As America Votes Harris vs. Trump, One Woman’s Legacy Looms Especially Large

How Shirley Chisholm, who ran for president against all odds, forever altered the landscape for women in U.S. politics.

Watercolor of Lilly Ledbetter, with a blonde bob, white shirt and black jacket.

Forgotten Feminists

Remembering Lilly Ledbetter: A Life of Grit and Persistence

Lilly Ledbetter, for whom America’s Fair Pay Act of 2009 was named, has died. She was 86.

A black and white photo of Febb Burn standing in a garden.

Forgotten Feminists

How to Make Your Mother Proud

History is rife with examples of women who effected change, then vanished into obscurity. When it comes to the story of how the 19th Amendment became a reality—irony be damned—it’s no different.