Ann Clare Boothe Luce was born and raised in NYC. Her mother wanted her to become an actress, and from the age of 10, she studied at Mary Pickford on Broadway, playing first in Broadway by the age of 11. At the age of 20, she married George Tuttle Brokaw, a millionaire heir who was 23 years older than her. They had one daughter before they got divorced. At 27 years old, Luce started to work at Vogue as a caption writer, and later as associate editor, managing editor, and column writer at Vanity Fair. In 1931, she published her first book, a volume of short stories titled “Stuffed Shirts.” In 1935, her first playwright, “Abide with Me,” was staged but failed. Soon after, she wrote the satirical comedy, “The Women,” with an all-female cast of 40 characters. This pioneer play was a Broadway hit and soon was adapted into a movie. Following the success, she wrote two more plays that were adapted into movies – Kiss the Boys Goodbye and Margin for Error. At the age of 32, she married Henry Luce, the publisher of Time, Life, and Fortune. In 1939, when WW2 has erupted, she traveled to Europe as a correspondent for Life magazine. In 1941, she and her husband went to China to report on the status of the war with Japan. When the US entered the war, Luce visited military installations in Africa, China, India, and Burma. In 1942, at the age of 39, Luce won a seat representing Connecticut in the US House of Representatives, the first woman from Connecticut to be elected to Congress. During her term, she called for the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act, advocated aid for war victims abroad, and lobbied for issues such as infant-care, maternity appropriations for the wives of enlisted men, the Equal Rights Amendment, and the development of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. She was a member of the House Military Affairs Committee and had a pivotal role in creating the Atomic Energy Commission. She co-authored the Luce–Celler Act of 1946 to permit Filipinos and Indians permission to immigrate to the US, and she proposed a bill to create a Labor Department bureau to ensure equal pay for equal work for women and minorities. In 1944, her 19 years old daughter, Ann Clare Brokaw, died in a car accident. Dealing with the tragedy, she began to explore religion and received into the Roman Catholic Church. She did not run for re-election. When WW2 ended, Luce became a loud advocate against international Communism. During the presidential election of 1952, she campaigned on behalf of Republican candidate Dwight Eisenhower, giving more than 100 speeches nationwide. Thanks for her contribution, she was appointed as the US ambassador to Italy – the first American woman to serve in a major ambassadorial post abroad. She resigned from her position after three years due to arsenic poisoning that impacted her physically and mentally. In 1973 Luce was appointed by President Nixon to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. She remained on the board until 1977, and then again in 1981, was appointed by President Reagan. In 1983, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the first female Congress member to receive the award. Three years later, at the age of 84, she died of brain cancer. Read more...

Nan Wood was born in West Point, New York, where her father, the author Charles Erskine Scott Wood, worked as an adjutant of the US Military Academy. When she was three years old, her family moved to Portland, Oregon. She attended private schools and graduated from St. Helens Hall. Afterward, she studied music at the Finch School in NYC, where she met her life-long friend Eleanor Roosevelt. At 26, she married David Honeyman. While raising her three children, Honeyman was active in various charities and humanitarian organizations and served as the president of the Portland League of Women Voters and as a board member of the Oregon Mental Hygiene Society. During the 1920’s she became an anti–Prohibition activist, and at the age of 47, she was appointed head of the Oregon division of the Women’s National Organization for Prohibition Reform. Two years later, Honeyman was chosen as the vice-chair of the Oregon Democratic Committee. In 1933, she served as a delegate to the state constitutional convention, which ratified the 21st Amendment, ending Prohibition. In 1930, Honeyman was asked by the democratic party to run for Congress but denied the offer. In 1935, after she was asked again, she decided to campaign for a seat in the Oregon house of representatives, which she won and served for three years. She also served twice as a delegate to the Democratic national conventions, first in 1936 and then in 1940. In 1936, she finally agreed to run for the Portland seat, representing Oregon’s 3rd congressional district. During her campaign, Honeyman focused on housewives and retirees, walking door to door to speak with them, claiming that “Women running for office can overcome much masculine prejudice by meeting the men voters face to face.” When she was elected, Honeyman became the first woman to represent Oregon in the US Congress. During her tenure, she was a loud advocate for the New Deal and the Neutrality Act. She was a member of numerous committees, including Irrigation and Reclamation, Indian Affairs, and Rivers and Harbors. Honeyman’s legislative interests varied from loans to farmers and the creation of a national award for poetry. In 1938, she lost the general elections 49-51. After leaving Congress, she remained involved with politics, serving as senior Pacific Coast representative of the Office of Price Administration and filling a vacancy as a senate member at the Oregon Senate. In 1942, she was appointed by Franklin D. Roosevelt as the US Collector of Customs in Portland, Oregon, a position she served in for 11 years. After her retirement in 1953, Honeyman moved to Woodacre, CA, where she died at 89. Read more...

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was born in the Bronx borough of NYC to a Puerto Rican family. Her political tendencies were recognized from a young age, and in high school, she participated in the National Hispanic Institute’s Lorenzo de Zavala Youth Legislative Session and later served as its Secretary of State. She attended Boston University, graduating cum laude with a BA degree in international relations and economics. While studying in college, she was an intern in Senator Ted Kennedy’s section of foreign affairs and immigration issues. As the only Spanish speaker in the office, she was the one to assist the families who were separated by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). After college, Ocasio-Cortez returned to the Bronx and worked at the nonprofit National Hispanic Institute, as well as a community organizer, a waitress, and a bartender, helping her mother with fighting a Foreclosure on their home. In 2016, she was a volunteered organizer at Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign. She became active with the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, traveling across the country speaking to the communities that have been affected by the change of drinking water in the area. The encounter with the local activists inspired her to work for her community. Not long after, she received a call from Brand New Congress, recruiting her as a progressive candidate for the congressional district election. In April 2018, still working as a waitress, Ocasio-Cortez launched her primary campaign for NYC’s 14th congressional district election – the first person in 14 years to challenge Joe Crowley’s seat in US congress. Under the slogan “The Courage to Change,” she organized an all-volunteer grassroots campaign and did not take corporate donations. With a strong social media presence, she defeated her opponent by almost 15%, becoming the youngest woman ever to serve in the US Congress. Arriving at the House of Representatives with millions of followers on social media, Ocasio-Cortez was appointed by her colleagues to give them social media lessons. In congress, she runs on a progressive platform. She is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and a loud advocate for social policies, such as abolishing ICE, universal healthcare, gun control, cancellation of student debt, tuition-free public college and trade school, criminal justice reform, and ending the privatization of prisons. She is also promoting climate policies, and together with Senator Ed Markey, she introduced the “Green New Deal” – a plan to switch to renewable energy sources for the entire country to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Read more...

Nancy Patricia D’Alesandro was born in Baltimore, Maryland. Both of her parents were involved in politics. From a young age, she had a political awareness, participating in her mother’s Democratic women gatherings, and helping her father at his campaign events. After graduating from the all-girls Catholic Institute of Notre Dame, she studied political science at Trinity College, where she met her husband, Paul Pelosi. The couple settled in San Francisco, and she became active at the local democratic party. Starting as a volunteer organizer and working her way up. In 1976, she was elected as a member of the Democratic National Committee, a position she held for 20 years. In the following year, she was elected as the party chair for Northern California, and within four years, she was chosen as the head of the California Democratic Party. She continued to serve in various positions, including the Host Committee chairwoman of the San Francisco Democratic National Convention, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee finance chair. In 1987, she won the special election for representing California at the US House of Representatives and was re-elected for a full term in the next elections. Over the years, she continued to gain reputation within the party, and in 2002, at the age of 62, she was elected for the House minority whip, becoming the first woman to lead a party in Congress. In this role, she promoted many liberal causes, voting for gun control, abortion rights, and against the Iraq war. Five years later, she was elected to the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, making history as the first woman to hold this position. Working with President Obama, she became the architect of the healthcare reform, led the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and promoted bills for increasing the minimum wage, GI education, and increasing service for veterans and caregivers. Under her leadership, the Congress was one of the most productive in history. In 2011 she returned to her previous post as a minority leader until she was re-elected as the house speaker in 2019, making history once again, as the first person in over 60 years to serve nonconsecutive terms in this position. Read more...

Born as Shirley Anita St. Hill in Brooklyn, NY, to a family of immigrants from the Caribbean region. Due to financial problems, Chisholm and her sisters were sent to live with their grandmother in Barbados, where she attended a one-room schoolhouse for five years before returning to the US. At 22, she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brooklyn College, where she was recognized for her debating skills. Three years later, she married Conrad O. Chisholm. While studying at Columbia University for MA in elementary education, she worked and developed from a nursery school teacher to the director of the Friends Day Nursery in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and educational consultant at NYC Division of Day Care. By serving in those positions, Chisholm witnessed gender and racial inequalities, her interest in politics grew, and she began to volunteer for various organizations, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the League of Women Voters and the National Association of College Women. In 1965 Chisholm became a Democratic member of the New York State Assembly, and three years later, she made history by becoming the first African-American Congresswoman in the US Congress. In her seven terms in the House of Representatives, she advocated for racial and gender equality, expanding the food stamp program, and promoted the ending of the Vietnam War. During her time in office, she hired women-only staff, claiming she faced discrimination more as a woman than as a person of color. On January 25, 1972, Chisholm announced her bid for the upcoming presidential elections. By that, she became the first African-American candidate of a major party to run for the US presidency, as well as the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. During the campaign, she faced many challenges; she wasn’t regarded as a serious candidate, received little support from her African-American male colleagues, and was blocked from participating in the televised primary debates. She lost the elections to George McGovern, who later was defeated by Richard Nixon. After the elections, Chisholm continued her work at the House of Representatives, served for four years as Secretary of the House Democratic Caucus, and in 1977, became the first African-American woman and the second woman to serve on the House Rules Committee. In 1982 Chisholm retired from Congress to take care of her second husband, who was injured in an accident. She moved to Williamsville, NY, and returned to work in education at Mount Holyoke Women’s College, teaching politics and sociology. She traveled all across the US, giving speeches at colleges and visiting different minority groups to empower them. In 1990, alongside 15 other black women and men, Chisholm established the African-American Women for Reproductive Freedom and served as its first chair. Chisholm died in her house in Florida after suffering from several strokes. Read more...

Bella Savitzky Abzug was born in New York City to a Russian-Jewish immigrants family. She studied political science at Hunter College of the City University of New York and simultaneously attended the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. In 1944, she earned her law degree from Columbia University. As a lawyer, she specialized in labor, civil, and equal rights cases. Alongside being a lawyer, she was an activist that co-founded Women Strike for Peace in 1961. As one of their main actions, they organized a national peace protest attended by 50,000 women in 60 cities around the United States to protest against nuclear weapons testing. In 1971, Abzug won the election to the United States House of Representatives, the ninth woman who represented NY in the House. On her first day, she introduced a bill to remove all US troops from Vietnam. She was also one of the first to propose a bill for gay rights in Congress. Abzug kept her position till 1977 and used her voice to fight for gender equality and worldwide peace. Although failing to reelect to the US House, she continued promoting women’s rights in the US and abroad. In 1991, she co-founded the Women’s Environment and Development Organization, WEDO, organizing women for international conferences and actions for the Women’s Rights Movement. She co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus to increase the number of women in all aspects of political life. In her last years, she traveled worldwide promoting gender equality and lobbied to advance the Women’s Agenda for the 21st Century at the UN Conference on Environment and Development. She gave her last public speech before the UN in March 1998. The same month, she died of heart failure after battling breast cancer. Read more...

Barbara Charline Jordan was born in Houston, Texas, and grew up on an unpaved street “in the biggest ghetto in the biggest state.” Jordan graduated with a B.A. from Texas Southern University and later received a law degree from Boston University. After two failed attempts at running for the Texas House of Representatives, she won a seat in the 1966 Texas Senate, the first black woman in the position – among 30 white men. In 1972 she was the first black person elected to the National Congress from Texas since the Reconstruction era, after the Civil War. She served only six years due to ill health and spent the rest of her life teaching at the University of Texas in Austin. Barbara Jordan was a great orator, a skill that gained her national recognition when addressing the Judiciary Committee in 1974 on national television – she spoke in praise of the constitution when calling for the impeachment of President Nixon after the Watergate scandal. Her talent for speaking in public made her the first woman and the first black keynote speaker at a Democratic National Convention in 1976. At the same time, her nature as a politician was a pragmatic negotiator, which led to criticism from black and feminist activists. In Jordan’s last public service position, she was appointed Head of the Commission on Immigration Reform, for which she had to travel to Mexico and the Dominican Republic in a wheelchair. She died at the age of 59 from pneumonia. Her death made her the first African American woman buried in the Texas State Cemetery.   Read more...

Born in Montana to a wealthy rancher and a teacher, oldest of seven siblings. She studied Biology at Montana State University, Social Work in New York School of Philanthropy, and Policy-Making in the University of Washington. After exploring various professional avenues – as a teacher, social worker, seamstress, and lobbyist, politician became her chosen career. In 1916, she was elected to the US House of Representatives from Montana and became the first female in Congress four years before the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution passed, allowing women to vote. Rankin served twice as a Republican Representative of Montana in the House, the only woman from Montana. Both times she voted against US involvement in World Wars. She was an active advocate of pacifism, suffrage and social welfare up until her nineties. At the age of 87, she led a march of 5,000 women dressed in black, against the Vietnam War, named “Jeannette Rankin Brigade.” Rankin loved to travel, for work or pleasure, a spirit captured in her legendary diary entry: “It makes no difference where, just so you go! Go! Go! Remember, at the first opportunity, go.” In the United States, she lived and worked in various states, and owned a farm in rural Georgia, which she tried to turn into a female commune, and where she established the Georgia Peace Society. In her travels overseas, she visited New Zealand, Russia, Ireland, Indonesia, South Africa, Turkey, Switzerland, and returned several times to her favorite destination – India. Her fame attracted to her several marriage proposals via mail, which she rejected. She is said to have had little time for romantic affairs and did not want to have children. She passed away at 92, in California. She left her estates to the Jeannette Rankin Foundation which awards educational scholarships for low-income women above the age of 35. Read more...