Clara González Carrillo was born in Remedios, Republic of Panama. Her father was a Spanish immigrant, and her mother was of indigenous descent. When she was two years old, her father refused to supply weapons to the dominant political group of their region, and the family fled the country to Costa Rica, staying there for four years. She attended the Santa Familia School, which trained the girls in domestic life, learning sewing and home economics. Afterward, she won a scholarship to the Escuela Normal de Institutoras, earning a teaching degree. While working as a teacher, she studied law at the Escuela Nacional de Derecho (National School of Law). In 1924, at 24, she became the first woman in Panama to earn a Bachelor of Law and began her law career when the law changed in 1925, allowing women to practice law. In 1923, while still in school, she co-founded the Partido Nacional Feminista (National Women’s Party), promoting women’s rights and suffrage. The party established the Escuela de Cultura Femenina (School of Feminine Culture) to provide professional, educational, and social development for women. At the time, González became involved with socialist and anti-imperialist groups, and in addition to her civil rights and suffrage activities, she became an advocate for social and economic justice. In 1927, at 29, she won a scholarship to New York University, where she earned a doctorate in law. During her time in the US, the Inter-American Commission of Women (IACW) was established, and she became Panama’s representative. She worked on legal issues and women’s rights in the Pan-American Union office and led their research on the status of women’s rights in different nations. Over time, González felt that the organization withheld funding from the Latin American activists and denied them leadership posts, and in 1930, she left the IACW and returned to Panama. On her return, she taught economics, political science, and sociology at the National Institute, and later criminology, family law, and juvenile justice at the newly-founded University of Panama. She continued to advocate for women’s rights and rejoined the National Women’s Party. In 1938, she broadened her activities and became a member of the Mexican organization Frente Único Pro-Derechos de la Mujer (the Sole Front for Women’s Rights). In 1943, at 45, González married Charles A. Behringer, an American civil engineer. The following year, she founded the Unión Nacional de Mujeres (National Women’s Union); when women were granted the right to vote in 1945, she ran for national deputy of the Constitutional Assembly and the vice-presidency of Panama but lost in both elections. She continued her social activities, as an organizer of the Popular Centers of Culture for Adults, as an official in the International Federation of Women Lawyers, and worked with UNESCO on child welfare issues. In 1951, 53 years old González became the first woman in Panama to be appointed as a juvenile court judge. In this role, she assisted in drafting the Juvenile Code, which established the treatment of juvenile delinquents; she also founded the Chapala Juvenile Reformatory. In 1964, she retired and moved with her husband to West Covina, California. She returned to Panama when her husband died two years later. In 1972, she went through a hip surgery that caused her leg amputation and limited mobility. She died at the age of 91. Read more...

Ketanji Brown Jackson was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in Miami, Florida. She attended Palmetto Senior high school, where she was a member of the debate team and president of the student body. She studied government at Harvard University, graduating magna cum laude, and then worked for a short time as a researcher and reporter at TIME Magazine. In 1993, at 23, she continued her studies at Harvard Law School, where she served as the supervising editor of the Harvard Law Review. In 1996, the same year she received her law degree, she married Patrick Graves Jackson. For the next decade, she worked in both the private and public sectors. She clerked for several federal judges, including Judge Patti B. Saris of the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, Judge Bruce M. Selya of the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and Justice Stephen Breyer of the US Supreme Court. In 2003, at the age of 33, Jackson returned to work for the government, first as an assistant special counsel to the US Sentencing Commission and then as an assistant federal public defender. In 2009, President Obama nominated her to serve as vice-chair of the US Sentencing Commission for four years. After President Barack Obama’s nomination, she began serving on the US District Court for the District of Columbia in March 2013. In June 2021, following President Joe Biden’s nomination, she was confirmed as a circuit judge for the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. In the following year, President Biden announced her nomination for associate justice of the US Supreme Court, and on April 7th, 2022, 52 years old Jackson became the first black woman in the Supreme Court. She is also the first federal public defender to sit on the court and the first justice in almost 30 years to have represented criminal defendants. Jackson is serving on various boards and committees, including the Judicial Conference Committee on Defender Services, Harvard University’s Board of Overseers, the Council of the American Law Institute, the board of Georgetown Day School, and the US Supreme Court Fellows Commission. Read more...

Margaret Thatcher was born in Lincolnshire, England, to a middle-class family of shopkeepers. Growing up, she was introduced to conservative politics by her father, a member of the town’s council, and formed her political tendencies and inspired her to become a Politician. She attended Huntingtower Road Primary School and later Kesteven and Grantham Girls’ School. At 18, she got a scholarship to study at Somerville College, Oxford, earning a degree in chemistry. There, she was active in school politics, serving as president of the Conservative Association. After graduation, she moved to Colchester, where she worked as a research chemist. In 1950, at the age of 25, she relocated to London and made her first bid for public office, running as the Labour candidate for the Dartford parliamentary seat. Though she lost the election both in 1950 and in 1951, her nomination increased the local Conservative votes. At the time, she worked at J. Lyons & Co food company as a food scientist, testing the quality of ice creams and cake fillings. In 1951, she married Denis Thatcher and took some time off politics to study law. She passed the bar exams in 1954 while taking care of her newborn twins. Later on, she worked for a few years as a tax attorney. In 1959, 34 years old Thatcher made another attempt to enter the House of Commons, successfully winning the Conservative seat of Finchley district. Once in, she steadily climbed within the party. Within two years, she was appointed parliamentary secretary in the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance, becoming the youngest woman to receive such a post. In 1969, she was named chief opposition spokesman on education and then secretary of state for education and science. In this position, she advocated for making academic education available for working-class children. In 1975, at the age of 50, Thatcher, who was still low ranked in the party hierarchy, was elected Leader of the Conservative Party, becoming the first woman to lead a major political party in the UK and the first to serve as the opposition leader in the House of Commons. In the following year, she gave the Britain Awake speech, in which she attacked the Soviet Union and its policies, for which she was called the Iron Lady by the Soviet press, a nickname that stuck with her for the rest of her life. In 1979, Thatcher led the Conservative Party to win the general elections, becoming the first female prime minister in the UK. At the time, England was in political and economic turmoil, unemployment on the rise, and the government was nearly bankrupt. In her first term, she constructed a series of measures to eliminate governmental regulations and advance the independence of individuals from the state: increasing taxes on spending, privatizing state-owned industries such as public transport, social housing, water, gas, and electricity, reducing governmental expenses on social services including education and health care, and eliminating regulations of businesses. The result was a collapse of the manufacturing industry that led to an increase in unemployment by more than 20%. Thatcher’s popularity was in decline, but her firm approach during the Falklands War in 1982, in which Britain managed to retake the territory from Argentina, enabled her to win the 1983 elections. In her second term, Thatcher focused on applying legal restrictions on trade unions. She also formed an alliance with the US against the Soviet Union, presided over the independence of Zimbabwe, and opposed international sanctions against the apartheid regime of South Africa. Though she encountered criticism for her actions, she managed to gain popularity by supporting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and keeping the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent, which manifested in another victory in the 1987 elections. In her third term, Thatcher led a hostile approach toward the European Community (EC), believing that the European Union should be a free-trade area and not a political entity. This approach against the EC divided the party. This, and the violent street outbreaks caused by the implementation of fixed-rate local tax led to the resignation of numerous party members. In 1990, Thatcher won the party elections by a small margin and decided to resign as the party’s leader and prime minister. She remained a member of Parliament and continued to influence the party’s politics until the 1992 elections. Afterward, she received a life peerage as Baroness that entitled her to sit in the House of Lords. After retiring at 67, Thatcher began to write about her experiences as prime minister and a woman in politics. In addition, she gave lectures and established the Thatcher Foundation to promote political and economic freedom. Thatcher retired from public speaking after suffering a series of minor strokes in 2000, which led to progressive dementia. She died at the age of 87. Read more...

Catharine Alice MacKinnon was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She attended Smith College, graduating magna cum laude with a B.A. in government, continued her education at Yale University, earning her J.D. in 1977 at the age of 31, and her Ph.D. in political science at 41 in 1987. During the 70s, MacKinnon became an active member of the newly formed women’s liberation movement. While in graduate school, she initiated a course that later will develop into Yale’s women’s studies program. As part of her law studies, MacKinnon wrote a paper in which she argued that sexual harassment in the workplace is a form of sex-based discrimination. That paper was the foundation of her first book, Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination, published in 1978. In the book, MacKinnon categorizes two types of sexual harassment – sexual compliance in exchange for benefits and sexual harassment as a persistent condition. In 1980, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission adopted MacKinnon’s guidelines and prohibited both kinds of sexual harassment, and in 1986 the Supreme Court ruled in favor of MacKinnon’s argument in its first sexual harassment case. During the 80s, MacKinnon focused on legal issues in the sex industry, fighting it as a form of sex discrimination and human trafficking, arguing it as a civil rights violation. Alongside activist Andrea Dworkin, MacKinnon wrote an ordinance that allows women harmed by trafficking in pornography to sue the producers for damages. In 1998, MacKinnon’s and Dworkin’s law against prostitution passed in Sweden and was termed as the Swedish Model, and later was adopted in various countries, including Canada, France, Norway, and Ireland. In 1993, MacKinnon represented Bosnian survivors of Serbian sexual atrocities and achieved legal recognition of rape as an act of genocide. She continued to advocate against prostitution and trafficking crimes as a Special Gender Adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and practiced nationally and internationally with organizations such as Equality Now, the ERA Coalition, and the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women. Throughout her career, MacKinnon served as a professor at several law schools; among them are Yale, Stanford, the Hebrew University, and the University of Basel. She was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford and the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin. She is also a Roscoe Pound Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and an Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. MacKinnon published 17 books about sexual harassment, pornography, and prostitution, helping to change the legal system in the U.S and abroad in gendered-based sex crimes.   Read more...

Carol Elizabeth Moseley was born and raised in a segregated neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois. While in high school, her parents got divorced, and she moved in with her grandmother. After graduation, she studied Political Science at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Afterward, she studied law at the University of Chicago, earning her Juris Doctor degree at 25. While at law school, she met Michael Braun, and the couple married in 1973. In the same year, Moseley Braun began to work as a prosecutor in the US Attorney’s office in Chicago, dealing primarily with civil cases. After four years, she took time off to be at home with her newborn son till her neighbors recruited her to run for the state legislature. She served for 10 years, promoting health care, gun control, and education reform. In 1988, when Moseley Braun was elected to the Cook County Recorder of Deeds, she became the first African-American to serve in an executive position in Cook County. In November 1992, after defeating her Democratic opponent, Moseley Braun ran in the primary election for the US Senate. On her win, she became the first African-American woman to be elected to the US Senate, the first African-American US Senator from the Democratic Party, and the first female Senator from Illinois. In her single term as Senator, she supported social causes, such as minority rights, pro-choice bills, child support bills, and budgets for job training of youth and senior citizens. A year after losing the re-election, she was nominated as the US Ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa. In 2003, Moseley Braun began her campaign for the Democratic Party presidential elections, though She dropped out of the race after reaching third in the DC primary. In 2005, she ran for mayor of Chicago, finishing fourth with only 9% of the votes. Since the early 2000s, Moseley Braun teaches political science in numerous institutes, including DePaul University and Northwestern University. Read more...

Stacey Abrams was born in Madison, Wisconsin, and grew up in Gulfport, Mississippi, and then Atlanta, Georgia. Growing up, her parents had struggled to stay above the poverty line, and more than once there could not pay the water and electricity bills. After graduating high school valedictorian, she studied interdisciplinary studies at Spelman College, earning her Bachelor of Arts with magna cum laude. During that time, she worked in the youth services department in Atlanta’s mayor’s office and later interned at the US Environmental Protection Agency. She continued her education at the University of Texas at Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affairs, earning a Master of Public Affairs degree, followed by a Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School. At the age of 26, Abrams worked as a tax attorney at a law firm in Atlanta, and at 29, she was appointed a deputy city attorney for the City of Atlanta. In 2006, the 33 years old Abrams won the election as the 89th district representative at the Georgia House of Representatives. In her 11 years in office, she served on various committees, including Ethics, Appropriations, Ways & Means, and Judiciary Non-Civil. She promoted pro-choice and gun control policies and opposed strict voter ID laws. In 2010, she was elected as the House minority leader, becoming the first woman to lead a major party in the Georgia General Assembly and the first African-American to lead the Georgia House of Representatives. In this role, Abrams co-administrated the bipartisan transportation bill to save the HOPE scholarship program, stopping the largest tax increase in the state’s history. She also co-wrote a criminal-justice reform to reduce prison costs without increasing crime. During that time, she co-founded the financial services firm NOW Corp and Nourish, Inc – a beverage company. In 2017, Abrams resigned office to focus on her 2018 gubernatorial campaign. When she won the Democratic nomination, Abrams became the first African-American woman to be elected as a major party’s nominee for governor. She lost the general elections by only 55,000 votes. During her career, Abrams founded several organizations advocating for voting rights. In 2014 she established the New Georgia Project, in which she worked for registering voters who are unlikely to vote, especially people of color. In 2020, she founded Fair Fight to promote fair elections, ensuring that every citizen has a voice in the election system and encouraging voter participation by educating about voting rights. Abrams has been nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for leading the nonviolent campaign for exercising voting rights. Abrams is serving on many boards and committees, including the Center for American Progress, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the Gateway Center for the Homeless, the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education, and Let America Vote. She is also a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Read more...

Sadie Tanner Mossell was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A year after she was born, her father abandoned the family and moved to the UK. During high school, she moved to Washington, DC, where she lived with her relatives and attended M Street School. At 17, she returned to Philadelphia to study Education at the University of Pennsylvania. There, she suffered discrimination from both students and professors, and though she graduated with honors, she was denied joining Phi Beta Kappa. She continued her studies, and at 23, received her M.A in Economics, followed by a Ph.D. – becoming the second African-American woman in the USA to earn a doctoral degree and the first to receive a Ph.D. in Economics. Despite her academic accolades, she struggled to get a professorship. Unable to find a job in Philadelphia, she moved to Durham, North Carolina, and worked for the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company. At the time, she also served as the first national president of Delta Sigma Theta – the black women’s sorority. In 1923, she married the lawyer and civil rights leader Raymond Pace Alexander, and the couple moved back to Philadelphia. Once again, she had difficulties getting a job in the city, so she stayed home, concentrated on volunteering for a year, and then decided to go to law school. At the age of 26, Alexander became the first African-American woman to study at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and two years later she became the first to graduate and to be admitted to the Pennsylvania bar – the first African-American person to hold both a Ph.D. and a J.D. Afterward, she joined her husband’s law firm as a partner, making them one of the early married legal teams in the USA. As an attorney, Alexander advocated against segregation, racial discrimination, and employment inequality. As a partner, she helped draft the Pennsylvania state Public Accommodations Law of 1935, prohibiting discrimination in public places. At 30, Alexander added another “First” to her list when she was appointed the first African-American woman Assistant City Solicitor for the City of Philadelphia. During the two inconsecutive terms in this position (1928-1930 and 1934-1938), she established a legal aid bureau that assisted African-Americans who could not afford attorneys. In 1930, Alexander served as secretary for the National Urban League, a position she held for 27 years. In 1943, Alexander was chosen as secretary of the National Bar Association, becoming, once again, the first woman in this position. In 1947, President Harry Truman appointed her to his Committee on Human Rights, and in 1952 she began her 12 years term on Philadelphia’s Commission on Human Relations. At the age of 61, after her husband was appointed to the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia, Alexander opened her law firm, continuing to practice law for the next 15 years. At 78, she joined Atkinson, Myers, and Archie law firm as a general counsel until her retirement at 84. Alexander passed away at the age of 91 from complications of Alzheimer’s disease. Read more...

Catherine Cortez was born in Las Vegas, Nevada. She studied finance at the University of Nevada, Reno, and then law at the Gonzaga University School of Law. In 1995, she became the chief of staff of the former Nevada Governor Bob Miller, as well as served as an assistant to the United States Attorney General. During that time, she married Paul Masto, a former Special Agent in the US Secret Service. In 1999, Cortez Masto moved to Washington, DC, for a few years to work as a federal prosecutor. In 2006, 42 years old Cortez Masto won the state Attorney General’s elections, serving full two-term after winning the re-election of 2010, the second woman to serve as Nevada Attorney General. In this position, she focused on social issues such as sex trafficking, elder abuse, domestic violence, and the methamphetamine epidemic. As state attorney general, Cortez Masto investigated a nationwide mortgage-fraud, which the settlement of the case brought to the state more than $1.9 billion. In 2016, Cortez Masto ran for a seat at the US Senate. In her campaign, she asserted topics such as immigration reform, protecting Social Security and Medicare, and raising the minimum wage. She won with 47% of the votes, and when she took office, Cortez Masto became the first Latina in the US Senate and the first woman to represent Nevada. While in office, she advocates for gun control, pro-choice, and federal government limitations on greenhouse gas emissions. She is a member of numerous committees, including the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, the Committee on Finance, and the Committee on Indian Affairs. In her efforts to promote women and children, Cortez Masto introduced two bills addressing missing, murdered, and trafficking of Native Americans and Alaska Natives, as well as introduced the Interdiction of Protection of Child Victims of Exploitation and Human Trafficking Act, providing tools for law enforcement officers to recognize and rescue exploited children. Read more...

Jennifer Granholm was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. At the age of 4, she moved with her family to the US, settling in California. After graduating high school, she worked in various jobs, including as a tour guide at Universal Studios, in customer service at the Los Angeles Times, and at John B. Anderson’s presidential campaign. She studied Political Science and French at the University of California, Berkeley, then continued to a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard University, where she met her future husband, a fellow law student named Daniel Mulhern. After graduating with honors, she was active in the Michael Dukakis presidential campaign for the 1988 election while working as a clerk for Judge Damon Keith at the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Granholm started working as an attorney in the Wayne County executive office, where she prosecuted gang members, drug dealers, and child pornographers. At the age of 36, she was appointed to the Corporation Counsel for Wayne County – the youngest person to serve in this post. In 1998, she won a close and dirty race for Michigan Attorney General – the first woman in this position. In-office, she established Michigan’s first High Tech Crime Unit, sued RVP Development for the disruption of Lake Michigan, and enforced regulations on gasoline dealers in the state. In 2002, she entered the race as the Democratic candidate for Governor of Michigan. She won and became the first woman to serve as Governor of the state of Michigan. As Governor, Granholm pushed for education reform, promoting education for children from birth to age 5, advocating for post-secondary education, and leading the state to double its number of college graduates. Under her leadership, she led Michigan through the national crisis of 2008, channeling $2 billion to attract jobs and investing in clean energy, homeland security, and manufacturing sectors. During her eight years in office, the state of Michigan had attracted 4,000 companies and became the 2nd highest state in the country with child health care coverage. After leaving office in 2011, she began to teach law and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and became a senior research fellow at the Berkeley Energy and Climate Institute. She founded the American Jobs Project at UC Berkeley, served as a senior advisor for The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Clean Energy Program. She is a board member of the Dow Chemical Company and of The University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics. She is also a regular contributor to CNN, serving as a Managing Partner of RIDGE-LANE LP company and chairing the Priorities USA Action as well as the American Jobs Project.   Read more...

Amy Coney Barrett was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and grew up in Metairie, a New Orleans suburb. Her family is Catholic, and throughout the years, she studied at catholic education institutes. After high school, she studied English literature and French at Rhodes College, graduating magna cum laude. Afterward, she studied law at Notre Dame Law School, graduating first in her class with a Juris Doctor summa cum laude. At the age of 25, Barrett began to work as a judicial law clerk for Judge Laurence Silberman and then for Justice Antonin Scalia of the US Supreme Court. In 1999, she married Jesse M. Barrett, whom she met at Notre Dame Law School. The couple moved to Washington, DC, where she worked for a prestigious litigation law firm. At 29, Barrett served for a year as a visiting associate professor at George Washington University Law School, before returning to Notre Dame Law School as an assistant professor, soon becoming a full-tenured faculty member. She taught federal courts, statutory interpretation, and constitutional law and was voted Professor of the year three times. In 2010, she was named a Professor of Law, and during 2014-2017 she held the Diane and M.O. Miller Research Chair of Law. At the age of 38, Barrett was appointed to the Advisory Committee for the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, a position she served for six years. In 2017, Barrett was nominated by the US President Donald Trump to the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. At the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, she was asked how her faith could affect her law-making decisions. Barrett answered that her faith would never compromise her work as a judge. The hearing, as well as her opinions on abortion and gay marriage, made her popular with religious right conservatives. She was voted 55–43, and in her confirmation, Barrett became the first woman to serve in the Indiana seat on the Seventh Circuit. While serving in this position, she authored more than 100 opinions that reinforce her name as a textualist. On September 26th, 2020, Barrett was nominated by President Trump to the US Supreme Court, to replace the deceased Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. On October 27th, 2020, Barrett became the 103rd associate justice of the US Supreme Court, the fifth woman in this position. Read more...