Margaret Higgins Sanger, also known as Margaret Sanger Slee, was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. She popularized the term "birth control", opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established organizations that evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Mary Kathleen Turner is an American actress. Known for her distinctive deep husky voice, she is the recipient of two Golden Globes, as well as nominations for an Academy Award, a Grammy, and two Tony Awards.
Gloria Marie Steinem is an American journalist and social-political activist who emerged as a nationally recognized leader of second-wave feminism in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Kathleen Hanna is an American singer, musician and pioneer of the feminist punk riot grrrl movement, and punk zine writer. She is the lead singer of feminist punk band Bikini Kill and fronted the electropunk band Le Tigre in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Since 2010, she has recorded as the Julie Ruin.
Bella Abzug, nicknamed "Battling Bella", was an American lawyer, politician, social activist, and a leader in the women's movement. In 1971, Abzug joined other leading feminists such as Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, and Betty Friedan to found the National Women's Political Caucus. She was a leading figure in what came to be known as ecofeminism.
The Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. (PPFA), or simply Planned Parenthood, is an American nonprofit organization that provides reproductive and sexual healthcare and sexual education in the United States and globally. It is a member of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).
Rebecca Walker is an American writer, feminist, and activist. Walker has been regarded as one of the prominent voices of Third Wave Feminism, and the coiner of the term "third wave", since publishing a 1992 article on feminism in Ms. magazine called "Becoming the Third Wave", in which she proclaimed: "I am the Third Wave."
Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa was an American scholar of Chicana feminism, cultural theory, and queer theory. She loosely based her best-known book, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), on her life growing up on the Mexico–Texas border and incorporated her lifelong experiences of social and cultural marginalization into her work. She also developed theories about the marginal, in-between, and mixed cultures that develop along borders, including on the concepts of Nepantla, Coyoxaulqui imperative, new tribalism, and spiritual activism. Her other notable publications include This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (1981), co-edited with Cherríe Moraga.
Otis O'Neal Horsley, Jr. was a militant anti-abortion activist and Christian Reconstructionist who produced a website called the Nuremberg Files, which provided the home addresses of abortion providers in the United States.
Dolores Clara Fernández Huerta is an American labor leader and civil rights activist who, with Cesar Chavez and lesser known Gilbert Padilla, is a co-founder of the United Farmworkers Association, which later merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to become the United Farm Workers (UFW). Huerta helped organize the Delano grape strike in 1965 in California and was the lead negotiator in the workers' contract that was created after the strike.
Jennifer Baumgardner is a writer, activist, filmmaker, and lecturer whose work explores abortion, sex, bisexuality, rape, single parenthood, and women's power. From 2013 to 2017, she served as the Executive Director/Publisher at The Feminist Press at the City University of New York (CUNY), a feminist institution founded by Florence Howe in 1970.
Faye Wattleton is an American reproductive rights activist who was the first African American and the youngest president ever elected of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and the first woman since Margaret Sanger to hold the position. She is currently Co-founder & Director at EeroQ, a quantum computing company. She is best known for her contributions to family planning and reproductive health, and the reproductive rights movement.
Merle Hoffman is an American journalist and activist.
Jessica Valenti is an American feminist writer. She was the co-founder of the blog Feministing, which she wrote for from 2004 to 2011. Valenti is the author of six books: Full Frontal Feminism (2007), He's a Stud, She's a Slut (2008), The Purity Myth (2009), Why Have Kids? (2012), Sex Object: A Memoir (2016), and Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, and the Truths We Use to Win (2024). She also co-edited the books Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape (2008), Believe Me: How Trusting Women Can Change the World (2020). Between 2014 and 2018, Valenti was a columnist for The Guardian. She currently runs the Abortion, Every Day newsletter on Substack. The Washington Post described her as "one of the most successful and visible feminists of her generation".
Camille Anna Paglia is an American academic, social critic and feminist. Paglia was a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 1984 until the university's closure in 2024. She is critical of many aspects of modern culture and is the author of Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990) and other books. She is also a critic of contemporary American feminism and of post-structuralism, as well as a commentator on multiple aspects of American culture such as its visual art, music, and film history.
The Margaret Sanger Award was an honor awarded annually by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America from 1966 to 2015. Created to honor the legacy of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, it is the Federation's highest honor. It is given to individuals to recognize excellence and leadership in the reproductive health and rights movement. Although it is identified as an annual award, it hasn't been given out and since 2015.
NO EXCUSES: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think about Power is a nonfiction book by women's rights advocate, feminist and speaker Gloria Feldt released by Seal Press in September 2010.
Lori Bizzoco is a writer, journalist, former public relations executive.
Jill Nicole Filipovic is an American author and attorney.
Erin Aubry Kaplan is a Los Angeles journalist and columnist who has written about black political, economic and cultural issues since 1992. She is a contributing writer to the op-ed section of the Los Angeles Times, and from 2005 to 2007 was a weekly op-ed columnist – the first black weekly op-ed columnist in the paper's recent history. She has been a staff writer and columnist for the LA Weekly and a regular contributor for many publications, including Salon.com, Essence, and Ms. Kaplan is also a regular columnist for make/shift, a quarterly feminist magazine that launched in 2007 and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times.
