Margaret Higgins Sanger, also known as Margaret Sanger Slee, was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. Sanger 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.
Carol Lani Guinier was an American educator, legal scholar, and civil rights theorist. She was the Bennett Boskey Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and the first woman of color appointed to a tenured professorship there. Before coming to Harvard in 1998, Guinier taught at the University of Pennsylvania Law School for ten years. Her scholarship covered the professional responsibilities of public lawyers, the relationship between democracy and the law, the role of race and gender in the political process, college admissions, and affirmative action. In 1993 President Bill Clinton nominated Guinier to be United States Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, but withdrew the nomination.
Michelle Sung Wie West is an American professional golfer who plays on the LPGA Tour. At age 10, she became the youngest player to qualify for a USGA amateur championship. Wie also became the youngest winner of the U.S. Women's Amateur Public Links and the youngest to qualify for an LPGA Tour event. She turned professional shortly before her 16th birthday in 2005, accompanied by an enormous amount of publicity and endorsements. She won her first and only major at the 2014 U.S. Women's Open.
Hak Ja Han is a Korean religious leader. Her late husband Sun Myung Moon was the founder of the Unification Church (UC). Han and Moon were married in April 1960 and have 10 living children and over 30 grandchildren. In 1992, she established the Women's Federation for World Peace, and traveled the world speaking on its behalf. Since her husband's death, she has assumed leadership of the Unification Church, whose followers call her "True Mother" and "Mother of Peace".
Patsy Matsu Mink was an American attorney and politician from the U.S. state of Hawaii. She served in the United States House of Representatives for 24 years as a member of the Democratic Party, initially from 1965 to 1977, and again from 1990 until her death in 2002. She was the first woman of color and the first Asian-American woman elected to Congress, and is known for her work on legislation advancing women's rights and education.
Patricia Hatsue Saiki is an American politician and former educator from Hilo, Hawaii. She served as a Republican in Congress from 1987 to 1991 and then as Administrator of the Small Business Administration under President of the United States George H. W. Bush.
Haunani-Kay Trask was a Native Hawaiian activist, educator, author, poet, and a leader of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. She was professor emerita at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where she founded and directed the Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies. A published author, Trask wrote scholarly books and articles, as well as poetry. She also produced documentaries and CDs. Trask received awards and recognition for her scholarship and activism, both during her life and posthumously.
The term picture bride refers to the practice in the early 20th century of immigrant workers in Hawaii and the West Coast of the United States and Canada, as well as Brazil selecting brides from their native countries via a matchmaker, who paired bride and groom using only photographs and family recommendations of the possible candidates. This is an abbreviated form of the traditional matchmaking process and is similar in a number of ways to the concept of the mail-order bride.
Sang Whang was a Korean American church leader and community advocate in Florida.
Robyn Mokihana Ah Mow is the head coach of the Hawaii Rainbow Wahine volleyball team and a former American indoor volleyball player. She was a setter on the USA national team and played at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the 2004 Athens Olympics, and at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, helping Team USA to a silver medal. She worked as an assistant coach at the University of Hawaii Rainbow Wahine volleyball team from 2011-2015 and was named Head Coach in 2017 after Dave Shoji's retirement. She has also served as a club coach at Na Keiki Mau Loa Volleyball Club.
Susan Oki Mollway is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii and the first East Asian woman and Japanese-American woman ever appointed to a life-time position on the federal bench.
Sylvia Jung Luke is a South Korean–born American attorney and politician who is serving as the 16th lieutenant governor of Hawaii. She served as a member of the Hawaii House of Representatives for 24 years, from 1998 until her election as lieutenant governor in 2022. She is the first Korean American politician ever elected to a statewide office in the United States.
Ha Soo Whang, was a Korean American social worker. She was the first Korean social worker in Hawaii, and acted as a bilingual interpreter for the families under her care. A graduate of Athens College, she was affiliated with the YWCA's International Institute. She is credited with spreading the art of Korean dance in Hawaii.
Halla Pai Huhm was a Korean-American dancer and the most well-known teacher of Korean dance in Hawaii. She established the Halla Pai Huhm dance studio, and after her death, the Halla Pai Huhm Foundation's Dance Collection was started from her collection of documents, photographs, and recordings. The archival collection was named a U.S. Irreplaceable Dance Treasure in 2001.
Dora Kim Moon (1877–1971) was a Korean-American community organizer. In March 2017, Hawaiʻi Magazine ranked her among a list of the most influential women in Hawaiian history. After emigrating from Korea to the Territory of Hawaii, she formed a prayer group which later became the First Korean United Methodist Church. Also in Hawaii, Moon founded the Korean Women's Club, the Korean Missionary Society, and helped establish the Korean Women's Relief Society. According to the Hawai'i Council for the Humanities, she was a "pivotal organizer of a modern Korean women's movement in the Territory of Hawai‘i".
Whang Bo-ryung is a South Korean-American singer, songwriter and painter. She is the lead vocalist and founder of the band Smacksoft. She released her first solo album, Cat With Three Ears, in April 1998.
Hong Son-ok is a senior North Korean politician. She has served as the Vice Chairwoman of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly (SPA) and Chairwoman of the Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries. These posts took her to many foreign countries and meetings with foreign dignitaries. In 2013 she became the first female to be appointed Secretary General of the SPA Presidium. She served in that capacity until 2018. Hong has chaired many of North Korea's friendship associations with foreign countries.
Dr Whang Youn Dai is a Korean physician known for her work on the welfare of people with disabilities and her advocacy of sports for those with disabilities. The Whang Youn Dai Achievement Award is named in recognition of her contributions to Paralympic sport.
Edith Kenao Kanakaʻole was a Hawaiian dancer, chanter, teacher, and kumu hula. Born in Honomū, Hawaii in 1913, she was taught hula from a young age, and dropped out of her formal schooling before completing middle school. She began to compose traditional Hawaiian music in 1946, choreographing hula to accompany many of her chants, and founded Halau o Kekuhi in 1953. In the 1970s, she taught Hawaiian studies and the Hawaiian language at Hawaiʻi Community College and later the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, where she worked until her death in 1979.
Dana Okimoto is an American former Branch Davidian. She moved to Waco, Texas, from Los Angeles, California, in approximately 1988 with Robyn Bunds, a former Branch Davidian turned critic. She is originally from Hawaii and is a registered psychiatric nurse at Kaneohe State Hospital, and remarried to Roy Kiyabu, a chef, as of 2003. She gave birth to Sky or Skye Borne Okimoto and Scooter Okimoto, who are both children of David Koresh, the leader of the Branch Davidians.
