Alice Wolfson

Last updated

Alice Wolfson is an American activist. A Barnard College graduate and former Fulbright Scholar, she is a veteran political activist in women's reproductive health issues, a lawyer, and a co-founder of the National Women's Health Network.

She played an important role at the Nelson Pill Hearings on Capitol Hill, where she and other soon-to-be prominent health feminists were galvanized by their success at warning women of the Pill's dangerous side effects.

In 1968, she signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. [1]

She worked in the 1990s to obtain damages for women adversely affected by breast implants.

She is featured in the feminist history film She's Beautiful When She's Angry . [2] [3]

Today, Wolfson is an attorney who specializes in women's health care. Wolfson is concerned about new methods of hormonal contraception and advocates use of barrier methods over oral or injectable contraceptives. She believes that "it is criminal to suggest anything other than condoms." [4]

Related Research Articles

Alice Walker American author and activist

Alice Malsenior Tallulah-Kate Walker is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist. In 1982, she became the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which she was awarded for her novel The Color Purple. Over the span of her career, Walker has published seventeen novels and short story collections, twelve non-fiction works, and collections of essays and poetry.

Robin Morgan American poet and writer

Robin Morgan is an American poet, author, political theorist and activist, journalist, lecturer, and former child actor. Since the early 1960s, she has been a key radical feminist member of the American Women's Movement, and a leader in the international feminist movement. Her 1970 anthology Sisterhood is Powerful has been widely credited with helping to start the contemporary feminist movement in the US, and was cited by the New York Public Library as "One of the 100 Most Influential Books of the 20th Century." She has written more than 20 books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, and is also known as the editor of Ms. magazine.

Barbara Deming

Barbara Deming was an American feminist and advocate of nonviolent social change.

Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in the early 1960s and lasted roughly two decades. It took place throughout the Western world, and aimed to increase equality for women by building on previous feminist gains.

Susan Brownmiller is an American feminist journalist, author, and activist best known for her 1975 book Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape.

Karla Jay is a distinguished professor emerita at Pace University, where she taught English and directed the women's and gender studies program between 1974 and 2009. A pioneer in the field of lesbian and gay studies, she is widely published.

Tillie Olsen

Tillie Lerner Olsen was an American writer who was associated with the political turmoil of the 1930s and the first generation of American feminists.

Barbara Seaman

Barbara Seaman was an American author, activist, and journalist, and a principal founder of the women's health feminism movement.

The National Women's Health Network (NWHN) is a non-profit women's health advocacy organization located in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1975 by Barbara Seaman, Alice Wolfson, Belita Cowan, Mary Howell, and Phyllis Chesler. The stated mission of the organization is to give women a greater voice within the healthcare system. The NWHN researches and lobbies federal agencies on such issues as AIDS, reproductive rights, breast cancer, older women's health, and new contraceptive technologies. The Women's Health Voice, the NWHN's health information program, provides independent research on a variety of women's health topics.

Alix Kates Shulman

Alix Kates Shulman is an American writer of fiction, memoirs, and essays, and a prominent early radical activist of second-wave feminism. She is best known for her bestselling debut adult novel, Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen, hailed by the Oxford Companion to Women's Writing as "the first important novel to emerge from the Women's Liberation Movement."

The sexual revolution in the 1960s United States was a social and cultural movement that resulted in liberalized attitudes toward sex and morality. In the 1960s, social norms were changing as sex became more widely discussed in society. Erotic media, such as films, magazines, and books, became more popular and gained widespread attention across the country. These changes reveal that sex was entering the public domain, and sex rates, especially among young people, could no longer be ignored.

Anne-christine dAdesky

Anne-christine d'Adesky is an American journalist and activist of French and Haitian descent. She has maintained a deep relationship with Haiti, reporting the 2010 earthquake from a feminist angle, especially noting the impact of the disaster on the lives of teenage girls. She has also contributed to humanitarian projects in East Africa, as well as conducting extensive research into HIV/AIDS and its treatment worldwide.

Alta Gerrey is a British-American poet, prose writer, and publisher, best known as the founder of the feminist press Shameless Hussy Press and editor of the Shameless Hussy Review. Her 1980 collection The Shameless Hussy won the American Book Award in 1981. She is featured in the feminist history film She's Beautiful When She's Angry.

Networked feminism is a phenomenon that can be described as the online mobilization and coordination of feminists in response to perceived sexist, misogynistic, racist, and other discriminatory acts against minority groups. This phenomenon covers all possible definitions of what feminist movements may entail, as there have been multiple waves of feminist movements and there is no central authority to control what the term "feminism" claims to be. While one may hold a different opinion from another on the definition of "feminism", all those who believe in these movements and ideologies share the same goal of dismantling the current patriarchal social structure, where men hold primary power and higher social privileges above all others. Networked feminism is not spearheaded by one singular women's group. Rather, it is the manifestation of feminists' ability to leverage the internet to make traditionally unrepresented voices and viewpoints heard. Networked feminism occurs when social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr are used as a catalyst in the promotion of feminist equality and in response to sexism. Users of these social media websites promote the advancement of feminism using tools such as viral Facebook groups and hashtags. These tools are used to push gender equality and call attention to those promoting anything otherwise. Online feminist work is becoming a new engine of contemporary feminism. With the possibility of connecting and communicating all around the world through the Internet, no other form of activism in history has brought together and empowered so many people to take action on a singular issue.

Chude Pamela Parker Allen, also known as Pamela Parker, Chude Pamela Allen, Chude Pam Allen, Pamela Allen, and Pam Allen is an American activist of the civil rights movement and women's liberation movement. She was a founder of New York Radical Women.

She's Beautiful When She's Angry is a 2014 American documentary film about some of the women involved in the second wave feminism movement in the United States. It was directed by Mary Dore and co-produced by Nancy Kennedy. It was the first documentary film to cover feminism's second wave.

Belita Cowan was a women's health activist during the 1960s and 1970s. She attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She worked part-time at the University Hospital while finishing her master's degree in English. Cowan started her research as a result of how horrified she was by the false advertising of the morning after pill. She was invited to present her research findings at the Senate hearing on DES in 1974. This made her the first women's health activist to ever testify as an expert witness.

Jenny Brown is an organizer in the women's liberation movement and the author of several books on feminism, reproductive rights, and labor. She works with National Women’s Liberation, a radical feminist organization of dues-paying women.

Marilyn Salzman Webb, also known as Marilyn Webb, is an American author, activist, professor, feminist and journalist. She has been involved in the civil rights, feminist, anti-Vietman war and end-of-life care movements, and is considered one of the founders of the Second-wave women's liberation movement.

References

  1. “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” January 30, 1968 New York Post
  2. "The Women".
  3. "The Film — She's Beautiful When She's Angry". Shesbeautifulwhenshesangry.com. Retrieved 2017-04-28.
  4. [Bloom, 1995]

Sources