Discover the Women of the Hall

As Florida State Attorney, she helped establish the Miami Drug Court and reform the juvenile justice system. Appointed by President Clinton to be the first woman Attorney General of the United States, she brought a personal and professional integrity to the office during times when issues were divided bitterly along partisan lines.

Microbiologist whose landmark discovery that pathogenic bacteria communicate with each other via a system known as “quorum sensing” served as the foundation for an entire field of study and has led to drug development to interrupt the bacterial communication process.

For over a decade, Lilly Ledbetter has fought to achieve pay equity. Upon retiring from her position as a manager with the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, Ledbetter discovered that she had been paid considerably less than her male colleagues. She filed a formal complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission and later initiated a lawsuit against Goodyear alleging pay discrimination. Although a jury initially awarded her compensation, the Supreme Court ruled that Ledbetter could not receive any money because she had filed her complaint more than 180 days after receiving her first discriminatory paycheck. Since then, Ledbetter has continuously lobbied for equal pay for men and women; her efforts proved successful when President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law in 2009.

In 1973, Emily Warner became the first American female commercial airline pilot when Frontier Airlines broke the barrier against hiring women pilots. She later became the nation’s first woman airline captain, also at Frontier Airlines.

Attorney and civil rights advocate who founded the Children’s Defense Fund, the nation’s strongest advocacy group for children. A passionate champion for youth, Edelman’s organization works on health care and assistance for homeless children.

Her life and work has been dedicated to the achievement of women’s equality and human rights.  She has been at the forefront of nearly every significant women’s rights victory.  Responsible for coining the phrase “gender gap” referring to the difference in the way women and men vote and popularizing its usage in election and polling analyses to enhance women’s voting clout.

First American woman ever to win three gold medals in the Olympics. A track and field champion, Rudolph elevated women’s track to a major presence in the United States. She created the Wilma Rudolph Foundation to help train young athletes.

A certified professional midwife who has attended more than 1,200 births, Ina May Gaskin is known as the “mother of authentic midwifery.” In 1971, Gaskin founded the Farm Midwifery Center in rural Tennessee and effectively demonstrated that home birth midwives could be well prepared for their profession without first being educated as obstetric nurses. During a stay in Guatemala in 1976, Gaskin learned a technique for preventing and resolving shoulder dystocia during birth. After using the method with great success, Gaskin began to teach it and publish articles about the method. Now referred to as the Gaskin maneuver, it is the first obstetrical maneuver to be named after a midwife. Gaskin is the author of four books, including Spiritual Midwifery (1975), the first text written by a midwife published in the United States.

As the former Dean of Engineering at Cooper Union and the Executive Director of the Cooper Union Research Foundation, Dr. Eleanor Baum is the first female engineer to be named dean of a college of engineering in the United States. In 1995, she became the first female president of the American Society for Engineering Education. An electrical engineer who has worked in the aerospace industry, Dr. Baum is a respected leader in recruitment and retention of women in the engineering profession.

For twenty-five years, Nancy Pelosi has broken ground for women in politics. As the representative from California’s 12th district, Pelosi has focused her political career on strengthening America’s middle class and creating jobs, reforming the political system to create clean campaigns and fair elections, enacting comprehensive immigration reform, and ensuring safety in America’s communities, neighborhoods and schools. In 2002, Pelosi became the first woman to lead a major political party in the United States as the Democratic Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, and from 2007-2011, she served as the first female Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Pelosi has spearheaded the passage of historic legislation, including the Affordable Care Act, the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and more.

The first contemporary woman to head both a major women’s college (Wellesley) and a research university (Duke). Her efforts have increased minority student enrollment and improved faculty diversity.

Served as the senior woman in Congress, first elected in 1972 from Colorado. Schroeder worked to establish a national pro-family policy, promoting issues such as parental leave, child care and family planning.

The first female to pursue infrared and submillimieter astronomy into ultra sensitive light detection of celestial bodies, Dr. Judith Pipher is a highly regarded infrared astronomer. As a professor with the University of Rochester for 31 years, she founded a group of observational infrared astronomers who took the first telescopic infrared pictures of starburst galaxies. Dr. Pipher was also instrumental in designing aspects of the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope, launched in 2003.

A groundbreaking educator and politician, Dr. Donna Shalala has more than thirty years of experience as an accomplished scholar, teacher and administrator. Dr. Shalala is recognized as the longest serving United States Secretary of Health and Human Services (1993-2001) and is the current President of the University of Miami. From 1980-1987, Dr. Shalala served as the president of Hunter College, and from 1987-1993, she was the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Shalala is the recipient of more than three dozen honorary degrees and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008.

Gloria Allred is a founding partner of the law firm of Allred, Maroko & Goldberg (AM&G). Across her 42-year legal career, her firm has handled more women’s rights cases than any other private law firm in the nation and has won hundreds of millions of dollars for victims. Her work began with sex discrimination cases eliminating separation of toys by gender in stores and the exclusion of women from private clubs, and in recent decades has focused on sexual harassment and assault as well as reproductive justice. A key voice in the pursuit of marriage equality, Allred has won countless honors for her pioneering legal work on behalf of women’s rights and rights for minorities. Her work continues today.

Patricia Era Bath was an American ophthalmologist, inventor, humanitarian, and academic. She was an early pioneer of laser cataract surgery and was the first Black woman physician to receive a medical patent, which she received in 1986, for the Laserphaco Probe and technique, which performed all steps of cataract removal.

A singer, songwriter, pianist, actress, and civil rights activist. Her multi-octave vocal range moved millions of people around the world during an expansive career that spanned six decades.

Founder of CHILDFIND, a nationwide organization which helps locate missing children. Yerkovich developed the program after her own daughter was abducted. Her concept was the prototype for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Susan Kelly-Dreiss has worked for over 30 years to enact legal protections, implement innovative services and heighten public awareness on behalf of battered women and their children. In 1976, Kelly-Dreiss lobbied for passage of Pennsylvania’s first domestic violence law, and later that same year, she co-founded the nation’s first domestic violence coalition, the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence (PCADV). She was a founding member of the National Network to End Domestic Violence, and has played a key role in drafting federal legislation including the Federal Violence Prevention and Services Act and the Violence Against Women Act.

Civil rights advocate Carlotta Walls LaNier, at age 14, was the youngest of the Little Rock Nine; the nine African-American students who integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.  A recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal, she works to ensure equal access to education for children of color.

A commercial, instrumental and multi-engine-rated pilot, Dr. Shannon Lucid was a member of the first astronaut class to admit women (1979). In her more than 30 year tenure with NASA, she served in various capacities and participated in five space flights. Dr. Lucid was the first woman to hold an international record for the most flight hours in orbit by any non-Russian, and, until June 2007, she held the record for the most flight hours in orbit by any woman in the world – 5,354 hours or 223 days in space.

Nurse who was the first woman since founder Margaret Sanger, and first African American to become president of the Planned Parenthood Foundation. Wattleton developed Planned Parenthood into an influential nationwide organization.

Through her pioneering work studying images of women in advertising, Jean Kilbourne has changed the conversation as to how organizations and educational institutions address many public health problems including smoking, high-risk drinking eating disorders, obesity, sexualization of children, and violence against women.