Novelist and Hollywood screenwriter Tess Slesinger was born in New York on July 16, 1905. She published several works, including: The Unpossessedand Time: The Present. Slesinger died of cancer at age thirty-nine before the premiere of one of her final works, the acclaimed A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

Wilma Shore was a writer and teacher most active between the 1940s and the 1960s. She lived at various times in Los Angeles and New York City, settling finally in New York City. Involved with left-wing political activity, she and her husband were blacklisted during the House Committee on Un-American Activities hearings.

“Our literature lacks the participation of the second half of humanity.” Thus proclaimed the Hebrew writer Hava (Eva) Shapiro (1878-1943) in her 1909 feminist manifesto, the first ever in the Hebrew language. She was the most prolific female Hebraist of her era to remain in the Diaspora and the first woman ever to have kept a diary in Hebrew.

As a journalist, editor and foreign correspondent, Alice Schwarz-Gardos wrote articles for German-language newspapers in Israel and Europe from an explicitly Zionist and patriotic point of view. Besides her journalistic work, Schwarz-Gardos published eleven books in German.

Therese Schlesinger’s life was characterized by her lifelong passion for learning and her endeavor to improve the plight of working-class women. She was a dedicated feminist who was inspired by the ideals of socialism, struggling to combine both of these political passions within the Austrian Social Democratic Party.

Alice Schalek first entered the public sphere at the turn of the century as the author of a well-received novel, published under the male pseudonym Paul Michaely. The first woman in Austria to become a career photojournalist and travel writer, and the first and only female member of the Austrian Kriegspressedienst (war information unit) during World War I, Schalek paved the way for careers in both photography and journalism for other women.

Anna Rozental belonged to the generation of Jewish labor activists who had already been active in the founding phase of the General Jewish Labor Bund under the Russian Empire and who were highly respected as “veterans” in the Polish Bund of the interwar period. From her youth on, Rozental’s life was closely tied to the Jewish labor movement in Vilna, where she died in Soviet custody during World War II.

Betty Ross was a journalist known for her international purview and interviews with celebrities. In the mid-1920s she traveled extensively through Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Russia, gathering materials and interviewing celebrities. She was among the first journalists to conduct radio interviews.

Colette Roberts devoted her life to increasing people’s understanding and appreciation of modern art. The success she earned as a gallery director, art critic, and educator influenced the art world of the mid-twentieth century in New York and Paris and throughout the world.

Esther Leah Medalie Ritz defended human rights throughout the myriad conflicts of the twentieth century, from speaking out against fascism in the 1930s to participating in Israeli-Palestinian dialogue in the 1980s.

Israeli poet Dahlia Ravikovitch (1936-2005) is one of the most significant figures in modern Hebrew literature and poetry, best known for her ground-breaking feminist poetry and for her political involvement.

Puah Rakovsky dedicated her life to working towards the empowerment of Jews, particularly of Jewish women. She was a revolutionary woman, taking on important roles as an educator, translator, organizer of women, and an early socialist Zionist.

Sophie Rabinoff used the skills she honed as a doctor in Palestine to improve health care in some of the worst slums in New York. Her innovative work helped to establish the fields of public health and preventive medicine in both the United States and Palestine.

The first woman on the financial desk of a big-city newspaper and the first woman to break into the world of writing about finance, Sylvia Field Porter was a pioneering economist, columnist, and best-selling author. For over half a century, she educated the American consumer about money matters, empowering women to achieve economic independence.

Writer, poet, critic, and screenwriter Dorothy Parker became known for her fierce wit as Vanity Fair’s drama critic in 1918 and as a founder of the “Algonquin Round Table.” She wrote multiple successful volumes of poetry and short stories and co-wrote the screenplay for the original A Star Is Born (1939). Parker was also committed to activism and numerous political causes.

Born in Germany, Ruth Peggy Sophie Parnass was sent to Sweden to escape the Nazis. Parnass became a journalist, actress, court reporter, feminist activist, and writer. Parnass combines her private and public lives in her writing, whether on her childhood under Nazi rule in Hamburg and as an exile in Sweden, on women's issues, or on political matters.

Margarete Muehsam-Edelheim was a journalist with a doctorate in law. In her native Berlin, she co-founded the organization Women Law Graduates and served as a City Councilor. In the United States, Muehsam-Edelheim was a founding member of the Leo Baeck Institute’s Women Auxiliary, as well as serving in many capacities for various organizations.