My mother was no shrinking violet. After a few weeks at home following the wedding, she got a job at the Gary Welfare Department, where she went on home visits and discovered Gary’s devastatingly impoverished African-American community. I am sure that this was a pivotal moment for her—and she never turned back.

Rivka got me to other agunah rallies, including a pitiful one with five other women circling the tiny front yard of a Manhattan brownstone. It was my last agunah rally but not Rivka’s. She never gave up and never turned down a request for help. For her, it was about justice and compassion, not numbers.

Aloni spearheaded an ideology in which feminism is a lens for social equality across all social sectors. Her work with Palestinians was informed by her feminism, and her feminism was informed by her work with Palestinians. She held on to a world view in which equality and compassion were part of the process of learning to see the “other” in society, whether that “other” was distinguished by gender, ethnicity, religion, or anything else.

Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky has earned a reputation as a liberal progressive for her stances on issues ranging from health care to marijuana legalization.

Congresswoman Susan Davis, the first Democrat in more than fifty years to serve more than one term for California’s 53rd district, has repeatedly fought for women’s health issues on both a state and local level.

The first woman allowed to train with male judo students at Japan’s judo headquarters, the Kodokan, Rena “Rusty” Kanokogi pioneered women’s judo as an Olympic sport.

Jaclyn Friedman voiced new possibilities for sex-positive feminism and a rejection of rape culture as editor of Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape.

Driven by her own experiences as a teenage mother, Gloria Feldt became an advocate for women's rights and reproductive choice, leading Planned Parenthood for a decade.

Carol Ruth Silver was one of the first two white women to be jailed in the Freedom Rides, an experience that sparked a career in law and politics, fighting for the rights of others.

Vivian Leburg Rothstein’s early experiences fighting for civil rights led her to a long career advocating for peace, women’s rights, and the labor movement.

Shaped by her experiences in post-Holocaust Europe and older than most civil rights volunteers, Trudy Orris brought her children with her to participate in demonstrations down South.

Barbara Jacobs Haber focused her civil rights activism on sit-ins and desegregating restaurants and bars.

Janice Goodman’s work on civil rights issues drove her to become a lawyer, arguing class action cases for women’s rights.

Meredith Tax used her writing both to highlight the tremendous upheaval of her own times and to reimagine the struggles of suffragists and union organizers.

Ann Lewis served as White House director of communications under Bill Clinton before lending her talents to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s own historic bid for the presidency.

An Orthodox Jewish feminist, Rivka Haut advocated on behalf of agunot (chained wives) and wrote feminist prayers for Orthodox Jews.

Rabbi Maralee Gordon helped found the Chutzpah Collective, a radical Jewish political collective that utilized the inclusion of women in religious rituals as a jumping-off point for making all Jews feel welcome in the Jewish community regardless of disability or sexual orientation.

Sonia Pressman Fuentes, the first female attorney in the office of the general counsel of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, helped extend the Civil Rights Act’s protections of equal opportunity to all people regardless of gender.

Eve Ensler’s massively successful play The Vagina Monologues gave her a platform to launch V-Day, a campaign to end violence against women and girls.

Heather Booth helped transform the American political landscape from her early involvement in both civil rights and abortion rights through her campaign for marriage equality.

Janet Yassen helped build the first rape crisis center in Massachusetts and went on to become an international consultant on preventing rape and sexual violence.