Her 1976 book, ‘The Hite Report,’ touched off ‘a revolution in the bedroom’ and has sold tens of millions of copies. But harsh criticism drove her to self-exile in Europe. Shere Hite, who startled the world in the 1970s with her groundbreaking reports on female sexuality and her conclusion that women did not need conventional sexual intercourse — or [...]

Feminism was still a dirty word in macho Texas when Maura McNiel, wife, mother, Sunday school teacher and community volunteer, dared to speak up for women’s rights. An irresistible force with stamina, brains and winning ways, McNiel would go on to lead the Dallas feminist movement for more than 20 years. And until her death July 18 at age [...]

Diana E. H. Russell, world-renowned feminist activist, scholar, and author died July 28th in Oakland, California. She was 81 years old. The cause of her death was respiratory failure. Diana Russell devoted her life to the remediation of crimes against women. She authored numerous books and articles on  marital rape, femicide, incest, misogynist murders of women, and pornography. In addition to [...]

When Ms. Lyon married her partner of 55 years in 2008, they formed the first legal gay union in California. In 2004, despite state and federal bans on same-sex marriage, Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Ms. Lyon and Ms. Martin were the first to receive one, but that union would be [...]

Ruth Mandel, who ran the Center for American Women and Politics at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, went on to serve as the Institute director. She was also an official with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, where she bore witness, and worked to educate new generations about learning from the past to inform the [...]

African American mathematician Katherine Johnson began working at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1953 in a position that was classified as “subprofessional,” not far outranking a secretary or janitor. Nevertheless she persisted: using a slide rule or mechanical calculator in complex calculations her job was to check the work of her superiors — engineers who, unlike her, were [...]