THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT
Joan Ditzion
“At 81, I embrace myself as an aging woman and an elder and want to have a sense of agency as I age; to age well, with passion and purpose until my last breath.”
Artist, Educator, Author, Activist, Geriatric Social Worker. A founder of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective and co-author of all editions of Our Bodies, Ourselves, including Our Bodies, Ourselves: A New Edition for a New Era (2005) and Ourselves and Our Children. Contributed to The New Ourselves Growing Older.
Interviewed by Judy Waxman, Oral Historian, September 2024
Photo 1. Women and Their Bodies, 1970 – what would become Our Bodies Ourselves in 1971. Photo 2. Our Bodies Ourselves founders, circa 1975. Back row (left to right): Wendy Sanford, Paula Doress-Worters, Joan Ditzion, Judy Norsigian, Jane Pincus, Norma Swenson, Nancy Miriam Hawley; seated in front row: Pamela Berger, Ruth Bell Alexander, Vilunya Diskin, Esther Rome. (Phyllis Ewen). Photo 3. Founding Members of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, 1976. Back (l to r) Ruth Bell, Judy Norsigian, Vilunya (“Wilma”) Diskin, Jane Pincus; middle (l to r) Pamela Berger, Esther Rome, Joan Ditzion, Norma Swenson, Paula Doress; front (l to r) Wendy Sanford, Nancy Hawley. [Courtesy of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard University]
More About Joan:
- “Joan Ditzion of ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves’ Fame Says ‘We Can All Be Aging Activists,'” by Liz Seegert, June 21, 2021.
- Joan Ditzion and Nancy “Miriam” Hawley talk about what it was like to help found “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” their earliest memories of being aware of their bodies, and the Women’s Movement of the 1960s and 70s. July 2018.
- 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, directed by Mary Dore and co-produced by Nancy Kennedy.
- Joan’s remarks, Publication Debut of Barbara Love’s, Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975, Columbia University Faculty House and Barnard College, NYC. Veteran Feminists of America, November 2006
- Our Bodies Ourselves website
- Joan Ditzion biography
- The Boston Women’s Health Collective archives
- Appearances on C-SPAN
- Cited in Barbara Love’s book, Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975, page 119