THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT
Kathy Bonk
“As my generation starts to retire, we want to make sure the next generation has all the tools they need to fight for women’s rights.”
Media Expert. Author. Co-Founder and Executive Director, Communications Consortium Media Center. Led Women’s Media Project at the National NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund. NOW Women’s Media Reform Committee. Global Communicator for Women’s Human Rights. Helped establish National Commission on Working Women. Helped implement the first family planning clinics in Moscow during the break-up of the Soviet Union. Worked for worldwide media coverage of the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994. Advisor to U.S. delegation to U.N.’s Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995.
Interviewed by Mary Jean Collins, VFA Historian, September 2019


Photo 1. With Pat Schroeder, working on her exploratory campaign in 1988. Photo 2. “Women, Men and the Media,” C-SPAN, 1989.
More About Kathy:
- Kathy rings closing bell at NYSE with Congresswoman Maloney – August 29, 2019
- VFA Event – “Sharing Our Stories: The Second Wave Feminist Movement,” Durham, North Carolina, March 31, 2017
- Kathy’s remarks lead into a conversation led by Kathy Rand with: Mandy Carter, Heather Booth and Historians Melissa Estes Blair, Robin Morris and Jessica Wilkerson
- The Herstory: JAWS Oral History Project
- Kathy on C-SPAN
- Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute
- The State Historical Society of Missouri. National Organization for Women, Legal Defense and Education Fund, Papers pertaining to the work of the organization and the papers of Kathy Bonk.
- Broadcasting News – March 13, 1978
- Kakenya’s Dream
- Cited in Barbara Love’s – Feminists Who Changed America – page 49