Women Who Changed the World

American history books contain stories of women who changed society with their hard work and insistence on justice. The women of the suffrage movement clad in white, those active in the temperance movement, and those advocating for better housing and protections for children contributed to the formation of our nation.

I can name the abolitionist Harriet Tubman of the Underground Railroad; Jane Addams, who started the settlement house movement in America along with other social work initiatives; Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker Movement; and Dolores Huerta of the United Farm Workers in California.

But I confess that these women, some of whom I studied during my school years, seemed to be extraordinary exceptions when it came to my own perception of women. No one told me that this kind of strength and determination was common to all women.