Women Inspire: California Women Changing Our World. Part 1: Drive for Equality

Toypurina was a young medicine woman who in 1785 led a revolt of Tongva Indians against San Gabriel Mission. The missionaries had committed many assaults on Tongva people and their culture. Spanish soldiers captured the rebels and found Toypurina and three others guilty of leading the rebellion. She was baptized a Christian and banished.

María Amparo Ruiz de Burton was the first Mexican American to write a novel in English. Her second novel, The Squatter and the Don, tells the story of a Mexican American whose land is seized. It echoed her struggles and those of many Mexican Americans trying to keep their land after the U.S. takeover.

As a young enslaved woman, Bridget “Biddy” Mason and her children were taken to California, a free state. She petitioned the court and won her freedom. Mason saved her earnings as a midwife and invested in property. She became the wealthiest Black woman in Los Angeles and one of its most noted philanthropists.

Charlotte Parkhurst ran away from an orphanage in boys’ clothing. Now known as Charley, Parkhurst came to California in the Gold Rush and became a noted stagecoach driver. The dynamic environment of early California gave Parkhurst the opportunity to embrace a different gender identity—and thrive.

Juana Briones, one of the first Mexican settlers of what became San Francisco, was a businesswoman and healer. She escaped an abusive husband by earning enough money selling milk and produce to buy her own land. When the U.S. took over California, she fought and won a legal battle to keep her 4,400-acre ranch.

Mary Ellen Pleasant, born into slavery in the early 1800s, became an abolitionist and millionaire. After arriving in Gold Rush San Francisco, she became a cook and invested her earnings wisely. A century before the Montgomery bus boycotts, she successfully sued to desegregate San Francisco’s streetcars.

Caroline Severance was a leader in the clubs movement, which encouraged women’s political awareness and launched many into public life.
Her interests were broad, from free kindergartens to world peace. She cast her first vote in the election of 1912 after campaigning for women’s suffrage for over 60 years.

Maud Younger was born into a prosperous San Francisco family but worked as a waitress and identified with working-class women. She helped establish the San Francisco Wage Earners' Suffrage League to ensure that suffragists didn't overlook working women. Her leadership helped win the eight-hour workday for women.

Delilah Beasley was a historian and journalist who brought attention to the barriers African Americans faced. Her book The Negro Trail-blazers of California was based on nine years of research and interviews. With a weekly column in the Oakland Tribune, she chronicled the Black experience.

As a child, Tien Fuh Wu was sold by her father to pay his debts in China. Sent to San Francisco, she escaped to the Presbyterian Mission House, a refuge for enslaved girls and women. Wu learned English and attended college. She returned to the mission, and for decades helped other women escape slavery.

Angela Davis is a leading voice for women of color. Inspired by the Black Power movement, she joined the Black Panther Party. She was arrested as an accessory to a courtroom shootout. Her imprisonment inspired a movement to “Free Angela,” before she was acquitted. She is a leader in the movement to abolish prisons.

Tillie Hardwick, a Pomo Indian, successfully fought to make the government keep its promises to her community. In 1958 her tribe was slated to lose federal recognition in return for improved infrastructure and job training. When her son was denied benefits, she sued, and won. The government restored her tribe's status.

In 1973, Dolores Madrigal (left) went to the hospital to deliver her baby. She didn’t know until later that she had been sterilized and could never have another child. She and nine other mothers sued, claiming the hospital systematically sterilized Spanish-speaking women without their consent. They lost, but the case led to bilingual consent forms.

Phyllis Lyon and Dorothy “Del” Martin met in 1950, fell in love and began a life of LGBTQ activism. They co-founded the nation’s first lesbian social and political organization and helped found the first gay political club. They first married in 2004, when San Francisco allowed same-sex marriage. They had a second ceremony in 2008, when the state legalized their union.

Artist, educator, and author Judy Chicago founded the nation’s first feminist art program at CSU Fresno in 1970. At the California Institute of the Arts, she and artist Miriam Schapiro established Womanhouse to create female-focused art. Chicago’s famous work The Dinner Party commemorates women’s accomplishments through history.

Laura Aguilar was a pioneer of Chicana photography. She challenged traditional definitions of beauty and focused her camera on people of color, as well as people with disabilities and those in the LGBTQ community.

In 1992 Californians became the first in the nation to be represented by two female senators with the election of Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer. Feinstein is the top Democrat on Judiciary Committee and was the first woman to chair the Select Committee on Intelligence. In 34 years in Congress, Boxer was an advocate for families, children, consumers, and the environment.

Laura Sobrino proved that women could be a force in the male-dominated world of traditional Mexican mariachi music. She played with the nation's most prestigious musicians. She was musical director for an all-female mariachi group and taught the music she loved in schools and colleges.

A leading scholar and civil rights advocate, Kimberlé Crenshaw challenges the notion that all women have a common life experience. In 1989, she coined the term "intersectionality,” which describes how an individual’s multiple identities affect the way she experiences discrimination.

Thanks to Billie Jean King, women’s tennis became a major professional sport. As a player, she won 39 Grand Slam titles. As an advocate, she championed equal pay for women athletes. In the decades since confirming her sexuality in 1981, King has become a champion for LGBTQ visibility.

Shonda Rhimes is one of the most successful creative forces in the entertainment business. She is best known as a television show runner—creator, head writer, and executive producer—of the medical drama Grey's Anatomy. In 2018, she helped launch Time’s Up, which fights sexual harassment in blue-collar workplaces and in Hollywood.

Isa Noyola is a transgender activist and a leader in LGBTQ immigrant rights. In 2015, she organized the first transgender protest against the deportation of undocumented LGBTQ immigrants. She has been a leader at the Transgender Law Center and in the #Not1More campaign. She also founded El/La Para TransLatinas, a nonprofit serving transgender Latinas.

Just after Susan Fowler left her job as a software engineer at Uber, she wrote a blog post that upended the company and sparked a larger debate about work culture in Silicon Valley. In her 2017 post, she detailed sexual harassment and said managers had failed to act. It led to 20 people being fired, and set the stage for the CEO’s ouster.

Writer and community activist Alicia Garza was in Oakland when she learned that the man who killed Trayvon Martin was acquitted. She wrote on Facebook, “Our lives matter, Black Lives Matter." Los Angeles artist and activist Patrisse Khan-Cullors read Garza’s post and added the hashtag “BlackLivesMatter." With the help of New Yorker Opal Tometi, a civil rights movement was born—one proud to have many faces rather than a single leader.

Actor and activist Yara Shahidi founded Eighteen x 18 to encourage young people to vote in the 2018 congressional election 2018—the year she cast her first ballot. She is best known for her role on the television comedy Black-ish and its spin-off Grown-ish.