Speakers
Geraldine Ferraro
A current New York candidate for the U.S.
Senate, Geraldine
Ferraro is a role-model for women in politics. In 1984, Ferraro earned
a place in history when she became the first woman vice-presidential candidate
on a major party ticket. She also won NOW/PAC's
first -- and to date only -- endorsement in a presidential race for the
Mondale-Ferraro ticket. Ferraro was first elected to Congress from New
York's Ninth District in Queens in 1978 and served three terms in the House.
As a member of the Budget Committee,
Ferraro strongly opposed the Reagan
Administration's economic policies. Ferraro sponsored the Women's Economic
Equity Act to end pension discrimination against women and provide job
options for homemakers. As U.S. Ambassador to the United
Nations Human Rights Commission from 1994-96, she encouraged the first
investigation of violence against women worldwide. Before entering government,
Ferraro taught elementary school in New York City for five years while
putting herself through law school at night. After spending 13 years at
home raising her three children, she joined the Queens County District
Attorney's Office and started the Special Victims Bureau to supervise the
prosecution of sex crimes, child abuse and domestic violence.
Marcia Ann Gillespie
Marcia Ann Gillespie is a trailblazer in the magazine industry. She has
served as Ms. Magazine's
editor in chief since 1993, but her association with the magazine dates
back to 1980 when she became a contributing editor. Gillespie went on to
become a featured columnist and the executive editor of Ms. before
becoming the top editor. This appointment marked yet another milestone
in her distinguished career. As the editor in chief of Essence
magazine from 1971 to 1980, Gillespie is credited with transforming the
then-fledgling publication into one of the fastest growing women's magazines.
During her tenure, Essence won the National Magazine Award, the
industry's most prestigious honor, and Gillespie was honored as "One of
the Fifty Faces for America's Future" by Time
magazine. At Ms. Gillespie has made "moving the discussion of feminism
forward" and "keeping it real" with readers her priority. In her first
editorial as editor in chief, Gillespie promised readers that Ms.
would be a "welcome table" for a range of voices and views about feminism.
And under her leadership the magazine has reached an ever more diverse
readership, attracting increasing numbers of younger women.
Betsy McCaughey Ross
Currently lieutenant governor of New York, Betsy
McCaughey Ross is running for the state governorship in the November
elections. During her tenure as second-in-command of the state government,
McCaughey Ross has advocated for improvements in the early education
system in New York and led the fight for patient rights and increased awareness
of HMO abuses.
Among her successes were the campaign for full state funding for prekindergarten
for all children, effective early reading programs to ensure that all children
can read by third grade and the Patient
Fair Appeals Act which gives patients a right to appeal outside their
insurance company. McCaughey Ross unequivocally supports women's reproductive
freedom, leads the fight against "drive-through"
mastectomies and deliveries and champions lesbian and gay rights. She
entered public service after successful careers as a university professor
at Columbia and as a public policy
researcher at the Center for the
Study of the Presidency and the Manhattan
Institute. McCaughey Ross has many publications, academic awards and
prizes, but is most proud of her Mother of the Year Award.
Sonia Sanchez
A prolific poet-activist and scholar, Sonia Sanchez is the author of 16
books including We a BaddDDD People and Under a Soprano Sky.
In addition to being a contributing editor to Black Scholar
and the Journal of African Studies, she has edited two anthologies
of black literature. Her book Homegirls and Handgrenades won the
1985 American Book Award. She has also been the recipient of the Lucretia
Mott Award for 1984, the Community Service Award from the National Black
Caucus of State Legislators, the Peace and Freedom Award from Women's
International League for Peace and Freedom in 1989 and a Pew Fellowship
in the Arts for 1992-1993. Sanchez holds the Laura Carnell Chair in English
at Temple University and is chairperson
of Temple's Women's Studies Program.
She has lectured at over 500 universities and colleges in the United States
on black culture and literature, women's rights and social justice, and
has read her poetry worldwide. Sanchez serves as a board member of MADRE
and as a sponsor of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
Her most recent book is Like the Singing Coming off the Drums published
this year.
Eleanor Smeal
The leader of The Feminist Majority Foundation,
Eleanor Smeal has been on the frontlines of the struggle for women's rights
for over 26 years -- from the integration of Little
League, newspaper help-wanted ads and police departments to the passage
of legislation such as the Violence
Against Women Act and the Civil
Rights Act of 1991. During her three terms as president of NOW,
Smeal led the campaign to ratify the Equal
Rights Amendment, the largest grassroots and lobbying effort in the
history of the women's rights movement, and initiated the landmark NOW
v. Scheidler case against anti-abortion terrorists. In 1987, Smeal
co-founded and assumed the presidency of The Feminist Majority to encourage
feminists to take power and win equal representation for women. Making
this majority visible has long been Smeal's aim, from the first national
abortion rights march in Washington D.C. in 1986 to the first-ever national
feminist exposition, Expo
`96. Always a pioneer, Smeal recognized the potential of the Internet
as a feminist organizing and research tool, launching the Feminist Majority
On-line in 1995, one of the first women's organization sites on the World
Wide Web.
Barbara Smith
A leading feminist writer and activist since the 1960s, Barbara Smith co-founded
Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, the first U.S. publisher for women
of color. Smith's articles, essays and short stories have appeared in publications
including Ms., The
New York Times Book Review, The Black Scholar, The
Nation and Gay Community News. Editor of three major collections
about black women, Smith was also a general editor -- along with Wilma
Mankiller, Gwendolyn Mink, Marysa Navarro and Gloria Steinem -- of the
just released The
Reader's Companion to U.S. Women's History. Her numerous awards
include the 1994 Stonewall Award for service to the lesbian and gay community.
Smith served on the Board of Advisors for the New York Public Library's
award-winning." She was a Scholar-in-Residence at the Schomburg
Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City in 1995-96 and
a Fellow at the Bunting
Institute of Radcliffe College in 1996-97. A collection of Smith's
essays and articles entitled The Truth That Never Hurts: Writings on
Race, Gender, and Freedom will be published this fall.
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