For Immediate Release:

Celebrating Extraordinary Women’s Contributions

Seneca Falls, NY: – In celebration of the 100th year anniversary of Women’s Right to Vote in NY, The National Women’s Hall of Fame will host a weekend celebrating the achievements of American Women in the birthplace of the Women’s Rights movement in the U.S. The highlight of the weekend is the induction of women into the Hall of Fame for their historic achievements. “We are pleased to add these American women to the ranks of inductees whose leadership and achievements have changed the course of American history,” said Betty Bayer, Ph.D., the Hall’s President.

The National Women’s Hall of Fame will celebrate the inclusion of these extraordinary women into the ranks of the inductees at the biennial induction ceremony on September 14, 2019, at the magnificent del Lago Resort & Casino, located outside of Seneca Falls, NY.

The 2019 inductees* were nominated by the public, judged by an interdisciplinary team of experts across the nominees’ fields, and selected for their invaluable contributions to American Society in the areas of the arts, athletics, business, education, government, humanities, philanthropy, and science.

The 2019 National Women’s Hall of Fame inductees are:

Gloria Allred: (1941- ) Gloria Allred is a founding partner of the law firm of Allred, Maroko & Goldberg (AM&G). Across her 42-year legal career, her firm has handled more women’s rights cases than any other private law firm in the nation and has won hundreds of millions of dollars for victims. Her work began with sex discrimination cases eliminating the separation of toys by gender in stores and the exclusion of women from private clubs, and in recent decades has focused on sexual harassment and assault as well as reproductive justice. A key voice in the pursuit of marriage equality, Allred has won countless honors for her pioneering legal work on behalf of women’s rights and rights for minorities. Her work continues today.

Angela Davis: (1944- ) Dr. Angela Davis is a prominent political activist, academic scholar, and author of numerous groundbreaking works. Well-known for her emphasis on the ways that justice is “indivisible,” Dr. Davis has spent a lifetime working on civil rights and women’s rights, against the prison industrial complex and for international justice. Dr. Davis’ teaching career has taken her to numerous college campuses across the United States, and she has also given lectures in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and South America. She spent 15 years at the University of California Santa Cruz where she is now Distinguished Professor Emerita of History of Consciousness (an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program) and of Feminist Studies. Dr. Davis’ works have emboldened generations of students to critically address and respond actively to contemporary issues of injustice. Her powerful voice remains instructive today.

Sarah Deer: (1972- ) A citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma, Sarah Deer is a professor at the University of Kansas and an engaged activist for indigenous women. Ending violence against women is her life’s goal. A lawyer by trade and an advocate in practice, Deer’s scholarship and public policy work focuses on the intersection of federal Indian law and victims’ rights, using indigenous feminist principles as a framework. Her work to end violence against Native women has received national recognition from the American Bar Association and the Department of Justice as well as a MacArthur fellowship.

Jane Fonda: (1937- ) A two-time Academy Award-winning actress (Best Actress in 1971 for Klute and in 1978 for Coming Home), activist, businesswoman, author, producer for film and television and philanthropist, Jane Fonda has revolutionized how we see things from the screen to fitness to representations of women and girls in the media. From the counterculture of the 1960s to today’s feminism, Native American rights and environmentalism; from Klute to 9 to 5 to Grace and Frankie: Fonda has been a visionary and powerful influencer. She is the recipient of many honors and awards, including two Academy Awards, two BAFTAs, four Golden Globes, a Primetime Emmy Award, the AFI Life Achievement Award, and the Honorary Golden Lion. In 2007, Fonda received an Honorary Palme d’Or from the Cannes Film Festival, making her one of three people to ever be granted this honor until then. She was also recognized with a Tony Award nomination for her role on Broadway in Moisés Kaufman’s 33 Variations. In 2018, she was the subject of an acclaimed documentary on HBO, Jane Fonda in Five Acts, by Award-winning filmmaker Susan Lacey.

Nicole Malachowski: (1974- ) Colonel Nicole Malachowski (USAF, Ret.) has over 21 years of experience as an officer, leader, and fighter pilot in the United States Air Force. Upon her commission into the military, she was competitively selected to fly combat aircraft and embarked on an adventure among the first group of women to fly modern fighters. She has commanded a fighter squadron, piloted within the U.S.A.F. air demonstration squadron, (better known as the “Thunderbirds”) and served as a White House Fellow and as an advisor to the First Lady of the United States during the Obama Administration. Colonel Malachowski is also committed to work focused on tick-borne diseases.

Rose O’Neill: (1874-1944) Rose O’Neill was a well-known artist, suffragist, and businesswoman. In 1896, O’Neill got one of her cartoons published in Truth Magazine, and thus earned the title of “America’s First Woman Cartoonist.” The next year, she was hired by Puck Magazine as the first woman cartoonist on its all-male staff. She remained the only woman staffer for six more years, and hundreds of her illustrations for Puck depicted themes of women’s empowerment. Most famous for her Kewpies comic strip, O’Neill produced work for more than 50 magazine publishing companies, wrote and illustrated short stories, poems, children’s books, and novels, marched in New York suffrage parades, donated her art for use in the National Woman Suffrage Association’s suffrage posters and postcards, and participated in many fundraising activities for the suffrage cause.

Louise Slaughter: (1929-2018) A prominent advocate for women and POC, Louise Slaughter was a member of Congress for over 30 years. One of the longest-serving women in the House of Representatives, Slaughter was the first chairwoman of the House Rules Committee and the co-chair and founding member of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus, which works to promote reproductive health and protect a woman’s right to choose. Slaughter also established the Office of Research on Women’s Health and secured the first $500 million in federal funding for breast cancer research at the NIH, and she co-authored the landmark Violence Against Women Act, which has reduced cases of domestic violence by 67% since 1994. Representing upstate New York in Congress for decades, Slaughter was a scientist-turned-politician, a local and national leader whose work for women and for all Americans continues to shape our lives.

Sonia Sotomayor: (1954- ) Sonia Sotomayor is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009 after leadership as an assistant district attorney, in private practice, and across a distinguished judicial career. She is the third woman to be appointed to the Supreme Court and the first Hispanic and Latina Justice in the Court’s 230 years. A graduate of Princeton and Yale Law School, Sotomayor’s experiences as one of few Latinas at these institutions led her to advocate for inclusion on campuses, foreshadowing her focus on public service across her career. During her tenure on the Supreme Court, Sotomayor has been reputed for her work concerning the rights of defendants, calls for reform of the criminal justice system, and attention to issues of race, gender, and ethnic identity. Justice Sotomayor is also an author, including of “My Beloved World/Mi Mundo Adorado,” “A Judge Grows in the Bronx/La juez que creció en el Bronx” and “Turning pages/Pasando Páginas.” A recipient of the Katherine Hepburn Award from Bryn Mawr College honoring women who change the world, Sotomayor has also received multiple honorary degrees, including from her alma mater Princeton University.

Laurie Spiegel: (1945- ) A composer whose work appears on NASA’s “Golden Record,” (shipped out on the Voyager spacecraft) Laurie Spiegel is known worldwide for her pioneering work with early electronic and computer music systems. A cutting-edge thinker, her experience with early analog electronic music systems led Spiegel to innovate musically and instrumentally. She has focused largely on interactive software that uses algorithmic logic as a supplement to human abilities, thereby expanding access to creative expression for a far greater number of people than was previously allowed through traditional methods of musical training. The aesthetics of musical structure and cognitive processes have also been a focus of Spiegel’s work. Spiegel’s work has been re-issued, having appeared in the popular Hunger Games movies, highlighted in the 2018 BBC Proms, and featured in various museum settings where the intersection of electronic music compositions, the machines, and software used to create those compositions, and the visual arts have come together in harmony.

Flossie Wong-Staal: (1947-  ) A world-renowned virologist and molecular biologist, Dr. Flossie Wong-Staal has pursued her passion for biomedical research through the diverse lenses of academia, government, and industry. She and her team of scientists at the U.S. National Cancer Institute were the first to molecularly clone HIV and to elucidate the complex structure of its genome. This accomplishment was instrumental in proving HIV to be the cause of AIDS, and in the subsequent development of diagnostic and therapeutic approaches for the disease. Dr. Wong-Staal has served as Section Chief at the National Cancer Institute and held the Florence Riford Chair in AIDS Research at the University of California, San Diego from 1990 to 2002. Later, she became Director of the AIDS Research Institute and co-Director of the Center for AIDS Research at UCSD. In 2002, she left academia to direct research at biotechnology companies focused on applying novel approaches to target cancer and viral infections including HIV and HCV. Recognized as an extraordinary woman scientist by Discover magazine, Dr. Wong-Staal has also been named the top woman scientist of the 1980s by the Institute of Scientific Information.

About the National Women’s Hall of Fame

The National Women’s Hall of Fame was founded in 1969 and is the nation’s oldest membership organization and museum dedicated to honoring and celebrating the achievements of distinguished American women. In pursuit of its mission of “Showcasing Great Women…Inspiring All,” the National Women’s Hall of Fame honors the women of the past, relates the history of women’s struggles, prepares the women of the future and serves as the voice celebrating the value of women.

Situated in Seneca Falls, NY, the birthplace of women’s rights, the Hall tells women’s stories by focusing on the leadership lessons from its inductees throughout American history. The Hall is in the process of revitalizing the former Seneca Knitting Mill as its new home with the plan to create a vibrant, state-of-the-art facility serving as a leadership center and an educational venue where visitors can discover and be inspired by the stories of great American women. For information about our 2019 inductees, please go to womenofthehall.org/introducing-2019-nwhf-inductees.

For tickets to induction: womenofthehall.org/event/2019-induction-weekend/

Download the Media Kit (PDF)

* This list of the 2019 class of inductees to the National Women’s Hall of Fame contains only the names of those nominees whose attendance at the Seneca Falls Induction ceremony is confirmed at this point. Additional inductees may be announced pending scheduling and travel confirmation.

DISCLAIMER: The views, beliefs, and opinions expressed by inductees do not necessarily represent the views, beliefs, and opinions of the National Women’s Hall of Fame, its members, affiliates, Board, donors or volunteers, or induction sponsors or attendees.

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