Founded in 1996, the National Women’s History Museum (NWHM) is an innovative museum dedicated to uncovering, interpreting, and celebrating women’s diverse contributions to society. A renowned leader in women’s history education, the Museum brings to life the countless untold stories of women throughout history, and serves as a space for all to inspire, experience, collaborate, and amplify women’s impact—past, present, and future. We strive to fundamentally change the way women and girls see their potential and power. NWHM fills in major omissions of women in history books and K-12 education, providing scholarly content and educational programming for teachers, students, and parents. We reach more than five million visitors each year through our online content and education programming and, in March 2023, mounted our first physical exhibit at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in downtown Washington, DC, "We Who Believe in Freedom: Black Feminist DC."

The first woman elected to the United States Congress was also the first in her family to attend college. But Jeannette Rankin found her true education in Boston while visiting her brother, Wellington, at Harvard, where she often walked through the city’s tenements. Here, the cruelty of poverty, child labor, and industrial exploitation were laid bare in the faces of those who scratched out a living in factories and sweatshops. 

The experience sent Rankin on a lifelong quest to find the means to create systemic change. Rankin still felt that nothing short of government intervention would be required to cure the ills of poverty that affected those they served and the millions like them across America’s cities. In honor of Women's Equality Day this month, learn more about Jeannette Rankin's life and other women who sought out change through the vote and political office in this month’s featured biographies.