Women’s Work
Women have helped clean our air and water, yet their efforts sometimes get lost in the historical record.​
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Here's a very short list of women whose work deserves to be celebrated! ​​​​​​​​​
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Photo by permission: Goldman Environmental Prize
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Semia Gharbi
Despite "an Oscar-winning movie, the story of Hinkley, California, did not have [a] Hollywood ending."​
The giant utility company, PG&E, secretly contaminated the drinking water of rural residents.
Erin Brockovich helped expose the crime, but in the end, legal maneuvers prevented Hinkley citizens from getting a significant amount of restitution for birth defects and cancers.
In 1997, Julia Butterfly Hill climbed a 200-foot-tall redwood tree, which she named “Luna”, to save trees. Loggers were “clear-cutting" redwood forests on private land.
After two years up in the tree top, the logging company finally agreed to leave Luna, and the small surrounding grove, untouched. While many other trees were chopped down, millions of people were inspired by her effort.
In Rachel Carson's 1962 book, Silent Spring, she outlined "the dangers of chemical pesticides", which "led to a nationwide ban on DDT” and other toxins.
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She “accused the chemical industry of spreading misinformation,” while they tried "to discredit her" as being “hysterical”. In 1964 she died of cancer.​​
As a girl, Nalleli Cobo suffered with “headaches, heart palpitations, stomach pain, spasms, and asthma.” Cancer treatment has included multiple surgeries.
There was an oil well across the street in their low-income neighborhood. “It turned out the site was leaking.”
“Cobo organized her neighbors and led a tireless campaign … resulting in the site's permanent closure and criminal charges against [oil company] executives.”
In the 1970’s, Gaura Devi, “from a nondescript village in India, hugged a tree, using her body as a shield to stop the tree from being cut down.”​ A group of women “stood their ground against loggers who hurled threats and abuses.”
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“This simple act of defiance … would come to be recognized as the fountainhead of the Chipko environmental movement.”
After an award-winning career in underwater research,
Sylvia Earle became “the first female Chief Scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration” in 1990.
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In 2009, she founded Mission Blue - an international oceanic research and conservation organization.
Semia Gharbi helped expose corrupt waste trafficking
(of tons of illegal exports) between Tunisia and Italy.
Many government officials were arrested; Tunisia’s environment minister was imprisoned.
European Union waste shipment regulations were improved.
Lois Gibbs lived in a suburban community near Niagara Falls, N.Y. It wasn’t until after neighbors and school kids became sick that they were told the housing was built above a buried toxic waste dump.
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Her years-long work to get a proper clean-up and appropriate remuneration led to the federal establishment of the Superfund law.
Mona Hanna grew up in the USA after her parents fled Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. She is an acclaimed pediatrician, and a professor of public health.
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In 2015, she exposed how the drinking water in Flint, Michigan had excessive levels of toxic lead. A state Republican official accused her of starting an “hysteria”.
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Despite infrastructure improvements, "Flint residents … continue to grapple with serious health issues."
Antonia Juhasz is an American oil and energy analyst, renown author, and investigative journalist.
"She has written three books: The Bush Agenda (2006), The Tyranny of Oil (2008), and Black Tide (2011)."
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In this link she writes about the fossil-fuel industry, President Trump, and American legal & financial systems: rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-climate-clawback-court-green-bank-20-billion-
Petra Kelly was one of several founders of the German Green party. Based on eco-environmental-pacifist ideas, she was influential in promoting and organizing party successes throughout the 1980’s. Eventually, the Greens served in coalition governments in Germany - but not until after her murder in 1992.
"Wangari Maathai became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.” Starting in the 1970’s, she rallied the women of Kenya to plant trees. This work spread and became known as the Greenbelt Movement - creating or preserving natural spaces adjacent to urban areas.
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By 1993, “the women reported that they had planted over 20 million trees on … farms and school and church compounds.”
She was an American scientist and inventor, who first proposed (1856) that an accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere (plus water vapor) would lead to a global warming effect.
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"Foote died in 1888 and for almost a hundred years her contributions” were not discussed​​​​. In this century, her work was re-discovered and recognized as the earliest published study to explain the greenhouse phenomena.
Her 1971 book, Diet for a Small Planet, "was groundbreaking for arguing that world hunger is [caused] by ineffective food policy,” with a particular emphasis "on meat production and its impact."
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She continues to write about, "the political power​ of the meat industry.” “We can make food choices based, not on what’s most advertised, but on what is best for our bodies.”
Vandanna Shiva “has spent many years campaigning against industrialised farming.”
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She’s acted to “protect biodiversity, defend farmers' rights and promote organic farming”.
“My journey ... started with the Chipko movement,” "when women in ... the Himalayas protected forests by hugging trees.”
Susan Solomon “led expeditions to Antarctica to gather evidence that CFCs were destroying the ozone layer.”
“It’s heartbreaking when I see people suffering with … flooding and rainfall in Central America [and] Bangladesh and Vietnam.” They “are so incredibly poor,” yet “are essentially having climate change inflicted upon them by our [first-world] lifestyle.”
“Greta Thunberg is a Swedish climate activist known for challenging world leaders.”
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"I was diagnosed with … selective mutism."
"That basically means I only speak when I think it's necessary. Now is one of those moments."
Andrea Vidaurre led efforts to eliminate fumes from diesel trucks and idling train engines, protecting her California community "from toxic air pollution.”
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​"The Advanced Clean Fleet rule, adopted in 2023, would have phased out diesel trucks."
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In 2025, President Trump helped overturn this rule.
Robin Wall Kimmerer is "a Potawatomi botanist, author, and the director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment."
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She makes use of "both Western science and Indigenous environmental knowledge.
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"Kimmerer has written numerous scientific articles" and books such as Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (2013)​.
Finally, there are the women of “Cancer Alley” in Louisiana:
"In Cancer Alley, the fight against industrial pollution is led largely by Black women,”
within "a coalition of environmental groups.” "Many [can] trace their ancestry back to the days of slavery.”
- Janice Ferchaud, “has been involved in various environmental justice organizations,” including her own, “L.O.V.E.”
- sisters Joy and Jo Banner, with the Descendants Project, illuminated historical connections to environmental racism
- Hazel Schexnayder, helped prevent additional hazardous waste facilities being built in her town of St. Gabriel
- Barbara Washington & Gail LeBoeuf founded Inclusive Louisiana, who filed suit over racist pollution zoning rules
- Wilma Subra is a chemist/environmentalist/teacher. Her lifelong work helped environmental and public health
- "Mary Hampton and Robert Taylor help lead Concerned Citizens of St. John Parish” to advocate for health & safety
- Kimberly Terrell is "a research scientist and director of community engagement at Tulane University”
- Dr. Maureen Lichtveld, is a "professor and Freeport-McMoran Chair of Environmental Policy at Tulane”
- Myrtle Felton and Debra Ramirez are "environmental activists with Inclusive Louisiana”
- Sharon Lavigne leads RISE St. James, a "grassroots environmental justice group” with her daughter Shamyra
To read about other inspirational women (& men), see this list of Goldman Environmental Prize recipients:
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