"Whether developing green technologies, advancing economic justice, strengthening education systems, or building civic power – women are designing blueprints for sustainable transformation," says the National Women's History Foundation. "This theme affirms that shaping a sustainable future means fostering systems that support both people and the planet."
The cannabis, psychedelics and environmental movements have many women to honor who have advanced sustainability.
One is Tina Gordon of Moon Made Farms, in Southern Humboldt, California. In her sustainably grown garden, Gordon incorporates "aspects of nature, native soil, and on-site composting, we introduce forest and plant material to our gardens to ensure the best and healthiest product. We want to encourage the genetics, and ultimately epigenetics of the plant to carry through an expression of this unique geographic environment."
Sophia Buggs—also known as Lady Buggs—is an urban farmer, medicine woman, and community leader in Youngstown, Ohio. Through stories, blessings, and reflections, she explores themes of ancestral connection, Indigenous practices, food justice, and the challenges and joys of negotiating community partnerships. Her talk at the Women's Visionary Congress 2023 is both a celebration of cultural heritage and a call to honor the unseen forces and generational wisdom that guide us toward collective healing and empowerment.
Winona LaDuke (pictured), the Native American activist who ran for Vice President on Ralph Nader's ticket in 1996 and 2000, is growing hemp and other crops in Osage, MN, where she operates a hemp market store and coffee shop. "I want to scale up and join the 400,000 other horse powered farming operations in North America, understanding the sacred relationship between life, power and the future," LaDuke writes. "I would like to live well, I am interested in decoupling food and hemp from fossil fuels, and I am also interested in the quality of life which small-scale farming creates."
Another who sought a sustainable life is actress Heather Donahue (The Blair Witch Project) who wrote the book GrowGirl about her move to a Northern Californian pot-growing region, where she started a farm in 2008. She wrote, "There are a lot of pretty normal people who've taken to growing as a way to weather this economy and try to carve out a sustainable life with some semblance of autonomy, often in beautiful places that don't have many other jobs available." As she recounted on a recent episode of the podcast "Great Moments in Weed History," Donahue (now known as Rei Hance) has now moved to a town in New England where she lives intentionally small.
Stella McCartney deserves a nod for including hemp fabric into her fashion designs. It's been reported that her father Paul is growing hemp on his farm in England. Stella follows in the huge footsteps of Anita Roddick, who was a worldwide pioneer when she added hemp products to her eco-friendly line at The Body Shop in the 1990s.
Known as "The Duchess of Hemp," Patricia Ann Steward was an activist, entrepreneur, and a key compatriot of Jack Herer (author of The Emperor Wears No Clothes: Hemp and the Marijuana Conspiracy). Born in Phoenix, her parents were two of the original owners of National Car Rental, where she worked as a teenager and honed her entrepreneurial skills. While attending school in Southern Texas, she met Janis Joplin and went with her to San Francisco, where she also befriended Grace Slick. In the 1970s, Patricia moved to Scottsdale and opened the Balcony Hall, a music club featuring musicians like Donovan and John Prine and go-go dancers in cages.
Another hemp pioneer to honor is Christie Bohling, who was reportedly a "major league pot smuggler" in the Southwest when she turned her efforts towards legalization in the 1990s, founding CHA - the Cannabis Hemp Alliance. "She was fiercely outspoken, instrumental in the early battles for hemp legalization. Jack Herer considered her an equal," writes High Times photographer Malcolm MacKinnon, who took this photo of Bohling in the Arizona desert wearing a hemp poncho while standing next to a bale of hemp.
WOMEN ENVIRONMENTALISTS
Women's Visionary Congress 2011 presenter Dorka Keehn's book EcoAmazons: Twenty Women Who are Transforming the World chronicles the undertold story of womens' contribution to the environmental movement. Starting with Susan Fenimore Cooper (daughter of the novelist James) who wrote of her time in the woods "where the mind lays aside its daily littleness," Keehn moved to inspiring moderns like Hazel Johnson, Rev. Sally Bingham, and scientist Janine Benyus who coined the term "biomimicry." "If we're going to have a sustainable future, we need to be emulating them," Keehn said.
Another to emulate is Naomi Klein, the brilliant author of The Shock Doctrine and its sequel This Changes Everything. At a standing-room-only event in Berkeley, CA in 2014, Klein said that while The Shock Doctrine talked about the "disaster capitalists" who take advantage of events like Hurricane Katrina to assert their elitist agendas, we now need a "disaster collectivism" to fix the climate change that is destroying our habitat.
"We're past the point where radical changes aren't needed," Klein told the crowd. "It isn't enough to resist; you need your own strategy." For one thing, we need a "polluter pays" model that funnels the profits from the oil industry into renewables, she said. Pointing out that renewable energy industries generate 6-8 times as many jobs as do oil industries, she noted that adding jobs will help end the "industrialized racism" of the prison industry.
We recently lost Susan Wojcicki, the former CEO of YouTube who was named "the most important person in advertising," as well as one of Time's 100 most influential people in 2015. She served on the boards of the UCLA Anderson School of Management, Environmental Defense Fund, and Room to Read, an organization that focuses on literacy and gender equality in education. Wojcicki was an advocate for the expansion of paid family leave, countering gender discrimination at technology companies, getting young girls interested in computer science, and prioritizing computer programming and coding in schools. She also owned a real estate holding company that worked on the sustainable growth of Los Altos, California.
Chilean botanist, environmentalist, and author Adriana Hoffmann was Chile's Environment Minister in 2000 and 2001. She advocated for the sustainable management and protection of Chilean forests, leading opposition to illegal logging in her role as coordinator of Defensores del Bosque Chileno (Defenders of the Chilean Forest) since 1992. Hoffmann authored over a dozen books on the flora of Chile and 106 botanical names, mostly realignments of species and infraspecific taxa of cactus.
No list of women environmentalists would be complete without the recently, dearly departed Jane Goodall (pictured). She founded the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977 to promote wildlife conservation, followed by the Roots & Shoots youth program in 1991, which grew into a global network. Goodall also established wildlife sanctuaries and reforestation projects in Africa and campaigned for the ethical treatment of animals in animal testing, animal husbandry and captivity.
And the grandmother of them all was Rachel Carson, the author of Silent Spring, which started the environmental movement when it was published in 1962. Carson began her career as an aquatic biologist, and her widely praised 1951 bestseller The Sea Around Us won her a U.S. National Book Award and advanced marine conservation. Although Silent Spring was met with fierce opposition by chemical companies, it spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy, which led to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides. It also inspired a grassroots environmental movement that led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Carson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Jimmy Carter.
GOALS & OBJECTIVES OF WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH:
Honor: Celebrate the diverse contributions of women who are leading sustainability efforts across environmental, economic, educational, and social justice movements.
Educate: Raise awareness about the important historical and contemporary roles of women in shaping sustainable change.
Inspire: Empower individuals and institutions on how to take action toward sustainability, equity, and justice in their own spheres of influence.
Connect: Build bridges across generations, geographies, and disciplines to foster collaboration, mentorship, and shared learning.
Envision: Encourage a long-term vision for our future where women’s leadership is central to thriving communities and a healthy planet.
LET'S DO IT ALL!
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