Katharine McCormick: Making Her Mark

Katharine Dexter McCormick is the most compelling, multifaceted person we had never heard of before we started doing research on influential women. McCormick, one of America’s great philanthropists, never sought recognition, but she deserves it. McCormick was an ardent activist for the suffrage movement. She served as treasurer and vice president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Convinced that women’s sovereignty was based on their ability to control birth, McCormick almost single-handedly financed the development of the birth control pill, which the FDA approved in 1960.