Women activists who pushed boundaries and helped equate gender

8. Dolores Huerta

Dolores Huerta's activism is mostly involved in the fight for farmworkers rights and against discrimination. Huerta formed the Agricultural Workers Association (AWA) in 1960 and co-founded the United Farm Workers (UFW). Huerta continues her activism to help workers, immigrants and women.

She worked hard by pushing voter registration drives while lobbying politicians to allow non–U.S. citizen migrant workers to gain public benefits and pensions and to push for Spanish language voting ballots and driving tests.  She directed the Community Services Organization (CSO), working with her husband until they left and with Gilbert Padilla, co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA).

The AWA and the NFWA in 1965 combined into the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee. They took on the Coachella Valley grape growers and after five years got 26 grape growers to sign an agreement which improved working conditions for farm workers. She also came up with the phrase, "sí se puede," or "yes we can."

Huerta led a national lettuce boycott and got the 1975 Agricultural Labor Relations Act, allowing farm workers to bargain collectively.

Dolores Huerta was also vice president of the UFW and co-founded the UFW’s radio station in the 1980s. In 1988, she was mauled by San Francisco police while protesting George H. W. Bush.

Although conditions for migrant Mexican American's could still be better, she has accomplished a lot for them and for civil liberties in general.