Margaret Sanger felt that "no woman can call herself free who does not own and control her own body" — for her accessible birth control was a necessary part of women's rights.
In the 1920s Sanger put aside earlier radical tactics in order to focus on getting mainstream support for legal contraception. She founded the American Birth Control League in 1921; two years later her Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau opened its doors. The Bureau kept detailed patient records that proved the efficacy and safety of birth control.
Sanger also lobbied for birth control legislation, though she didn't meet with much success. However, she had more luck in court, with the U.S. Court of Appeals ruling in 1936 that it was okay to import and distribute birth control for medical purposes. And Sanger's advocacy also helped shift public attitudes: the Sears catalog ended up selling "preventives" and in a 1938 Ladies' Home Journal poll, 79% of its readers supported legal birth control.
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Rose Schneiderman
A former factory worker and dedicated labor organizer, Rose Schneiderman focused on the needs of working women post-suffrage. She did this while holding various positions: From 1926 to 1950, Schneiderman was president of the Women's Trade Union League; she was the only woman on the National Recovery Administration's Labor Advisory Board; and she served as New York state's secretary of labor from 1937 to 1943.
During the Great Depression, Schneiderman called for unemployed female workers to get relief funds. She wanted domestic workers (who were almost all women) to be covered by Social Security, a change that took place 15 years after the law was first enacted in 1935. Schneiderman also sought to improve wages and working conditions for waitresses, laundry workers, beauty parlor workers and hotel maids, many of whom were women of color.
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