Featured Changemaker

Loretta J. Ross

United States

Loretta J. Ross (she/her) joined the women's movement in 1978 by working at the first rape crisis center in the United States and learned about women's human rights, reproductive justice, white supremacy, and women of color organizing. Co-founder of SisterSong, she currently speaks, trains, consults, and lectures on many issues including Reproductive Justice, Appropriate Whiteness, Human Rights, Violence Against Women, and Calling in the Calling Out Culture.

Loretta Ross standing at a speakers podium and speaking into a microphone

In her words

Every human being has the right to determine if they will have a child...and to raise children that they do have in a safe and healthy environment.
Loretta J. Ross

Feminist Activist. Public Intellectual. Professor.

Is see that all the tiny steps you take towards human rights add up, it is possible to create transformative change. As a teenager and I never expected to see Nelson Mandela walk out of prison in 1990, I thought we were going to be fighting the apartheid movement forever”
Loretta J. Ross

Feminist Activist. Public Intellectual. Professor.

I wish I had known that I don't have to be a perfect activist, that I can bring all my flaws to the movement because the movement is perfect, but I don't have to be.
Loretta J. Ross

Feminist Activist. Public Intellectual. Professor.

I have a lot of faith in young people. Young people are more naturally intersectional than the generations before them, they're going to take charge of the future and heal some of the wounds that older people have left.
Loretta J. Ross

Feminist Activist. Public Intellectual. Professor.

I would say to new activists: never give up on your dreams and never give up on yourself, because if you work towards your dreams you will see yourself achieving them.
Loretta J. Ross

Feminist Activist. Public Intellectual. Professor.

Every human being has the right to determine if they will have a child... and to raise children that they do have in a safe and healthy environment.
Loretta J. Ross

Feminist Activist. Public Intellectual. Professor.

Feminism means...

”I think there are many interpretations of feminism and everybody has the human right to determine what type of feminism works for themselves. While we are united in our desire to end patriarchal oppression, the way we experience and express that is going to be highly individual. I don't think there's any one definition of feminism that should be universal and works for everybody.

For example, I find quite often that white feminists don't understand how, because of their white identities, they can´t resist the ideology of white supremacy and so they've got a lot of work to do in terms of developing how white identity reinforces white supremacy and works against it.”

—Loretta J. Ross