Every year for the past 72 years, Time Magazine has featured a Person of the Year. This year, to coincide with International Women’s Day (March 8), Time flipped it for those who were often overshadowed by publishing a 100 Women of the Year project, announced on TIME’s website and via Twitter.
See all 100 Women of the Year covers #womenoftheyear https://t.co/Xiko582T5B pic.twitter.com/90Ame4Ipkv
rn— TIME (@TIME) March 8, 2020
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The list, whittled down from 600 nominations, includes 89 new covers from a dozen artists, such as Mickalene Thomas and Bisa Butler, according to The Root, and features women who have wielded power in different sectors over the last century. From the 1920 Suffragists to Black Lives Matter founders: Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi, “The women profiled here enlarged their world and explored new ones, broke free of convention and constraint, welcomed into community the lost and left behind,” Nancy Gibbs, director of the Shorenstein Center, wrote in her essay “Why TIME Decided to Revisit a Century of Women and Influence,” published on March 5.
Gibbs, who is the former editor of Time, continued:
Many of the women on this list exercised their influence at the margins, in defense of the marginalized. Recy Taylor, victim of a brutal rape by a gang of white men in 1944, defied intimidation and insisted the attackers be prosecuted. Her example emboldened civil rights leaders who followed, including fearless bus riders like Rosa Parks and Claudette Colvin. The Mirabal sisters were assassinated in 1960 for their protests against Dominican strongman Rafael Trujillo. Dolores Huerta co-founded the United Farm Workers union and conceived the boycott that became the model for a movement. Marsha P. Johnson helped lead the fight for LGBT rights, Judith Heumann for disability rights. As individuals, as activists, they took substantial personal risks; as models, they showed people whose stories weren’t being told and whose lives weren’t being valued that dignity is not the monopoly of the dominant.
To see the full list of names, the covers and to learn more about each 100 women, visit Time here. To purchase one or all of the covers, click here.