Entrepreneur Mary Kay Ash founds Mary Kay Cosmetics; the company trains thousands of women who lack other career options to pursue direct sales careers and achieve financial success. The company culture provides an impetus to enthuse and motivate the employees. This multibillion-dollar company, now international in scope, established an associated charitable foundation in 1996. The foundation’s mission is to cure cancers that particularly affect women and to end violence against women.
Jean Nidetch plans, develops, and incorporates Weight Watchers International. She says: “It’s choice—not chance—that determines your destiny.”
Maria Goeppert-Mayer is the first U.S. woman to win the Nobel Prize in physics, for her work relating to the structure of atoms.
Navajo Annie Dodge Wauneka is the first Native American to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She is recognized for working to eradicate tuberculosis and to reduce infant mortality. Wauneka said: “Over the years, I have learned that one failure, or even half a dozen failures should never be the end of trying. I must always try and try again, and I will continue to try as long as there is breath to do so.”
Encouraged by her mother to write and to make something of her life, author and feminist Betty Eriedan publishes the highly influential The Feminine Mystique, a well-researched portrait of the gender roles of the time. The book examines and questions how women define themselves. It is often regarded as the impetus for the resurgence of the women’s movement.