Molly Yard (born July 6, 1912 in Chengdu, Sichuan province, China as Mary Alexander Yard, the daughter of Methodist missionaries) is a U.S. administrator, social activist, and feminist who served as National Organization for Women President from 1987 to 1991. Having previously served as an assistant to Eleanor Roosevelt, she connected first-wave feminism with second-wave feminism. She received the Feminist Majority Foundation's lifetime achievement award for "tireless work for women's rights, for women and girls in sports, for the Equal Rights Amendment for Women, for civil rights for all Americans, for her championing of the trade union movement, and her devotion to world peace and non-violence."
Molly Yard graduated in the 1930s from Swarthmore College, a coeducational college that was also the alma mater of Alice Paul, a pioneering feminist and suffragist who drafted the Equal Rights Amendment.
Molly Yard moved to Pittsburgh in in 1953 and worked in the gubernatorial campaign of Mayor David L. Lawrence in 1958; headed the Western Pennsylvania presidential campaigns of John F. Kennedy in 1960 and George McGovern in 1972; and was co-chairman with Mayor Joseph M. Barr of the unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign of Jeannette Reibman in 1976.
Miss Yard made an unsuccessful run for the state Legislature as a candidate from the city's 14th Ward in 1964.
Miss Yard became active in NOW while a resident of Squirrel Hill in 1974, and she joined the national staff in 1978 during the campaign to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, serving as a lobbyist in Washington. She raised more than $1 million in less than six months for that drive.
She passed away in her sleep at age 93 on September 21, 2005.
Hmmmm....no mention of her "life partner".
How come so many missionary kids go in the direct opposite direction in their adult lives?
Women's rights are based entirely on perceived men's wrongs.
It's amazing that half the male population hasn't turned gay in response.