By Krista Thompson, MHSc, ROH, CRSP & International Hygiene Association (AIHA)

International Women's Day is a time to celebrate progress and to remember the trailblazers who created it. In OEHS, women were there at the very beginning, fighting for the rights and lives of workers long before the world was ready to listen.

Alice Hamilton (1869–1970)

Before there were regulations protecting workers from toxic chemicals, there was Alice Hamilton, a physician who turned her attention from the clinic to the factory floor.

Working in immigrant communities, Hamilton noticed a disturbing pattern: workers were getting sick, and their jobs were the reason. She launched investigations into lead, mercury, benzene, carbon monoxide, and phosphorus, becoming a pioneer in occupational toxicology and industrial hygiene.

In 1925, she testified that lead should not be added to gasoline. She was ignored. Leaded gasoline remained in use in the US until it was finally phased out between 1985 and 1996.

She lived to be 101 years old and never stopped her advocacy for peace, women's rights, civil liberties, and worker protections. Three months after her death, the US Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act. The world caught up, eventually.

Frances Perkins (1880–1965)

Frances Perkins studied chemistry and physics, and her coursework took her into factories where she witnessed industrial work firsthand.

In 1911, she witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City. One hundred and forty-six workers, mostly young immigrant women, died because of inadequate fire safety. Perkins never forgot.

She became the first woman appointed to the US Cabinet when FDR named her Labor Secretary in 1933, a role she held for 12 years. In that time, she helped establish the first minimum wage, set maximum workweek limits, supported workers' rights to organize and bargain collectively, and helped create Social Security. The safety net millions of Americans have relied on has her fingerprints all over it.

Nannie Helen Burroughs (c. 1879–1961)

Nannie Helen Burroughs understood that for many Black women in early 20th-century America, the greatest occupational hazard was having no choice at all.

Domestic work, the only option available to many, came with no worker protections, long hours, low pay, and unsafe conditions. Burroughs, an educator and civil rights activist, recognized that true safety required opportunity.

She founded a school for Black girls and women that combined practical skills with education: Latin, history, grammar, public speaking, typewriting, and the tools to access better, safer, more dignified work. Working alongside leaders like Mary McLeod Bethune and Maggie Lena Walker, she fought the compounding effects of racism and sexism on women's working lives.

Her vision was simple and radical: every woman deserves a safe place to work, and every woman deserves the chance to find one.

Lucy Deane Streatfeild (1865–1950)

In 1895, the United Kingdom appointed its first "lady" factory inspectors, 60 years after men had begun performing the same role. Lucy Deane Streatfeild was among them.

These women worked on improving the welfare of women and children in factories, focusing on hygiene and toxic exposures, but they were not allowed to address issues related to men. The women faced active resistance from their male counterparts, some of whom tried to sabotage their work. Yet the lady inspectors consistently caught violations that the men had been overlooking for years.

Deane Streatfeild also trained Annie Jane Duncan, an Australian who became a prominent factory inspector. She was among the first in the UK to address the health effects of asbestos. In her Report on the Health of Workers in Asbestos and Other Dusty Trades (1898), she highlighted the dangers posed to workers' health due to occupational asbestos exposure. Unfortunately, her findings, along with those of other women factory inspectors, were largely overlooked. It wasn't until 1911, when reports written by men were published, that Great Britain began to recognize asbestos as a potentially harmful substance.

Crystal Eastman (1881–1928)

Crystal Eastman graduated second in her law school class. No firm would hire a woman.

She channeled her talents elsewhere, taking on the Pittsburgh Survey (1907–1908), a sweeping investigation into workplace accidents in steelmaking and mining. At the time, the accepted wisdom was simple: accidents happened because workers were careless.

Eastman proved otherwise. Through rigorous research, she demonstrated that workplace accidents were systematically rooted in a lack of safety provisions, excessive hours, pressure to work quickly, poor supervision, ignored hazards, and inadequate training. Her findings became the foundation of modern safety thinking.

She expanded her conclusions in Work-Accidents and the Law (1910) and Three Essentials for Accident Prevention (1911). Though she is better known today as a co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union (1920), her contributions to occupational safety were groundbreaking.