womenoftheyear

How We Chose the 2023 Women of the Year

This year's list features 12 leaders who are working to build a more equal world

Boxing Champion Ramla Ali Is Fighting for Refugees

Going into a Feb. 4 junior featherweight bout in New York City, Ramla Ali, the professional boxer, fashion model, and philanthropist who represented Somalia at the Tokyo Olympics, felt less than her best. She had...

Masih Alinejad Won't Be Silenced

Exiled from Iran since 2009, the journalist and activist has long spoken out against the Iranian regime

Anti-Racism Minister Gets to Work in Brazil

Brazilian racial equality minister Anielle Franco is fighting a personal battle

Angela Bassett Knows Her Value

Angela Bassett, fresh out of grad school in the ’80s, intended to be a star. When she got an agent—a big deal for any actor early in their career—the man she was dating at the...

This Mexican Activist Is Helping Americans Defy Abortion Bans

For Verónica Cruz Sánchez, the past year has felt like traveling back in time. Since 2000, Cruz’s feminist activist network, Las Libres, has transformed the experience of getting an abortion in Guanajuato, a deeply conservative...

Quinta Brunson Wants to Shine a Light on Everyday People

Quinta Brunson does what she does—currently, creating, executive-producing, co-writing, and starring in the comedy series Abbott Elementary—for everyday people, taking inspiration for the characters from teachers in her own life. The showrunner’s mother, Norma Jean...

Phoebe Bridgers Is Singing Her Truth

She could see them from her perch onstage: a kid and their parents, getting up to leave. It happened at a concert in Florida last year—one of many where Phoebe Bridgers took a moment between...

Makiko Ono Has a Plan to Get More Women Into C-Suites

You don’t rise to the top of Japan’s most venerable whiskey company without the occasional hangover. So it’s no surprise that Makiko Ono—who on March 24 becomes CEO of Suntory Beverages and Food, part of a...

Ayisha Siddiqa Is Defending the Planet

'I was raised with the idea that the earth is a living being'

Cate Blanchett's Greatest Gift Is Her Humanity

When Cate Blanchett was around 5, she wrote a mini essay—saved for years by her mother and unearthed serendipitously during a recent move—envisioning her possible future as an adult: “When I grow up, I would...

Women of the Year