Rosemary Dempsey

Rosemary Dempsey was Vice President of NOW, The National Organization of Women.

Rosemary Dempsey is a mother of two who is constantly fighting for women’s reproductive rights. Rosemary practiced law out of New Jersey and was heavily involved in the justice system. Aside from being Vice-President of NOW she was also The President of NOW based out of New Jersey. Her reason for pursuing such a controversial movement was simply that she was being affected by the current issues at hand and wanted change for her and other women. Rosemary was a part of the “We Won’t Go Back” March in April 1992. Aside from marching to raise awareness she is also a regular at giving speeches about women’s rights.

Rosemary would go around to many different college campuses to help raise awareness about the wage gap between men and women because at that time women only made 58% of what men earned.

Rosemary won custody of her children despite being openly gay.

In 1991, there was roughly 1 million incidents reported of domestic violence towards women with another 3 million incidents predicted to go unreported. Domestic violence had become so common in society at the time that it had become the top health risk against women. Rosemary was heavily involved in the act of demanding more laws towards domestic violence by raising awareness about the abuse women endure. This was the start to the idea of the Violence Against Women Act.

Rosemary traveled to Tokyo in 1996 to raise awareness about a sexual harassment issue between Mitsubishi and hundreds of women that were employed by them. Rosemary was doing a lot of talking during her trip with many officials from Tokyo including Mitsubishi Motors representatives. With her help and others, the EEOC, sued Mitsubishi which eventually agreed to pay $34 million in a settlement.